Freya broke into wild sobbing and clung to me. We stared in horror and pity, but Thor lifted his great hammer in salute.
"Skoal to the lady Gerda!" he rumbled. "She goes proudly to death with her lord, like a true Viking."
Tyr slashed the mooring of the ship. Then he took a waiting torch from a socket, and tossed it into the resinous wood with which the ship was filled. The pile blazed up with a crackling roar, casting a red, quivering light through the deepening twilight. We bent our shoulders against the stern. The ship of death forged out on the heaving waves. Then, as the wind took its raised sail, it sprang forward like a thing alive.
Back we climbed to Asgard, my arm supporting Freya. At the top of the cliff, we stood with Odin and the other Aesir. By the light of many torches, we gazed silently at the burial ship of Frey and Gerda. Blazing red with flames, its high sail carrying it before the swift wind, the ship drove south over the heaving black waves.
"Viking funeral, for a true Viking man and his mate!" Odin declared.
Thor raised his hammer into the air. His red face was even redder by the light of the distant fire ship.
"Thy spirit hear my vow, Frey!" boomed the giant. "It was slimy Iormungandr, Loki's evil snake, that slew thee. I swear to rid Earth of that Midgard serpent in the coming battle, or die myself. Wyrd binds me to that oath!"
The blazing ship that bore the bodies of Frey and Gerda was now far away upon the dark sea. A great torch of red fire, it, was still scudding southward before the wind. Then we saw the ship's prow dip. The whole burning craft plunged down beneath the waves.
"So passes the lord Frey and his mate," said Odin's heavy voice in the silence that followed. "And now, jarls and warriors of the Aesir, we must prepare ourselves. The hosts of the Jotuns come upon the morrow, led by evil Loki, to destroy us."
"We hold Asgard safe while we live, lord Odin!" cried Bragi.