Vinland Saga IF – The Tale of the Other Queen, Rím
Rím, the woman who served as King Canute's shadow and devoted everything to him, now gets her own tale, a story that never came to be in the original saga.
Just as he is about to unify England, Canute is poisoned and falls into a deep coma. In her despair, Rím holds onto one secret knowledge: the dream of Vinland, the ideal land that Canute secretly yearned for deep in his heart, a legacy of the man named Askeladd.
"I'll show him Vinland myself!"
With that wild declaration, Rím secretly organ
Vinland Saga IF – The Tale of the Other Queen, Rím - The Dark King and the Mad Handmaiden
The goblet fell to the floor.
A dry clatter echoed, and wine seeped into the flagstones.
"The King... The King has collapsed!"
A voice rang out.
The great hall of the royal residence in Jorvik. The buzz of the eve-of-unification celebration—England's conquest within reach—fell silent as if doused in water.
King Canute had collapsed.
Rimu broke into a run.
The hem of her man's tunic fluttered. Only the silver brooch gleamed dully in the swaying lamplight.
It was the one and only thing she had ever received from the King.
"Your Majesty!"
Her voice was hoarse.
She pushed through the crowd, toward the fallen King.
The young King's face was pale, his lips beginning to turn purple.
Labored breathing. Eyes closed.
"Poison... Someone has poisoned him!"
Another voice.
The courtiers' faces shifted. Whispers of witch hunts, rumors of succession. The murmuring swelled again.
But none of it reached Rimu's ears anymore.
She knelt beside the King and clasped his cooling hand.
The warmth of him ebbed away, little by little, beneath her palm.
"...Again."
She murmured it, barely audible.
As a food taster, she had nearly died more times than she could count.
The old burn scar on the nape of her neck.
That was from when she'd had scalding soup thrown at her.
But this time was different. The King himself had swallowed the poison.
Tears welled in her hazel eyes.
But she did not cry.
This was no time for tears.
Late night.
The King's bedchamber, empty of all others.
Beyond the window, the wind blowing in from the northern sea howled and keened.
Rimu was alone.
King Canute lay stretched out on the great bed. A pallid face. Steady, but shallow, sleeping breaths.
The poison had spared his life, but the King remained in a deep coma.
Rimu sat in the chair beside him, gazing at his face.
Like this, the old memories came back.
"...I nearly died, the winter I was ten."
She spoke to the sleeping King.
"I lost my whole family in the war. I was huddled in the snow. I thought... that was it."
Her voice was very quiet.
"Then you came for me. Even though you were still so small yourself."
Back then, Canute had been just a boy.
But his eyes alone were older. Colder.
"You made me your food taster. I think... that was all I was to you. A useful piece."
Rimu smiled, just a little.
"Time and again, I almost died. But every time, you would say it. 'Don't die.' Just that, so curtly."
Perhaps it had never been affection.
Perhaps it was nothing more than possessiveness.
"Even so, that was enough for me."
Rimu swept a hand through her reddish-brown hair. Cut short at the shoulder, it had once been beautiful, like flame, but now it was rough and dry from the salt wind.
Still, when the light caught it, it shimmered, just a little.
"Just being in your shadow... made me happy."
A one-sided love.
She knew that.
But it was everything she had.
After a while, Rimu rose to her feet.
She stood beside the King's bed and looked straight down at his face.
"...Listen, Your Majesty."
Her voice was a little stronger than before.
"I know. Deep in your heart, Askeladd is still there."
Askeladd.
The man who had once served the King, who had shaped his very character in ways nothing else could.
He was dead now, of course.
"He used to talk about it. A paradise. A beautiful land called Vinland."
The land of grapes from the old Norse sagas.
Everyone laughed it off as a fairy tale.
"The courtiers don't believe in it. But you're different."
Rimu was certain of it.
On the surface, he was a cold-hearted conqueror-king. But deep down, he yearned for that utopia.
"Before Askeladd died, he said to me: 'Show that brat a real paradise.'"
Maybe it had been nonsense.
But Rimu clung to those words.
"I will show you Vinland."
A fierce light kindled in her hazel eyes.
A strange radiance, somewhere between madness and pure devotion.
"I won't let anyone get in the way. I will take you there. No matter what."
After that, she moved quickly.
Rimu slipped out of the residence in the dead of night and headed for the stables.
The cold night air bit at her cheeks.
There were no guards in sight. After the eve's festivities, everyone had let their guard down.
She efficiently hauled out a cart.
Then she returned to the bedchamber and wrapped the comatose Canute in layer after layer of blankets.
He was heavy. Dead weight.
But Rimu's slender arms held a strength she had never once revealed in her palace service.
Poisoned again and again, crossing the line between life and death over and over—her body had been tempered, lean and resilient.
Beneath her chest, there was a scar from a short sword she'd kept for self-defense.
Her fingertips were knobby and calloused, nothing like a handmaiden's.
She had never been just a handmaiden.
She laid the King in the cart and slowly made her way toward the residence's rear gate.
"Who goes there!"
A sentry called out.
Rimu smiled sweetly.
"It's me. I'm moving His Majesty to the annex for convalescence. The physician advised that a quieter place would be better for him."
She had always been a capable woman who handled political affairs as well.
A lie like this was child's play to her.
"Is that so. Good work, then."
The soldier believed her without a second thought and let her pass.
Shrouded in the deep night darkness, the cart departed the royal residence.
Her destination: an abandoned house a little way outside the port town.
It took her about half an hour to reach it.
Inside the dilapidated building, there was only a ragged bed.
Rimu laid the King down upon it and let out a breath.
"...Alright."
She looked straight ahead.
Her expression was no longer that of a handmaiden.
It was the face of a warrior.
"Next, I need to go see Gudrun of the Silver Tide Company."
The largest merchant guild in the town of Jorvik: the Silver Tide Company.
Its head, the merchant woman Gudrun Halfdan.
If anyone could secure the ship and funds needed for a voyage, it was her.
"The Fimbul... I have to find a way to get that ship."
That was the name of the ocean-going vessel she had her eye on.
But before that.
Rimu gently touched the cheek of the sleeping King.
"Wait for me, Your Majesty. I will bring you to that ideal land. I promise."
In the darkness, her voice resonated—quiet, but fierce.
This was the beginning of her battle.
A secret voyage that no one would know about.
And it was also the continuation of a one-sided love that might never, ever be returned.
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