A Burning Blade (The Light of the North Saga).

Their kings are dead, their armies scattered and beaten. If they want to live free again the ordinary people must rise and fight for their right to a future. Alternate history - 1121 AD. The last free warbands of the Norse are scattered in the forests and hills of central Sweden. Denmark has fallen, consumed by the crusades, coerced into loyalty to foreign lords. Norway has bent the knee, making peace once their mighty king was slain. Only in Svealand, the old heart of the Swedish kingdom and the Norse people, does the fire of defiance yet burn, and even there just softly, flickering in the long dark winter. That fire burns brightest in the core of a mythical blade, Ljós a Norðan: The Light of the North. Forged from the heart of a fallen star. It was prophesied to give the people of the north a future, as long as it was wielded by a Norseman strong and true. The sword has returned to the hand that forged it: Gjaldir, the slave who has become a warlord. The weight of fate and destiny is now his unwelcome burden to bear. As the vultures of the Crusader lords feast on the dying body of the Norse nations, he will have to answer the only question that will ever matter again. Is he the man that his friends and countrymen believe he can be?