“What say you, as a stranger, Ranald?”

“I have known the ways of Harald of Norway,” I answered.  “I think that he would not have left a man of this host alive.”

Whereon the old warrior laughed shortly, and was silent while Guthrum bade us go back to Alfred and thank the king for his word, saying that an answer should be given as soon as the word of the host had been taken in open Thing.

So Alfred won Guthrum to the faith, and greatly did he rejoice when he heard what the Danish king had said.  I think he was more glad yet when he knew that Osmund would become Christian also, and he urged us both to be baptized at once.

“Let us be so with Guthrum,” I asked.

“That will be fitting,” he answered, “for I think you have won him over.”

But I hold that Guthrum and more of his chiefs had been won by the deaths of those martyrs of whom he spoke long before the choice was set before him.  One cannot tell how this was wrought in the mind of the Danes altogether by the hand of God.  Some will ever say, no doubt, that they took the Cross on them by necessity; but I know that it was not so.  Nor have their lives since that time given any reason for the thought.

Then Alfred asked the name of that old warrior who withstood us, and Osmund told him.

“I will have that chief as a hostage,” the king said, “for I think that he is worth taming.”

“I think that King Alfred’s hostages are not in any way to be pitied,” Osmund said.

“Save that they are kept from home and friends, I would have them as happy as may be,” the king answered; “but I would have none presume on what mercy came to you, Jarl Osmund, for the sake of the Christmastide message.”

“I think that none will do so,” Osmund said.  “There is full knowledge among my kin that you showed mercy when justice was about to be done, and well they know that your kindness was not weakness.  It is likely that the mercy shown here also will do more for peace than would even destruction of your enemies.”

So it seemed at last, for on the fourteenth day of the siege the Danes accepted the king’s terms with one consent.  And more than that, Guthrum and thirty of his chiefs asked that they might be baptized; which was a wonder to all of our host.

Now I have said nothing about the life in the great camp before Bridgwater, for it had nothing of much note to me, though it was pleasant enough.  I think there was some jealousy of me among the younger thanes at one time; but it passed because I would not notice it, and also because I took no sort of authority on me, being only the king’s guest and warrior as yet.  But I did find a few young thanes of Odda’s following who knew somewhat of the sea, and I was wont to talk with them often of the ships and the like, until I knew they would be glad to take to the viking’s path with me in the king’s ships, bringing their men with them.  And often Alfred spoke with me of the matter, until I was sure that he would have me stay.