Vinland Saga Fic: How Slow His Steps (Bjorn, Canute, PG-13)
Title: How Slow His Steps
Author: sheffiesharpe
Fandom: Vinland Saga
Characters: Bjorn, Canute
Rating: PG-13 for a bit of violence
Length: 1622
Warnings: Conceptual spoilers through Chapter 48 of the manga (though this section doesn’t specifically spoil anything).
Author’s Note: Another piece in that Vinland Saga AU that alters the ending of Chapter 45. Follows Purpose and Snow.



Bjorn comes to recognize the sound of the prince’s sleep, quiet breaths behind a thick woolen curtain on the far side of the room. That surprised him when he first noticed, that Canute would sleep here, but so does the priest, his dirty sprawl on a cot near the fire, an empty wineskin always at his hand. But even a future king can’t make a separate building appear in the dead of winter, and a curtain for privacy is more than Bjorn has ever known. Bjorn blinks sleep away, though it’s still night, and everything is quiet, the pain finally gone enough that Bjorn thinks he’ll try walking more. He’s been standing for a few minutes at a time, at night, when there’s no one awake to see his grimace, how slow his steps. But he hadn’t fallen, and nothing feels like it will tear when he moves. He’ll be quiet, won’t disturb Canute’s rest, because Canute hasn’t disturbed his in all of these long days he’s been here. The priest is lucky he doesn’t snore, luckier still he sleeps soundly in his drunken fog.

Bjorn levers himself up slowly, can pick out the features of the room under the faint glow of the cooling coals on the hearth. He shuffles forward—it hurts to lift his right leg, so he only lifts his feet as much as he has to for quiet’s sake. He looks at the wineskin beside the priest, would like to drink, but he knows it’s empty. His hand steadies on the edge of the bed he’s been lying on, then on a chair, on the table where the prince keeps packets of parchment Bjorn can’t read. They’re pale against the dark wood, and he pauses a moment, looking at them. His finger rests on the corner of one sheet and slides it to one side, then back, and then he isn’t looking at it anymore. He’s looking at the woolen curtain, and it’s only the length of the room. He can walk that far.

He isn’t sure what to do, though, when he gets to the curtain. It’s blue, that much he knows from the daylight, but he’s never seen what’s behind it, where the Prince sleeps. It worries him a little—strangely—that Canute hasn’t already woken up, looked around the fabric, because Bjorn isn’t being loud, but he isn’t one of those who can walk silently, who can creep like a cat the way Thorfinn does. There’s the labored weight of his breath, the feel of a body moving through a room. That should be enough to wake anyone. He hooks his fingertips on the edge of the fabric, pulls it back, and Canute’s skin is as pale as the calfskin sheets on the table. The prince doesn’t move as Bjorn stands there, the yellow of his hair a silvered shade on his furs, and despite the room’s late chill, one white shoulder shows. Bjorn has no strength to move, though there is no reason he should stand here, no cause for him to look, and no excuse he can give if the prince wakes up and finds him here. He should walk back to his bed, sleep the way the prince does, because it is time to be done with sleeping during the day. He’s walked the length of the room, can walk it back. He is letting down the edge of the curtain when snow crunches outside, too near the door for the camp sentries. By instinct, he steps inward, between the prince’s bed and the door, and he is still, listening, and he hears the lifting of the latch. It’s not Thorfinn—it moves too slowly. Not Askeladd, because Askeladd would be louder or perfectly silent. The door opens, the creaking hinge it had at first now quieted because Canute said it would disturb Bjorn’s rest. He remembers the thick smell of grease in the air, someone’s fingers smearing it into the wood, but that was weeks ago and now there are footsteps, guarded, coming closer. Still the prince doesn’t even twitch, so deep is his yellow-haired sleep. The priest is useless, snuffling into his blanket, not waking at all. Bjorn draws himself closer to the wall, puts his left side to whatever intruder this is, and he waits.

Sure enough, the cloth ripples and there is the shuffle of leathers, the slither of a knife unsheathing. Bjorn waits, listens for the next step, and he knows better than to look at Canute. That’s where the assassin’s gaze is. Bjorn is looking for the lighter skin of the throat, for the whites of eyes.

He sees his chance, and his hands are big enough to make up for any trick of the dark. The man’s windpipe crunches with a wet grunt, but there is no scream, which is what he wanted. There is, though, the kicking weight of the dying man’s feet, the teeth-gritting stitch in his mangled side, and Bjorn twists his wrist sharply. Neck-bones pop, and the struggle stills. The scent of piss wafts up, and Bjorn drops the body, lets himself exhale now.

Behind him, there is a scrabbling sound, and when he turns, Canute is sitting up, his blanket pooled at his waist, and at least there is the thin shape of a blade in his hand.

“Prince,” he says. He wants to sit down, but only leans against the wall.

“Is everything all right, Bjorn?” Canute’s voice is almost perfectly steady—almost.

The assassin’s not even twitching at his feet. He touches his side out of habit—no blood. The outside has been healed for three days now. And there’s no more sound from outside, not another set of feet. He waits a little longer, and then he says yes, quietly. It’s good Canute’s not screaming. The priest hasn’t woken. They should let everything look normal tonight, and in the morning, Askeladd can deal with this, with the politics of it.

He pushes away from the wall, takes a step. He will have to lift his right foot higher to step over the fallen man’s leg, and he’s lifting it, slowly, when Canute speaks again, his voice as crisp as snow.

“Sit,” he says, and when Bjorn looks, the prince is wrapping a blanket around himself—his pale body swathed dark—and he walks to the dim hearth. Logs shift, and the flames glow their orange, and Canute folds himself back into the bed, buries his feet in the thick furs. Canute looks at him, and Bjorn can see him now, can see him not-looking at the body on the floor, but that means he’s looking at Bjorn. Looking at Bjorn with those strange eyes. “Bjorn,” he says. “Sit down. You shouldn’t be up.”

There isn’t anything he can do but bend his legs and sit on the foot of the prince’s bed. The skin of his stomach aches now, but he says he’s fine. That much he can tell—he is: nothing ripped or torn—he’s only sore.

The prince inches a bit closer, peers over his shoulder now at the corpse. In the light, Bjorn doesn’t recognize him, and neither does Canute, but the prince inches back again all the same, pulling his blanket tighter around his shoulders for a moment before his face takes on that coolness again. He touches Bjorn’s shoulder, push-pulls the slightest bit.

“You can rest here for the remainder of the night,” Canute says, and he moves to the bed’s edge as though to make room for Bjorn beside him. His glance flicks toward the door again, and Bjorn understands—there might be another one outside, might be someone waiting for the first. Bjorn makes a fist, enjoying the way the tendons tighten, how his blood is still heated while the body on the floor goes cold. If there is someone else, let him come.

But the thought of spending even what’s left of the night in the prince’s bed—it staggers him a little. He looks at the empty space beside Canute, and he shakes his head, but he lies back where he is, across the foot. It’s not long enough for all of him, but he can draw his legs up now, and it will be better if he faces the door, anyway, because again he is naked, again he swells because of the give of the assassin’s throat, the snap of bone. The bare, womanish curve of Canute’s white shoulder. Bjorn rolls to his side, pillows his head on his arm.

“Go back to sleep, Highness. I’ll watch.” The room feels warmer than the fire can make it, though his breath could nearly fog the cold air.

Behind him, the blankets rustle more, and the mattress dips, then sags still closer to Bjorn’s back. Canute touches Bjorn’s side where only the thick scars and the shiny pink of new skin show how close he was to dying, and Bjorn flinches. It doesn’t hurt, and Canute leaves his hand there for what seems like a long time before he drapes a wooly sheepskin over him.

“Thank you,” he says, and when he moves back, curls up on the bed, it is not at the head where his pillow is. Bjorn can feel him in the center of the mattress, close and not touching, there, behind his shoulder. He pushes the sheepskin down a bit. He is warm enough.