A Ballot of the Wolf and Merc | Ubbe Ragnarsson FanFic

Royal Souls for Heleim

Save for the drag on of what was just a couple of days. Ubbe felt trounced by the seemingly drawn out days turning into nights. One by one falling silent to give once more to the drone of sun rise to sunset. The feeling of restlessness in more than just the vikings legs. Ubbe spent most of the days puttering from one subject to the next without once being able to take Eleri's attention like he had in the past. Since Hvitserk's departure with Bjørn the varagain persisted a close proximity to Queen Aslaug. One thing to be at her side during the day but even with pestering daily Ubbe had not within the last handful of days been able to get anything but a fleeting kiss around a corner and no less than mere minutes all together in the past days. More troubled than angry by the woman's resentment to spend time with him, Ubbe was still galled Eleri wouldn't give him a straight answer.

This mood obvious enough for Sigurd to pick up on on the four day of Ubbe's rifled pacing in his room. There being little to put his older brother's mind at ease Sigurd soon feeling at a lost just as much. Doleful that in the absence of his brother the varagain hadn't offered her company to either brother. Perhaps a pitiful endeavor it still didn't stop both brother's from talking a little more crassly on the fourth day than previously.

"Do you think mother has had a change in heart?" Sigurd sat hunched over on a rotting fence post, busy fraying the ends of a green stick to keep mindless fidgeting at bay.

Ubbe roll his eyes back over to his sibling. Holding a response right off the back until he sighed and turned around, "Why would she have a change of heart about our father?"

Heaving his shoulders in a shrug Sigurd couldn't produce a clear answer, "Maybe since Ivar-"

"She's still not over Ivar leaving with him," Ubbe shook his head and looked down at the knot of grass between his fingertips, "If she could have mother would have surely killed father if it guaranteed Ivar staying home."

"Then why is the varagain still here you suppose?" Sigurd knew Ubbe was right even as it neared a week since Ivar took off with Ragnar and Hvitserk with Bjørn, Aslaug was still more upset over her youngest departure than she would ever be over Hvitserk's journey. The only peculiar change in the scenario was Eleri remaining in Kattegat much longer than either Sigurd or Ubbe thought was needed to supposedly make it seem like her leave wouldn't clash with any suddenness in Ragnar's unsuspected death.

"I don't know," pursing his lips Ubbe didn't look over at his brother. Glum that even with the shift in family structure the hardest adjustment was how little he saw Eleri. Most of it passing glances or quick excuses to be somewhere else. It was taking its toll on the man even if he resented admitting it.

"Maybe mother had changed her mother about father," Sigurd, thinking out loud, tore a thin strand of green branch like piece of thread. Repeating over and over while the stick diminished in his grasp, "Has she-"

"She won't talk to me," hearing Sigurd ask one more time if he'd talked to Eleri was enough to make Ubbe snap. Cutting his brother off at the fear of snapping Ubbe exhaled slowly and leaned back on his post looking up at the overcast sky, "She won't spare me the moment of day. All she's told me is, work, that's it."

The new stick Sigurd had been worrying vanished into nothing but remaining strips at his feet when he ripped the last section into thin tree sinew. Ditching the last piece he pushed back curls that had spent the morning unraveling from the loose french braid one of the servants had put in his hair. Their craftsmanship nothing compared to the tight weave Eleri had put into the young vikings blond locks. Sigurd even a tad fraught over Eleri's absence within his daily routine. The quiet viking had grown fond of her stories of areas past Kattegat and the enthusiasm she had when Sigurd explained the cords on his ute to her.