When his eyes opened, Thorson did not recognize where he was.
He was staring at a thatched roof that clearly belonged to a longhouse.
What manner of Valhalla was this?
The famed Hall of Odin that every Viking craved to end up in when they died could not look like this.
This lacked the warmth, the grandeur….
And where were all the brother-warriors who had gone before him?
And where was the flowing mead?
“Bjorn, he is awake…
You are awake,” a feminine voice said, and only then did he realize there was someone by the bedside…
two someones.
“Bjo…
Bjorn…
How?”
A pair of soft hands reached out to steady his head.
His vision had not yet cleared well enough to make out faces.
Surely, if he had not ended up in Valhalla, maybe then he was in Folkvang, Freyja’s Hall.
There was no shame in that.
Freyja was a warrior goddess too, as well as the goddess of magic and love.
It would be an honor to join the warriors in her Hall.
But even Folkvang could not be this dull.
Only when his vision cleared did he begin to understand what had happened.
“I’m alive,” he said almost regretfully.
“Yes, you are…
but you need to rest.”
The woman standing next to the girl who had spoken gently pushed him back onto the bed.
“My husband and Torstein and my son had to drag you home from the Thing.”
“Drag me…”
“So I survived,” Thorson said, almost in panic.
“Well, not according to the Earl.
They wanted to bury you together with the man you slew.”
Another voice spoke, masculine this time, as a boy entered the room.
Thorson did not have to ask who they were.
He knew them.
Everybody knew the family of the daring Norseman who had dared to go against Haraldson on numerous counts.
The woman nursing him was Lagertha, of course, Ragnar Lothbrok’s wife.
That was Bjorn, and the girl who had announced his awakening was Gyda, their daughter.
“You refuse to die,” Bjorn said, coming to stand closer to the bed.
Thorson forced a laugh and immediately flinched.
“Don’t blame me.
I should be dead.”
Bjorn crouched beside him and gently patted his chest.
“Not according to the gods, my friend,” he said with a smile.
“The man should have killed you, yet you are alive.”
Now that he was looking at Bjorn, he realized the boy was just as big as his father, if not bigger.
At his age, he already showed signs of surpassing his famed father.
But this was not the only memory Thorson had of this family.
Ragnar had crossed his dreams several times.
He did not know whether they had only been dreams.
His mother had called them just that.
But he had seen things that, if he tried to explain them, would make him look mad to everyone gathered in this room.
Thorson buried the thought deep within his mind.
He had survived.
That was the most important thing.
He wasn’t dead.
He didn’t know whether to be happy or sad that he had sent a man to Valhalla, yet condemned himself to survive in this land the gods had forsaken.
“He’s awake, Father,” Bjorn said as Ragnar entered the room.
“I see…
It’s about time.”
Ragnar moved over with a cheeky smile and stood beside the bed.
“It would have been great if he had woken up a day ago.
Then we wouldn’t have had to drag you all the way back.”
“A day ago?” Thorson swore, attempting to sit up.
“I have been unconscious for an entire day?”
“Two days,” Bjorn said.
“It’s almost night again.”
Thorson tried to push himself up once more.
But Lagertha was stronger than him.
He was ashamed to think of it.
He was too weak to even withstand a woman’s push.
“Your wounds are still raw.
You lost a lot of blood.”
Yes…
The loss of blood must have been why he had passed out.
“You prolonged the battle for too long.
Here.”
Ragnar reached into his pocket and produced what looked like a pair of golden rings.
“Haraldson might be a stingy man, but he still recognizes valor when he sees it.
You fight like a madman?” Ragnar said, handing him the rings.
“If I had not seen those wounds, I would have thought you were a berserker.”
Thorson stared at the rings in his hand.
“They are a gift an Earl gives to free a slave.”
“I had already been free,” Thorson said.
“Not in the eyes of the man you slew.
There had always been a blood feud between your master’s household and him.
Haraldson gave you these rings at the Thing before all the free men.
You are one of us now, and of course that means you can also claim your previous master’s land as your own, if the Earl grants it.”
Thorson nodded his gratitude and allowed Ragnar to slip the rings onto his wrist.
Staring at them, he still did not feel any contentment in his heart.
Once again he tried to sit up, but Lagertha would not have it.
“Just give up.
Stop fighting her.
You won’t win,” Ragnar said, smiling at his wife.
“What became of the meeting?” Thorson asked, tense.
“…About the raid.”
Ragnar stared at him for a while.
“What else did you expect?
I tried to bring up the matter after you passed out.
A few more brothers tried to stand with me, but Earl Haraldson eventually put it to a vote.”
“And?”
“We lost,” Bjorn answered.
The words were bitter in Thorson’s ears.
To him, they felt like a death sentence.
“So what did they decide?”
“We wait,” Ragnar said.
“For the sea to thaw…
it always does.
Maybe it’s taking a while longer, but it will.”
Thorson stared at him.
He suddenly found he had no strength to explain anything else.
For a second, he closed his eyes and accepted his fate.
They would have to wait for an even crueler death than an axe.
“I am curious, though,” Ragnar said, crouching next to his bed.
“What madness led you to suggest that we raid in winter?”
Thorson looked at him.
“The same one that led you to support me.
You must have seen it too.
There is no hope here.”
“Maybe,” Ragnar said, “or maybe not…
I always wanted to go.
My reasons, I assure you, are not the same as yours.”
That may be true, Thorson realized.
It wouldn’t be the first time Ragnar had done something against custom.
“I am telling you,” Thorson said, “you may have felt it too, but the land has changed.
This is not…
this is not our land.”
Ragnar looked at him for a couple of seconds.
“What do you mean?
It is still Kattegat as far as I can tell.
The mountains are still there, I know.
And although the trees are dead and covered in snow, surely the terrain is still the same.”
“Except there is no soil…
Have you tried digging anywhere?
As far as you can see, there is no soil beneath.
We might as well be sitting on top of a frozen ocean.”
The four of them stared at each other.
“In any case, it would take several summers for such thick ice to thaw.
Do you have supplies for that long?
Because I dug that ground until my hands split.” He raised his two palms to show them.
“Until I disappeared inside.
A pit twice my height.”
Lagertha stared at her husband.
Thorson was not exactly a short boy.
Even at sixteen, he was still clearly taller than Ragnar and taller than Bjorn.
Probably taller than many other men in the village.
A pit twice his height should definitely have exposed soil if there had been any beneath.
“Maybe you dug in the wrong place,” Ragnar said.
“Some places are dead valleys.”
“I knew the land.
I dug the right place,” Thorson said.
Just like everyone else, Ragnar was trying to create hope where there was none.
“That be as it may.
Where would you have us raid?
Snow has flattened everything.
Stand on the highest point and you can see as far as your eyes will let you.
If you go north, all you will meet is another village with another Earl who will tell you that the ice will thaw.”
“Then we raid south.”
That weird dream he had on numerous nights came back to him.
Ragnar was arguing from the belief that they were still in Kattegat, and that moving farther north would bring them to other Viking clans and villages.
That might be true.
But they might as well be the only village around, because they were not in Kattegat.
They were in what Thorson knew to be Westeros.
And if all signs, gods forbid, were true, then they were in the Land of Always Winter, far from any fertile land and even farther from the sea.
If they stayed here, there was no doubt.
All of them, old and young, men and women, all would perish.
Of course, the journey was impossible and hard, seeing that they had no means of navigation and no destination to navigate toward in the first place.
The sea was frozen.
How would they make any journey, any sort of raid, across a frozen sea to an unknown destination?
Even worse, Thorson did not seem to have a complete picture.
Things came to him in small, incomplete visions.
Some came during the day, some during the night.
Without a complete picture, how would he even come up with a strategy to save those who accompanied him?
“We can pull the longships if we need to.
We can crawl if we must, as long as we move away from this curse.”
Ragnar stared at his wife.
“You should rest…
I will talk to you later.”
“Ragnar,” Thorson called, trying to force himself up, but once again Lagertha overpowered him.
“You know I am right,” he said, falling helplessly back onto the bed.
His mind was made up.
He was leaving this place, even if he had to do it alone.
Better to die on the road than sit here hoping the gods would pity them.