Brothers in Arms
The dust had just begun to settle and the pale, thin mist set in when the old Seer emerged from his house. Through the empty streets and the desolate land, he walked alone to the fields where so many still lay. He prayed to the gods that he might have been wrong in his visions, but he knew as soon as the emptiness of the streets and the silence from the people he passed along the way met his senses, he had been right all along. It pained him in body and mind to see so many dead, and so many of them so young, lying there on the cold, damp grass and blood-soaked earth.
But that was his curse: he could walk among the dead as they lived, he witnessed their demise just around the corner before they themselves knew a thing, he saw death all around him and never feel its cold hands. Neither could he fully taste life this way. He longed more than ever for death seeing what these men had done to their own kin.
As he trudged through the seemingly endless field of destruction and death, it took everything in him not to cry out to the gods to take his curse, to end his pitiful existence, to let him go free from this pain. He would have liked to have reasoned with them. He would have told them he would do anything just so he would not have to live – if it truly could be called living – knowing the things he knew. But none of that would have done him any good, he knew, so he stayed silent, and he pursed his dark, crooked lips and stepped around yet another dead shield maiden.
"Please," he heard a voice behind him say.
This voice did not come from the ground and it did not sound physically weak, though it was full of another sort of pain. This was the voice of a survivor. The Seer stopped dead in his tracks and listened as the man behind him went on:
"I need to know, what will become of us? You must know."
"Your part in this story, Hvitserk Ragnarsson, is not over," the Seer said.
"That is not what I asked." The young man took a step closer.
"What do you ask?"
"My people," he said. "Our people."
"What of them, Son of Ragnar?"
"Will we always be this way? Will we always want to, to…kill each other for foolish reasons? Will there ever come a day when we don't want to fight?"
"You get so caught up in the rush of battle. You fight mercilessly and you kill just as viciously as your snake of a brother," the Seer said, "but in your heart you long for peace?"
Hvitserk did not answer. He did not need to. The Seer knew the truth, and to argue with it would have been foolish.
"Aye, you long for peace," the Seer said, turning around, and on his twisted face, Hvitserk thought he saw a hint of a smile on one side of his mouth. "You long to live in peace and contentment, and you want your brothers to be brothers again." The old Seer sighed and he shifted his weight from one foot to the other where he stood. "You told Ivar that you regret not having a family. That could mean you regret not having an heir, but I think your true regret is having nothing worth fighting for. You want glory, yes, and the fighting is fun until it is over and you see the result of your body count, but in the end glory is vain and useless. You saw that with your father. How quickly your brothers' people seem to have forgotten him for their own motives. The battle for revenge for Ragnar Lothbrok is over. Now the war for Kattegat is being waged, and I think your younger brother's reputation shall be its next greatest wonder, not your father's legacy."
Still, Hvitserk remained silent, listening to the Seer talk.
"Oh, not that you won't all be great, but that isn't the point, is it?" The Seer cleared his throat and went on: "If you had a family of your own, you could trick yourself into believing you were fighting to protect them and not to reach a goal which will never satisfy you, and it would give you something comforting to come home to at the end of the day."
The young man let out a heavy breath and looked at his feet. "This is true, but again, it is not what I have asked."
"Do you not want to know your own fate?"
"I would," Hvitserk admitted. "But I don't think I want you to tell me. I like not knowing."
The Seer chuckled darkly. "Alright, then I will not tell you of your future, or of the events of the long life you have yet to live," he said. "I will tell you that yes, Son of Ragnar, your people will one day be peaceful again. They will return to their farming and their families. There will come a day when no Viking sails the sea to raid distant lands, and a day when your people no longer thirst for their own blood."
"Will I live to see this day?" asked Hvitserk.
"This I do not know," the Seer answered. "I see this future for all that it is worth, but I do not know how close it may yet be."
"What will it take for my people to make it to this day?"
"There are many lands," the Seer said vaguely, and Hvitserk cocked his head to the side, his confusion evident. "You know this. You have seen many for yourself, and will yet see more. But when your people realize that it is the purpose of their land to unite them and not to divide them, then they will see reason and lay down their arms and brothers will cease to fight one another."
"Where do we go from here, then?"
"The war is not over," the Seer said. "Far from it. The fighting does not end yet, I am afraid. And I don't think I'll like very much to see the end of it, though I already have in my mind."
"What should I do?"
"Oh, Son of Ragnar, you are a fickle soul," the Seer said, pausing to cough before continuing. "Just like your father in that sense. He had difficulties making up his mind, too. Do I tell you your fate or don't I?"
Hvitserk opened his mouth to speak, but was cut off.
"Oh, but you're questioning that, too, now, as I recall," the Seer said. "Since speaking with Ivar's priest, you have begun to doubt and to question the gods." He paused again, waiting for Hvitserk to speak, but he did not. "That is alright. You will find your way soon enough. I will leave you."
"I don't think I understand," Hvitserk said.
"I have said all I can," the Seer told him as he turned again, stepped over an arm, and made his way forward through the field. "It is late and will soon be dark."
Hvitserk watched as the man slowly made his way across the field and disappeared somewhere in the distant mist, then he began his own trek back to find Ivar.