@tothedevilsshow ; plotted starter
The northern lands were a cold, hard place. Thick ice covered the surface of the river; the sky was white in the morning, gray in the afternoon and black at night, without a hint of sunlight. It was far from a welcoming hideaway. Helen had settled in an abandoned villa with an entourage of maids and soldiers, the latter who had come not with the intention of pursuing a war with the locals, but instead to prevent the opposite. It did not take much to figure out why those humble wooden residences were unoccupied. At their arrival, the soil surrounding the area had a reddish tone, indicating that it was not fruitful and it could not feed a family. That must have been the reason why the natives did not disturb them, either. At this point, it would hardly be a secret that she had gold stored in those halls, which made them an attractive target for a raid. Still, it should be common knowledge by now that there was a group of large, armed men protecting such gold, so it made no sense to waste warriors in a fight if they thought they would all die of starvation by winter.
Helen wanted to leave. She had not wanted to come in the first place, but either to meet her king at his war camp or to go home and wait for his return was a better prospect than waiting, but the gods chose to keep her there and so she stayed. It was a miserable place to live. This was not a civilization of builders: whereas in her motherland they built palaces and temples in tall, artful columns of carved marble, pebble mosaic floors and painted walls, here the homes were but a wooden hall covered in straw, with an elevated platform for the lord’s seat.
Despite all this, they tended the land. Although Helen knew that the natives worshipped other gods, that did not prevent her from performing her rites and sacrifices, so even though they were busy with the Trojan affairs, they listened. Bit by bit, the soil became darker. They planted olives and grapes and even a made a cellar to store wine. Deer and wild boar roamed the area, so they hunted and ate plenty. Winter came and they did not starve. These swift changes must have attracted the curiosity of the neighboring communities, for not only they survived the harshest cold, but the land was also thriving.
Before too long, the first contact finally happened.
An envoy came into the villa one morning when the weather had softened. Helen received him in one of those elevated seats, denoting her importance, with two guards standing between her and the stranger, not allowing him to approach, in a way that commanded her authority even before she had said one word. He must have understood the signs, because he did not speak before she ordered him to. The man was tall, visibly strong, covered with a thick fur coat and a face covered in tattoos of shapes she could not identify. He claimed that a king named Ivar had sent him to summon her presence in his hall.
“Tell your king”, Helen answered with a smile, sitting with a relaxed stance, “that the woman he summons is Helen, Queen of Sparta and that I am outranked by no king, so I answer to no summons from no man”. A pause succeeded these first words, leaving in the air a sense that there would be the end of it. Then, she continued. “You may say he can come to me first and he shall be received peacefully, if he likes”.
