The sun was just beginning to rise when Esben woke up, shifting under the blankets on his bed pallet, and he pressed his face more solidly into the back of Kottr's scruff, pressing his nose into the wiry grey of his fur, wrapping his arm around the hound's belly.
Kottr yawned, making a squeaking noise in the back of his throat as he stretched out his legs as far as he could, and then leaned back into Esben's body, shoving his hard skull up into Esben's chin.
The fireplace was still crackling away quietly, almost down to the end of its fuel, and Esben lifted one hand away from Kottr's thick fur, flicking two fingers toward the pile of logs in the trough beside the door. One of them lifted up immediately, levitating smoothly on the air, and slid into the fire, sending a satisfying puff of new sparks up around the spit.
Most of the light in the room came from the fire itself, a little more light coming in from the chimney's gap, that light paler and not as warm. Esben was underneath a layer of four blankets, although Kottr, owing to the thickness of his fur, had elected to burrow under only the uppermost one, laying on top of the others.
Esben didn't want to rise just yet, and as he shifted his hand, pulling at the flow of magic on the air, he set a pouch of water to pour into the kettle, a few nettle leaves and berries inside, and then the kettle floated merrily through the cool morning hair, settling itself neatly on its hook over the flame.
Kottr yawned again, silently this time, and Esben scratched his chest, pressing his fingers into the thickness of his fur. He had gotten Kottr as a young dog, given to him when he'd healed the daughter of a woman some days' rowing upriver — he'd been six months old, the last of their dog's litter, and the first time he'd seen Esben use magic, he'd been very frightened indeed, had barked and howled at the floating cloak.
He hadn't, Esben didn't believe, realised that the cloak was under Esben's control: he had posed himself immediately between his new master and this frightening cloth attacker, and ripped the bottom hem quite to shreds.
Esben hadn't blamed him, of course — and once Esben had repaired it, it seemed like the different colour cloth at the hem was on purpose. He'd received a few compliments on it.
"The full moon has waned, Kottr," said Esben, scratching Kottr's ear, and Kottr looked at him with interest, brown eyes shining in the dismal gloom. "I shall make my pilgrimage to Freyr's shrine today, and lay my offering there."
Kottr rolled onto his back, and pawed at Esben's shoulder.
"Is that some statement of understanding, or do you want a piss?" asked Esben.
Kottr rolled off of the pallet and, tail wagging, pawed at the door.
Esben laughed and stood from his bed, pulling on a pair of loose leggings and an undershirt. It was spring, and the air was beginning to warm, the snow starting to thaw away from the land outside and leaving a grey-white slurry behind in the grass, but the air was still cold, and there was a bitterness in it.
Nonetheless, he did not wear his heaviest tunic — he would only grow too hot in it later.
He loosely wrapped his belt around his middle, checking that his knife was sheathed where it ought be, and then he slipped on his boots, his cloak.
"Are you staying in bed, Hundr?" asked Esben, and Hundr stirred in his favourite bed, which wasn't actually a bed at all — it was a fish trap Esben hadn't been able to repair, the wicker too damaged after an elk had trodden on it, but Hundr had liked it very much even before Esben had lined it with a ruined shirt, and now it was his favourite place to sleep. Hundr opened both eyes reluctantly, chirruping from the back of his throat and purring when Esben slid his palm over the top of his wide head, marked over as it was with battle scars and scabs.
Hundr refused to move, and Esben left him in his place — he would stir by the time Esben had broken his fast and drunk some morning tea, and would no doubt begin his patrol of the nearby farmsteads, sowing his wild oats.
As Kottr walked down to the end of Esben's plot, nestled between two more defined farms, Esben followed after him. Troels and Estrid and all of Troels' brothers were on the western side, and Svend and his family on the other. They had offered him more land than he had, when first he had been walking through with his goats and Hundr on his shoulder — he had requested only the portion of land they'd given him when he'd first offered his services as healer, but they had heard of him already.
They'd been a little frightened of him, truth be told, and he hadn't been intimidating at all those years ago, a young man with no hair on his face, his every feature still seeming so much more youthful, his voice still high, but they hadn't treated him as the boy he had appeared as — and certainly hadn't treated him as a woman.
He hadn't wanted to take advantage of their desire to please, and he did think that was for the best, so many years on — they respected him now without fearing him for no reason. Fear didn't always serve a man.
As Kottr took his morning piss against the fencepost, Esben let free his goats from their little barn, and his little brood of hens, too, that they could move about more freely. He would ask Revna, one of Svend's youngest, to check on them before he made his journey, in case he was gone a few days.
He unparcelled the last of the boar he hadn't put up to cure, and that got Hundr to jump up from his basket, coming to settle beside him at the fire. Kottr took half of the parcel raw, but Hundr, a far more demanding and sophisticated eater, waited for Esben to cook the meat over the fire before he ate any.
"The full moon has waned, Hundr," said Esben as they shared a piece of pork meat, and Hundr looked up at him with wise eyes and frazzled whiskers. "I might be gone a few days."
Hundr put one paw on his knee, and began to knead into the fabric there, looking up at him lovingly, until Esben dipped his head and butted their heads together.
It was not that he disliked his house, nor the animals with whom he lived, nor the modesty with which he lived. Esben had never wanted for luxury, and even before he had ever met a great, tall beast of a man-not-man with gold shining in his hair and his beard, he had been confident in his command of magic, had been born with skill enough to improve on.
The pact he had made was not one that made great demands of him, he did not think, particularly given the great extent of the rewards it garnered, and yet part of him, at times, wondered what it would be like, to live with someone in his house — another man, perhaps, a shield brother who might touch him, be touched, a man with a good cock to play with.
The thought made his own cock stir between his legs, and he pressed the heel of his hand down against it, humming lowly as he rubbed his heel back and forth over the jut of the nub through his clothes, feeling heat flood downward —
But no.
Why bother, when he could have so much more by the day's end?
He left the door on the latch, painting a handful of symbols on the air before the entrance. It wasn't as though he had to — Kottr would dissuade anyone who came close to the house bar young Revna, and if anyone came seeking his services, they would leave their message with either Svend's wife, Gertha, or with Estrid.
