Shared by the Vikings
Read Shared by the Vikings Online
Authors: Isabel Dare
Leo would never get used to seeing holy objects in the hands of the Vikings. Objects stolen from his monastery, just like he had been stolen. The Vikings had carried him to their homeland with a rope around his neck, for all the world as though they were leading a beast to market, and God had not seen fit to strike them down for it.
As Leo sat in the jarl’s longhouse, watching the Vikings celebrate yet another successful raid, he could not keep from shivering at the sight of the altar vessel in the jarl’s hands. The jarl was the lord of the Viking village and the surrounding area, and he liked to choose the best of the spoils for himself.
The jarl was drinking mead from the golden cup, rivers of it streaming past the cup’s jeweled rim and into his long beard.
“Hail Runolf!” some of the men yelled, toasting their ship’s war leader, and the jarl gave them a look of displeasure.
The jarl was an older man, and Runolf was a challenger to his power. Runolf was young, fit, and a leader of the most successful raids this village of Northmen had ever known. It might not be very long before Runolf son of Ragnar was the new jarl.
Runolf was also Leo’s owner. Leo followed the jarl’s gaze to where Runolf sat. It was a place of honor at the head of the main table, and he had all his men round him, laughing and celebrating.
From Leo’s humble seat among the village thralls on the stone floor strewn with rushes, he could just see Runolf’s broad grin as he told some story of their summer adventures. His blue eyes gleamed in the firelight, and his broad chest heaved with laughter.
Leo could not keep his eyes off him.
Runolf was simply beautiful. He was nearly a head taller than Leo and much more powerfully built, with wide shoulders and strong, capable arms. A gold armring glinted around the bulging muscles of his left upper arm; a gift from the jarl for his bravery in battle.
With his startlingly blue eyes and long white-blond mane, Runolf looked like a very masculine angel. The kind of angel Leo had liked to draw, back in his other life where he had sworn himself to celibacy. Where he had never known the touch of a man’s hand upon his body. Things were very different now.
Sometimes, he almost wondered if his new life was real. In his other life, at Culverston Priory, Leo knew himself to be sinful. He knew that even thinking of men in a lustful way was wrong, and as for lying with them - that was unthinkable. He was a servant of God, and all the older monks were always telling him he should be grateful for having been given such an opportunity, for Leo’s family was a poor one.
And yet, now that Leo was a slave, he was happier than he had ever been before.
“Disgusting,” someone muttered in Saxon, just loud enough to reach Leo’s ear.
Leo sighed. If there was one flaw in his strange new happiness, it was this: that he was not the only slave who had once been a monk.
Next to him sat Brother Theodore, one of the other monks from Leo’s monastery who had been taken captive. He was an older man with a sour disposition, who had always prided himself upon his status as the Abbot’s right-hand man. But Brother Theodore was now a mere household slave, just like Brother Leo, and he was not adjusting well to his new life.
“Drinking from the sacred vessels!” Brother Theodore hissed. “May God strike them all with plague!”
Leo tried to hush him. “That’s hardly charitable,” he said softly.
Theodore turned his head and gave him a vicious look. “Charitable! Aye, and I suppose it’s out of charity that you whore yourself out to these Godforsaken barbarians!”
Leo flushed. He could feel the heat rising to his cheeks, and the tears of mortification starting behind his eyes. He blinked furiously, denying Theodore the satisfaction of seeing his tears.
It wasn’t the first time he had heard such words. The other monks had given him no peace from the day they arrived at the Viking village.
Leo thought they were being profoundly unfair, and he could not help feeling wounded. None of them were monks any longer, not really.
If he shared Runolf’s bed, if he serviced his owner in other ways than the other monks did, what business was it of theirs? Was charity not one of the main virtues of their creed? And in any case, it wasn’t as though he had chosen this life. Whenever doubt struck him, whenever he felt the black weight of sin upon his shoulders, that was what he clung to.
“I had no choice,” he whispered, glaring back at Brother Theodore. “I do what I must, just like you.”
“Hah,” Theodore said, with a look of deep contempt. “You were only waiting for a chance to spread your cheeks for someone, slut.”
Leo glared at him furiously, biting his tongue. If he decked his fellow monk, there would be trouble; there was no fighting allowed under the jarl’s roof.
Theodore clearly wanted to insult him some more, but then the jarl got to his feet, raising the holy cup, and began a long speech in the strangely musical tongue of the Northmen. Even Theodore knew better than to interrupt the jarl, and he grew quiet, glaring up at the jarl from under his bristling brows.
Leo listened to the jarl’s speech, trying to understand it. He could pick out many of the words, and with effort he could even make sense of the shorter sentences.
It was important, he thought, to learn the language of his captors. Not that any of the other monks had ever tried it; they were content to mutter to themselves in Saxon, and learned only the simple commands their owners gave them. And yet the Norse tongue was not so strange, not to Leo’s ears; it was close kin to the Saxon, though it did not sound quite the same.
The jarl seemed to be saying something about the grain harvest, which was coming tomorrow. Everyone would be expected to pitch in, even women and thralls like Leo. And afterwards, there would be a big harvest feast with ‘rivers of mead for any man’ as the jarl was promising lavishly.
This news was greeted with a roar of welcome, and some of the men pounded the tables with their fists.
The jarl went on to say something Leo couldn’t quite make out, something about ‘the old rites’, but whatever it was, it caused a riot of approval. All the men were now pounding the tables with fists and wooden platters, and some of them started singing a song that sounded very vulgar, from what little Leo could understand of the words.
Runolf was shouting along with the song, and he suddenly looked over and caught Leo’s eye with a grin. He seemed very pleased, and some of his friends were pounding him on his back as if in congratulations.
Leo looked back at his master with a tentative smile, but he knew he had missed his cue; he didn’t know what Runolf was celebrating, or what there was to be pleased about.
“What are they singing?” Brother Theodore asked him, curiosity apparently getting the better of him.
“Something about the harvest feast,” Leo said, trying and failing to follow the words.
Then he looked Brother Theodore in the eye, remembering all the foul, vicious things this man had said to him over the past few weeks. “I think they’re saying they’re going to roast a monk at the harvest, for good luck. Probably one of the older ones, like you.”
Brother Theodore gasped, and Leo watched with hidden glee as his face slowly turned the color of whey. It was a petty revenge, and the lie was unworthy of a monk or a follower of Christ, but it felt very satisfying all the same.
***
That night, Runolf made it home from the jarl’s longhouse on his own two feet, despite the amount of ale he had drunk. He was light on his feet for such a big man, and his life-long training in sword-fighting gave him excellent balance.
Leo followed him home, occasionally stumbling over a rock. The Viking village was pitch-black after dark, and nobody ever seemed to bother to light a torch to light themselves home. He only wished he could be as sure-footed as Runolf, but of course the big Viking must know the village so well that he could make his way blindfolded.
Runolf laughed at Leo’s stumbling, but in a friendly way, and something about his expression made Leo think of a bear watching his cubs at play. Then Runolf slung a broad arm over Leo’s shoulders, half lifting him off his feet, and said, “We must train you well for the feast!”
He said this in Saxon, which he would speak now and then for Leo’s benefit, though his lilting accent made the words sound very strange. He was one of the few Vikings in the village who had bothered to learn Saxon, and it undoubtedly helped him plan his successful raids upon Saxon shores.
“Train me how?” Leo asked, but Runolf just laughed harder and didn’t answer him, except by saying, “Wait, wait ‘til we’re home.”
The farm was dark when they entered it, but Runolf shouted, and two of his thralls came running up from where they had been sleeping in the hayloft. They got a fire going in the main hearth and lit a few oil lamps, and then Runolf dismissed them with a broad wave of his arm.
Leo thought he saw one of the thralls smirk at him before they turned back to their beds.
He waited for Runolf’s orders, trying not to seem nervous.
Some nights, Runolf just slept with him and made no demands. Now that the Viking raiding season was over, Runolf worked as hard as his thralls to prepare his household for the winter. Farming, smithing, hunting, fishing - there was no task he did not turn his hand to.
After a long day he would fall over into the big hay-stuffed bed, pull Leo close so that they could share each other’s warmth, and sleep like a log.
But Leo wanted Runolf to make demands, tonight more than ever. Mead seemed not to affect Runolf at all, except that it made him friendlier, quicker to smile, and easier to talk to. A glow of well-being seemed to suffuse him, filling him with golden light, and Leo wanted to touch him desperately. He wanted to earn that brilliant smile for himself.
With a sigh, Runolf dropped the massive sword which he wore everywhere, even to celebrations, onto a shelf close by the bed.
There was only one main room in the farmhouse, not counting the outbuildings, and it served for everything: kitchen, bedchamber, hearth and guest chamber. This was something Leo, who had lived in the huge, sprawling Culverston priory since he was a boy, was still having a hard time getting used to.
Especially hard to get used to was the fact that anyone could walk in at any moment while Rudolf was…while they were… well. While he was
serving
Rudolf, was how he put it in his private thoughts.
Runolf turned to him, moving with that liquid grace that was so surprising in such a big man, and dropped his hand on Leo’s shoulder in a possessive manner.
“Time for bed,” Runolf told him. “I want some easing before sleep, though.”
Leo nodded, swallowing hard, his eyes shining.
He did know what Runolf wanted, and what ‘easing’ meant. It meant that he would get to touch Runolf, perhaps suck him until he came, or perhaps use his hands on Runolf’s cock, or even bend over and offer up his ass for Runolf’s use. They had not done that last thing many times, but they had done it, and Leo had enjoyed it shamelessly.
In the first days of his new life, he had been full of shame for everything. He prayed and begged the Lord to help him, or at least not to send him to Hell for doing this. The resounding silence that answered his prayers had made him wonder if the Lord could even hear him, out here in the pagan wastes of Viking country. And certainly the Lord had never sent any help, or any sign that what he did was wrong.
Now, Leo did not utter even a silent prayer. He just dropped to his knees in front of Runolf, hoping the big Viking would tell him what he wanted, and - not that he would have admitted this to anyone but himself - already becoming aroused.
Runolf watched him with a fond smile as Leo unbuckled his belt, then undid the leather lacings of the Viking’s trousers.
Leo’s fingers were adept at the task by now, and it wasn’t long before he could reach in his hand and take out Runolf’s cock. It was already half-hard, and it stiffened in his hand as he brought it out.
“Put your hands behind your back,” Runolf said suddenly.
Leo looked up, blinking in surprise. This was new.
“Training,” Runolf explained at his questioning look, then yawned tremendously, a sound like a lion’s roar. “Come on, now,” he added impatiently, rolling his hips with a predator’s grace.