This carries straight on, on the same night as the previous chapter. Really short chapter, sorry!

'More singing,' said your brother. 'I demand it.'

Quiet laughter. The sound of someone falling over. Everyone was sleepy and full of blackberry ale, mead. Arms draped over legs, legs draped over arms. You had eaten so much pig it was possible you would wake up as one in the morning.

'No one is singing,' Ragnar said, slumped on his throne. 'I will punish you all.'

'We are too tired,' said Thorsten. 'There are no more songs left.'

'There are always songs.' He rubbed his hand over his face, glanced around, sat up a little straighter. 'Princess,' he said, in the sort of voice he used when he saw a church he wanted to raid.

The little raf refr was half-asleep on your nephew's shoulder, with the warrior-girl on the other side. Both of their heads came up.

She blinked the blink of a chipmunk who has come out of hibernation too early. 'Me? No.' She smiled and her head thunked back down.

Bjørn grinned at his father. You remembered her foxhead on your shoulder on Winternights. She had not remembered it, or at least never spoken of it in the few times you had seen her, just looked at you like you might eat her. You, on the other hand, had thought of it often, thought what might have happened had Siggy not been there, had Sansa not stumbled away. Warmth and wetness under her skirts. Your own name on her lips, which you were perhaps biting.

Bloody Floki. Bloody mushrooms.

'You, yes,' said your brother, shifting in his chair. King-voiced.

'I don't know any songs.' Her words were plentiful now. Sometimes she spoke almost as if she was born in these lands.

'Yes, you do.'

'Sing to us, Sansa,' said Aslaug, smiling at her, a queen-smile.

You knew that she could not bring herself to refuse her. She sat up properly, flames in her cheeks. You could see her ribcage move from over here as she took in an ale-gulp of breath, thinking.

'This is a song my –' she stopped. 'An old lady sang to me in wintertime. When I was small. Our winters are long. It is about the trees that are green in winter. And the gods in the trees.' Her eyes darted, quick as Ratatosk, to Floki. His smile was colder, but he nodded. He hated other gods.

The room had gone quiet. The girl had become almost one of us and this was a reminder that she was not. That she might have a new song that none of us might have heard.

It was in her own tongue. You had hardly heard her speak in it. You had forgotten, almost, that she had this other language, that she did not only speak in yours, with that limp in her mouth. Her song moved like a walk on small hills. Her words changed but the tune did not. Smaller, less broad than the songs of your own people.

Your brother was right. She sang well. People looked at their boots, or at the fire, or the roof, and listened.

She stopped. Clapping, and murmurs growing as folk went back to their own talk, words becoming louder around her stillness. She seemed to be caught in her song, though it had stopped, caught as a hare in a trap - still alive, but not moving.

'I know you like her.' Siggy, appearing like a trick of Freyja's, right by your ear.

'Who?'

'Rollo. Don't. Not with me.' She settled properly next to you. 'You don't know who she is. What is true.' Her voice was a sea-mist as she laid a hand on your shoulder. 'She cannot help you.'

Nor can you, you thought.

She kept going and you tried not to listen. 'King Horik – you knew who he was because we saw his people. You saw his home. We do not know her home. Her people. It may just be words.' Spoken as gently as if it were one of Aslaug's stories for the children.

You shoved her hand off. 'Don't ever say that dead man's name to me again,' you said, rising and leaving her.

*V*V*V*V*V*V

His son is next to his little shieldmaiden with the eyebrows like dark moss. She is frightened of Ragnar.

'Go and get us some more ale,' he says to her. Bjørn looks displeased that she has been spoken to like a slave when she no longer is one, but she goes. She is happy to go, he thinks.

'She is a pretty one, your woman,' he says.

'Yes, Father. She is.'

'There are many pretty women here.'

Bjørn's eyes furrow, before he looks round and grins. 'It is true, Father. Perhaps we are blessed in Kattegat.'

'I could not help noticing that you had two pretty women on those broad shoulders of yours earlier,' Ragnar says, leaning into his son, nudging his elbow with his own.

Bjørn does not blush as you think he might. 'Sansa and Thorunn are friends now. We are all friends, I think.'

Ragnar examines a nail. It is black. 'Just friends?' He slides his eyes over.

Bjorn goes to speak, and does not. He folds his arms. 'Yes.'

'It is good to see you in such fine company. Perhaps you should make the most of it.'

'Father?'

Ragnar gives him a gently admonishing look, a look that says you know. 'It is a cold night.' He shrugs, purses his lips. 'Two women would keep your bed warmer.'

A colour comes into your son's cheek, stronger than any blood that has ever marked him. 'No Father, it would not be right.'

'Why not? You should try her.' He keeps his voice very light, as if he is talking about sword-blades, or horses. 'See which of them you prefer.'

Bjørn's shoulders drop violently, like an axe-move your brother has taught him. 'No, Father. It is wrong for you to speak of her – of either of them – this way. I am not like you.' He stalks off.

You sniff, chew on that black nail, smile at Thorunn as she returns with a cup in each hand, her eyebrows two questions.

*V*V*V*V*V*V

Despite her best efforts, Sansa felt drunk. She stepped outside, and one lungful of air was enough to rouse her. It had been a lovely night, full of food and ale and song. Even Floki, trying to scare her with his goat-mask, had only made her giggle.

Athelstan was sitting against a wall on his own, a fur wrapped round his shoulders. Siggy had said –

It was difficult to know how he felt about her. They were always together, and had an understanding that no one else did. And she liked him, truly. It was also true that she treasured their time together, and how close they sat as they pored over his papers. And felt jealous when she saw him talking to other girls, full of grins that seemed both shy and perfectly assured.

Sansa sat next to him on a haybale, sloshing her ale-cup a little. 'Are you well, Athelstan?'

He turned to her slowly, as if coming out of a dream. 'Yes. I am very well. Thank you.'

'Are you thinking of your family?'

'A little. Not so much that, but –' Snowflakes were catching on his hair, like breadcrumbs. 'We have – we had our own festival in Eng-land at this time. It is that I am thinking of.'

Sansa saw her own family gathered in the godswood, giving thanks to the old gods, her father, and stayed silent. Together, they watched the snow tumble. Perhaps it wasn't snow, but songs, poems – tiny crystalline things falling from the sky onto their tongues, forming in new ways.

'You should go back inside,' he said, his voice folding in with the snow. 'It's cold.'

'I am happy here,' she said, and as she said it, she realised she meant not just in this moment, but here, in Kattegat, in this strange Northern land which felt so far from home. She had sung to them, Old Nan's hollyberry song, and they had listened.

Athelstan was looking at her. She pretended not to notice, eyes up at the wool-spill of snow. He moved suddenly, bringing his fur around both of them. His arm around her shoulder. Hip against her hip.

'Then you should at least be warm,' he said, and her stomach became the warmest thing then, as warm as an oven full of rye bread.

Perhaps Siggy had been right. Perhaps they might be more than just friends. Her head swam a little. Blackberry ale fizzing around her head like poems, like snowflakes. Perhaps she could –

And Sansa leant into his shoulder, turned her head and placed her lips on his.

A kiss as light as a snowflake. His breath afterwards as light as another.

He pulled back, his bluegreen eyes a shade wider than normal. He seemed to want to say something but couldn't decide on which word to use. 'Do you want to?' His voice was snow-flake light. Everything was a snowflake.

'Yes.' She nodded, very definitely, and took another sip of ale. She thought she did. She was sure she did.

'I mean - of course – you are very pretty.' He blinked, shook his head at himself. 'More than pretty. And – more than just that. I just didn't think – I – you are a princess,' he said finally, and grinned, as if knowing how silly he sounded.

Sansa leaned into him a little more, into the warmth of his side. 'I just want to learn.' She was always good at learning.

And she kissed him again.

V*V*V*V*V*V

NOTES

Norse mythology school:

Ratatosk is a squirrel who runs up and down Yggdrasil, the tree of life, passing insults between the eagle at the top and the dragon at the bottom. Which is as good a job as any, I suppose…

I used 'The Holly Bears A Berry' as the inspiration for Sansa's winter-song – it is an English carol with pagan roots, and would have once been simply about evergreen trees, hunting and winter-time, before being adapted by Christians.