Kira the Viking

At the beginning of the novel we find our heroine telling of the only hero that she knows of, the Viking:

"The only hero [Kira] had known was a Viking whose story she had read as a child; a Viking whose eyes never looked farther than the point of his sword, but there was no boundary for the point of his sword; a Viking who walked through life, breaking barriers and reaping victories, who walked through ruins while the sun made a crown over his head, but he walked, light and straight, without noticing its weight; a Viking who laughed at kings, who laughed at priests, who looked at heaven only when he bent for a drink over a mountain brook and there, over-shadowing the sky, he saw his own picture; a Viking who lived but for the joy and the wonder and the glory of the god that was himself."
-We The Living p. 49
We find this story reborn in Kira's life. She never saw beyond her sword-her goal of making it abroad. The sword had no boundary-she stopped at nothing to attain what she wanted whether it was saving Leo's life (her first hope at going abroad) or going it alone. She broke through barriers and reaped victories-the government who tried to make her part of the being that was made of human flesh, arms, and hot heavy breath from toiling never could and she would work her way past their lines of red tape to prove it. She laughed at kings at priests or better disguised as Commrades with party cards. She saw herself and saw the life, if even for only a brief moment, that could existed undefeated and that was her God-the life that held possibility.