"I cannot believe that," Teja says. "These people must wear blinkers, rough bottle-bottoms for eye-glasses, and have boards nailed to their foreheads, to think thus of you. You are both strong and lovely, true, principled, and fearless. I wish I had had one such as you -- a dozen such as you! -- among the people that stood with me on Mount Vesuvius, for things would have been easier, we would have stood longer, and killed more Byzantine mercenaries with such women behind us and beside us."

Pause.

"If there is one thing I regret," he adds, "because of what I learned in this place, it's that I did not arm those young women that might have wished to fight. My friend Hilde, for whom little Hilde in Gotland was named, had been dead for many years by then; she fell in battle, beside her husband, so I weas lacking the inspiration she would have been, or you. Unflinching strength such as yours or hers deserves nothing but the greatest respect, the highest regard."