A Thracesian woman kills a Varangian for trying to rape her, for which his brothers in arms applaud her and give her his belongings -- she had earned them. It is somewhere in the tenth or eleventh century, most certainly after 874. The Kievan Rus' had made a treaty that, in exchange for the hand of a Byzantine princess, the Rus would send soldiers to aid the Byzantines and would convert to Orthodoxy. Little did the Byzantines know that the ruler of the Kievan Rus would send only the most unruliest of his warriors - remnants of the Vikingr that had conquered the Russian tribes and, for the most part, tried to unify them under Rurik.
These men were eager to find battle and, when the Basileus lead them to battle, happily chased down the enemy troops that were fleeing from them when their leader had suffered a stroke and died. To the civilized Byzantine Empire, who were used to clean and well kept people as per modernized Roman standards, these axe wielding barbarians were savages, but none the less a useful force to keep at hand.
In this empire, things work very differently from home, and while the Varangian Vikingr are 'allowed' to resolve issues betwixt themselves in their own ways (mostly bloodshed), most of the vikingr habits are frowned upon. And, vice versa, a lot of the Byzantine bureaucracy and pompous showings of strength seem theatrical and useless to the vikingr.
Here, a Varangian of some renown finds himself cornered by the Basileus, who sees his death on the horizon. This Basileus is sickly, and the heir to inherit the Byzantine empire is a weak boy, no older than 14, who still suckles his mothers tit, and is sickly and disfigured. It is clear that when the Basileus dies, the empire will devolve into a civil war.
His final request is to take one of his
children that were not
born in the Purple North, to the Kievan Rus, so that they might shelter them and utilize them to retake the throne in their name, in exchange for a beneficial marriage here or there. The road North is, of course, full of dangers, and the dangers might increase trifold if anyone was to find out that one of the two was a pretender to the Byzantine throne. In return for this service, the Varangian would receive a large payment upon leaving, enough to cover the trip to the North and then home, and then have a luxurious retirement pension from the Varangians -- he would most likely not be welcomed back when the new Basileus sits upon their throne.
And so an uneasy alliance is formed between a wolf of Odin and a lamb of God. What happens when they arrive in the Kievan Rus territories, and find out that the Rus king has no intentions of helping them reclaim their throne? What if the Varangian was a two-timer that decided to take the payment
and take the child as a prestigious ward/concubine?