“Christians. Someone strikes you on one cheek, you offer him the other. How did anything like that ever catch on?” The enormous fair-haired warrior gave a contemptuous snort as he wiped dried blood from the blade of an equally massive battle-ax. “That religion makes men weak.”
The warrior spat heartily over the side of the ushkuynik.
The sun had not yet risen above the sea, but the darkness was already retreating. A following wind snapped the sailcloth, made the wooden blocks chatter and the taut rigging creak, driving the vessel onward.
Heavy with cargo, the longboat sliced through the smooth water like a knife, hurrying home to the north.
The waves protested noisily, flinging up spray and bleeding white foam beneath the wooden ship crammed with plundered gold and silver.
The old, nearly bald Viking seated opposite him merely smiled and continued sorting bundles of dried herbs. He was shorter than the strapping berserker but no narrower across the shoulders, and the muscles beneath his sun-darkened skin resembled steel cables.
“You’re simply young, Hergen. Young and foolish. Remember how that scrawny Saxon fought. He had neither gold nor livestock, yet he stood alone against six of ours. Alone.”
“You mean the peasant who wounded the jarl with a pitchfork? I still took his head off.”
The warrior dipped his rag into the blood-reddened water in a wooden tub and resumed scrubbing his ax.
“You did.” The healer carefully tied another bundle of herbs with twine. “You—a man whose profession is killing, a man who lives by his ax—are boasting of your victory over a plowman whose weapon left a mark upon your face and nearly sent our chieftain to Valhalla? A glorious victory indeed.”
The healer’s words stung. The berserker gripped his ax haft until his knuckles cracked, but the old man paid no attention and continued:
“Be that as it may, the jarl spared the man’s woman. No one laid so much as a finger on her. That was what the peasant fought for. That was what he died for. Which means he won his battle. Religion does not make men weak or strong. The more a man possesses, the more he fears losing it. Wealth is the true source of weakness. Love is the source of strength. That is why he tossed you around like blind pups.”
“Love…” The fair-haired Viking’s face twisted into a contemptuous smirk. “Blind pups, is it? I twisted my ankle beside that church. Do you know how many Angles I cut down there?”
“They were defending their lives. The peasant stood ready to die. He meant to take as many of us with him as he could.”
