Quoted By:
-Tell us a tale, Ymmanuil. Of how you met the Men Of The East, and how they taught you the love of an old hag!
Guffaws and mocking laughter break the silence around the campfire.
In a stern yet knowing voice of mischief, Ymmanuil sets aside his whetstone and says
-Now I did endure the love-vows of an older woman, it is more than you brutes will ever know... But I witnessed many wonders on my travels. In the East I met magicians who wrote in words of worms and birds, who measured the lines and shapes of the land for their rites. In their strange hermeneutics they taught of many things, of the gold-gloom and the treasure-plague that began with greed in the hearts of men, maddening them to murder and slaughter. And I fear this unsoundness sways the old war-thane Iosaef...
At the mention of this name, the lumbering fat warrior Boriska Jotun-son spits.
- Speak not of that muddled fool, who was old and aged when even I was young! They say King Unbidden worships a tree now - a corpse, spread-eagled upon a tree! A man fights with spear and axe and knife, trusts the true strength of his arm and barehanded grasp as was the old way. What does a corpse on a tree bring in battle? Wolves and carrion-birds!
The warrior Olaefyr, new and untested, murmurs from near the edge of the campfire,
-This Skirnir we are after - is he not the kinsmen of Iosaef?
The fat Boriska scowls,
- That he is not. The old war-thane is far too high and mighty now, Iosaef thinks himself King! Nay, Skirnir belongs to Unferth, who is a distant kinsman of Waldmar. He is the Unferth who cut the face of the Atheling's daughter after she spurned him - and we will see he pays the blood price for that.
Ymmanuil glances up curiously:
-Waldmar Arrow-caller? Who sought bowstrings and war needles from Iosaef? The old thane gifted his men with many weapons...
The fat Jotun-son replies
-Aye, and Unferth carries a cursed battle-flame, a sword with an iron bite that will not heal until touched by the amber stone bound to its hilt. Unless we take that jewel from him, the Atheling's daughter will have a marred face forever.
