The man on the ground may be worth more alive. Slave-taking was not incidental to Viking raiding — slave raids became one of its most important purposes. A prisoner taken in war who was not ransomed could lawfully be enslaved, and while most Scandinavian households owned only one or two thralls of their own, the great majority of those captured were sold onward into an international market: west through the Dublin trade towards Moorish Spain, or east from Hedeby along the Volga to the Samanid markets of Central Asia, on to Iran and the Abbasid Caliphate, or to Byzantium by way of the Dnieper and the Black Sea. That traffic ran from at least 786 until 1009, and it is where the Arab silver dirhams buried in hoards across Scandinavia came from. The word came with it: "thrall" entered late Old English from Old Norse þræll. And the law measured the difference precisely. Kill a freeman and you owed his kin two hundred shillings. Kill a slave and you had damaged another man's property, to be compensated at whatever the worker was reckoned to be worth.

W. Britain give the Viking the axe already up and the Saxon still fighting — down on one knee, shield across his body, sword in hand rather than dropped. Nothing is settled yet, which is what makes it the better of the two hand-to-hand sets to build a scene around. It follows directly from "The Contest Decided", where the same question has already been answered, and from "Leofric" Saxon Casualty Falling. And it belongs near "Carl" Saxon/Viking Warrior with Axe for a quieter reason: thrall is one of the many words English took from Old Norse, and the two peoples who ended up sharing a language began by doing this to one another.

Model: 62122 / W. Britain / 1/30 scale / matte finish / 2 piece set