KJARTAN KNUDSEN
Kjartan stood quietly, the flames of his brothers funeral pyre illuminating his battle scarred visage and pale blue, almost white, eyes. He could smell the burning flesh as it curled and the corpse began to shrink from the heat. His brother had been shorter than his six feet, though just as broad in the shoulders and chest; now he was no larger than a small boy. The pyre shifted and then collapsed in an explosion of sparks that shot high into the sky, just one a hundred such blazes along the shores of the River Thet. Some, like his, served as funeral pyres while others were surrounded by celebrating warriors. Ale flowed and the screams of captured women echoed across the water as their captors forced them onto their backs.
He frowned and shrugged his shoulders slightly to shift his chainmail. He had never been one for rape and had always discouraged it where he could, but trying to prevent it would certainly lead to a fight and enough men had died today. His own mead horn was still half full, the feeling cool against the blaze before him. He ran a hand through a thick blonde beard, stroking the ends of it as he stared into the fire, unfocused and unseeing.
There was no escaping the reality that he was now the last of his family line. Two brothers had been killed fighting in Englaland, another had drowned at sea, and his parents were long dead of old age. As it was, he was nearing his thirtieth winter and he could feel the aches in bones and the cold bothered him more now than it had when he was young. No wife, no legitimate children of his own, and no true land to call home. What he and his brother had built had burned during the recent fighting. Now he had nothing save his weapons', armour, and the small horde he had collected over the years. Maybe the time had come to seek new opportunities elsewhere, somewhere far from the blood and death.
His hand drifted from beard to battered pommel of his longsword as he absently rubbed the leather. There had been talk over the past months of a land far to the West, beyond even Iceland and Greenland. Rumours of a huge land, inhabited by tribes of men who some said were Arabs, and filled with such beasts and great forests that no man need be hungry or cold again. That would suit him just fine. He hated the cold.
Post Catalogue:
1. To Go West (Kjartan and Jaska)
2. Finding a Crew (Kjartan and Åse
3. The Saxons Attack (Lise and Sisse)
