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The moon had cycled in full, and was half again through another, before the near-constant tension left Athelstan's shoulders. The chaos was over, or so it seemed. He was back in Kattegat—back with Ragnar—and the man who had threatened their peace was now dead, his existence memorialized only by a darkened section of floorboards in the Great Hall.
The first flurries of late fall were now beginning to blow through the air, looking at turns like bits of late-spring cottonwood fluff, or dust motes glittering in a warm summer sunbeam. The edge to the cold breeze, however, told their true story: Winter beckoned, and thus of course did the long, quiet nights of the Northern freeze, when straying too far from the fires and human warmth within strong wooden walls could spell death.
Yet for some reason, he couldn't bear the thought of staying inside. Instead, he lately found himself where he was now: standing on the shores of the village, staring out over the water and thinking of the green, moist land that lay to the west. The greenest parts of it were not his homeland in specific—that was instead the windswept moors of the rocky North—but the whole of it was still was far less harsh than the land he now called home. He understood why Ragnar wanted to build a settlement there. What he didn't understand was why he felt as if he wanted to live in it. Dread of the next few months of frigid weather didn't seem to be reason enough. Were it warmth he craved, he could easily find it in the arms of at least a few of the people here—one in particular. What he truly wanted, he did not know. It just seemed as if he'd find it more easily out here than around anyone else.
"Athelstan?"
He turned. Bjorn, a fur slung around his shoulders and his cheeks pink with the ice in the air, approached him. "Hello." Athelstan smiled, though it felt artificial to do so.
"My father has been looking for you. What are you doing out here? Are you not cold?" He moved to give him the fur wrap, but Athelstan waved him off.
"I am fine. The air is bracing." In truth, he was actually fairly cold, now that he was reminded of it. "Did Ragnar say why he needed me?"
Bjorn shrugged. "You would know better than I." He glanced down at Athelstan's hands and reached for one. "At least let me give you my gloves. Your hands are turning red—oh."
Athelstan gently pulled his hand back, and stuffed both under his knitted vest. Ragnar of course knew of his scars, though not yet the exact way they had come about. Torstein had noticed them when they were sharing a room, but said nothing. Elisef, when he assisted her with Torstein's post-poisoning care, had only handed him a small pot of a strong-smelling salve. "It will help those fade," she said, and then dropped the topic. No-one else in Kattegat had seemed to notice or care, at least until now.
Bjorn looked back out at the water. He was quiet for some time, then finally spoke. "When I was young, you told my sister and me the story of your God. You said how he had been betrayed by someone close to him, and that had led to his torture and death. You showed me the silver cross you carried, and told me what it represented."
"And you laughed." Athelstan couldn't help a small grin as he remembered the petulant adolescent he had met so many years ago.
Bjorn smiled sheepishly. "I did. It's not as if there are no strange tales of my gods, but that story somehow seemed silly to me. I didn't know why Christians would celebrate something so awful—why they would turn a torture device into a symbol of faith."
"And do you understand it now?"
"I think so." Bjorn frowned. "It is like a sacrifice, right? Like how we use the death of animals, and sometimes people, to prove our devotion to the gods."
Athelstan nodded. "That is basically it, yes."
"I was angry with you when you were supposed to be sacrificed at Uppsala, and then were not. I really liked Leif, and I thought it was better that a slave should have died. But I know now why you were not the best choice. Leif's death was an honor to our gods. Your death would have brought only grief—especially to my father." Bjorn sighed, and chewed his lip. "I have seen too much unnecessary suffering now to be able to tolerate it for long. My mother—well, that's not my truth to tell. Suffice it to say that I now think pain should always have a purpose." He nodded back down at Athelstan's hands. "I suppose that yours did not."
Athelstan went quiet. For months after his torture, he had begged God to reveal to the reason why he had suffered so. He believed, for a while, the logic that his tormentors had used: that he needed to be reminded of the suffering of Jesus to bring him back to faith. That was, after all, the same logic that he had grown up with. The poverty, the chastity, the suffering in silent devotion—all were meant to remind him and his fellow monks that this life—this body—was unimportant, and that only the life to come was of any matter. But the longer he stayed in Wessex, and the more his wounds healed, the more he had begun to remember that the other culture into which he had been forcibly thrust did things differently. Death and sacrifice were matters of honor, and pain was often inflicted as punishment or by the cruel, but the gods were also honored in other ways: joy, love, and laughter; feasts and other pleasures of the flesh. One's death in battle was the path to Valhalla, not endless suffering while still alive. "I do not know," he finally said. "I wish I had the answer to that, to be honest."
"I will let you decide on that yourself, then. But please, let me at least convince you that there is no purpose to you freezing out here." Bjorn extended an arm.
Athelstan sighed, and smiled. "Consider me convinced." Ducking under the arm—when did the boy he remembered get so tall, anyway?—he trudged back up the beach toward the village.