The Sacrifice

The first thing to die is that brief silence, before the supreme violence.

It is destroyed by Melle herself, whose body cannot contain the rage and the grief any longer.

She does not care that she is a queen anymore.

She only knows that she loves her husband, and cannot bear to see him die.

She tries to stand, and scrambles forward in the snow, but stumbles again immediately. Her legs will not obey her anymore; she has lost the strength, and now she tries to pull herself forward through the freezing snow, her green robes sweeping it around her in miniature drifts.

*   *   *

Thorolf nods to two of the women, who step forward and grasp Melle by the arms as she tries to stand again.

She turns her head blindly to each of them, but they will not look at her. Their faces are set firm, and they are strong women, their hands dig into her soft arms like the winter ice grips the harbor, and she succumbs to them, her chest heaving.

*   *   *

Eirikr turns his head toward her. He sees little. He has been smoking stem as well as drinking petals, and his mind is fogged.

My queen, he thinks.

That’s all.

His queen.

He does not feel the cold, though it bites his naked skin all over his body at once.

He lifts his head to the moon, the blood moon, and he prays that his death will rescue his people. He is no longer certain that it will, not after the other blessings, whose skulls now hang in the evergreen, but he has said this to no one, for he knows that his people have nothing else now, and that it is only a small shred of belief.

Without it, he knows they will be dead before the next full moon.

*   *   *

He steps from the sled, letting the fox fur fall into the muddy snow at his feet.

In front of him, the stone table waits, a simple flat rectangle, with a stubby stone pillar at each corner, to which to tie less willing sacrifices.

From the top of the table projects a short spout, carved into the stone, thick, and wide, with a deep groove running out from the center of the bed. It is stained, a deep, rusty color, and Eirikr understands that in a few moments, it will gleam wet and bright again.

So it is, he thinks.

He looks at Thorolf, whose face is as unreadable as the stone bed itself.

Thorolf nods imperceptibly, and Eirikr steps onto the bed, and stretches his arms wide.

He feels the cold a little now, for the first time, but makes a full turn, taking in the whole scene around him, the last his eyes will ever see.

Slowly, he kneels, then lies on his back, on the table.

Melle’s moans become wails, and she begins to tug frantically at the hands that hold her.

Thorolf nods at a warrior, one with a hammer in his hand, who begins to edge through the crowd toward Melle.

Eirikr lies on the table, staring into the night sky, staring at the uncountable stars that are shining brightly down on him.

What lives, he thinks, are lived by the men up there?

What do they do?

What do they believe?

What do they see?

Do they see me?

He wonders about them all, all the many lives that have been, and that will be, and wonders why they are not all the same, why they are what they are. It cannot be, he thinks, that when our life is run, we are done. There must be more to man than that, surely?

That we are not just one, but a multitude.

*   *   *

“Now,” says Thorolf, and he points at the executioner.

The figure in red has been standing statue-still all this time, head bowed under his red hood, knife concealed, tucked up behind his forearm.

Now, he steps forward, and in two paces he’s above Eirikr on the stone table, and though he should not, the executioner pulls the red hood from his head, showing himself to the world.

It is Gunnar.

The dog, thinks Eirikr, with sudden fury, he made some trick with the pebbles, with the black pebble, so he could be the one to do it. The dog.

“Well,” Eirikr murmurs, “his horns appear.”

*   *   *

Melle screams. The warrior with the hammer is by her side, and lifts it to still her noise.

The hammer falls, but Melle, making as if to faint, slumps to one side, pulling the woman on the other side with her. The hammer strikes the woman’s shoulder instead of Melle’s head, and she collapses.

There is confusion, and Melle slips free, her legs strong again, and scrabbles toward the table.

“Eirikr!” she cries, and now Eirikr turns to her.

His rage at seeing Gunnar, and the cold, and the hot blood inside him all work some power, and his head begins to clear.

“Melle!” he roars, and begins to sit up, “Melle!”

Thorolf sees that he means to move. He still wields his own, ceremonial hammer of gold, and he brings it down, sharply.

Eirikr sees, and tries to move, but his body is slow, his muscles stiff from the cold, his mind foggy from the dragon, and the hammer catches the side of his head.

He collapses onto the bed once more, on his side, but he is still conscious, though Thorolf has hit a nerve, some part of his brain, and as he tries to stand again now, he finds his arms do not work.

His legs shudder, his arms twitch, but his eyes and ears are open as Melle tumbles in the snow at the side of the table.

“Eirikr!” she cries. “No!”

But Eirikr knows it is too late.

Gunnar steps forward, and other hands are already grasping Melle’s arms again.

Eirikr speaks.

He looks at Thorolf, and at Gunnar, and with the magic of the dragon inside him, he speaks his last words.

“You cannot kill me,” he shouts hoarsely, and yet as loudly as he can. “You cannot kill me. Do you not know my name? I am Eirikr. The One King! Forever Strong, and though you kill my body today, I will live again! I will live!”

He turns to his queen, to Melle, and his voice drops. “I will live seven lives, Melle, this is only my first.”

The stars shine down on Eirikr, on his twitching body on the cold stone table.

“I will live seven times, and I will look for you in each one. We will always be together.”

Gunnar raises the knife, and the moonlight gleams from its edge.

“I will look for you and love you in each one. Will you follow?”

Suddenly Gunnar sweeps the knife across Eirikr’s throat, in a single long arc of silver.

He makes no sound now. There is no air to make the sound. There are only the lips moving on Eirikr’s face, but Melle sees what the words are.

“Will you follow?”

*   *   *

Blood gushes from Eirikr’s neck, spurting across the ground, making a mockery of the stone spout, spraying Gunnar and Melle alike.

The snow steams, red.