Rathi leads another prayer, that lilt of his father’s accent carrying the sadness out of his voice, and he gleams with a sincere sort of glory. Cameras flash, and I imagine viewing this all through a television screen, as I’ve seen so many appearances by the gods and Valkyrie before.
But the cold ocean wind tickles my ears and I smell salt and mud under the perfume and gathered bodies. There are evergreen boughs tossed onto the pyres to brighten the inevitable sickening of the air when the remains burn, and I wish there weren’t. That we would all be forced to breathe in the sour death.
Why should it be beautified?
I ignore the congressman with his wide sideburns and rearing-horse lapel pin as he eulogizes my island. I ignore the click of a camera beside my face. Let them see that I stand to the side, that I don’t sing along with Jesca’s favorite hymn or the old dawn theme they used to open the festival.
Only when Baldur the Beautiful steps forward, and tears glint on his cheeks, do I feel any of it matters. He shines like a star in the darkness, tan and healthy and perfect, his jacket casually open, his collar unbuttoned. All the god of light says is “May they rest peacefully in Freya’s embrace, as I do in my turn.”
The Valkyrie step forward again, both with unlit torches in hand. They raise the carved wood in harmony, and in an arch over their heads tap the tips together.
Flames burst to life.
The congregation gasps, and Baldur claps with a smile. Freyr takes a torch and lights it from the Valkyrie’s fire, then so do Baldur, Rathi, the congressman, and the president’s lawspeaker, who is short and unimpressive among this company.
It is so choreographed, exactly like our Beowulf pantomime in the feast hall. A shallow production, a mask. This is not what death is. This is not all the Valkyrie should be.
A scream builds in my chest. I clench my hands into fists, push them hard against my heart, and the Valkyrie of the Ice suddenly looks at me. The Valkyrie of the South does the same.
They lift their voices in a keen. A beautiful, controlled wail of grief. There’s no rage in it, no desperation.
Other voices join them, until all around me a hundred people cry as the fire passes from torch to torch. This is no scream, but a song they tried to teach me.
The Valkyrie step away from the pavilion and stride together for the first pyre. It lights, flaring loud and bright and cutting off the howl of the crowd. The Valkyrie are shadows against the bonfire as the others file from the pavilion and walk through the rest of the pyres.
I back away, touch Soren to tell him he need not follow, and dart through the mourners onto the free, open tundra. It sparkles in the moonlight, so many human bodies shielding it and me from the warm light of the fires.
If the frost-tipped gorse rose up to become the troll mother, if her moon-white marble body loomed over me now, I would say his name for her.
“Signy.”
I turn to face the Valkyrie.
The firelight behind them darkens their faces, but the Valkyrie of the Ice tilts hers so I can see the glint of green in her eyes. And there is Precia beside her. In the two years since I’ve seen her, I’ve grown a head taller than the Valkyrie of the South.
“You do not mourn?” Siri of the Ice says with disdain.
I try to match her tone. “Not like this. It is too clean for me; you should know.”
“People like for death to be clean.”
Precia adds, “It’s part of what we do.”
“Death isn’t clean. Especially these deaths,” I say.
The Valkyrie of the South shakes her head at me. “We make death into what we need it to be.”
“Or what the Alfather needs it to be,” Siri adds. “We translate for him; we are his voice.”
I drop my hands to my sides. This is habit to argue with them, over this thing. I shrug. We will never agree.
Precia reaches for me, takes my hand. “Ask us for help, Signy.”
“No.”
“She’s too proud,” Siri scoffs.
Precia narrows her dark eyes and I hold my breath, wishing I could read runes in her irises.
The Valkyrie of the Ice laughs, a brutal, sharp laugh. “We saw the posters with your face, you wretched child. Playing Valtheow the Dark for tips. And you said we were shallow, we had lost our way.”
There are a handful of justifications I could give, especially that I was here for the riddle, but I won’t lend her the satisfaction. So I say nothing, not even that the Alfather led me here by the hand of a poet.
“You look horrible,” Precia murmurs.
“I’ve been hunting on the mountains,” I say, cutting a hand toward the south.
“You fought the herd,” Precia says. “You faced a herd of greater mountain trolls and lived. We heard the stories, from your wish-brother and from Baldur the Beautiful, who is enamored with you. Come home with us. You have surely earned it, and this moment you could hold the country in your hand with your story: Signy the Valkyrie of the Tree, who shepherded the great Vinland sacrifice.”
“It’s not the answer.”
“To the riddle?” Precia asks hopefully.
“Yes.”
Ice leans nearer to me, takes my face in one cold hand. “I don’t believe you. You are still searching, undecided. It’s plain in your runes. You lack conviction.”
“I don’t believe you, Siri. Conviction is all I have tonight. And passion, and hope.” I twist out of her grasp. “Because I do know the answer, and before long I will bring a stone heart to the Death Hall that you cannot even imagine. You will be the one to change.”
Siri catches her surprise and snuffs it out fast. “Only death changes me. Another lesson you’ve never learned.”
“Death and poetry,” I snap.
But the Valkyrie of the Ice stalks away.
South lets her sister go and cocks her head. Not a single hair falls out of place. “Myra will be glad to know you still carry her knife.”
“You believe me?” I ask.
“Signy.” Precia’s hands are tucked into her fur and leather coat. She holds herself together, back from me, though her voice is tender. “I always have known you would succeed. It’s you who fights it, not me.”
Darkness surrounds us, wails and conversation from the funeral pyres, the harsh snaps of burning wood.
“What do you see, in my eyes?” I whisper.
“Not indecision but madness. Chaos.”
My jaw clenches. Chaos. Still.
The Valkyrie pulls her hand out of the pocket of her coat and points southeast. Toward the ocean. “For now, your madness is that way.”
Turning to look, all I see is the dark sky, the long shadowed stretch of the moor. What is that direction? The sea, the death ships, and, far over the ocean, the coast of the USA. Or perhaps she only means Your madness is away from us.
When I open my mouth to ask, the Valkyrie has already gone to join our sister again at the first bonfire.
I trip and cuss as I make my way through the intense darkness, through mud, for there is no path this way she pointed. I have no idea if she meant it literally, but if not I’ll reach the ocean and be forced to quit. I’ll find the death ships and sleep there, light my own pyre for Unferth. Once I took him there with me, held his shoulder as I climbed atop the prow of the flagship. Sometimes I think I want to remain here forever, I cried up at the windy sky. And Unferth said, You would hate forever.
Cold air chaps my lips, for even so many weeks after Baldur’s Night the island will freeze, but I press on. My boots slip and the hem of my dress grows heavy, despite it being cut just below the knee. My palms are raw from catching myself, and finally I stay where I fall.
The wool soaks up cold water off the hill, freezing my thighs and making my ass numb. I lie back and spread my arms. Unferth’s sword is like an external backbone, an exoskeleton shield for my heart. My fingertips brush baby grass, and sharp rocks cut up into my hips, but I don’t care. My chest heaves.
I stare up
at the stars and try to find poetry in them, words to ground myself in, but there’s nothing.
Your heart. Your heart. Your heart.
The rhythm of the words is the rhythm of the distant waves.
Dark figures loom suddenly around me, coalescing out of the moorland. They’re broad and dressed in black coats, weapons strapped to shoulders and hips. Their eyes gleam and every one of them has a slice of darkness cutting down their left cheeks. Berserkers.
I hold my hand out and one takes it in a very firm grasp. He hauls me to my feet. “Hello, pretty Valkyrie,” he says, almost purring. There’s a buzzed line of hair striping down his otherwise bald skull and he smiles a head-swallowing smile. “I’m Sharkman,” he adds. “I saw you as I descended from the heliplanes. Your madness was so raw. It affected me, who is affected by little.”
“You affected all of us,” says the warrior to his right: a berserker with dark braids pulled tightly back from his face and one of those thin Frankish goatees around his solemn mouth. I know his brown eyes. This is the berserker who caught my sword in the fray, who held me back, who said, Balls.
He puts two fingers to his heart and says, “The Mad Eagles salute you, Valkyrie.”
At least seven of them surround me, mostly shadows in the dark. “Thank you,” I say.
“I am Darius Strong, captain of the Mad Eagles.” He covers my hand with his, the warmth of his skin traveling up my arm. “We returned here for you, Valkyrie. Come with us tonight, home to our hall, and drink in honor of our fallen, and yours. We will show you how the Mad God mourns.”
Without hesitation, I say yes. Darius and Sharkman flank me, with the five other berserkers spread behind.
SIXTEEN
THIS IS WHAT a funeral should be:
Me standing atop a table beside a wide bowl of honey-dark mead, in a torchlit warehouse before an entire band of berserkers. They put two fingers to their hearts and together cry, Hangatyr! God of the Hanged.
I let the words wash over me, closing my eyes for only a moment, hunting for a response in the bowels of my memory. My head swims, my body buzzes with the heat of Odinist frenzy that exudes from the berserkers, with fierce joy and heavy, heavy sorrow. I dunk my goblet into the cauldron of mead, let the cool alcohol swirl around my fingers and into the cup. I lift it, mead streaming down and dripping onto the table. As I hold it high, I say, “To the glorious dead!”
The Mad Eagles roar in response and the warehouse rings with the echo of our cries.
It’s a huge metal cavern in the center of the berserker camp. They’re tucked far into a corner of the North Ice joint military base, between the airfield and the ocean, separated from the army by curling barbed wire and a small guardhouse at the gate. Tiny windows high against the warehouse roof glow with moonlight, but the metal catwalks hang with torches and oil lamps. Real fire, not the false flicker of stage lights like in the old circus feast hall. The orange light dances over chipped and abused round-shields, rows and rows of spears that line the walls, dust-covered wooden rifles, and one autocannon crouched like a wolf in the corner. The Mad Eagles have created a strange, dark home that’s half ancient, half modern here in this industrial building.
When the roar fades, I drink all that will fit into my mouth, and the berserkers pound the floor with their boots, the table with their fists. The air vibrates, my bones shake, and I let myself laugh wildly.
Then I dunk the goblet again and crash down along the table to kneel before Darius. I wrap my hands around the cup and say, “Captain Darius Strong, drink mead with me as your fallen brothers drink mead with the Alfather.”
I put it to his lips and he drinks.
One by one, I offer my cup to the berserkers. I ask for their names and repeat them back, inviting each to drink mead with me. Some murmur my name, Signy, and some Valkyrie.
Sharkman covers my hands with his and feeds alcohol back to me. Another, called Thebes, ducks bashfully but meets my eyes. He’s got a strip of burn scars distorting his face from temple down past the iron collar of Odin. Another warrior has tears in his dark blue eyes, and the oldest of them all says not my name nor my title, but calls me Nine.
I’m flushed and sweating midway through the ritual. Fire and alcohol and the fevered madness that spins under the heart of every berserker raise the temperature in the warehouse. It’s a sauna. I shed the top layer of my dress onto the floor while Darius holds Unferth’s sword, and when I take it back I leave it unsheathed. Cup in one hand, sword in the other, I use Sharkman’s shoulder to climb onto the table again. There I stand in my underdress and jewelry, Jesca’s silver and Ned’s copper rings on my fingers, and I fill the goblet again. I drink long, tossing back my head, and when I wipe my mouth with my forearm they laugh and salute. They come to me and I pick up cups and goblets and drinking horns from beside the mead cauldron, passing out full cups to every berserker. When we’ve all a drink, I lift the sword and tell them a piece of my story I’ve not told anyone.
“I was afraid,” I call, “and numb and desperate—but it did not matter because I burned, too, with rage and grief, and when I saw that herd picking their teeth with the bones of my own glorious dead, when I raised my sword—this sword—and charged, there was a great roar behind me. The roar of power, the roar of our grim god of madness and death, pushing at my back like wind, like massive black wings.”
My throat is hot, and my stomach and heart, too, tingling with alcohol and passion. The poetry tumbles out of me, fast and strong. “They were wings, though they did not grow from my back. They were your wings, every dark feather a finger of your craze, your passion. My heart spun with the Mad Eagles as you charged from the sky like my own battle wolves, to tear apart my enemies. That madness has hounded me, has lived inside me, ever since.”
They cheer.
The cry raises the hairs on my neck, and my head falls back. I shut my eyes as they yell. We drink together.
A throne-like seat is brought for me and I slouch in it, Unferth’s sword slung across the back and the goblet of mead in my hand. They tell their stories now, boasting about the trolls they killed, their visions of me, the spinning fury of the madness inside them. I hear of rending limbs, the sweet smell of troll ichor, crushed bones, and tears that streaked their faces from the hot wind of death. I learn the names of their fallen and we salute their brothers with more mead.
My head is lost in dizziness, my nose numb from drink. I eat roast pork with my fingers and stomp with them in the rhythm of our united heartbeats. I down the last drops of mead and laugh.
Here’s red-haired Marcus tugging the goblet from me and lifting me to my feet. He swings me close and spins me around, and I still laugh. I’m pulled from him into another’s arms, and then another’s, my head cloudy and the entire world spinning. Brick, with a scar cutting his tattoo apart, grabs my elbow too hard and I swing it up into his face. There’s blood in the mix now, and a frozen moment before Brick laughs outrageously and the others follow. I dance with him then, heady and wild. There are hands on my ribs and my arms, loosing my braids, and then a hot mouth against mine. I allow it, embrace it, sinking into the kiss for one brief turning of the magnificent world, and then put my hand on his cheek and push back.
It’s wicked-eyed Sharkman, one eyebrow tilted and his face still close. His shoulders slope with muscles bursting out of his black vest; he’s a head taller than me. He’d take me away right now and give me everything I desire, and there’s no hiding it on that wide, flushed face of his. He doesn’t even try to hide it. Everything the opposite of Ned.
“Valkyrie,” he whispers. I grab his face and I kiss him again.
I’m still in his arms when the sun rises.
It spills through the wide-open doors of the warehouse, where tables and benches are pushed back or turned over and so many berserkers snore, sprawled out or with heads together. My eyes ache and nausea digs spindly fingers into my stomach. From this dark corner, I spy Darius at the main table reading a book, a mug of something
steaming in hand. It smells like hot chocolate and I think of Unferth.
There’s no hard, sharp pain at the thought of him, but only a sorrowful echo.
Slowly I push out from beneath Sharkman’s arm. My underdress is twisted uncomfortably and my braids a disaster, boots I have no idea where. Sharkman grumbles and I shove him off the hem of my dress. I creep to my feet.
“Signy?” Darius murmurs.
“Darius,” I whisper. I walk to the bench as if on a tightrope, and Darius hands me the mug. It’s coffee, not chocolate, and I smile sadly down at it.
There’s a fuzzy aura around everything, but a cool breeze snakes inside, dragging away the sticky heat of stale berserker frenzy. I sip the coffee. My stomach revolts and I feel like an idiot, though I wouldn’t change last night. It was magnificent and wild; it was mad frenzy; no control!
I lay my head down against the cool wooden table, and Darius puts his hand beside my face, not touching. “I can get you some water.”
I murmur something, actually wanting a toothbrush and a shower. My thoughts drift like thin spring clouds. I danced hard and laughed; I abandoned my family to their Vinland graves, and Ned Unferth, too. I ran off with strangers who are just like me, sang for the dead, kissed, and forgot my own name for a little while. And it was a relief.
It is a relief. I want to remain here, soak it up, let it go, cycle through it again and again until I’m spent and exactly this loosened, this relaxed every morning.
But I can’t. I have too much to do. I can’t only be wild and free like they are, waiting for their orders to rend and destroy, to set loose their madness and rage.
They embody the destructive passion and death in the Alfather’s fiery heart, this scream inside me, and sharing it made even my bones ache with glory and pleasure. Yet this place has taught me a thing I never understood before: the Mad Eagles, the berserkers, they are controlled. In their hearts they’re pure, but they’re caged from the outside by military laws and barbed-wire fences. Like Soren said, they’re tools. They’re not a part of the world.
The Valkyrie are. The Valkyrie walk free among the people; the Valkyrie lead. Because they are not feared, because they are their own control.