The Keldara had 120 males available between the ages of seventeen and thirty. Mike’s goal was to turn them in to a decent company of militia, period. He wanted them to be able to maneuver against an enemy force while the younger women, who were trained in positional defense, held the homes. That was it.

What he found out, as the training progressed, was that the Keldara were far from “simple farmers.” They took to military training as if they had been born with a rifle in their hands. Enthusiastic didn’t begin to cover it; he realized, quickly, that he had unleashed a monster.

The reason for their response trickled out, slowly. He still wasn’t sure he knew the whole story. But one part he found out even before the training began: the Keldara were not “true” Georgians; they were a living remnant of an ancient elite force called the Varangian Guard. The Varangians were Norse, mostly from Russia, hired by the Byzantine Emperors as their personal bodyguards.

In the Keldara, the fierce warrior spirit of the Viking was a present day reality. They had to survive as farmers, but at heart they were reavers and warriors that sought death in battle so that they could ascend to their heaven: “the Halls of Feasting”, Valhalla. They masked as Christians but practiced their ancient worship of “the Father of All”, Odin, in secret. Their preferred weapon was the axe and they trained with them as seriously as they learned to plow.

They were, in fact, born with a weapon in their hand. When a Keldara male was born, one of the ancient battleaxes the Fathers kept — axes handed down over literally millenia — was placed in his hands and the hands closed over the great hilt. The first thing they learned to grasp was a weapon.