Hours later, I find Eric sitting at the high table going through pages of sheep skin with writing on them.
"Eric?"
He pushes the pages aside quickly.
"Sookie, should you be up?" he asks, walking over to me and holding me tight against him.
"I'm fine", I say with a tight smile. He's hiding something from me. "What are you reading?"
He tucks me under his chin. "Something I hope may help us", he says.
"The funeral is tonight?" I ask.
"Yes. My family will go to Valhalla together tonight", he says, with certainty.
Eric is an atheist. Even after the Lilith debacle. Maybe especially after it. He has 1,000 years experience telling him not to believe in fairy tales. So to speak. So it's very strange that he sounds so certain, so desperate to be right.
The stars are shining. I'm about to attend a Viking funeral, and I don't know how I feel about it. I know his men consider it mollycoddling, but I'm not taking my newborn outside in the freezing cold, much less to watch his family go up in flames. The midwife is taking care of him.
The longship rests on the beach. A bonfire burns brightly nearby. I find it almost impossible to believe these people rowed all the way to Nova Scotia within the next two hundred years in this thing. I haven't seen my husband. Ysgar, who seems to have appointed himself my new protector, is cuddling me against him as the sharp wind whips through the valley and sweeps over the water.
Despite the frigid night, many of the men are bare-chested. They're angry, and I can feel it, smell it. They want vengeance. Their King has been murdered, along with their Queen and Princess. They want blood.
Jugs are being passed around, and men take gulps of what can only be beer from it. As the shouting and screaming grows louder, I think Ysgar is holding onto me for more reasons than the cold. Things could get out of control fast.
I squeeze my eyes closed, but pop them back open again as silence falls over the crowd. Four men carry Ulfrick, in his finest array, toward the longship.
Two men I don't know, Asgar, and Eric are carrying him. The villagers bow their heads. They climb a wooden ladder onto the ship and lay him down gently.
As they climb down the ladder, Eric searches the crowd for me. He meets my eyes, then looks quickly away.
Three men return with Vallandra, and the tears behind my eyes come out in a sob.
Ysgar holds me closer. Eric is walking behind them with his tiny baby sister in his arms.
Once the others in place, all four men take up long pieces wood, shove them under the ship, and launch it into the water.
"Farväl fader, moder, Agna", Eric calls, and I can hear the tears in his eyes. Farewell.
I pull away to go to him, but Ysgar is insistent that I don't. He looks me in the eye and shakes his head. Do I have reason to fear my husband right now? Fearing Eric isn't new to me, but it's been a long time since I felt anything from him but love.
I hear women crying quietly, and children crying in confusion.
With a roar, Eric lights a torch from the bonfire. When the longship is safely far enough from shore, he hurls it into the air, and it lands on the ship. The dry wood bursts quickly into flames.
The crying is done. Shouts, screams, roars, growling. The men pound their swords against their shields. They light torches and march across the beach. Eric is growling and screaming.
"Hämnd!" Vengeance. This is the Eric I've never seen. His men take up the chant, pounding their swords against the shields.
"Hämnd, hämnd, hämnd!" Their individual cries meld together until they shout as one.
This is about more than his family. Eric is heartbroken, but he's been through this before. I'm sure knowing and losing his family again is terrible. But there's something else.
He takes out a dagger and holds up his arm, slicing into it. "Odin, VITTNE mitt slaktoffer!"
Ysgar scoops me up in his arms and carries me away.
"Ysgar!"
"Time for you to go, little one."
He pushes through the crowd. I bury my face against his neck.
I feel the extreme temperature difference as he pushes open the door to the main house and there is a roaring fire in the throne room. He keeps walking and takes me to the bedroom.
He sets me down on the pallet, then stokes up the fire.
"Why did you pull me out of there?" I ask.
"It was no longer safe. No one would purposely hurt their Queen, but accidents happen when people are angry and drunk."
"Thank you."
He almost blushes. "You're welcome. I will bring the Prince to you."
Odin, witness my sacrifice. I don't understand.
"Ysgar, will Eric come to bed tonight?" I ask.
He looks away. "I don't know, little one."