The morning had been very normal, calm, for Ragnar and his sons, as they had passed their time practicing out in the newly prepared fighting pits of the village, where the smell of the wetted wooden splinters that had been spread to soften the eventual falls of the many men that spent their time training their fighting techniques there filled their noses as Ragnar and his sons were practicing.
The ground was hardening beneath them, slowly, and he looked into the sky for a brief moment, enjoying what must be the last rays of this year's late summer sun.
The sun that would rise tomorrow would be a cruel sun. A bleak one, he could tell by the images in the sky.
Blurred clouds hang in clutches above them, searchingly, and the night was coming quicker. The days would be shorter soon. He felt something so foreboding in the colors of the sky, but he was confused by them.
What were they trying to tell him?
"Father, come on!" Ubbe yelled from behind him, and he soon felt a sword tapping on his shield.
He tightened his grip around it, feeling a small pain shoot from one of his knuckles.
Why did that hurt?
He narrowed his eyes at Ubbe.
He was getting old, wasn't he?
Ragnar widened his eyes wildly and hurled himself forward with a loud scream growling from his jaws, he launched his ax forward and stopped only inches from Ubbe's skull.
The boy stood still. Ragnar straightened himself and rustled Ubbe's short golden hair, squinting his eyes at him before turning to Bjørn.
Bjørn.
He was finally back, he was finally home. And yet, he seemed so different. Ragnar did know that he had been through a lot of rough patches in his fight for survival. And Ragnar only knew part of it, he could tell easily from the long stares his first-born son would suddenly escape into, a distant reality where some invisible images flashed before his eyes. Images that Ragnar did not know of.
And maybe he would never get to know them. Bjørn was the one who would decide that.
"I have to head back," Ragnar breathed to the tall blonde before him, reaching up his hand to nudge the broad shoulder of his son. "I expect you can handle them, yes?"
Bjørn furrowed his eyebrows slightly before he nodded.
Ragnar repeated the motion, and he slowly started walking back towards the village. He readily untied one of the horses and quickly rose to its back before urging back to the longhouse. He had this sensation. This weird tingling sensation.
Something was up. Something was coming.
He did not know what.
His gray horse took him to the longhouse in a short matter of time, and he rushed into the long-hall, his shoulders broadened as he entered his home, his eyes glaring wildly around, scanning for anything peculiar. But everything was normal.
He exhaled a big breath and stroked the side of his head with his hand. He noticed Athelstan strolling along one of the walls of the long-hall, casually, as if in his own world, his mind wandering just like his legs.
Their eyes soon met, and Athelstan immediately stopped in his tracks.
His stare was strange. Worried.
Ragnar gulped down.
"What's wrong?" Athelstan asked as he walked closer to him, and Ragnar felt a concerned hand on his shoulder as his eyes turned to his best friend's gray eyes.
He shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. "Nothing, apparently."
Ragnar heard Athelstan exhaling a long breath, and he turned his eyes back to his friend, narrowing his eyes at him. He actually seemed very off somehow, off just like Ragnar himself.
"Have you noticed anything strange around here?" Ragnar asked.
A short moment of silence passed between them, and Athelstan shrugged his shoulders. "No, I don't know. I, uh…"
The sound of an owl crying somewhere outside made them both look at the door leading out of the long-hall. Athelstan's body jerked slightly towards the sound, causing Ragnar to be the one leaving a concerned hand over the shoulder of his friend, and he stared at his face, hard.
He knew something.
Athelstan exhaled a surrendering breath as he nodded towards the door. "I had some sort of vision before, when I… I saw someone I have not thought about for very long when I looked out at the forest earlier today."
Ragnar felt his heart starting to pump harder in his chest, the tingling sensation from before returning with greater force.
"Who?" he asked in a quick breath, impolitely.
It seemed like a very personal matter, but he and Athelstan had had many talks like these before. Before, when Ragnar was not king and had more time to think about life. Life and death, and everything in between.
Athelstan's face twisted into something unfamiliar and strange. He looked embarrassed almost, as he shrugged his shoulders again with a faint blush over his cheeks.
"I saw… I think I saw the mother of Christ."
Ragnar furrowed his brows. "The virgin woman?"
Athelstan nodded, and Ragnar narrowed his eyes at him. He noticed that Athelstan shivered greatly. He seemed so out of himself.
"Where?" Ragnar pressed, wondering that maybe she was the cause of the strange cautioning feeling he had felt before. But that could not be.
The virgin mother was not real to him. Right?
Athelstan took him outside, and Ragnar followed him as he turned around the corner of the longhouse. The same owl they had heard before cried once more as Athelstan came to a halt, and Ragnar stared at the spot his friend pointed to, at the forest that was the edge of the village.
His shoulders sank.
It was just the forest. Nothing unusual came to view, no sensation spread from his heart. It was just… The dark trees, appearing the same as always.
He felt Athelstan's eyes on him. "I can't stop thinking about her," he uttered, causing Ragnar to look at his friend with worried eyes.
He had not spoken about his god for a long time. Ragnar had actually thought he had forgotten about him all together.
He felt something uncomfortable drip down his spine, as he spoke: "Did she speak to you?"
He looked around thoughtlessly, as if checking if anyone was listening to their conversation. He did not know why.
Athelstan let another heavy breath escape his lungs. "No, she was just standing there. She looked so…"
His words died out.
"Ragnar, who is that?"
Just a bit to the right of the forest, a small boat appeared.
Ragnar felt his heart racing once more when he realized that it was Floki's boat, and he narrowed his eyes when he noticed its speed. Floki rarely rowed so fast.
"Floki?" he whispered, and his legs automatically started walking in the direction of the harbor.
Athelstan followed him closely.
"Who's with him?" he asked.
But they soon heard her screams.
Frida's screams.
A wave of realization followed by horror washed over Ragnar as he broke into a run. This was what the gods had tried to tell him. This was the thing that was coming. Her screams were so loud, so wild and horrific, he had never heard her voice like this before.
And it scared him.
What had happened to her?
He reached the harbor at the same time as Floki, and the air was constantly filled by the agonizing screams of his wife. As he rushed forward, he watched as Floki carried Frida over the bridge, and his eyes widened in fear when he noticed all of the blood that had darkened her dress.
She was in labor.
His mind exploded. Already?
Ragnar reached out his hands to take her, when he reached them on the bridge, but a loud hissing gnarl from Floki made him freeze and pull his hands back.
Floki's eyes were hard, wild, his face sweaty and twisted, and he forcefully carried on past Ragnar, whose mind and body was now paralyzed. What the Hel?*
Ragnar let out a growl as he was finally able to move again.
Floki's back was covered in sweat, his clothes covered by blood. Frida's screams caused a lot of villagers to peek out from their cottages, and Ragnar felt their stares on him as he ran after them, and he knew they were wondering the same thing as him.
Why was he not the one to carry his wife to their home?
Irritation and frustration washed over him as he followed Floki and Frida into the longhouse, but he could not waste his time on dealing with Floki's weird behavior right now.
He angrily shouted orders for his servants to help him, to help her, before he ran for the bedroom from where Frida's screams were still loud and clear. His heart was pumping hard, his mind racing.
Her screams cut into his flesh like daggers, like he could feel her pain himself, but just as he pushed the door opened to the bedroom, silence spread over the entire village.
And when he looked at the redness of their bed, he felt his knees giving in.
There, between Frida's legs, were not one but two bloody creatures.
He stared at them while panic traveled over his entire being, and he heard two different small and fragile cries in his ears as he fell to the floor.
Floki was crouched over them, and Ragnar heard him whispering repeatedly out over them, but he could not tell what he was saying.
His mind was too wicked to comprehend anything as he simply stared at his silent wife and their two newborns.
Servants flew past him with clean water and clothes as his world seemed to fall before him.
Two…
He felt someone pulling at his shoulders, but he was paralyzed on his knees. She was so silent. Too silent.
When Floki's bloody face appeared before him, blocking his view of the two newborns between Frida's legs, he was finally able to move again, a dead breath escaping his lungs instantly. He felt like vomiting.
"You need to bite the cords," Ragnar heard Floki hissing at him, before he was pulled to his feet.
Ragnar stumbled a bit on his feet. "Yes," he croaked overwhelmingly, and he let Floki steer him closer to the bed.
He could not look at her. He could not see her like this. Not yet.
And so he let his eyes cling on the two living creatures between her dead bloody legs. He felt foreign to them.
But as he bent over and skewered both of the mushy cords that they had grown from, he finally felt Freyja pouring love into his heart.
Love for his two new sons.
Oh, how he could not wait to get to know them. And when he lifted one of the newborns into his arms, he finally dared to let his eyes fall to Frida on the bed, and he immediately felt his heart cry.
She was so still and so silent.
Gone.
Her prophecy was not true after all, then.
But just as he accepted that the gods had taken her with them, Floki whispered something into his ears that made him sob loudly.
"Freyja will heal her. She told me herself."