A Bit of Prose From My Current Story

Well, this is the beginning of a new story that I intend on continuing. It's about Vikings, sailing the North Sea, and ultimately, the creation of Danelaw in eastern England (well, what would later be called England). I just wanted feedback on my writing style. Is it entertaining to read? I fear I may have made it somewhat overly-verbose and possibly annexed unnecessary items amongst the paramount motives, but I'm not sure.

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A stout man with a jet black beard that matched his ragged hair burst into the local tavern. He surveyed the bar with his deep, brown eyes. He spotted a chair at the front and slammed a coin on the table.
“One pint for me, Oleg!” He shouted, sounding almost disgruntled.
“Aye! It is Ragnar. Home from one of your Arctic raids of Wessex, I see.” Said the bartend heartily.
“Aye…”
“Well, could you have details of the voyage to lend to us?”
“Crossed the North Sea. Battled. Lost more numerous men than the last. Returned home. You need else?”
“Ragnar, why should you sound forlorn? You’ve been on many of these trips, and shall we not meet the most of the braves in Valhalla? Here’s your pint.”
“Valhalla is a place of the faint-minded, Oleg. There will be no plains of the warrior waiting for us after death, and I should be surprised at your agony when you discover this fact to be fully true. If you believe that Odin requires our service after our corpse has withered, then you shall be his fool, and you shall forever remain under his hands.”
“Oi! Fortune be at your side such that you should be a such a fine and worthy acquaintance of mine, Ragnar. For if you would not be, my blood worm would be too swiftly moved for you to breathe much longer. What, pray, makes you wish to defy him who would control us so? Does the great Odin not provide our homes with warmth and our tables with meat?”
“No, Oleg! Your fire flickers dim tonite. We are responsible for the fire, for the meat, for everything supplied to us. We need no deity to bring us to it. It is not Odin who rubs sticks or pulls hunting-strings--it is you. It is you, and me, and all the men with families of need of such a type of boarding.”
“But does Odin not give good fortune to you as well as me? Forget, you must’ve the many days when we could not get so many numbers of coin without the assistance of such fortune. Do you fault this on the stones, or on the whale-road?”
“Oleg, if you must persist with these half-pinted questions, I shall grab myself a half-pint and be gone from this place. Odin was the founder of the soil, but that does neither make him the ruler, nor the premier ruler of mortals. The sooner you should comprehend this fact, the more intelligible you would be, young Oleg.”
“Ay! If I recall accurately, I lived two more snows than you, Ragnar. You be an arrogant fool to call me by a name, and in the same arrogance to deprecate Odin’s likeness as so.”
“Aye, in snows, yet in sea-crossings I out-do you by tenfold at least. You are old in age, yet young in experience, and it is apparent that your spirit does follow as it submits to the same as a fawn. With this, I must be off. I shall gain this pint and then leave with no further discussion of this. I should be more bothered fore more discussion when you comprehend what you speak. Farewell, Oleg. I shall wish to catch sight of your likeness on the morrow.”
“Then that’s what you shall do, Ragnar. Sleep a brave night.”
“And you as well.”
Ragnar stepped from his place on a stool and walked drudgingly through the bar doors. He trudged to his lonely hut where he stayed alone. He had once had a wife, children and other kin, but when they could not see him for more than an hour at a time, they had left him as a bachelor.
Ragnar stood outside his door, deep in contemplation, as it began to rain. As he felt a droplet strike his head, he looked at the sky.
“Aye, Odin. Now be a good time for one to weep. If I had a pride to spare, I should do so in condolence with you,” Ragnar said as he returned his head forward and stepped in his door. He continued to his washroom and looked into the basin in front of him, obviously still exhausted. It had not only been a long day, but a long month--nay, a long year--for him. He splashed a mandatory bit of water to his face, caring very little about how he looked. It just appeared less paramount to him to look as well as he could, and it appeared as so to everyone else as such.
He staggered over to his kitchen area and snagged, from his food box, a loaf of bread. He continued over to his sitting room where he lit his fireplace and proceeded to sit down in a wooden chair of his.
Ragnar awoke with a half-consumed loaf of bread in his lap and the sight of a couple red embers in his place. After a stretch, he managed to bring himself to his feet and bring his hands far into the air. He took a bite from his bread, and heard the sound of a wooden knocker at his door.
“Good day, Mirk,” Ragnar greeted the man at the door.
“Ragnar, Borvent wishes to see you.”
“Borvent?…Wishes to see me? Grrah!” Ragnar let out an ululative growl of disgust at the name of his military superior, “He honestly wishes to give me yet another command not two days earlier than I get back?”
“I am sorry, sir, but I am not at fault. You are the last commander not in mission already.”
“And he wishes me to voyage off to his house immediately? Why does he never travel himself? Why, I’d have half a brain to think he was not more than a street-dweller or the horriblest genre.”
“Well…Yes, I--”
“Thank you, Mirk. You may dismiss.”
“Fair thee well in your next battle,” Mirk wished as he walked away, relieved to be out of the presence of the newly rage-infested Viking.
Ragnar walked by the tavern to the port where his boat rested. Borvent’s abode lay more than three miles west by river and sea.
“Ay, it be Ragnar! Yet again we meet. Where be ye travelin’ now?” The voice of a friendly man rang out from inside the bar with its doors propped open by a foot.
“Borvent, Oleg. Another job. Another fucking job. How do I stand on my feet now? How do I be tall and thick-chested? How is it that I can my torso still breathe after all this torment?”
“Aye…” Oleg considered his friend’s plight as he walked out of the bar closer to him, “You always seem to be in the tough, and you do manage more than your quota, I see, but your rivers aren’t stoned or mineraled, so signs you’re yet un-demised.”
“But, Oleg, what does sign one’s beating heart?”
“Why their blood, of course.”
“Nay, their emotion, naïve Oleg. I may appear walking, but I am not living. I am beast.”
“Ragnar…I—“
“I take my leave now, Oleg. I may witness you yet again before the end, or I may not.”
“Right, Odin…” Oleg’s voiced trailed as he recalled the previous conversation.
“What’s that?” Ragnar swung his head around.
”I say—I say, Odin is with you…And…‘Der er et yndigt land…’” Oleg recited the first line of the song of the Danes.
Ragnar paused at hearing this, hesitating as he schemed a response to this. He opened his mouth only to speak nothing and walked out onto the rickety wooden dock and leapt into his boat, proceeding to travel to his superior's call.
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I apologize for the length of the piece. I had difficulty finding a good stopping place. Of course, you needn't read all of it. If you just read a little bit and give me some feedback, I'd be pleased.



!~Bass'-ist.