[M4F] Alternate Script: Attacked and Taken by Vikings

Hey all!

I had said that this audio was highly experimental, but that includes even in the way in which it was written. I didn't start writing this, knowing it would be an audio. Instead, I simply just wrote the start of a story, and realized that it could be an audio - and a pretty good one, I hope. 

But, like I said, I wrote the start of a story. So, if you are interested in reading how this audio came to be, then here you are! The story behind the audio, or, the alternate script (the mind script?):



The wind stung and the air was filled with a mixture of salt from the ocean below, and the promise of rain from the darkening sky above. Along with the knowledge of what was to come, it was enough to make any man’s hair stand on end, but for Gray, it had him petrified, every muscle tense, eyes wide and fixed ahead, as if he were a beast, ready to pounce to the shore beyond which he could not yet see, and would take a day or more still to reach. He had never felt such an intense calm before in his life.

In the distance, a horn sounded softly, its cries carrying across the waves to the other ships around, but fading to a whisper shortly after. A slow inhale was followed by a puff of annoyance. Was it time to switch already? His back burned and his arms threatened to fall away from his body if he dared raise them again. Still, there was already shuffling on the wood behind him, and the wind suggested that they were already slowing down. So, the young man spun, and without a word weaved between the rising bodies to find his seat, filling the empty space only seconds after the previous occupant had left. Then, the monotonous movement began again, each pull a strain that would have been a sign it was time to stop his regular routines and allow his body to rest. But he did not. No one did. The drums continued, the chanting anchoring him back to the others, clearing his mind, focusing his vision, and reminding him of the rhythm of the unit. The pulse of the pack of beasts around him that an outsider may mistake for human beings.

Walking with the sun kissing her left, bare shoulder, though it was still high in the sky, Sanna took in sea and its ever-fresh scent with a deep breath, wondering to herself how long it would be till she was to see it again. The northern ship had been spotted just over four days ago, and what luck it had been that it was spotted, and hadn’t stolen away into the night, as it has likely intended to do. It would take time for reinforcements from the army to arrive, but it would also take time for savages to return in forces, and the lord of Illiad was already organizing his troops. Had they been in the south, they might be at the mercy of the Vansk, because the kingdoms were always at war with each other and had no militia to spare for their own villages, but of course if they were in the south, they wouldn’t have to worry about the northern Vansk at all.

Still, they knew this day would come. They had for generations now, ever since the uprising in the northern colony. Sanna did not know much of the history or politics behind it, but her mother had seen the start of it all when the ships filled with lively men and beaming smiles had returned with a quarter of their numbers, and the once bright eyes turned to stare down the neck of empty bottles, courageous voices now quiet, a void filled with only the whispers spoken behind their backs or the dismissal at a request to share their story. The little they did share, and sometimes the only words spoken, ended in the same warning from each mouth: they would come. Be it for revenge, for a feud now unsettled, for the blood they were rumored to drink, or the bodies they were said to eat, or simply because they could, everyone agreed: they would come.

But the stories grew old, as did the men who shared them. A decade passed, and then another, and still there were no signs of the wolves who wore skins of men. Of the creatures who, when offered magic, accepted the gifts of the demons, rather than the angels. The eyes behind the listeners of the legends changed from fearful to dismissive or even humorous. Mothers would threaten that the northern wolves would eat their children if they did not go to bed on time, and those children grew up to chase each other, howling in the night before howling with laughter at their siblings. Only the aging men and those who revered them did not make the same jokes that the others did, but even so their tales became scarce, and their mouths became still, for they would rather keep their memories to themselves, than have the visions of their bothers’ blood be overrun with mirth.

“Sanna!” If she had not physically jumped, then her heart in her chest certainly had, before the woman spun around, eyes wide and pulse racing.

Cara stood, arms crossed, staring at her friend, one eyebrow raised. It was a familiar stance, the same she took each time that Sanna got lost in thought for too long, and she felt left out of the stories in her friend’s mind.

“Sorry!” Sanna replied, allowing the nervous laughter carry the monetary fear out of her as the breath escaped her lips.

“Are you?” Cara answered. “You know, at this point I should tell the fishermen that I’ve lost a friend at sea with how much you’ve been staring at it this past week.”

“Do you think they’re coming?”

“Oh for fucks sake, again?”

“We saw the ship!”

“An old man and his crew of young boys saw the ship, Sanna,” Cara replied, shaking her head with a huff. “They saw a ship. Hell, they might have even seen a wisp of fog, roughly in the shape of a ship.”

“The elders believed them.”

“As did I’m sure every other old man within a hundred miles. Anything they need, to prove they’re not crazy,” Cara sighed, and shook her head again. “But, the guards will be here soon, and then all of the senile grumps can finally breath again. It’s bad enough with everyone holding their breath, don’t get swept away too, Sanna.”

“Why don’t you believe them?”

“It’s been over twenty years, Sanna,” Cara’s face softened, as if she realized that she was coming off harshly to her friend. “No Vansk has ever been seen outside of their home. I mean, the only people to have ever seen a Vansk at all were the ones who went there. Anything could have happened, who knows if Vanskelldom even has a native people. The sea is not kind, nor is the winter. Men will say many things to save their pride. A fight to the death sounds a lot more valiant than starvation because you weren’t prepared, and no crops would grow.”

“We used to trade with them, you know,” Sanna almost snapped back. “The colony lasted generations. They even put up a fortress there, out of stone too!”

“Many men and women went to the north to seek their fortune,” Cara answered, beginning to walk again. “No one knows their names, how many, of what happened to them. What does it matter anyway? Are you going sail north?”

“Then what about the runes, Cara?”

Cara tripped over her own feet, and almost fell. When she turned, her jaw was tight and her eyes strained. “What about the runes, Sanna?” She asked, trying her best sound casual though she could not stop the venom that leaked through the words.

Sanna held her breath for a moment, before averting her eyes and waiting for her friend to do the same, before allowing a hand to slowly move towards just under her left breast, where the dark, weaving marks were tattooed into her body. They were jagged lines, drawn in the way a rose made of rigid sticks might have been, but beautiful in their fierce contrast. They were what kept her from laughing at the stories when Cara began to drink, and what kept her clothes on until none were around. Only two others had seen them, one who told her they should be hidden and were sacrilegious, and that she might be outcast if some saw them, and the other was the woman who had put them there, painting them on her body when she was too young to remember how or why. But her mother had passed away before Cara could meet her, and so Sanna lived without questioning the symbol until the source of any answers she might have was gone, and all that remained were the cautious words of her best friend.

They were the only proof of the stories the old men shared, the only evidence that might give some power to their tales, but they remained her secret to keep, because she was too afraid of what might happen if she shared them. She didn’t even know if they were runes, but the description fit well enough, and Cara thought they looked evil enough, that they were runes to her.

“Is that a fire?” Cara’s voice once again brought Sanna out of her thoughts.

Raising her head and scanning the trees, she could not see any smoke, but a smell clashed with that of the salt of the ocean, and she understood how her friend could think it to be smoke. A better answer did not present itself to her, so instead she only wrinkled her brow.

The two began to walk faster, once again matching pace side-by-side, their hope to escape the village’s chores for the day vanishing with their increasing curiosity. Their feet sunk and stuck in the sand with each step, but it was a feeling they were used to, and did not slow them as much as it might another, and as the minutes passed by, Sanna began to agree more and more with her friend’s observation. It was smoke, and obviously from a fire, but not the kind that food would be roasted over. The smell carried too far, and with it brought the burning of wood with an undertone she could not recognize, though it was rather foul. A faint could was finally visible in the air.

“What is that? That’s huge!” Cara exclaimed, her feet beginning to move faster.

“Someone’s house has to be on fire!” Sanna’s voice came out louder than she expected, fueling her own excitement. An emergency was never a good thing, but it was impossible to deny that it wasn’t thrilling.

“Father help us,” Cara replied. “The last time there was a house fire, it took half the village hours to put out all the embers!”

Sanna remembered it too. It had claimed the lives of a mother, a child, and the drunken father who had started it all. With a village of their size, a somber cloud had settled over everyone for weeks, and even still no one dared to build over the ashes, whether out of respect for the dead, or fear of them.

As their pace picked up, it was a miracle that Sanna saw what she did. In fact, at first she didn’t quite process the shapes in her peripheral vision. If it were not strange for the beach to be anything but clear, she would not have looked or thought twice. But the beach was meant to be empty. She had only ever heard of beached whales, and the fishermen kept their boats at the docks. Only the storms and the waves met her gaze when Sanna stared out to sea. So she glanced once. And then she glanced again, the cadence in her feet changing. And then she glanced for a third time, without looking away, her legs coming to a stop, and her heart beginning to pick up a the pace they had left.

“Cara…”

Had she even spoken? Perhaps the words had been caught at her lips. Her friend did not slow.

“Cara.”

The wind of the sea returned Sanna’s words back to her, tearing them apart in the air, and throwing them away before they made it even a few feet.

“Cara. Cara. Cara! Cara!” Like a child who only knew one word, Sanna began to scramble towards her friend, her vision fading out the world, save for where her eyes were locked, her ears beginning to ring with an overpowering silence.

“What?” A voice answered, too far away for her liking. “What? Sanna, are you okay? Sanna?”

Or perhaps those were only the words she would have said, if Cara was able to speak any more. Instead, she too was trapped, caught under the same spell as her friend; one spoken in a universal language. Fear.

The only ships Sanna had seen before in her life had been the small vessels that fishermen used, and those were meant to stay near the shore where the weather was kinder. She had heard from travelers, traders, or even the discarded soldier of great creations, taller than buildings and able to house her whole village, some for war and others simply for travel. Before her was neither. She had never seen a longship before, but she did not have to, to understand what she was looking at. Every inch of it mirrored the rumors of the sighting a few days ago, and had a harrowing resemblance to the tales of the nightmares that chased the soldier’s ships as they fled the north land. The sleek, long, polished wood, with oars pulled up on either side and a mast that carried an unfurled sail; it was the ghost in the night, said to move faster than ships are ought to. If only there was just one.

Her vision jumped with her breath, each hitch of her chest bouncing her eyes onto the next ship, and then the next, and the next. They continued down the beach until they were difficult to count, and all became one blurred line which quickly faded to a dull brown and the sting of salt. Sanna pushed herself up from the sand that she had unknowingly collapsed into. She was suddenly very cold, and while her mind was still racing, she was also suddenly very aware of her own pulse.

“Cara?” A voice croaked.

“What do we do?” Was the answer, as if it was a problem that could be solved, but she needed Sanna’s help to do it.

“We…” Sanna begun to turn. “We have to warn them! We have to let everyone know.”

But her movement stopped when the sight of smoke reminded her of why they had been running at all. If her heart had even begun to slow down, it only sped up more then.

While she understood the connection between the two grim sights, her mind had run off in a million directions and too fast for her to keep up with, and so in that moment, she was unable to realize that there may be no one left to warn. So she stood, and pulled Cara with her, and together the two women began to rush through the thin woods to the homes they knew so well.