Frida

Chapter 16 - Food of the Gods

The night was dragging on.

Most of the children had already fallen asleep, only Ubbe was still awake, sitting in his father's lap with his eyes half closed. Ragnar, Bjørn and Floki were discussing their plans for the next summer raid while drinking from their horns, and Frida and Helga had been making small conversations about village life and why her and Floki had chosen to live outside the town.

Floki is just like that, she had said. Apparently, he was the only one in the village who could build boats, so he worked night and day to make improvements and come up with new ideas for their voyage over the wide seas.

Frida could not help but to feel a bit sad when she heard this. Sad not only when she felt how Helga might wish for him to spend more time with his family, but also because she never really liked him. Not really.

Floki had been the one reason for Ragnar to travel to Northumbria, he was the only person responsible for her meeting the father of her growing child.

Frida stroked her belly.

She looked up immediately when she felt eyes on her, and she saw all three men glaring at her. "Hm?" she smiled, before raising her horn at them.

"Come," Ragnar waved her over, and as she rose to her feet, Helga followed her over to them by the fire.

Bjørn looked interrogatively at Frida, then to Ubbe, as if asking her whether she wanted him to carry his brother over to the other sleeping children. She nodded and whispered thanks, while feeling a fur being laid on her shoulders and a small kiss on her hair from Ragnar beside her.

"Are you cold?" Ragnar whispered in her ear, and she shivered lightly, not from the cold but from his breath on her skin.

He reached up to pour her some more mead, and he smiled: "It is still warm, even."

She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek but sat back down when she felt Floki's eyes on her again. His lips were curled up in a twisted smile, his eyes in shadows. He pulled out a small bowl filled with what seemed to be fried herbs, which he passed around. Frida saw everyone take a small herb from it before it was passed onto her, and she realized that its content was mushrooms.

Small white, dried, mushrooms.

She looked questioningly at Ragnar, who shook his head almost invisibly before taking the bowl from her. Frida blinked a couple of times with her eyes.

"This," explained Floki with a devilish grin on his face, "is food of the gods."

She watched him put the mushroom between his lips, chew it as one would chew dirt, and then swallowed it down with a big gulp of his horn.

She watched Helga and Ragnar do the same, before Helga explained: "It makes you... experience the world like the gods do. You see and hear things that are meant only for the gods to witness."

Frida leaned in closer to the fire, intrigued, to see the mushrooms clearer. They sure did not look like anything gods would eat, but she heard Floki snicker.

"These are, of course, only one kind," he said. "There are other kinds who work differently."

Frida was very interested now. "You mean, like medicine?" she asked, her skin prickling curiously as this was probably something her mother would have known.

This caused all of them to laugh, and Frida did not even look up when she heard Bjørn enter the room again.

"Hm, yes and no," Floki smiled into his horn before taking a small sip.

Ragnar pulled her closer to him, to have her sit between his legs while his hands swayed down to gently stroke her stomach. The usual warmth spread in her body, and she relaxed back into his arms.

"The white ones, like these, are to make you sense godly things. The green ones..." Floki's glare quickly slid over to Bjørn before returning to Frida, "Make you go berserk. And the red ones..."

He rolled his eyes dramatically before reaching over the wooden bench he was resting his back against to pull out a log of wood for the fire.

"It kills you," Ragnar breathed into her ear.

Frida's eyes widened, and she quickly drank from her horn. She took in the new information and weighed it slowly in her head. She could feel Ragnar swaying slightly behind her. "What does... 'go berserk' mean?" she asked in a small voice.

Athelstan had never taught her that expression before.

Just as Floki opened his mouth to answer, Bjørn's voice suddenly spoke out from beside her. "'Bersærkergang' is very powerful. It makes your mind frenzied, your bile eats up all of the fear you would have felt without it before you enter battle. Many warriors use it for strength, courage."

He swallowed the mushroom he had been chewing on before turning his face to look at her.

Frida furrowed her brows at him. She wondered whether he had ever gone berserk.

"Some say that the berserkers are given strength by Odin, that he protects them, and they therefore need no armor."

Frida stiffened. "No armor in battle?"

Bjørn shook his head before scooting himself further down on the fur he was sitting on.

"No!" Floki cried out in excitement, rising to his feet with his arms in the air. "Because they become stronger than the mere men they are, they become wolves, or... bears."

Floki's eyes landed once more on Bjørn, who was smiling with his eyes closed. She could hear him mumbling for Floki to shut his mouth, but Floki did not hear it, and he continued.

"There are tales of men in the northern lands, how they never left their frenzied state of mind, and they are still running wild in the woods, killing whatever comes near them."

Frida shivered heavily, causing Ragnar to rub his fingers against her arms with big movements.

She wandered whether he was already affected by the plant, because it seemed as if Helga was.

"Halfdan the Black's men," Helga whispered through smiling lips. She seemed dazed, spellbound, as she lied on the furs covering a bench.

"They only wear the skins of the wolves they kill, and their weapon is a long spear that they throw silently through the forest, the victim innocently unsuspecting, and then..." Floki howled, frightening Frida more than she would care to admit, as the hideous sound crept into her ear and dissolved itself in her body like venom.

She promised herself never to wander off into the woods alone again.

She heard Ragnar chuckle into her ear. "Floki, stop. You are scaring her."

Floki grinned maliciously before sitting down beside Helga once more, resting his back at the bench she was lying on. His eyes never left Frida's face, she could feel them on her like knives, cutting at the flesh of her cheeks.

"Oh, do not worry, my sweet Ragnar. We all know that Frida here is protected by the gods. Are you not?" he snickered.

Frida finally let her eyes connect with his and she felt her blood freeze as the question left his lips. His smile was wicked as he sat there looking at her, and she finally realized what had gone wrong between the two of them.

He did not believe her.

Floki thought that she was fooling Ragnar with her talk about the gods in her dreams. Frida narrowed her eyes at him.

Oh, how she wanted to prove him wrong.