Askeladd

In adulthood Askeladd is a lean, muscular fighter of middling size, listed at 170 centimeters and sixty-five kilograms, his slight frame hiding real power behind his speed. He wears his light blond hair short and slicked back above pale blue eyes, coloring that betrays his mixed Welsh and Danish parentage. Hollow cheeks, sharp cheekbones, a hooked nose, and thick brows that flick upward at their edges frame heavy-lidded eyes and a small, tidy goatee, a face well suited to the smirks and cocked eyebrows he wears so often.

As a boy he was 'the Ashen Lad,' barefoot and grimy from menial labor, his wavy hair parted and loose; once his father took him in at eleven, he grew cleaner and better clothed. His usual battle dress is a cowl-necked gambeson over a dark long-sleeved shirt and trousers, a Roman-style breastplate, and a sword hung at his left hip, sometimes with a capelet or a heavier cloak in the cold. As the years pass his hairline climbs and his features grow more lined, and a clash with his own men leaves a scar above his right eye.

Askeladd is sly, magnetic, and manipulative, a fine swordsman whose greater weapon is his intellect and his knack for reading a person's whole nature from their face. Slow to anger yet quick to seize an opening, he inspires his crews as a bold and lucky leader worth following. Raised in squalor caring for his mother, he came to loathe the Norse for how they mistreated her Welsh people, embracing instead her Romano-Celtic heritage and clinging to her tales of the ancestor Artorius who would return to save them.

He is a master of the mask, playing bored or amused to lower an enemy's guard before shaping a situation to his own advantage. He prizes wealth and will break a warrior's oath, order a village slaughtered, or leave his own dying men behind without hesitation when it serves him. Yet a warmer thread runs underneath: he avenged and cared for his mother until her death, schemes to shield Wales from both Norse and English, takes no pleasure in aimless violence or Viking indulgence, and grants the dying Bjorn a warrior's death along with the truth that he was his only friend.

Askeladd is the son of Lydia, a captured Welsh noblewoman, and Olaf, the Danish chieftain who enslaved her. Born illegitimate, he was left unnamed by his father, though Lydia called him Lucius Artorius Castus after the ancestral Roman hero she believed would one day return to free their people. As her health failed she was cast into the stables, and the boy labored from a young age, earning his nickname from the ash and filth of his work. When he was eleven, his mother lost her mind and, mistaking Olaf for the returned savior, clung to him; realizing no legend would rescue her, the boy took up a sword against his father, and though he fought impressively for a first-timer, was beaten. Recognizing his own blood, Olaf lifted him out of slavery. For two years Askeladd feigned loyalty before killing Olaf in his sleep with a stolen blade, letting a half-brother take the blame while he inherited the property. He brought Lydia home to Wales, where she soon died, then spent nearly two decades as a Danish captain leading mercenaries while nursing his hatred of the very people he lived among.

Hired by Floki to murder Thors, Askeladd drew the dead man's son Thorfinn into his band, tolerating the boy's demands for duels in exchange for dangerous work. He became a strange sort of mentor to Thorfinn and steered Prince Canute through a hardening transformation, all while chasing renown and quietly working to spare Wales from invasion. When King Sweyn announced a campaign against Wales and forced him to choose between the country and Canute, Askeladd feigned madness, proclaimed himself Artorius reborn, and beheaded the king, then cut down soldier after soldier until Canute, seeing through the ruse, ran him through.

His final words to Thorfinn were counsel rather than mockery: let go of hatred, move on, and become a true warrior who ventures past what Thors ever saw. Long after his death he lingers in Thorfinn's dreams and visions as a guiding, almost fatherly presence, his lessons and tactics resurfacing whenever Thorfinn faces his hardest choices.