“Butcher?” Somerled supplied the word coolly. “Priest, we have heard your ramblings and, frankly, they make even less sense than Eyvind’s. I remind myself that you are not of our people and have little understanding of our ways. Yours is a soft faith, a comfortable faith, based on love and forgiveness, gentleness and inaction. We endured a perilous voyage to make our way to these shores. We are a proud and warlike people, whose deeds of courage in battle, whose raids and conquests are known and feared from Halogaland to Saxony, from Birka to Novgorod. We stride forward boldly, we vanquish the most tenacious of foes, we seize rich plunder, and set our stamp on new lands where we will. Look at our Wolfskins. They are warriors of godlike strength; indeed, they are inspired by Thor himself in their valiant deeds of combat. Odin, the trickster, gives us our cunning, our cleverness, and our determination. If we have triumphed here in the Light Isles, if we have deposed King Engus and his hapless underlings, that is no more than the natural defeat of a weaker breed by a stronger. I will speak no more of my brother’s death; I relive the pain of that day every time the tale is told. But I will say one thing. In a place like this, remote, harsh, virtually untenanted, there is only one kind of leader who will succeed. It is not a leader who dreams and philosophizes and keeps company with Christian priests. It is a man who is unafraid to take his people forward into their new world, a chieftain who keeps control, and knows enemy from friend. All that I am doing tonight, little priest, is being that leader. Without firm authority, there can be only chaos. That is why this case must be decided quickly, the penalty determined, the sentence carried out at dawn, in accordance with the new laws I have decreed. Men who oppose my rule have no place on the island. Men who act against me can expect to pay the price of their treachery with their lives. This is a frontier realm, the farthest point of man’s voyaging, a place from which there is no going on and no going back. And I am king here. Would any man among you dispute that?”