Chapter Text
WE STAND ALONE, TOGETHER
PROLOGUE – 1940
They’d been betrayed.
A hand grabbed hold of the back of his collar, pulling him back in time to avoid the bullet that would have sent him to their Gods, the deadly lump of metal impacting the tree instead with a loud thunk.
“Move!”
Struggling through the snow covering the ground, Hvitserk turned and ran, his brothers obeying their fathers panicked cry as German soldiers appeared out of every possible hiding place around them. It was difficult, his body off balance because of the bag of explosives he was carrying, and the rifle held in his cold hands, his gloves soaked through before they’d even arrived at their target.
Ahead of him Bjorn took cover behind a tree, raised his own rifle and began to give them what little covering fire he could manage by himself. His time with the Norwegian Army had improved his aim to a level Hvitserk and the rest struggled to match, their own talents lying elsewhere. He fired methodically, his hand sliding the bolt back and forth, picking off one German after another.
A cry of pain came from his right and it was instinctive to turn, searching out the owner of their familiar voice, only for his father to shove him forwards again before he could get anything more than the slightest glimpse of his brother’s body face down in the snow.
“Sigurd!”
It was Ubbe who cried out, his voice twisted with horror and desperation, and for a moment it looked as though he was about to turn back and run towards the too still body of their brother.
“He’s already dead!” their father choked out, his own voice thick with physical and emotional pain. He’d been clipped by one of the first bullets fired, the Germans clearly having been told to aim for the leader of their little resistance group, and bloody was steadily dripping down his arm. “We must get back to your mother and brother! They knew we were coming. They knew. That means…”
Identical looks of horror appeared on the three brothers faces.
Their mothers, Lagertha and Aslaug, and Ivar were back at the village.
If the Germans came for them…
Bjorn continued to fire until the rest of them had passed his position, at which point he fired one last shot towards one of the German officers before turning and hurrying after the rest of them.
They lost the Germans in the dense woodland, using their local knowledge and the think snow to their advantage, but they had far too many close calls before Kattegat finally came into sight.
And what a sight it was.
The village was on fire, entire buildings burning like gruesome pyres of worship, as people screamed and ran for cover. German soldiers were attacking people in the streets, mostly the men but some of the women too, whilst others were clearly searching the as yet undamaged houses.
As they watched their friends and fellow resistance members were dragged from their homes, beaten bloody in most cases, and hauled into the back of three large trucks waiting at the edge of the village. Arne. Lief. Tostig. Erik and Elisef. Kauko. And then…
“No!”
Floki.
They’d found Floki.
The carpenter looked half dead as they hauled him from his house, Helga stumbling out after him with little Angrboda in her arms and tears running down her face.
There was nothing they could do but watch as their dear friends were loaded onto the middle truck, the Germans throwing Floki’s limp body up into the vehicle without any semblance of care. Helga was then forced to pass her daughter up into Arne’s waiting arms before climbing up into the truck herself, her entire body trembling from far more than just the cold.
“Oh, Gods…”
“We have to find mother,” Bjorn choked out, readying his rifle for the fight ahead, his hand automatically spreading his spare clips around his pockets to make them easier to reach. “And your mother,” he added, his fierce gaze shifting between Ubbe and Hvitserk. “And Ivar.”
Their mothers could look after themselves, that they knew as Lagertha had almost as many successful sabotage raids and kills under her belt as they did whilst Aslaug was a skilled schemer and liar, having been able to talk them out of trouble on more than one occasion since the Germans had invaded their beloved country. But Ivar…
Ivar was a cripple, the bones of his legs so brittle that they couldn’t even support his own weight.
He was clever, far cleverer than the rest of them combined, and half of their missions had been thought up by their baby brother and executed to the plans he’d laid down. And he could fight, they’d seen to that, but not to a level that would allow him to survive an all out assault.
He was so clever, in fact, that he’d been wary about this mission from the start.
Ivar hadn’t liked the plan at all, hadn’t liked how the information had come to them, hadn’t liked the numbers presented to them, hadn’t liked the fact that it would have to just be the four of them.
He’d seen the trap for what it was but none of them had believed him.
They’d believed…
“Knut.”
There he was.
The traitor that had sold them out, calmly talking to a German officer as they walked from truck to truck checking the face of those inside. And with them was Earl Haraldson, the mayor of Kattegat.
His loyalties had been suspect for some time, his quisling nature becoming more and more obvious when he’d agreed to the Germans demands without hesitation even as his people began to starve.
“Bjorn, can you make that shot?”
Hvitserk found himself holding his breath as his half-brother raised his rifle into position and assessed whether or not he could hit the man who’d betrayed all of them to the Germans.
“Yes.”
“Knut first.”
The shot when it was fired was loud enough to cause his ears to ring but Hvitserk refused to look away from where Knut was standing, the older man letting out a strangled cry as Bjorn’s bullet thudded into the centre of his chest right where his traitorous heart was located. At once Haraldson turned and fled for cover, his hands flying up as though he could stop a bullet in it’s path, while the German officer began barking orders, gesturing towards the woods where they were hiding.
“Time to go.”
“But Haraldson…”
“…will get what is coming to him.”
It was instinctive for Hvitserk to sling his rifle over his shoulders, the strap crossing his chest as the weapon pressed down on the top of the heavy backpack, thus freeing up his hands to retrieve his twin axes from where they’d been hanging from his belt.
He was a good shot, they all were, but with his axes he was positively deadly.
Hurrying down the hill between the woods and village he swung out at the first German he saw, his action taking the soldier by surprise and so he was able to knock his rifle aside with one axe whilst sinking the other into the side of his neck. Blood spurted from the wound, coating both of them, and when he pulled his axe free he felt it splatter all over his face but he paid it no heed.
He needed to find his mother and baby brother.
Ubbe had similarly switched to his axe and sword, using the latter to remove an officer’s hand when he aimed his pistol towards their father who was firing wildly with his own pistol, screaming with rage as he stormed through Kattegat in search of his ex-wife, wife and youngest son.
It took them a little over ten minutes to reach their house, located near the docks where their fishing boat was moored up alongside all the others, restricted on where and when they could take her out.
Hurrying inside Hvitserk barely had time to realise what was happening before a sword was swung at his head, stopping just in time as his mother let out a shrill scream, the blade leaving the smallest of cuts on his vulnerable throat.
“Hvitserk,” Lagertha panted, shocked and relieved, as she lowered the sword. “We feared…”
Moving aside to allow the others into the house he found himself pulled into his mothers arms, uncaring of the bloody covering him, before she released him in favour of doing the same to Ubbe.
“You were right, little brother,” he sighed when he caught sight of Ivar, dressed in his warmest travelling clothes, his legs bound together as was his habit. “Knut betrayed us to the Germans.”
“I take no pleasure in saying I told you so, but I told you so.”
As the last to enter Ragnar turned, closing the door and putting the bolts across at the top and bottom of the door before turning the key in the main lock and looking around for something suitably heavy to place against the door to give them more time to escape when the Germans came.
“Wait,” Aslaug gasped suddenly, looking around the room. “Where Sigurd? Ragnar, where’s…”
As one, the four of them lowered their eyes to the floor, Ubbe letting out a quiet sob.
It was answer enough.
“No,” the beautiful woman gasped, shaking her head in denial even as Ragnar moved to pull her into his strong arms. “No, not my Sigurd. Not…”
“He’s dead?” Ivar asked, his voice disturbingly hollow. Their relationship had always been a strange one, the two youngest sons of Ragnar Sigurdsson having absolutely nothing in common but for their ability to wind each other up. They’d never been friends, more close rivals, and Hvitserk had spent his entire childhood pulling them apart when what should have been a friendly game turned into a violent scrap that left one or both of them injured to the point of permanent scars. “Ubbe? Is he…”
“Sigurd’s dead, Ivar,” the eldest of Aslaug’s sons confirmed. “He was shot.”
“It was quick,” Bjorn added, trying to ease their suffering. “He didn’t suffer.”
Ivar sat quietly for a long moment, clearly struggling to figure out how he should feel, before finally his grief won out and a single tear fell from his impossibly blue eye.
“We need to go,” Ragnar announced gruffly, reaching out to clasp his ex-wife’s shoulder even as he kept his current wife tucked in close to his chest. “They’re arresting everyone. Knut must have given them every name. Leif. Arne. Floki…”
“Floki?” Lagertha gasped. “But, what about Helga and…”
“Them too.”
Lagertha let out an angry hiss, turning away to glare out of the window at the chaos taking place all around them.
“We have to go.”
“Where?”
“England,” Ragnar answered quickly, turning to gather up his things and gesturing for his sons to do the same. Hvitserk filled his pillowcase with everything he wanted to take with him, his backpack already full of explosives, while Ubbe crammed his own things and some of Sigurd’s into his small suitcase. Bjorn didn’t live with them, his own house being located on the other side of the village, so he stayed close to the door, finger on the trigger. “To Athelstan.”
Athelstan.
They’d opened their home up to the young Englishman when he’d come to Norway before the war to study at the university, his lack of funds having forced him to look for rooms outside of the city, back when Ragnar and Lagertha had still been married and Bjorn had been a boy of ten and Gyda, their poor sister a girl or twelve. As time went on, Athelstan had become more like a friend of the family than a guest and then, after Gyda’s sudden death, closer still as he comforted her parents.
His return to England at the end of his studies had broken them, Ragnar giving in to his depression and sleeping with Hvitserk’s mother, initially to spike Lagertha’s whose own grief had turned to anger rather than hopelessness. They’d divorced when Aslaug had realised she was pregnant, a quick marriage taking place to ensure Ubbe would be born on the right side of the blanket.
Athelstan had come to stay with them again when Hvitserk was four years old.
He could remember being frightened of the stranger to begin with, not liking the way her spoke due to his English accent, but he’d settled in quickly as stayed with them for almost four years before his responsibilities back in England had finally grown to numerous to ignore, the most important of which had been the revelation that he had a son through an affair he’d had with a married woman.
They hadn’t heard from his since the occupation, the Germans having stopped all communication with England for obvious reasons, just as they hadn’t heard from their uncle Rollo in France since they too were occupied.
“Athelstan,” Lagertha hummed sadly, nodding her head with approval. “The journey won’t be pleasant. Our boats are hardly designed for such a crossing.”
“If our ancestors could do it in their longboats we can do it in our fishing boat.”
“So long as the weather is kind we’ll be fine,” Bjorn murmured, speaking from his years of experience working alongside his father on the boat. “I see movement. We need to go. Now.”
“Ubbe,” Ragnar barked out sharply. “Get Ivar. Lagertha, the hatch.”
Their home had an escape route built into the floor, something that Hvitserk had always wondered about but never questioned. He’d heard stories of his father’s wild youth, of the trouble he, Rollo and Floki had got into, so perhaps that had something to do with its construction. Or perhaps it had bene his grandfather, a strict fisherman who dabbled in the art of smuggling if stories were to be believed, or maybe even his great grandfather who had stolen another man’s wife twice.
Hurrying across to the large rug in the centre of the room, Lagertha pulled it back to reveal the hatch which she swung open with ease in spite of the sheer weight of the thick wooden door. Ubbe went down first, Ivar clinging to his back and their suitcases in his hands. Then went Aslaug, followed by Hvitserk himself.
The tunnel was small, Ubbe struggling not to bash Ivar’s head against the wooden beams supporting the roof, but Hvitserk had played in it often enough that its size didn’t affect him.
Soon they emerged close to the dock, the tunnel’s entrance hidden inside a hut they used for storage and maintenance, keeping their spares nets and the like hung up for all to see.
Had he known that would be the last time he saw his father he would have said something even if it had just been goodbye but at the time he fully expected Ragnar to follow Bjorn and Lagertha out of the tunnel.
But he didn’t.
“Where’s…?”
“The Germans came just after you went into the tunnel,” Bjorn answered him tightly, his foreheads creased with an angry frown as he glanced back towards the worryingly silent house. “Father stayed behind to give us a chance.”
“But…”
“Get to the boat,” Lagertha ordered. “We can’t wait for him. We have to…”
“But…”
“Get to the boat!”
They had no choice but to obey the sharp command, Ubbe leading the way and Bjorn bringing up the rear, his eldest brother opening fire as soon as the Germans noticed their escape attempt. Bullets thudded into the wooden planks beneath their feet as Hvitserk urged his mother to hurry along the dock, all but throwing her into the boat after Ubbe and Ivar.
Pushing her down into the hold of the ship Hvitserk slipped his axes back into his belt and made his way to the front of the boat to release the bowline, ducking away from bullet impacts as he went.
The boat rocked as Lagertha and Bjorn jumped in last, his eldest brother releasing the stern line just as Ubbe fired up the engine and pushed the engine as hard as he dared to turn them away from the dock. It felt as though they moved far too slowly, bullets impacting all around the fishing boat, but soon they began to hit the water behind them, signalling that they were out of range of their rifles.
They’d done it.
They’d gotten away.
If only the cost of their freedom hadn’t been so high.
“What now?”
“Now we go to England, to Athelstan,” Lagertha mumbled, clearly in shock by the shocking turn of events. “And then one day, when we can, we shall come back and get our revenge.”
~ * ~