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[h2]Gedda Salmundsen[/h2]
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Gedda had never given much thought to the Christians’ strange god or the teachings that crawled across the pages of his faithful’s books in dark, undecipherable letters that curled like plumes of smoke; the sack of Thetford had certainly not changed that. Yet he could see why English villagers might have come to marvel at the stained-glass window of the church. When the Danes had first hacked down the doors, he had been among them, yet even the heat of battle had seemed to pause when he first caught sight of it. Despite the noisome air—choked by the metallic tang of blood and the reek of death and filth—its majesty had been unmarred. 

Now Gedda stood with the others in the chamber, his weapons having been left outside the door. Though Thetford was a ruin, the beauty of the glass still stole his breath and made him pause. The golden light of dusk filtered through its panes, casting a sanguine glow over the walls. Yet now the color recalled the death of the Christian priest, his withered cheeks crusted by the salty tracks of tears. Crimson gore had spilled on the floor beneath his eviscerated body, terrible and red as the light that bathed the walls. 

[i]Let me not die like that[/i], Gedda thought, [i]without a sword in hand, abandoned by gods and men, unmanful and laughing like a fool in a pool of my own filth.[/i]  His lip curled; he looked over his shoulder towards the door. Kjartan was gone now, likely called outside by Åse, and the old priest’s body had been carried out of the corner where it had only sat and stank. At least the path out of the church was clear. Weaving between the others without so much as a word, Gedda stepped outside to grab his weapons from the pile outside the door. With his seax on his belt, he felt like himself. Even with the battle won, it was a familiar comfort, one of the few that had remained the same between Thetford and the town on the Danish coast that he had once called home.

By the time Gedda reached the cooking fires, wind that whipped through the remains of Thetford finally banished the charnel stench from his nose long enough for him to take a deep breath. Though the reek was behind him, his thoughts of the priest and the strange god of the Christians lingered. He remembered the first time he had lifted an oar after leaving home in shame. One of his fellows had been a man who, by the web of lines carved into his face and the grizzled gray beard that he had worn braided beneath his chin, had easily been old enough to be his father, though Gedda had long forgotten his name. Against Gedda’s protestations, the older man had taken him under his wing; Gedda had wondered if the old man’s eyes were failing him, for he had seen all of twenty years and lacked the patchy beard that might say otherwise. His gray-bearded companion had liked to offer avuncular advice on subjects ranging from women to fishing to the craft of battle, but his favorite subject had always been the matter of faith.

The old man had been a Christian, a convert who tried to make the same of every man on the ship. Upon hearing his secret, Gedda had been sure that they would not tolerate his companion for long, but the boat had been filled with exiles and men whose shame followed them like hungry hounds—men like Gedda. Their companions would not have turned on the old Christian lest it create a precedent for the others to draw blades on each of them in turn. Besides, Gedda would have been disappointed to lose him; as tiresome as they could be, his ramblings were preferable to the cold silence of solitude. Hunched over by his oar, he had told Gedda tales of White Christ and the eternity which the foreign god offered his worshippers. Indeed, his god could cure disease with his touch and restore life to the dead. At the time, Gedda had been unimpressed by his great powers. Now, lingering in the warmth of the fire with a slain pig from the town’s pens, he remained unconvinced. 

[i]If White Christ was not a sorcerer,[/i] Gedda mused, [i]why did the old man tell me no tales of his battles? What god walks the earth only to speak with beggars and men covered in boils, never keeping the company of great warriors?[/i] Odin was ever watching the field of battle, and in the crash of thunder he heard the hammer of Thor. When he took to the sea, he heard the wailing of Njord over the water; on days when the waves turned choppy and dark in storm, he had always been quick to offer a word to his patron. If the All-father offered his gifts to wise men, Thor lent his red rage to warriors, and Njord blessed the waters for sailors and fishermen, was White Christ a god of beggars and sick men? 

His thoughts drifted back to the gray waters through which he had rowed alongside the old man. Gedda had not feared the chance of a storm, for he knew Njord had always smiled upon him. Yet he knew his companion, who had forsaken the gods, would not earn their favor. For his part, though, the old man had been so calm that Gedda would have sworn he was asleep if not for his bright eyes. He had worn a strange smile, one which Gedda now recognized as not dissimilar from the old priest’s when he died. 

“Are you not afraid of drowning?” Gedda had asked. 

“No,” the old man had said, “I am not afraid. For if I drown, I shall be saved by Christ and sent to his kingdom where men live eternally. Are you not afraid of drowning, boy? When pagans die, you are cast into the fires of Hell. A fair young man like yourself deserves a better fate.”

Gedda had scoffed then. “Of course not. Though storms often spell the doom of men at sea, I have ever been a good swimmer; Njord would not forsake me. What makes you so certain that you shall not be cast into the fires of your hell?”

“Christ is merciful and forgives all sins,” his companion had replied. “He will forgive mine.”

[i]Would White Christ forgive cowardice?[/i] Prodding the side of the slaughtered pig, Gedda struggled to banish the thought. From the old man’s tales of mercy, White Christ’s hands seemed, like the dead priest’s, soft and unbloodied. The strange god was enshrined as a lamb; when he was slain by lesser men, did White Christ cry like a babe? Or would he have laughed like a madman, like the priest who had lain in the corner of the church, his viscera spilling out onto the dirt floor? Regardless, a lamb was an unmanful byname unfitting of a warrior. Perhaps White Christ was a god of cowards. The soft-handed men who prayed to him, worshiping meekness, certainly seemed so; they waited for salvation instead of winning their place in Valhalla or Fólkvangr through their deeds. Yet—if the gray-beard’s tales were true—White Christ was once a man, and no man’s mercy was endless. Gedda knew all too well that love’s well could run dry. Perhaps he, like the gods of the Danes—like the rest of the world—had no love for unmanly nithings, even ones like Gedda who hid their nature well. For he could hide himself from the eyes of mortal men, but the eyes of the gods were not so dulled by ale and age. 

A fierce headache throbbed in Gedda’s skull; he found himself glowering as he poked the pig with clumsy hands, dressing it as well as he could remember. [i]If only the old fool had liked to talk of meat half as much as he liked preaching.[/i] 

Segrim’s familiar voice cut through the mire of his reverie, drawing Gedda out of his thoughts. “I knew that,” he said brusquely, looking up to meet Segrim’s gaze. “How would you do it?”