Viking 2: Sworn Brother by Tim Severin

Author:Tim Severin [Severin, Tim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: Pan Macmillan

‘It is better to live than to lie a corpse,

I saw flames rise before a rich man’s pyre

and before his door he lay dead.’

Kjartan saw his chance. He quoted the next verse for me.

‘The lame rides a horse, the handless is herdsman

The deaf in battle is bold

No good can come of a corpse.’

A low mutter of approval came from the crowd, and a voice from the back shouted, ‘Forget about Thorkel. Odinn had other plans for him. I’m all for the accepting Knut’s silver.’

One by one, the members of the council spoke up and all were in favour of Kjartan’s proposition. Only Thrand failed to speak. He sat there silent, and on his face was the same distant expression that I had seen while he gazed into the ship’s wake and thought of the defeat at Hjorunga Bay.

As the assembly began to dissolve, Kjartan took me aside to thank me. ‘Your speech made all the difference,’ he said. ‘Without it, the men would not have committed themselves to fight for Knut.’ Then he smiled. ‘With my wooden leg, I liked the bit about the lame being able to ride a horse. But I’m not sure that when I get back to London I should tell Gisli One Hand that, according to you and Odinn, he should become a cowherd.’

‘It was All-Father Odinn who spoke through me and swayed the minds of the audience,’ I replied. What I did not tell Kjartan was that, after a month in Jomsburg, I knew that the new order of Jomsviking could never resemble the felag Thrand had known. The new Jomsvikings were driven by their thirst for silver, not glory, and in the end they would have accepted Knut’s bribe whatever Thrand had said. By citing the High One, I had given Thrand a reason to accept their decision with no loss to his own sense of honour or duty to his fallen comrades.

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