Hvitserk rolled over onto his back and stared forward. Candlelight from the single candle that he had left burning on the nightstand illuminated the room in soft light. He lay still for a moment, uncertain what had woken him from his slumber.

The night was silent, save for the sound of the wind outside.

Puzzled, he allowed his eyes to close once again. If something had woken him, it had passed now, and his body was eager for sleep. He felt himself begin to drift away, sinking slowly beneath the waves of slumber that washed over him.

"A nice, comfortable room you have here, brother."

With a sudden, sharp intake of breath, Hvitserk's eyes sprung open again. The voice that cut through the silence of the Wessex night was one that he had never expected to hear again. Not in this life, at least.

He searched the bedchamber with his eyes, peering through the darkness. The long shadows cast by the candle, formed dark shapes that morphed and changed as they danced in time with the flame that flickered in the air currents of the room.

Hvitserk took a deep breath, and tried to still the pounding of his heart. When, finally, he trusted himself to speak again, his voice was a low, uncertain whisper.

"I...Ivar?"

No. It couldn't be. It was impossible. Ivar was dead. Hvitserk had seen it happen. He had watched in horrified disbelief as the life had drained from his brother's body; he had carried him from the battlefield himself, and finally, he had placed him in the ground, careful, so as not to cause further breaks to his fragile bones as he had lowered him into his final resting place.

And yet that voice had been unmistakable; not just the voice itself, but the tone, the subtle hint of a mocking smile he could hear concealed within the words.

He was answered by silence; a silence that felt much more complete now than it had a moment earlier. Hvitserk held his breath, hoping for a reply but terrified that he might get one.

Nothing happened. Carefully, he reached for the candle still burning by his bed, and with a trembling hand, tilted it to touch the flame to the wick of several other candles. Wax dripped onto the nightstand, and with each new flame, the shadows moved, intensifying as they shrunk away from the light, until they revealed a dark, impossible shape seated at the end of his bed.

Hvitserk blinked, giving his eyes time to adjust, and to make sense of what he was seeing, but the more he stared, the more he could see Ivar. He frowned. "You're dead," he said.

The shadows that had somehow come together to form his younger brother, turned to look at him. His face was completely familiar, right down to the scars. Ivar shrugged. "So what? Does that mean I'm not allowed to visit my brother? Or can I not be here because you're a Christian now and it upsets your delicate new faith. Is that what you mean, Athelstan?"

Hvitserk felt himself flinch. Ivar had never been supposed to know. Not about the conversion, or the name that King Alfred had bestowed upon him. The idea that he did know, even though he was certain that this was not real, provoked a deep sense of shame. He was firm in his conviction that he had made the right choice, but he was equally certain that it was something he would never have done if Ivar had been there to tell him what he thought of the idea.

He shook his head. "Don't call me that."

"What, Athelstan? Why not? It's your name now, isn't it? You cast aside the name our mother and father gave you, renounced it along with Odin, and all of our other Gods. I've got to call you something, haven't I?"

"My old name will do fine," Hvitserk told him.

Ivar frowned, then shrugged as though it didn't matter anyway. "If you say so."

He was dressed in the same clothing he had worn the last time Hvitserk had seen him alive, and he wore his hair in the same braids. Everything about him looked exactly as it had that day on the battlefield. Everything but his eyes. The whites of his eyes appeared to have lost their blue tint, indicating that the danger of broken bones had now passed. Too late, of course.

"This isn't real," Hvitserk said to himself. His new faith did not allow for visitations from the other side. The dead remained where they were, in Heaven, or in Hell. "I'm imagining it," he said. "Or dreaming."

"If that's what you want to believe, feel free," Ivar told him. "But I assure you, I am very real."

Hvitserk looked at him again. He certainly looked real. And sounded real. "Really?" He wanted it to be true, no matter how impossible it might be.

"Absolutely," Ivar told him. "But of course, if I was a figment of your imagination, isn't that exactly what I would say? I probably wouldn't own up to it, would I?"

He had a point. Hvitserk kicked back the blanket that covered him, and swung his legs over the edge of the bed so that he and Ivar were sitting side by side. He reached across and touched him on the shoulder, half expecting his hand to pass right through him. Impossibly, he felt real, as though flesh and blood.

He tried again, reaching for his brother's hand this time, and feeling the well-worn leather of the fingerless gloves he wore to protect his hands on the rough ground. Once again, it felt familiar, and completely real.

"How…?"

"The dead are often around us. You used to believe that too."

"But not like this. Anyway, I…" Hvitserk hesitated. "I don't believe it anymore. The dead are in Heaven, or in Hell. They don't come back."

"The Christian dead, maybe. But then, maybe not. I've met a few of them, they aren't so different from us." Ivar shrugged. "But if that's what you choose to believe, I won't try to stop you. That's not why I'm here."

Hvitserk nodded, relieved, because faced with something like this, he was certain that his new faith would crumble if Ivar chose to challenge it. "Then why are you here?"

"I just wanted to see that you were all right. After all, even though I am the younger brother, I know you always looked up to me - not literally, of course, since I spent so much time crawling on the ground, but in a manner of speaking - and now I'm gone, I thought you might be feeling… untethered."

"I'm fine," Hvitserk lied. "Anyway, this only proves you're not real. The real Ivar wouldn't care how I felt." If he had, he wouldn't have gone into battle that day, knowing how vulnerable to breaks his bones had been. Hvitserk had never seen his eyes more blue than they had been that day, and although they hadn't known exactly how it would happen, both of them had known that Ivar wasn't going to leave the battlefield alive.

Ivar feigned shock, gasped, and clutched at his chest as though shot by an arrow. "You wound me, brother," he said. "Of course I care. But I see you've found yourself another new faith to keep you occupied." He leaned forward on his crutch, then turned to stare searchingly at Hvitserk. "How does being a Christian suit you? It looks a little boring. What kind of a god doesn't want a sacrifice now and then? And all that kneeling…" he smiled. "It would be no good for me. One advantage to being a cripple is that I cannot kneel. Not even to Odin himself, and certainly not to your god."

He had a point. "Are you still a cripple, then? Hvitserk asked him. "Even in Valhalla?" Somehow, he had expected that after the Valkyries carried his brother to Odin's great hall, he would find himself free of pain, and able to walk and run, and to do all the things that had been denied him in life.

"Of course," Ivar told him. "After all, this is who I am. I'm Ivar the Boneless. Take that away, give me a healthy body, and what would that make me?

"It would make you Ivar," Hvitserk told him without hesitation. "Ivar Ragnarsson."

"Exactly," Ivar agreed. "And whoever heard of him?"

Hvitserk smiled. "I have," he said. "He's my brother, and I love him."

Ivar smiled too. "I should go, Athelstan," he said. "I imagine that after this, you have a long day of praying ahead of you."

"Will I see you again?" Hvitserk asked.

"Maybe." Ivar shrugged. "Certainly in the next life. For now, I'm going to check in on Prince Igor, and find out the name of my child. I'm going to drink with our father, and make sure that mother knows about everything I managed to achieve in life, because for all that she loved me, I honestly don't think she ever believed I would do anything truly great. Maybe I'll even get Sigurd to forgive me for cutting his time so short. And by the time I've done all that, maybe you will be ready to join us in Valhalla."

Hvitserk rubbed at his eyes with a finger as though tired, trying to disguise the tears that threated to fall. He shook his head. "I'm a Christian now, Ivar," he reminded him. "I don't get to go to Valhalla."

"Oh, I wouldn't worry about that. There is room for all the sons of Ragnar at Odin's table," Ivar assured him. "But I'll let you in on a secret that not even the Seer knew while he was in Midgard. Valhalla, your Christian Heaven, Hel, all the other places that people we never even got to meet believe they go when they die? They're not so far apart. No matter where you go, we'll see each other again. If that's what you want, of course."

It was. It was what he wanted more than anything. Hvitserk nodded.

Ivar leaned forward to rest his weight on his crutch, and levered himself to his feet as Hvitserk had seen him do many times before. "I suppose I'll see you there, then," he said, then took a step as though he intended to walk away.

"Wait!" Hvitserk reached out to grab his brother's arm, half expecting his fingers to pass through him as though he was already gone, but he still felt impossibly real. "Wait," he said again. "I don't want you to leave. I'm all alone here."

Ivar shook his head. "You'll be fine," he said. "Live a little; marry some Christian girl and have some children to keep you company. Raise them with our stories. Tell them about Odin and Thor, Frey and Freya. And tell them about your crazy, crippled brother who led two great armies to England, and traveled the silk road." He smiled. "Tell them they have a cousin in Rus. The world is getting smaller every day, so who knows, maybe one day they'll even get to meet him."

Hvitserk nodded. This time he didn't bother to hide his tears. "I miss you," he said.

"Why?" Ivar asked him. "I'm not that far away."

Without warning, a sudden gust of wind chilled the room and extinguished the candles that Hvitserk had lit, leaving only one remaining. He turned to look at them, only for a second, and when he turned back, Ivar was gone, replaced by the flickering shadows that had been there before.

He took a deep breath, smelling the unmistakable scent of extinguished candles as he did. "Ivar?" he said hesitantly. There was no reply. He reached out into the space where, seconds earlier, his brother had been standing. This time, his hand passed through nothing but the air. "Ivar?" he tried again, a little louder this time, but no longer expecting a response. The silence obliged.

Reaching to his side, he placed a hand on the bed, where moments earlier his brother had been sitting, and was not surprised to find the surface warm to the touch. He sighed. "Fine, be like that," he said to the silence, then wiped his tears with the back of his hand, and smiled. "I suppose I'll see you soon," he added. "Not too soon though." Ivar was right, he needed to live first.

And now, for reasons that he didn't quite understand, the conversation that should have left him shaken and questioning his Christian faith, had instead lifted a weight from his shoulders that he hadn't even realised he had been carrying.

With one final glance around the room, Hvitserk lay back down in his bed, pulled his blanket over him, and allowed sleep to drag him back down into its comforting embrace.