Where the Land Starves, the Wolf Feeds Part 2: Tithe
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part 1 | part 1.5 18+ only | part 3 | part 4
Ubbe x Settler!Reader
Fandom: Vikings
Summary: You and Ubbe refuse to build a second bed, choosing the heat of the night over propriety. But when Kjetill demands the starving settlers weigh their rations like gold, you burn the old laws to forge a new one: from now on, the hungry eat first, and the greedy eat last.
Angst / Survival Words: 1.6k
The stack of birch timber behind the forge turns grey with the frost.
It is good wood. You know the weight of it in your bones because you dragged it from the black beach yourself, the leather harness digging into your chest until the skin was raw, your boots slipping in the slush that passes for earth in this accursed place. It is enough wood to build a fleet to sail back to the green world. It is certainly enough wood to build a second bed frame.
But the wood sits there. Untouched. A monument to a task neither of you intends to finish.
Nights bleed into moons. The sun begins to linger a little longer on the horizon, teasing a spring that feels like a lie, but the hammer never strikes the nail. Neither of you speaks of it. To speak of it is to break the spell that keeps the winter at bay, a fragile thing woven from silence and necessity.
Every night, when the wind begins to scream against the turf walls like a lost spirit seeking entry, Ubbe does not reach for his tools. He reaches for the heavy iron latch of your door. The bar falls. The world is locked out.
And every night, the narrow bed ceases to be a territory to be divided. There is only the bone-deep cold, and the desperate necessity of skin against skin.
You wake most mornings with the weight of him heavy upon you—his face buried in the crook of your neck, seeking the pulse there, his beard scratching the soft skin, his arm thrown across your ribs like an iron band holding a barrel together. It is not a claiming; he takes nothing from you that you do not give. It is an anchoring. You are the only thing in this land of black rock and grey water that does not feel like death to him. And he... he is the only fire that has not gone out.
But the bond between you is not forged in the furs. It is forged in the mud.
You are not carpenters. You do not have the hands of Floki, hands that could make wood sing and stone dance. You have the hands of a warrior—scarred, calloused, used to gripping the hilt of a sword, used to destroying, not creating. But you have will. And you are stubborn as the basalt cliffs that line the bay.
"Hold it steady!" Ubbe grunts, his shoulder jamming a heavy, water-logged beam against the sagging roof of the goat shed.
You are underneath it, your boots sinking deep into the muck. Your arms tremble violently. The wood is heavy, slick with ice, and rough. Splinters dig into your palms through the wool of your gloves, biting like insects. You grit your teeth, your vision swimming with exhaustion, sweat freezing on your brow. You are not a builder. You are just a woman who refuses to let the last milking goat freeze to death because a roof has failed.
"I am... trying!" you hiss, the breath tearing at your throat like a rasp. "But my fingers... they are stone!"
"Pull, Y/N," he commands, his voice strained, sweat dripping from his nose. "Pull, or the roof takes us both."
You roar—a sound of pure, desperate frustration that comes from your belly—and yank the leather lashing tight. Ubbe hammers the peg home with the back of his axe, the wood groaning in protest. The structure sways, settles, and then... it holds.
You collapse back against the turf wall, sliding down into the mud, your chest heaving. You are shaking. Your hands are bleeding.
"It is ugly," Ubbe says, stepping back to look at the shelter. The walls are uneven. The door hangs crooked on its leather hinges. It looks nothing like the great, soaring halls of Kattegat.
"It stands," you whisper, closing your eyes against the glare of the snow. "And the beast is warm. That is enough."
You feel a shadow fall over you. Ubbe is crouching in the mud. He reaches out, taking your hand in his. He peels off your ruined glove, looking at the raw, red skin of your knuckles, the blood mixing with the dirt.
He does not say you are a great warrior. He does not say you are a Queen. He lifts your hand and presses his forehead against your palm. The gesture is so small, so quiet, it makes your heart ache behind your ribs.
"You carry too much," he murmurs into your skin.
"Someone has to," you answer, your voice breaking. "Or we all fall."
He looks up at you then. The wind is whipping strands of hair across your face. His eyes are soft, blue as the summer sky he remembers from home, stripped of the warrior’s mask.
"Then let me carry it with you."
The hunger is a quiet thing at first. It is not a roar but a hollow ache in the belly, a constant, dull thrum that matches the grey sky pressing down on the settlement.
You stand in the center of the camp, your breath clouding in the biting air. The great iron pot hangs over the fire, bubbling with a broth that is more water than sustenance. Around you, the people move like ghosts.
Kjetill Flatnose used the balance scales—the ones meant for weighing silver and gold—to weigh dried fish. He treated the food like coin, and the people like thieves. But the people who look to you... they are done with counting.
"Line up!" he barks,"One piece for the man. Half a piece for the woman."
You feel the injustice of it burn in your chest, hotter than the fire. You look at Hild, the widow whose children are thin as willow branches. You look at the old men who built this camp with their bare hands, now shaking from weakness.
The settlers loyal to you break the line and gather around their ruler. They do not come empty-handed. From beneath cloaks and from hidden pouches, they bring what they have. A handful of dried peas. A strip of salted meat. A withered turnip.
They place it all on the table. Not for themselves, but for the pot.
Kjetill stands by the fire, the brass scales in his hand, watching with a sneer.
"What is this?" he barks. "We weigh the shares! That is the law!"
Ubbe moves beside you, does not step forward; he looms. He is a mountain in the mist, his presence heavy and solid. He puts a hand on the scales.
"The belly does not know numbers, Flatnose," he says. His voice is low, a rumble of thunder trapped in a chest of oak, but it rings off the stones. "A child who sits in the cold hungers just as the man who digs the grave. We do not ration by numbers anymore."
He looks at you.
His blue eyes are clear, stripping away the fear, asking the question only you can answer. Are we doing this?
Your heart hammers against your ribs like a trapped bird, terrified of Kjetill’s madness, but your love for these people is a fierce, living thing.
"We ration by love," you say. Your voice shakes, but you do not step back. "The people decide."
Ubbe takes the scales from Kjetill’s hand. He looks at the metal plates that have decided who lived and who starved. Then, without a word, he throws them into the heart of the fire.
The metal hisses. The crowd gasps.
You take the ladle. You dip it into the stew—a stew made from the sacrifice of the many, from the last of your own salted meat, the last of Ubbe's turnips. It smells of salt and life. It smells of home.
You do not fill your own bowl. You find Hild. You fill her bowl until it spills over, hot and rich.
"Eat," you command gently.
Then you fill Ubbe’s bowl. And finally, when the pot is scraping bottom, you take a little for yourself.
And the people... they do not hide their food in their sleeves. They eat together, huddling for warmth. If a man has meat in his bowl and his neighbor has only broth, he tears the meat in half. If a woman is full, she passes her bowl to the child behind her. They are a single body, keeping the blood warm.
Ubbe sits on a log, whittling a spoon, watching you. You move among them, touching a shoulder here, soothing a brow there, making sure the smallest mouth is fed before you even look at the pot.
He watches you not as a ruler, but as the very heart of the settlement beating in the cold.
Kjetill watches too. He stands in the shadowed doorway of the Longhouse, his face dark as a thunderhead. He grips the doorframe until his knuckles are white. He sees his power slipping away, grain by grain, drop by drop. He sees how the men nod to Ubbe with respect, not fear. He sees how the women look at you.
He sees a King and a Queen rising from the mud, without a crown between them.
And in the darkness of his heart, the jealousy begins to rot into something blacker. Something that will require blood to wash away.
<part 1 part 3>
