A Ballot of the Wolf and Merc | Ubbe Ragnarsson FanFic

The Dragon and The Bear

Bjorn placed the set of old parchments down alongside the rest of the cluttered pesky mess on the wooden table top. Rustling the disarray of maps and scribbled logs for some unknown semblance of organization to the mess, Bjorn only stopped and sighed lowly. Standing back up right with his broad shoulders back the thirty year old viking closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose irate over the scatter of confirmation he had flooding in over the past three days from tribes and groups left and right for the raid against King Aelle.

Couriers sent out to the furthest reach of the assorted dominions were surged with righteous intent to join the Ragnarsson's cause. Even the furthest reaches indignant over the injustice to the Mighty Ragnar Lothbrok. Disgraced by the audacity by the Christian King men and women akin were raising their shields up in outrage. All in grandeur except it left the eldest fumbling to consolidate such a large raid. If something so monumental could even be considered a raid at this rate.

"You'll hurt your chances of success if you vikings treat this like a berserking filled rush," caught unaware of the company in his newly announced war room after receiving such rave for the fight on King Aelle. Bjorn looked up from his papers and didn't make the connection at first to the voice and Eleri leaning arms crossed in the door frame. The curling furrow in the blond vikings brow more than words could say and Eleri pushed off the door frame and stepped over the threshold, "This isn't a raid, treating it as such would amount to failure."

"Varagain," Bjorn pardoned her rude interruption with a nod but did not follow into what she insights.

"Lothbrok," Eleri's slate eyes drifted over the mess of ideals and scribbles and maps loading the table, "...you should have the cripple in here, he speaks of some good ideas."

"What are you doing apart from my mother varagain?" Bjorn usurped her banter. Not since returning to Kattegat nearly two weeks ago had he any interaction with the alienated woman his mother favored. Neither did he wish to after the hectic spike her presence seemed to send right down the middle of his younger half brothers. Something must have resolved for the past week the community amongst the four and the woman resumed only with an air of tenuousness each day the sun set. Bjorn disregarding it as drama he had no time for.

Eleri not looking up flipped through a few of the pages junk on his table, "Your mother is-"

"Queen Lagertha to you-" Bjorn pointedly interrupted her.

Slate eyes darted from the parchment up to the burly blond, "She is my employer not my Queen."

"Splitting hairs," Bjorn shook his head.

"Splitting hairs is your nausince of deciding which of those half brothers are disposable," calm as her retort the words where the harshness.

Bjorn slightly galled opened his thin lips to disagree with her, "In no way have I-"

"Thought about which one of them are useful and which of them are to be casualties?" Eleri diving quickly into her callous tone as she came around the side of the table, "It's hard now, since Floki gave the crippled his wheels. A viking on a chariot ranks higher than the lute playing dolt now?"

Ice blue eyes narrowing in on her, Bjorn did not deter when Eleri approached him. With the little interaction he had with the southerner still left him a little taken back by how tall and broad she was. Nothing built like his wife or his mother, Bjorn looked Eleri's frame up and down, "...what are you doing in here?"

The avoidance to confrontation set Eleri's lips in a fine pink line. Though nothing she could hate since she prefered not arguing with another son after having her daily fill of Ivar no matter what. In with a big deep breath and the interloper crossed her arms and inclined herself back against the solid table, "...I need to know you will not be putting them in danger."