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could die at his hands. "Where is the one of Ulf's party who lives?"
Jael pointed ahead to a man younger than Karn, a hulking mass of muscle. Just who Karn would have
expected Ulf to take on as acolyte. "Erik Eriksson."
Karn's blood quickened in his veins. He set his teeth grimly. "I shall speak to him."
Jael nodded. "We will speak to him together."
Bjorn waited impatiently through this exchange. He seemed to be bursting with questions of his own.
"What I want to know, Karn, is how you survived among these vile Saxon dogs."
Karn felt uneasy answering questions about "vile Saxon dogs." "No Danir had been so far inland. They
did not know me for Dane. I remembered a little Saxon from the slaves in my father's house. The woman
who healed me taught me more."
"This woman, she was Saxon?" Thurmak asked, incredulous.
Karn nodded. It did seem incredible that Britta should have saved him.
"Ah, she could not resist that strong Danish pillar." Bjorn laughed. "Even wounded, Karn exerts his
power over women. Was she sweet as she writhed under you, my friend?"
Karn did not answer. He could never explain that it was not like that with Britta. The others took his
silence for modesty and laughed again.
"It must have been bad, exiled alone among your enemies," Jael finally said.
Karn said only, "I thought I might never see you three again, that is sure."
"Are they slaves to their priests?" Thurmak asked.
"Do they eat their children?" Bjorn added.
"They are men," Karn replied simply. "They struggle for a living. They look to have their daughters marry
well. They want fair treatment from their lords." He paused. "They want what men want." He had not
answered one question that must be in their minds. It was a question he could not avoid. Why had he
fought for them?
After a long pause he said, "I owed them. They took me in, gave me a sword." The Danir would
understand that. A man owed for a sword. "They gave me leather for my saddle, and leather is precious
in the fens." Karn forced himself to look at their faces, so he would know if they understood. Jael did.
Thurmak looked thoughtful. Bjorn the Bear-hearted shook his head.
"Still, it must have been horrible," he muttered.
Karn said nothing. It had not been all horrible, not in Stowa anyway, not with Britta.
Jael looked at Karn with speculation in his eyes.
"And this swamp!" Thurmak gestured to the fens. "It is like the end of the world."
Karn nodded. "But the soil is the richest I have seen."
"All I want is rich land of my own," Jael sighed. "And here it is wasted by water."
"After we have crushed these Saxons, those of us who want to stay will take what land we want,"
Thurmak reminded them. "We will find land as rich as this, and not fouled by water."
"And fight every day of our lives to keep it," Jael muttered. "I just want to farm in peace, when my days
going viking are over. Maybe feel a Saxon wife writhe under me in pleasure." He smiled slyly at Karn.
"Maybe that one with the blond braids in that village you defended, Karn."
Bjorn snorted. "Our older brothers got the only peaceful land at home in Denmark. Our only way to land
is the ship and the sword, to fight the barbarians to keep it."
"I think there is another way," Karn offered cautiously. "If we built dikes to take the land from the water,
the Saxons would not begrudge us what was never theirs." He drew blank stares. His friends thought
Loki had claimed him. He rushed on. "Building a dike needs strong backs only, and we have those. For
our work we gain rich land and peace to farm it."
"Building a dike is complicated," Thurmak protested.
"Then Karn is your man," Jael laughed. "Remember, it was he who organized the supply lines and
directed the digging of the trenches for the siege at Rouen."
"Saxons will share when we have killed every one, and not before," Bjorn protested.
"There will be no peace if we kill their kin, that is sure," Karn said slowly. "But if we come in peace to
reclaim the land and share what we reclaim, then perhaps." Suddenly what had been too wild to propose
to Walther had been spoken to his Danish brothers. Spoken, it seemed possible. Jael got a faraway look.
Thurmak scanned the water and the sedge that lined the path doubtfully. Bjorn began to smile.
"After we have fought by Ivar's side& " Thurmak paused.
They were all thinking the same thing. If Ivar and Halfdan raged over the land and killed the Saxons, their
hope of peaceful neighbors was gone.
"Perhaps the main force will not come so far inland," he finished lamely.
The hollowness knew no bounds. There were no tears. Britta's loss was too large for that. She sat with
Fenris in the hawthorn and bracken a quarter mile or so from the village. Night was coming on and she
was cold, but she couldn't bear to sit by the fires in the village and hear them berating Karn. How much
better it would have been to never know him at all! She would still be on her island, alone, a mussel
unopened to the world, and content to be so.
He had promised to return. She tugged at Fenris's ears absently, as Karn had used to do. She didn't
believe it. He'd said so to make parting easier. But only one of two things could happen: Either that awful
barbarian who led the Vikings would kill him in combat or in treachery, or his friends would defend him.
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