A New Beginning (Raven's Joining)

The woman did not raise her eyes, which in her defense, was a good thing but her submissiveness did not appease the territorial Jarl. The point of the fact was she was still within his borders and though realistically not a threat against Ragnar alone Syver had stuck around though the boy had moved to give Ragnar the space the Jarl required to do his job. The woman's lips had parted to speak and while sound had came forth it did not answer Ragnar's question. He was tired of trespassers, tired of taking them captive, tired of wolves acting like his borders did not exist when they did. Obviously, he needed to be a lot more ruthless in order to get the word out that Stavanger Bay wasn't to be messed with. Perhaps he might string the bodies of his wolf sacrifices out along the borders so the rotting flesh of brethren got the message across. Too often he was mistaken for a soft man. He wasn't soft. He wasn't kind. He wasn't a hero. He was the anti-hero, and his wives did a fair job at spinning a Saga of lies about him. He was as loving as he could be to them because they were his women, the same went to his children but that did not mean they were the exceptions of his personality, as Thistle had found out the hard way.

Mercy, Ragnar breathed with a dangerously coy smirk tugging at the edges of his lips, his soft, accented voice repeating the word as if it were a jest. She wanted to join Stavanger Bay and she desired mercy from him when she was trespassing Surely, surely this had to be a joke. You did not answer my question, Ragnar spoke to her slowly, as if she were a child that he needed to repeat himself too. For the time being, he saw her as no different. Until she gave him a reason not to kill her he saw no point in indulging her with speak of joining and mercy. Not when she was begging mercy from a breed of man that did not know the meaning of the word mercy.

TABLE CODE BY JOHN