Askeladd Quotes

The chapter opens on a siege between Frankish forces, and Askeladd's band watches from a hill, belonging to neither side. One of his men asks whether they will side with the attackers; Askeladd says yes, because there's more in it for them that way. This line completes the thought, and it is the whole politics of the opening in two sentences. No cause is on offer. The one building singled out is a church, sized up in an unattributed balloon as the local stronghold with treasure inside. Then he calls Thorfinn, and the next pages show how the plan will be sold: a message promising the attackers victory in exchange for half the spoils. The reader meets Askeladd as an accountant of violence, and three pages later he quotes Thorfinn a price in the same currency.

Askeladd names the price only after a pantomime. Thorfinn has refused three gold coins sworn upon Tyr, and Askeladd throws up his hands at the boy's scary face and calls it just a bit of humor. The next panel drops his face into shadow. There is a case that this is a captain being straight with a recruit: the band fights for spoils, and a boy who wants something other than coin has to pay in the band's own work. The wording undercuts that. "At least" makes the head a minimum rather than a price, so the terms stay open for as long as Askeladd likes, and "boy" puts the bargain back where it started, between a captain and a youth he can laugh at. The clowning belongs to the terms as well: by playing frightened first, he shows how little the boy's anger costs him. Thorfinn answers with an ellipsis and runs off.