Jan-Maat’s Reviews > Wayward Heroes > Status Update

The crone replied..."Christ has created all men to be men of peace, even though rulers & heroes constantly want to kill us."
Thorgeir replied: "I do not know what sort of person you are, old woman, & will thus never admit that your Christ is wiser than my mother Thórelfur or my sworn brother Thormódur Kolbrúnarskáld, & I hope that we sworn brothers will never be beguiled into making peace with others."

Books on the art of war state that nothing is more perilous for a valiant warrior wielding a sword or other noble weapon than to find himself putted against a peasant armed with a post or a tree stump.

The Duke of Normandy compains that the Norman peasants "stubbornly resist paying taxes, squandering their labour instead in ditch digging & other earthwork, or erecting fences & building brudges & mending roads, or many other kinds of miserable drudgery, instead of maintaibing my barons & their castles."

"& you Thorgeir, are a foolish man not to have gone to the castle to be baptised"
"Why did you not go to the castle yourself?" Asked Thorgeir Hávarsson.
"I am doddering, & I have no desire to betray Ódinn in my old age...another skald will...by Christ spread the good names of kings whom we extolled by Ódinn & Thórr."

-plus ça change

The greybeard looked up & stared hard at the man, before answering: " you are speaking to the Jomsviking Thórdur, the Skald of Strutharaldson. I will not, however, kiss you in greeting, though we are compatriots - for you are all covered in tar."

Thorgeir Hávarsson lifted the barrel's lid & emerged, black with tar. Sitting there by the deck cargo was a tall bard, with green tartar on his teeth & his vhin showing through his beard. He was wearing a tattered & torn black vloak, & his bare, sinewy forearms sported 2 bands of gold, both of them heavy & worth a great deal.
Thorgeir said: "I am tired of listening to your twaddle. What a liar you are..."

Thorgeir looked about for a place to hide, but found none apart from a tar barrel, not entirely empty. He decided that it would serve to avoid Christ, hopped in, & pulled the lid over his head. The stench in the barrel was the worst he had ever smelled, yet he found it far preferable to being baptised.

Together with these were squat men with pot-bellies, bandy-legged, bull-necked, pale-haired, ruddy-cheeked rascals, grinning as they waddled along. The rabble thronged round, their tongues flapping with praise & eyes glistening with tears of joy to witness such an appalling gang of thieves & villains adorned with the cloak of light, ready to be anointed with holy water & chrism & to recieve absolution for their evil

In order for you to indulge blamelessly in the entertainments to be had from a victorious campaign of manslaughter, arson, plunder, & rape, Richard demands nothing of you in return, apart from the trifle of receiving baptism & the Holy Spirit & becoming Christians.

My serving lad of late has been an English youth whom we call Grímkell, formerly valet to Ælfheah, the leading man among the Christians on England, whom you pelted with bones on the banks of the Thames. This lad is both skilled in interpreting dreams & a seer, & because of his gift of 2nd sight, he knows many a hidden thing in & upon the Earth, as well as what occurs sbove Hlidskjálf, the very seat of Ódinn,