Chapter 70: A Viking Funeral

Björn waded out to the ugly thing that passed as a ‘boat’ to these savages, arms packed with another load of alcohol. He carefully laid the treasured bottles of ‘single-malt Scotch’ around the couch-man’s legs, then popped open a bottle of ‘Everclear’ and started sloshing it upon his friend’s body as a final toast. Then, once he’d soaked everything in alcohol, he glanced over his shoulder at the bank of the river, where about twenty-five people milled in various states of curiosity.

Not enough, he thought, but at this time of night—and with his vampire adding ‘no kidnapping’ to the list of his concessions in return for her vow to let him choose their entertainment at night to forestall another Chuck Norris marathon—he hadn’t been able to acquire more. Even then, they picked at the overly pretty, insubstantial, bite-sized food that the ‘catering service’ had produced under tented tables. Dainty-like. Almost completely without revelry. The mead had barely even begun to flow.

Björn grimaced and looked back at the boat. Jessie’s body lay prone, wearing the fine chain armor he had procured from Anchorage, hands fisted around the massive broadsword upon his chest. Björn hadn’t broken it, of course, because he knew Jessie, as a humble man of meat-frying did not have the greedy soul to become draugr. The helmet and its chain coif hid the wound that had severed Jessie’s head, and the wooden shield was thin and flimsy, at best.

Björn wished he could do so much more, but he was a stranger in this land. The customs perplexed him, and his queen had insisted that to procure more gold would have meant another four hours of driving.

Cursing inwardly, Björn left the funerary vessel moored in the sluggish green tributary to the powerful Susitna River and waded back to the bank.

“Why are you not eating?” he growled at the onlookers. “Feast!”

A couple more of the guests went to get paper plates, but nobody dug in their hands and ate. Björn grimaced in disgust. As he was getting ready to yell at them and remove a few idle hands, Shannon grabbed him by the forearm and led him away from the onlookers.

“They are eating,” his queen insisted through her teeth.

“No they’re not,” Björn said, frustrated, “They merely dab at their food. With forks.”

“That’s how people eat here,” Shannon said.

Björn knew for a fact the Valkyrie would not be impressed with fork-dabbing. He glanced at the sky unhappily. “What about drink?” he demanded, looking back at the tents over his shoulder. “They’ve barely touched their horns.”

“That’s hard alcohol and there’s enough here for a football stadium,” Shannon said. “Most of these guys have to drive when it’s all over.”

“There needs to be revelry,” Björn growled, losing a bit of control over his shadow.

“You can’t force people to revel,” Shannon said. “Look, they don’t know this guy. He’s literally just some nameless corpse to them. They’re here because you basically threatened some form of evisceration if they didn’t hang out and watch you do this.”

Björn felt an ache of inadequacy in his chest. He wanted more—Jessie needed more—but the scattered conversation and fork-dabbing was the best he had been able to muster. He glanced out at the boat again, anxious. It had been too long since he’d sent off a friend in a funeral such as this.

Eirik.

And, to Björn’s surprise, he’d met the grinning bastard on the other side, once Björn had taken a sword to the gullet and been brought to Odin’s throne on the fiery wings of Valkyrie.

But Eirik had been well-loved in the clan. His beard had started to go gray before he’d been slain by an enemy’s sword and he’d had many children with his three very robust wives. He’d had hundreds of people gather to see him off, and he’d been wearing the finest armor, set ablaze in the boat of a master.

Jessie’s armor and boat almost seemed…fake.

But Shannon and her boatworkers had assured him these were the things that the softlanders used nowadays, so Björn had relented.

Now he wasn’t so sure…

“Look, they’re getting anxious,” Shannon said. “I’m just hoping nobody’s called the police yet. Are you gonna light it or what?”

“You can’t rush a funeral,” Björn said. “There has to be merrymaking and buxom wenches and harlots and—”

“Let me just stop you right there,” Shannon gritted. “This is the twenty-first century. We don’t have ‘wenches’ or ‘harlots’ anymore.”

Jessie had mentioned as much. Björn frowned. “Then who will have sex with our guests?” He gestured at the overabundance of men. It was, quite distinctly, a sausage-fest. “You?”

Shannon’s pale face reddened until it was purple. “Nobody’s having sex. You’re setting a boat on fire, then we’re going to get out of here before the cops show up.”

“I’ll just kill the—”

“No,” Shannon snapped, triggering the heady rush of the Nótt Danzleikr, “you won’t.” As Björn recovered his wits, she grabbed him by the front of his shirt with a feeble female hand and yanked him close. “Listen. I’d say I’m being a very good sport about this. You’re about to set almost three million dollars on fire for some guy you knew for less than twenty-four hours. Do me a favor and shut the hell up about the bland, lifeless catering and the people you’ve terrified into being your ‘guests’ and just go light the goddamn boat before my dog and I go back to the car and drive off?” She shoved a ‘barbecue lighter’ into his hand, which she had previously shown him how to squeeze to make flame.

Björn glanced down at the flame stick, then out at the boat, where Jessie and his gifts drifted peacefully, waiting for the afterlife. He could almost hear him out there, waiting to be freed…

Muttering, Bjorn took the ‘lighter’ and the two five-gallon canisters of ‘kerosene’ that she had bought for him, then waded back out to the boat.

Taking a deep breath, he popped the lid from one of the kerosene containers and held it over the boat, looking at Jessie’s face. “All right, couch-man,” he said, “When I light this, the Valkyrie will be coming to take you to Valhöll. I know I warned you about the sword-bitches, but when you meet them, you will need not fear them—as you are now, they are just messengers of the gods. You have not yet proven yourself on the battlefield of Hjaðningavíg, so they will not yet seek to make you theirs. That comes later. You have many centuries until the will even deign to take notice.”

It seemed a weak send-off, even to Björn. He took a deep breath to collect his thoughts.

“Jessie, thank you for being my couch-man. I believe that, with your advice, I may yet be able to conquer this feeble woman with these ‘compromises’. And, while I will never be able to return to Ásgarðr, it looks as though I will at least have her company in the troubles to come, and I owe this entirely to you and your great wisdom. Odin will appreciate having you in his hall, couch-man, for I’m sure you will share with him many insights, and the One-Eye always enjoyed such thoughtful conversation.”

Björn glanced down at the canisters of kerosene still in his hand. “Me, I did not entertain him much, methinks. Perhaps this is why he cast me out.” Björn knew it was for abandoning Valhöll that he, in turn, was abandoned by the One-Eye, but he wanted Jessie to feel as if he had something to offer in an afterlife filled with men stronger, faster, and better at fighting than him.

“Are you having problems pouring?!” came his queen’s shout, breaking the solemn calm of the moment. Behind him, she had her hands cupped to her mouth. “You gotta break the seal!”

“No, quiet, he listens as I say goodbye!” Björn snapped. “Don’t interrupt!”

On the beach, the softlander woman groaned and slumped back into her ‘lawn chair’ and dropped her temple into her hand.

Turning back to the corpse of his friend, Björn said, “You fought for me when, as a mortal, you knew you could never win the day.” He remembered the brutal fight with the Fury, and he was still confused as to why Jessie had taken up arms for him. “You could have run, but you didn’t. I live because of you, couch-man. I shall remember your sacrifice and tell tales of your glory to entire halls from now until the final battle of Ragnarök.”

Björn hesitated, thinking back to their conversations in the car, then Jessie’s hasty, desperate words just before the Fury tore off his head. “But…” he said slowly, “because I feel you would take very little pleasure in such tales, I will also promise you something else.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly between his teeth. “I swear to you, Jessie-of-Nowhere, I will learn from the wisdom you taught me. I will work to bridge the divide between myself and others. I will be…” he choked, finding the next word especially hard, “…kind…in your honor. Such is the meaning of your sacrifice, couch-man. “I, a warrior of Odin, hereby swear I will…” he hesitated, trying to remember the exact invocation that Jessie had repeated at least a dozen times, “…treat others as I would wish to be treated.” To seal the promise, he bit open his hand and dribbled his blood over the corpse, then rubbed it on his own chest and face.

Then, anxiously, he glanced behind himself.

The revelers had become more animated in the time it had taken him to say his goodbyes, the alcohol and laughter flowing more freely.

Good, Björn thought. Now to light a fire the Valkyrie can’t ignore…

He dumped the first load of kerosene into the bottom of the boat, then sloshed the second container over the corpse and his gifts. Then, once the kindling in the bottom of the boat was thoroughly soaked, he lit it with the flamestick.

At once, a whoomph rushed over Jessie’s body, swallowing the boat with fire much quicker and more violently than anything Björn had been expecting.

This is good, he thought, backing away as the flames leapt upwards, creating a column of billowing smoke and fire, a signal flare to Freyja’s she-bitches to come collect a soul.

Immediately upon having that thought, Björn fought yet another instinctive urge to stamp the fire out and go hide under a rock until the smoke died down. This is how Jessie gets to Valhöll, Björn thought stubbornly. If it took him facing the Valkyrie to make it happen, then he would face the Valkyrie. If they recognized him and reclaimed him for Brynhilder’s throne in Guðrhöll, then so be it.

The tower of smoke and flame would have made any king or earl proud. Grunting with satisfaction, Björn loosed the mooring and set the boat adrift, headed in a slow, lazy path towards the Susitna River.

He waited, watching the column of flame for the telltale flicker of Guðrhöll’s sword-witches. The boat continued to drift, the fire consuming more of Jessie’s corpse. The Valkyrie did not come.

Too long, he thought, on a pang of panic. It’s taking too long.

Behind him, Björn realized that the onlookers had gone silent. Spinning in the water, he roared, “Make merry! Now!”

Shannon snorted. “You can’t just—”

But then her dog barked and everyone started to laugh, cheer, and raise their mead horns to the sky.

“Good dog,” Björn said, grinning widely at the way the animal had backed him up. He liked this beast. Someday, he would have to train it to hunt man.

At the sounds of revelry behind him ringing out over the water, Björn glanced back at the sky. He squinted at the smoke. Had he seen a flicker?

He had. Immediately, his heart started to pound, his stomach cramped, and he fought the urge to vomit. He fisted his hands and waited. Another golden flicker, lower down the smoke column. Still out to his waist in the lazy tributary, Björn stayed where he was, feet planted in the greenish water, as the sword-witches came flitting down the column of smoke to examine the boat.

Three of them, he realized, his subconscious fear rising several notches. Even on his best day with Skofnung in hand, he could never take three…

He watched them move amongst the flames, bending to get a good look at the man he was offering them. One of them—Gunvor, he realized, as fear tightened his throat—put her mailed hand to the corpse’s head and, still squatting, frowned and said something to one of her sisters.

It was in turning to her sister that the Valkyrie general saw him and froze.

Björn straightened, his entire body going stiff as he remembered the deviant pursuits he had endured while chained to a post in Guðrhöll. Gunvor had abstained from taking delight in his flesh, but three times, she had caught him and punished him brutally when he tried to escape. She frowned and straightened, pointing at him. Her sisters turned…

Hekla and Signe, Björn thought, feeling sick. They had not been so kind. Seeing the three that stood before him, his instincts were screaming for him to back up onto dry land and prepare for a fight—or to sink into the water and attempt to hide—but he remained where he was, still invoking the call to Ásgarðr.

Like flickering fire, the three women walked from the boat and across the water to him, their swords still sheathed on their backs, their feet buoyed by wings of fire.

Transparent and ethereal in this messenger form, Gunvor paced around him, looking down on him in confusion. “Nökkvi?” Her voice was the sound of battle, of men screaming, of fire, of swords clashing. She glanced at the others, then almost nervously at their surroundings. “What are you doing here?”

“I summon you to take this soul to Valhöll,” Björn said, forcing himself to stare straight ahead. “I have witnessed his deeds. He acts bravely in the face of certain death, and has a heart that suits a sword at Odin’s side.” If they planned to take Björn as well, so be it. As long as they took Jessie…

Gunvor turned back to look at the burning ship. When she turned back, she was frowning.

“There’s nothing in that corpse to take.”