The Weight He Chose

…just like Finn looks now.

Bjorn’s voice dropped so low it was almost only breath.

“His name was Aric,” he said. “He was my brother. Not by blood. By oath.”

Finn’s small fingers tightened around the iron.

“We raided a steading on the south shore. I was nineteen. Stupid. Drunk on what I thought was glory.” Bjorn’s eyes did not leave his son’s. “There was a longhouse. There was a fire. We were told no one was inside.”

A drop of water fell from the grate above. It struck the straw between them.

“There was someone inside, Pabbi?” Finn whispered.

“A woman. A boy. Aric’s woman. Aric’s boy. He did not know we had chosen that house. None of us knew.”

Bjorn’s huge shoulders, the shoulders Finn had ridden on as a smaller child, began to shake — just once, quickly, then still again.

“Aric ran in. I ran in after him. He got her out. He went back for the child.” Bjorn swallowed. “The roof came down between us. I could have gone through. The beam was burning but I could have gone through, Finn. I had time. I —”

He stopped.

Above them, Ulrik’s boots reached the top of the stairs.

“Pabbi,” Finn breathed. “Pabbi, the shackle —”

“I turned around, boy.” Bjorn’s voice cracked clean down the middle. “I turned around and I walked out and I left him in there. I left them both. Because I was nineteen and I was a coward.”

Finn could not speak.

“Aric’s child lived,” Bjorn said. “Burned. Alone. The villagers found him in the morning. They raised him. I learned this only after.” He lifted his free hand and touched, very gently, the crescent burn scar on his own collarbone — the one that matched the one on Finn’s. “I gave myself this the night I learned.”

“Why are you still in chains?” Finn whispered. “Aric is — Aric is dead. It is over.”

Bjorn shook his head slowly.

“It is not over, Finn. Because Aric’s son is alive. And he is here. In this settlement. And he does not know who I am.”

Ulrik’s boots began to descend the stairs.

Finn’s ice-blue eyes went wide.

“Who, Pabbi? Who is he?”

Bjorn looked at his son for a long moment. The amber light from the grate caught the wet on his face.

“Tell me first, my boy — do you trust me, even now?”

And in the dark of that cold stone pit, with the guards almost upon them, Finn had to answer a question no twelve-year-old should ever have to weigh — and we want to ask you the same thing: if your father told you he had done something unforgivable, could you still call him Pabbi?