The Gargoyle

project, a boat intended to take Bragi into the coves for fishing. He was determined to paint every inch of it; such decoration was not necessary, by any means, but it felt good to have a brush in his hand again. The job dragged on for far too long, but Einarr never once complained about his friend’s slowness.

Svanhildr’s pregnancy progressed without difficulty, despite her advanced years for such an adventure. When she went into labor, young Bragi ran to fetch the midwife while the men stayed behind to comfort her. Another boy, healthy and beautiful and named Friрleifr, soon joined the family.

When it appeared certain that the child would survive, the men decided to drink to their good fortune. Even Bragi was allowed to stay up late and down a number of frost-cups filled with strong ale; since he now had a younger brother to watch over, his father contended that it was time for him to start drinking like a man.

The room was aglow from the longfire and the blubber lamps, and Einarr laughed as his boy-now, he noted proudly, his older boy-stumbled to his sleeping bench on wobbly legs. “No, not quite a man yet,” he teased, while Sigurðr called out that the ale would put hair on Bragi’s chest. Or, at least, hair on his tongue the following morning.

Within minutes the boy was snoring and Einarr, satisfied that his wife and new baby were also safely asleep, retreated to his workshop. He returned with a small bag that he tossed to Sigurðr; inside were a number of dried mushrooms. “Now we should truly celebrate. The gods smile upon us.”

Each man ate a couple of the berserkjasveppur-Sigurðr didn’t like the texture, but was never one to refuse his friend-before Einarr dumped the remainder into the ale bowl on the longfire. “We will boil the rest. It doesn’t taste good, but the effect…”

As they sipped late into the night, Einarr tried to describe the beauty of the free-flowing lines that floated all around him, and Sigurðr found himself laughing at Einarr’s every attempt. A few times Svanhildr lifted her head confusedly at one of Sigurðr’s exclamations, but settled back into sleep without a word. The men drank until the mushroom bowl was empty, and then ate the soggy remains at its bottom.

“It was good when you gave Svan the rune for her necklace,” Einarr said with a slur. “I wish I’d thought of it.”

“She looked after me,” said Sigurðr. “As did you.”

“It was time for her to have something of you around her neck.”

“I love,” said Sigurðr, “her.”

“I know.”

“Bragi,” added Sigurðr. “Bragi, I love, too.”

“I have something for you.” Einarr once again retreated to his workshop, and this time he returned with the arrowhead that had entered Sigurðr’s body. He sat down heavily, closer to Sigurðr than before. “Give me your necklace.”

“I didn’t know…” Sigurðr murmured. “I didn’t think you’d ever noticed it.”

“I knew of it from the first, but was reminded when I cut this”-he held up the arrowhead-“from your chest.”

Sigurðr handed over the leather strap, and when it was in his fingers, Einarr twisted it around and said, “It looks just like the day I wrapped Sigurðrsnautr with it.”

Sigurðr stared intently into the fire, unable to meet his friend’s eyes, as Einarr slipped the arrowhead onto the necklace. Then he held it out for Sigurðr to take.

Sigurðr started to reach for it, but then changed his mind and bowed slightly instead. Einarr hesitated momentarily, and then slipped the necklace over Sigurðr’s head. Sigurðr could feel the hand brushing up against his hair, perhaps even grazing the nape of his neck. After all his years of imagining Einarr’s fingers there, they finally were.

They paused a moment, eyes on each other.

Sigurðr leaned in a bit, and Einarr did not pull back. They were so close. Sigurðr cleared his throat, which felt clogged with boiled ale and fungus, and his voice cracked when he released the words he had waited so many years to say. “Ég elska Þig.'

Einarr narrowed his eyes a little, but otherwise his expression did not change.

Sigurðr leaned in a little further, and still Einarr did not pull away. So Sigurðr closed the remainder of the distance, settled his mouth to Einarr’s, and kissed him.

Einarr did not react. Sigurðr read this as acceptance, and kissed harder.

Then Sigurðr felt Einarr pull back, followed by an excruciating thud at the side of his head. The blow sent him toppling off the bench and he looked up just in time to see Einarr jumping forward, leg swinging. The kick caught Sigurðr full in the ribs and drove all the breath from his lungs. Using his sword arm, Einarr drove one punch to the center of Sigurðr’s stomach, and followed that with more. The attack was uncoordinated, heavy on frenzy and short on strategy, and mostly the blows missed.

Sigurðr tried to retreat but Einarr drove his shoulder into his chest, sending Sigurðr sprawling into one of the lamps, knocking it over. He tried to use the momentum to roll away, but Einarr followed with more wild fists. So many blows, so fast, and everywhere-into Sigurðr’s jaw, off his shoulder, to his throat, and at the most tender place on his chest where the arrow had entered. He could barely breathe, both from the violence of the attack and the fact it was happening at all.

The baby. Friрleifr was now howling in the dragon crib, aware that something was terribly wrong in the world he barely knew. Svanhildr had jumped up and was screaming at her husband to stop, and Bragi stumbled off his sleeping bench, confused both by the fight and by the ale that still ran through his veins. He could not quite control his legs, and the floor seemed to lurch like a boat deck during a storm.

Einarr was beyond any understanding of the yelling voices. Whatever demons the berserkjasveppur were making him see, he was fighting them as if they were the only real things in the room.

Sigurðr did not fight back with the conviction that one would have expected. His injuries limited his physical ability, true, but it was more than that: when he saw the stumbling boy Bragi and heard Svanhildr’s screams, he simply lost the will. He became aware, not consciously but nonetheless completely, that his moment of weakness was a betrayal of those closest to him, the family that had taken in a confused boy and given him the life of a man. In one lustful moment, Sigurðr had crossed the unspoken line he and Einarr had spent more than a decade constructing.

So Sigurðr allowed his body to go limp; he would let Einarr punch that line back into existence.

When Svanhildr saw Sigurðr give up, she was afraid for his life, and turned away from her path to the baby’s dragon cradle. She grabbed at Einarr’s right arm when it was drawn back for another blow, and her husband automatically spun around with his left fist. It connected heavily, sending Svanhildr sprawling headfirst into a pile of lumber.

Bragi knew better than to engage his father directly; a boy who still played with toy swords was no match for a Viking. The beating of his uncle Sig terrified him, but Bragi could also see a greater danger: whale blubber had spilled out of the knocked-over lamp and ignited a pile of wood shavings, and the flames were spreading.

Bragi began yelling that the room was on fire, but even this was not enough to bring his father back. Einarr’s fists, still inaccurate but unfailing in endurance, continued to rain down upon Sigurðr’s body and there was nothing in the attacker’s face but fearful rage.

The benches along the walls caught fire and those flames reached up to grab at the birch twigs that stuck out of the walls. There would be no stopping the blaze and-worst, Bragi saw-it was headed towards his mother, who lay motionless where she had fallen. There was blood leaking from her forehead, into eyes that were no longer open.

Bragi shook his mother, but without response. When he realized she could not be woken, he hooked his hands into her armpits and tensed his legs. He pulled with all his strength, but he was still too drunk and too small and he could only jerk her haltingly, a few feet at a time. Still, he would get her out. He had to.

As Bragi dragged Svanhildr towards the door, Einarr continued his merciless attack. Sigurðr could no longer have fought back even if he had wanted: his face was bloody pulp, many of his ribs had snapped, and his legs twitched with each connecting blow. Still, he was able to spit a few words through his broken teeth.

“Fire, Einarr,” he sputtered. “Wife! Bragi!”

He kept repeating the words until they finally made it through. Einarr stopped his fists and looked around confusedly, like a man who did not know where he has woken up. He saw that Bragi was at the longhouse’s