Murray ᛘᚢᛦᛦᛅᛁ’s Reviews > The Burning Land > Status Update

I turned in my saddle to see spears and swords, axes and shields. Saxon warriors, grey-mailed in a grey dawn. I was assailed by the certainty that I had to throw myself on the mercy of the gods. If they wanted me to live, if the spinners were willing to weave my thread back into the golden weft, then I would live through this morning. Omens and signs, we live by them, and so I rode to discover the will of the gods.

I pushed back her hood to see her hair, as golden as mine. I smiled. ‘A creature of gold,’ I said. ‘

‘Foolish man,’ she said, smiling.

‘What happens now?’ I asked her.

‘I imagine,’ she said, stepping gently away from me and pulling the hood back over her hair, ‘that my husband will try to kill you.’

⚔️ ⚔️ ⚔️

He had also believed in fate, a thing all religions seem to share, though the difference between Alfred and I had been his conviction that fate was progress. He wanted to improve the world, while I did not believe and never have believed that we can improve the world, just merely survive as it slides into chaos.

I hated her and I found it hard to take my eyes from her. She had been given the gift of beauty, yet it was the beauty of a weapon. She was sleek, hard and shining. Even as a degraded captive, unwashed and dressed in rags, she shone. Her face was bony, but softened by lips and by the thickness of her hair. I could not kill her. She fascinated me.

Bishop Erkenwald, who ruled Lundene, had chided me, saying I should have named the ship for some Christian milksop saint, and he had presented me with a crucifix that he wanted me to nail to Seolferwulf’s mast, but instead I burned the wooden god and his wooden cross and mixed their ashes with crushed apples, that I fed to my two sows. I worship Thor.
⚔️ ⚔️ ⚔️