The Last Light of the Sun

NINE

"Will my own world be there when I leave you?" "I don't know what you mean. This is the world we have."

She was beside him, very near. The glade would have been dark were it not for the light she cast. Her hair was all around him, copper-coloured now, thick and warm; he could touch it, had been doing so, in a wood on a summer night. They lay in deep grass, edge of a clearing. Sounds of the forest around them, murmurous. These woods had been shunned for generations by his people and the Anglcyn, both. His fear was beside him, however, not among the trees.

"We have stories. Those who went with faeries, and came home… a hundred years later." Spirit wood, they named this forest. One of the names. Was this what it meant?

Her voice was lazy, a slow music. She said, "I might enjoy lying here that long."

He laughed softly, startled. Felt himself suspended, precariously, between too many feelings, almost afraid to move, as if that might break something.

She turned onto an elbow in the grass, looked at him a moment. "You fear us even more than we fear you."

He thought about that. "I think we fear what you might mean."

"What can I… mean? I am just here."

He shook his head. Reached for clarity. "But here for so much longer than we are."

Her turn to be silent. He stared at her, drinking slender grace with his eyes, the otherness of her. Her breasts were small, perfect. She had arched her body back above him, before, in the light she made. He wondered, suddenly, how he would pray from now on, what words he could use. Did he ask forgiveness of his god for this? For something the clerics taught did not even exist?

She said, finally, "I think the… speed of things for you makes the world more dear."

"More painful?"

Her hair had slipped, by invisible degrees, towards silver again. "More dear. You… love more, because you lose so quickly. We don't know… that feeling." She gestured, one hand, as if reaching. "You live in… in the singleness of things. Because they go from you."

"Well, they do, don't they?"

"But you come into the world knowing that. It cannot be… unexpected. We die, as well. It just takes…"

"Longer."

"Longer," she agreed. "Unless there is iron."

His belt and dagger were in the chapel in Esferth. He felt a renewed grief: one of the suspended feelings here. What she had just said. Loving more, because losing.

He said, "Is my brother still with the queen?"

She raised an eyebrow. "Of course."

"But he won't be, always."

"Nothing is always."

Born into the world, knowing that.

She saw he was distressed. "It takes a long time," she said, "before she tires. He is honoured, much loved."

"And he will be lost forever, after. That is always."

"Why lost? Why see it so?"

"Because we are taught that. That there is a harbour for our souls, and his was taken and will not find the god now. Maybe… that is what we fear. In you. That you can do this to us. Perhaps long ago we knew it, about the faeries."

"It was different, once," she agreed. And then shyly, after a moment, "We could fly, then."

"What? How?"

She turned, still shy, to show him her back. And so he saw the ridges clearly, hard, smaller than breasts, inside her shoulder blades, and he understood that these were all that now remained of what had been faerie wings.

He imagined it, creatures like her, flying under blue moon or silver, or at sunset. An ache in his throat, the envisaged beauty of it. In the world, once.

"I'm sorry," he said. He reached out, brushed one with a hand. She shivered, turned back to him.

"There it is again. The way you think. Sorrow. It is so much in you. I… we… do not live with that. It comes with the speed, doesn't it?"

He thought about this, didn't want to even guess how old she was. She spoke Cyngael the way his grandfather had.

He said it: "You speak my language so beautifully. What does your own sound like?"

She looked surprised a moment, then amused, the hair flashing it. "But this is my own tongue. How do you think your people learned it?"

He gaped, closed his mouth.

"Our home is in those woods and pools," she said. "West, towards where the sun lies along the sea at day's end. There was not always so much… distance between us."

He was thinking, as hard as he could. Men spoke of the music in the voices of the Cyngael. Now he knew. A knowing, like this night, that shifted the world. How was he going to pray? She was looking at him, still amused.

He said, "Is this, is tonight… forbidden to you?"

She took a moment to answer. Said, "The queen is pleased with me."

He understood, both answer and hesitation. She was protecting him. In her way, a kindness. They could be kind, it seemed. The queen was pleased because of Dai. The taken soul.

He said, looking at her, "But it is still… seen as wrong, isn't it? You have some licence because of what you did, but it is still…"

"There is to be distance, yes. Just as for you."

He laughed this time. "Distance? You don't exist! To say you are even here is heresy. Our clerics would punish me, some would cast me out from chapel and rites, if I even spoke of it."

"The one from the pool wouldn't," she said quietly.

He hadn't realized she'd seen the cleric that night. "Ceinion? He might," Alun said. "He likes me, because of my father, I think, but he wouldn't allow talk of faeries or the half-world."

She smiled again. "Half-world. I haven't heard that in so long." He didn't want to know how far back in the past some-thing would have to be for her to think that way. The slow uncoiling of time for them. She stretched, feral and sleek as a cat. "But you are wrong about that one. He knows. He came to the queen when his woman was dying."

"What?"

She laughed aloud, quicksilver sound, flutter and ripple in the glade. "Softly. I can hear you," she murmured. She touched him, idly, a hand on his leg. He felt desire, again, was very nearly defined by it. She said, "He came to the mound and asked if one of us might come with him, to help her live. She was coughing blood. He brought silver for the queen, and he wept among the trees outside. He couldn't see us, of course, but he came to ask. She pitied him."

Alun said nothing. Couldn't speak. He knew, everyone knew, about Ceinion's young wife and her death.

"So do not say to me," the faerie added, stretching again, "that that one, of all of you, would deny us."

"She didn't send anything, did she?" he asked, whispering.

Both eyebrows arched, she regarded him. "Why think that? She sent eldritch water from the pool and a charm. She is gracious, the queen, honours those who honour her."

"It didn't… help?"

She shook her head. "We are only what we are. Death comes. I did what I could."

He almost missed it. "She sent you?"

Her eyes on his, no distance between them, in one way. He needed only move a hand to touch her breast again.

"I have always been… most curious."

He sighed. So great a strangeness, the world altering moment by moment as the stars turned above them. Was it slow, or fast, that movement overhead? Did it depend on who was asking?

He said, "And tonight is… being curious?"

"And for you, is it not? What else is there for it to be?" A different note in her voice now, under the music.

He was gazing at her. Helpless to look away. Small, even teeth in the wide, thin mouth, pale skin, achingly smooth, the changing hair. Dark eyes. And vestiges of wings. Once, they could fly.

"I don't know," he said, swallowing. "I'm not wise enough. I feel as if I could weep."

"Sorrow, again," she said. "Why does it always come to that, for you?"

"Sometimes we can weep for joy. Do you… can you understand that?"

A longer silence. Then she shook her head slowly. "No. I would like to, but this is your cup, not ours."

The… otherness, again. This sense that he was both in and entirely outside the world he knew. He said, "Tell me Esferth and the others will be there when I go from here?"

She nodded, calmly. "Though some of them won't be."

He stared. A hard thumping of the heart. "What do you mean?" "They are starting to ride out. There is anger, men taking horse, bearing iron."

He sat up. "Holy Jad. How do you know?"

She shrugged. The question, he realized, was foolish. How could he understand how she knew things? How could she answer him? Even in the tongue they shared, the language her people had taught his.

He stood up. Began putting on his clothes. She watched him. He was aware, might always be aware now, of the haste of his doing this, seen through her eyes. The way he and the others lived. "I must go," he said. "If something has happened."

"Someone died," she said gravely. "There is sorrow. The aura of it."

The speed of their dying. He looked at her, holding his tunic in both hands. He cleared his throat. "Don't envy us that," he said.

"But I do," she said simply; small, sleek, shining otherness in the grass. "Will you come back into the wood?"

He hesitated, and then a thought came that could not have come a night before, when he was younger.

"Will you sorrow if I do not?"

Her eyebrows lifted again, but in surprise this time. She moved a hand, same gesture as before, as if reaching for something. Then, slowly, she smiled, looking up at him.

He pulled on his tunic. No belt, because of the iron. He turned to leave. He hadn't answered her question, either. He had no answer to give.

He looked back from the glade's dark edge. She was still sitting there on the grass, unclothed, in her element, sorrowless.

+

The voices in the darkness began moving away to the north. Bern remained where he was in the stream. He had a thought, broke off a reed; might need to submerge himself. He heard shouting, men running. Someone rasped a curse, an obscenity directed at Erlings everywhere, and the scabrous, pustulent whores who gave them birth.

Not a good time for this Erling to be discovered.

He'd been right, then. The signal fire had meant nothing good at all. It was still burning. More shouting now, farther away, towards Esferth, where the tents were: the tents outside an over-flowing city on the eve of a fair. A city they'd been told would be almost empty, one that they might even loot in a raid that would give rise to songs for generations to their glory, and Jormsvik's.

Glory, Bern decided, was going to be hard to come by now.

He thought quickly, keeping his breathing shallow and slow. Skallson's party had gone east from the ships. A waste of time, some had thought—and the same had been said about Bern and Ecca going into Esferth, once they had learned about the fair. But if they were to leave here—and it seemed evident they were—without anything taken at all, at least learn something before they went, it had been decided.

Salvage pride, a flagon's worth, by carrying home report of Aeldred's lands. They might be mocked a little less by their fellows for returning empty-handed, swords unreddened, no tales to tell. A wasted journey at raiding season's end. His own first raid.

Right now, Bern thought, mockery might be the best they could hope for, not the worst. There were worse things than fire-side jibes in winter. If that bonfire was an alert, it most likely meant Guthrum Skallson's party had been found. And from the fury in the Anglcyn voices (still heading away from him, Ingavin be thanked) something had happened.

And then he remembered that Ivarr had been with Skallson's party. Bern shivered in the water, couldn't help it. You shivered like that when a spirit passed, someone newly dead, and angry. In that same instant he heard a soft splashing as someone entered the stream.

Bern drew his dagger and prepared himself to die: in water again, third time now. Third time was said to mark power, sacred to Nikar the Huntress, wife to Thünir. Three times was a gateway. He had expected death in the night waters off Rabady. And again in the dawn surf outside Jormsvik. He tried to accept it once more, now. An ending waited for all men, no one knew his fate, everything lay in how you went to your dying. He gripped his blade.

"Stay where you are," he heard.

The voice low, terse, barely audible. Utterly and entirely known all the days of his life.

"Spare me the knife," it went on softly. "I've been stabbed at already tonight. And keep silent or they will find and kill you here," his father added, moving, unerringly, towards where Bern was hidden, submerged to his shoulders, invisible in darkness.

Unless you knew he was here. Not a mystery, then, this part at least. He'd gone straight into the stream from the place on the bank where his father had left him. Not magic, not some impossible night vision, brilliant raider's instinct.

"I didn't think they'd offer me wine," he murmured. No greeting offered. Thorkell hadn't greeted him.

His father grunted, coming up. "How's your head?" "Hurts. Want your neck chain back?"

"I'd have kept it if I wanted it. You made a mistake in that alley. You know the saga: Have thine eyes about you / in hall or darkness. Be wary ever / be watching always."

Bern said nothing. Felt his face redden.

"Two horses?" Thorkell asked calmly.

His father's dark bulk was beside him, Thorkell's voice close to his ear. The two of them together in a stream at night in Anglcyn lands. How was this so? What had the gods decided? And how did men take hold of their own lives when this could happen? He realized his heart was thumping, hated that.

"Two horses," he replied, keeping his voice steady. "Where's Ecca?"

Small hesitation. "That what he was calling himself?"

Was calling. "Right," Bern said bitterly. "Of course. He's dead. You know, the same poet says: No good ever, whatever be thought / was mead or ale to any man. Are you drunk?"

The backhanded blow caught him on the side of the head.

"By Ingavin's blind eye, show respect. I got you out of a walled city. Think on it. I went to warn him, he drew a blade to kill when I used his real name. I made a mistake. Is your horse a good one?"

A mistake. One could weep, or laugh. Killing the second man on the isle had been the mistake, Bern wanted to say. He was still trying to wrap his mind around what was happening here. "My horse is Gyllir," he said. Struggled to keep anything out of his voice his father might read as youthful pride.

Thorkell grunted again. "Halldr's? He didn't come after you?" "Halldr's dead. The horse was for his burning."

That silenced his father, for a moment, at least. Bern wondered if he was thinking of his wife, who had become Halldr's, and was widowed now, alone and unprotected on Rabady.

"There's a tale to that, I imagine," was all Thorkell said.

His voice had not changed at all. Why should it change, though all the world Bern knew had been altered entirely? "Leave Stefa's mount," his father said. "They'll need a horse to find, after they get his body."

Stefa. With an effort Bern kept his hand from going to his head. The stars had swung again with the blow. His father was a strong man.

"They'll see the signs of two horses where we hid them," Bern said. "Won't work."

"It will. I'll find his horse and bring it out. Go now, though, and quickly—some fool killed Burgred of Denferth tonight. Aeldred's riding out himself, I think."

"What?" said Bern, his jaw dropping. "The earl? Why didn't they—?"

"Take him for ransom? You tell me. You're the mercenary. He'd have been worth your raid and more."

But that answer, in fact, he knew. "Ivarr," he said. "Ragnarson's paying us."

"Ingavin's blind eye! I knew it," his father rasped. His old oath, remembered from childhood, familiar as smells and the shape of hands. Thorkell swore again, spat into the stream. He stood waist-deep in the water, thinking. Then: "Listen. That one's going to want you to go west. Don't go. It isn't a raid for Jormsvik."

"West? What's west of here? Just…" And then, as his father said nothing, Bern finally thought it through. He swallowed, cleared his throat. "Blood," he whispered. "Vengeance? For his grandfather? And that's why he—"

"That's why he bought your ships and men, whatever else he told you, and that's why he wouldn't want a hostage. He wants to go after the Cyngael. But with ransom paid for an earl you'd turn and go home. He was with the shore party, wasn't he?"

Bern nodded. It was sliding into place.

"I'll wager you land we don't own any more they'll find Burgred with an arrow in him."

"He said the burh was still unwalled, that Esferth would be almost empty."

Thorkell grunted, spat downstream again. "Empty? During a fair? Serpent-sly, that one. Poisons his arrows."

"How do you know that?"

No answer. It occurred to Bern that he'd never spoken in this way with his father in his life. Nothing remotely resembling this terse conversation. He didn't have time, no time at all, to unwind his own held-in rage, the bitterness for lives marred. Thorkell still hadn't asked about his wife. Or Gyllir. Or how Bern had come to be in Jormsvik.

Fireflies darting around them. Bern heard bullfrogs and crickets. No human voices, though; they'd gone north towards the walls and tents. And would be coming out, back this way, heading for the coast. King Aeldred leading them, his father had said.

Guthrum's party was on foot, would be running for the ships right now. If they weren't dead. He had no idea where they'd been when they…

"Where are your horses?"

"Just west, in the woods."

"In those woods?" Thorkell's voice rose for the first time. "Are there others?"

"I'll hit you again. Show respect. That's a spirit wood. No Anglcyn or Cyngael will enter it. Stefa ought to have known, if you didn't."

"Well," said Bern, attempting defiance, "maybe he did know. If they don't go in, it's a good place for our mounts, isn't it?"

His father said nothing. Bern swallowed. He cleared his throat. "He only went in a few steps, tethered them, got out right away."

"He did know." Thorkell sounded tired suddenly. "You'd best move," his father said. "Think the rest of it out while you ride."

Bern moved, climbing up the western bank. He said nothing but as he looked around, crouching, Thorkell added, "Don't let Ivarr Ragnarson know you're my son. He'll kill you for it."

Bern stopped, looking down at the dark figure of his father in the stream. A tale there, too, obviously. He wasn't going to ask. He wanted to say something harsh about how late it was for Thorkell to be showing signs of looking after his family.

He turned. Heard his father come out of the water behind him. He walked south, quickly, bent low, went in among the trees to get Gyllir. He shivered, doing so. Spirit wood. He knew Thorkell was watching him, to mark the place. He didn't look back. Offered no farewell and, Ingavin knew, no thanks. He'd die before he did that.

Gyllir whickered at his approach. The horse seemed agitated, tossing his head. Bern rubbed his muzzle, whispering, untied the reins. He left Ecca's horse tethered, as instructed. It wouldn't be for long. Emerged from the woods, mounted, rode, south under stars and the blue moon, pushing Gyllir. There would be mounted men following soon.

The land stretched level, forest to the west, open to the east across the stream, mostly empty at first, uninhabited, then some dark farms over that way, planted barley, rye, the harvest coming soon. A line of low trees, cluster of houses, the ground beginning to slope towards the sea, and their ships. A long way to go. Men following. The bonfire still burning. After a time he saw another one, far off, and then, later, a third, sending its signals, which he couldn't read. The moon was gone by then, behind the woods.

He leaned forward over Gyllir's neck to make his weight easier to bear. There's a tale, I imagine, his father had said, learning of the horse. He hadn't asked, though. Hadn't asked.

Heimthra was the word used for longing: for home, for the past, for things to be as they once had been. Even the gods were said to know that yearning, from when the worlds were broken. Bern was grateful, as he rode, that no one on the wide dark earth could see his face, and he had to trust that Ingavin and Thünir would not think the worse of him, if they were watching in the night.

+

It was Hakon Ingemarson who had recognized Kendra by the stream.

He'd called out to her immediately as he passed with a torch amid a crowd of others heading for the tents. She hadn't wanted to ask how he'd known her so quickly in the dark. Was afraid of his answer. Knew his answer, really.

She'd cursed, silently, the sheer bad luck that had led him past this point, even as she'd turned and achieved a tone of pleased welcome when he came hurrying over.

"My lady! How come you here, unattended?"

"I'm not unattended, Hakon. Ceinion of Llywerth kindly sent his own guard with me." She had gestured, and Thorkell had stepped forward into the light. The dog, thankfully, was across the stream, out of sight. She'd had no least idea how she'd have adequately explained it.

"But there's nothing here at all!" Hakon had exclaimed. She'd realized that he was drunk. They all were. That might make things easier, in fact. "The gathering is over by the tents! Your royal sister and brother are there already. May we escort you?"

Kendra had searched for and failed to find any way to decline. Cursing again, inside, with a ferocity that would have surprised all three of her siblings and utterly disconcerted the young man in front of her, she'd smiled and said, "Of course. Thorkell, wait here for me. I'll likely just stay a short while, and I wouldn't want these men to forgo their entertainment to take me back inside."

"Yes, my lady," the older Erling had said, in the uninflected voice of a servant.

Hakon had looked as if he might protest, but evidently decided to be pleased with what he'd gained so unexpectedly. She'd fallen in with him and the others and they'd made their way to the colourful village of tents that had sprung up northwest of the walls.

When they arrived, they found a boisterous crowd gathered in a wide circle. Hakon pushed through to the front. Inside were two people. It came as no great surprise to Kendra to discover that these were her older brother and sister.

She looked around. To one side of the ring she saw a skull, resting on the grass, a torch set beside it. Kendra winced. She had a fairly good idea, suddenly, what had happened here. Athelbert simply did not know when to leave well enough alone.

Judit had a long staff, held crosswise with both hands. She knew how to use it. Athelbert carried a significantly smaller one, a thin switch. Nearly useless, good for swatting at leaves or apples, not much more.

Judit was attempting, with grim purpose and no little skill, to club her brother senseless. Finish the task she'd begun that morning. Athelbert—who had had a great deal to drink, it was clear—was laughing far too much to be at all safe from his sister's assault.

Kendra, eyeing them, listening to the hilarity around her, was thinking about the Cyngael in the woods, and about his dog—the way it had stood on the far side of the stream, rigid and attentive, listening. She didn't know for what. She didn't really want to know.

There was nothing to be done now, in any case. No way to turn around and walk away just yet. She had sighed again, fixed a smile on her face, and accepted a cup of watered wine from Hakon, busy on her behalf. She watched her siblings amid a rapturous, howling crowd and smoking torches. A late-summer night, the harvest looking to be good, the fair soon to begin. A time of laughter and celebration.

The entertainment in the ring continued, marked by two pauses for wine on the part of the combatants. Judit's hair was entirely and immodestly unconfined now. Not that she would care, Kendra thought. Athelbert was dodging and ducking without pause. He'd taken two or three blows, including one to the shin that had knocked him sprawling, barely able to roll away from Judit's urgent follow-up. Kendra thought about intervening. She was certainly the only person who could. She wasn't actually sure how much self-control Judit had left. It was sometimes hard to tell.

Then someone shouted loudly, in a different tone, and people were pointing to the south, beyond the city. Kendra turned. A bonfire. They watched the signals begin, and repeat. And then repeat again.

It was Athelbert who decoded the message aloud for all of them. Judit, listening, dropped her staff, went over to stand next to her brother. She began to cry. Athelbert put his arm around her.

Amid the chaos that ensued, Kendra shifted from where Hakon had been hovering at her elbow. Then she slipped away into the dark. Torches were everywhere, shaping patterns in the night. She made her way back to the river. The dog was still there. It didn't seem to have moved, in fact. Thorkell was nowhere to be seen.

Nor was Alun ab Owyn. He ought not to matter now, she was thinking. Her mind was in a whirl. One of their own had been slain tonight, if Athelbert had the message right. She was certain that he had.

Burgred. He had been in the marshes with her father, had fought at Camburn, both times, when they lost and when they won. And he had gone chasing a rumour of Erling ships while the king lay wrapped in fever.

Her father, she thought, would be tortured by that knowledge. There was a movement across the stream. The man she'd followed came out from the trees.

He stopped at the wood's edge, looking lost.

Kendra, heart pounding, saw the dog pad over to him, push his muzzle against the Cyngael's hip. Alun ab Owyn reached down and touched the dog. It was too dark to see his face, but there was something in the way he stood that frightened her. She had been frightened, she realized, all night. All day long, really, from the time the Cyngael party had come into the meadow.

There were noises, men shouting behind her, running towards the city gates, which were open now. Kendra heard a different sound, a footfall, nearer: she looked over, saw Thorkell. His clothes were wet.

"Where were you?" she whispered.

"He's come out," the Erling replied, not answering.

Kendra turned back to the woods. Alun still hadn't moved, except to touch the dog. Uncertainly, she walked towards the river, stood on the bank amid reeds and dragonflies. She saw him look up and see her. Too dark, too dark to know his eyes.

She took a breath. She had no business being here, no understanding of how she knew what she knew.

"Come back to us," she said, fighting fear.

The dog turned to her voice. Blue moon and stars overhead. She heard Thorkell come up behind her. Was grateful for that. She was watching the other man by the. trees.

And at length, she heard Alun ab Owyn say, in a voice you had to strain to hear, "My lady, I have a long way to go. To do that."

Kendra shivered. Was close to tears, and afraid. She made herself take another deep breath and said, with courage that perhaps only her father was aware that she had, "I am only this fan"

Thorkell, behind her, made an odd sound.

By the trees, Alun ab Owyn lifted his head a little. And then, after a moment, moved forward, walking as if through water even before he reached it. He crossed the stream with the dog. His hair was disordered. He had no belt on his tunic, carried no weapon.

"What… are you doing here?" he asked.

Her head high, feeling the breeze in her hair, she said, "I am truly not certain. I felt… afraid, from when I saw you this morning. Something…"

"You were afraid of me?" His voice was drained of emotion. Again she hesitated. "Afraid for you," she said.

A silence, then he nodded, as if unsurprised.

I am only this far, she'd said. Where had that come from? But he'd crossed. He'd come across the water from the trees to them. A little behind her, the Erling kept silent.

"Did someone die tonight?" Alun ab Owyn asked.

"We think so," she said. "My brother believes it was Earl Burgred, leading a party south of here."

"Erlings?" he asked. "Raiders?"

He was looking past her now, at Thorkell. The dog was beside him, wet from the river, standing very still.

"It appears so, my lord," said the big man behind her. And then, carefully, "I believe… we both know the one who leads them."

And that made a change. Kendra saw it happen. The Cyngael seemed to be pulled back to them, snapped like a leash or a whip, away from whatever had happened in the trees. The thing she didn't want to think about.

"Ragnarson?" he asked.

Not a name Kendra knew; it meant nothing to her.

The Erling nodded. "I believe so."

"How do you know this?" ab Owyn asked.

"My lord prince, if it is Ragnarson, he will want to take their ships west from here. King Aeldred is riding out now, after them."

He was very good, Kendra was realizing, at not replying to questions he didn't want to answer.

In the darkness, she looked at the Cyngael prince. Alun was rigid, so taut he was almost quivering. "He'll go for Brynnfell again. They won't be ready, not so soon. I need a horse!"

"I'll get you one," said Thorkell calmly.

"What? I think not," came a slurred, angry voice. Kendra wheeled, white-faced. Saw Athelbert coming across the grass. "A mount? So he can ride my sister and then ride home to boast of it?"

Kendra felt her heart pound, with fury this time, not fear. Her fists were clenched at her- sides. "Athelbert, you are drunk! And entirely—"

He went right past her. He might jest and tumble with Judit, letting her buffet him about for the amusement of others, but her older brother was a hard, trained, fighting man, king-to-be in these lands, and enraged right now, for more than one reason.

"Entirely what, dear sister?" He didn't look back at her. He had stopped in front of Alun ab Owyn. He was half a head taller than the Cyngael. "Look at his hair, his tunic. Left his belt in the grass, I see. At least you made yourself presentable before getting off your backside."

Thorkell Einarson took a step forward. "My lord prince," he began, "I can tell you—"

"You can shut your loathsome Erling mouth before I kill you here," Athelbert snapped. "Ab Owyn, draw your blade."

"Have none," said Alun, mildly. And launched himself, in a lithe, efficient movement, at Athelbert. He feinted left, and then his right fist hammered hard at her brother's heart. Kendra's hands flew to her mouth. Athelbert went backwards in a heap, sprawled on the grass. He grunted, shifted to get up, and froze.

The dog, Cafall, was directly above him, a large grey menace, growling in his throat.

"He didn't touch me, you Jad-cursed clod!" Kendra screamed at her brother. She was close to tears, in her fury. "I was over watching you and Judit make fools of yourselves!"

"You were? You, er, saw that?" Athelbert said. He had a hand to his chest, was careful to make no sudden movements.

"I saw that," she echoed. "Must you take such pains to be an idiot?"

There was a silence. They heard the noises from behind them, towards the gates.

"Less difficult than you think," her brother murmured, finally. Wry, already laughing at himself, a gift he had, in fact. "Where," he said looking up at Alun ab Owyn, "did you learn to do that?"

"My brother taught me," said the Cyngael, shortly. "Cafall, hold!" The dog had growled again as Athelbert shifted to a sitting position.

"Hold is a good idea," agreed Athelbert. "You might want to tell him again? Make sure he heard you?" He looked over at his sister. "I appear to have—"

"Erred," said Kendra, bluntly. "How unusual."

They heard horns, from the city.

"That's Father," said Athelbert. A different tone.

Alun looked over. "We'll need to hurry. Thorkell, where's that horse?"

The big man turned to him. "Downstream. I killed an Erling raider in town tonight. Tracked his horse to the wood just now. If you need a mount quickly you can—"

"I need a mount quickly, and a sword."

"Killed an Erling raider?" Athelbert snapped in the same breath. "Man I used to know. With Jormsvik now. I saw him in the—" "Later! Come on!" said Alun. "Look!" He pointed. Kendra and the two men turned. She gripped her hands together tightly.

The fyrd of King Aeldred was streaming out of the gates amid torches and banners. She heard the sound of horses' harness and drumming hooves, men shouting, horns blowing. The glorious and terrible panoply of war.

"My lady?" It was Thorkell. Asking leave of her.

"Go," she said. He wasn't her servant.

The two men began running along the riverbank. The dog growled a last time at Athelbert, then went after them.

Kendra looked down at her brother, still sitting on the grass. She watched him stand, somewhat carefully. He'd had a painful day. Tall, fair-haired as an Erling, graceful, handsome, reasonably near to sober, in fact.

He stood before her. His mouth quirked. "I'm an idiot," he said. "I know, I know. Adore you, though. Remember it."

Then he went quickly away as well, towards the gates, to join the company riding out, leaving her unexpectedly alone in darkness by the stream.

That didn't happen often, being left alone. It was not, in fact, unwelcome. She needed some moments to compose herself, or try.

What are you doing here? he'd asked. The too-obvious question. And how was she to answer? Speak of an aura almost seen, a sound beyond hearing, something never before known but vivid as faith or desire? The sense that he was marked, apart, and that she'd somehow known it, from his first appearance in the meadow that morning?

I have a long way to go, he'd said, across the stream. And she'd known, somehow, what he really meant, and it was a thing she didn't want to know.

Jad shield me, Kendra thought. And him. She looked towards the trees, unwillingly. Spirit wood. Saw nothing there, nothing at all.

She lingered, reluctant to surrender this quiet. Then, like a blade sliding into flesh, it came back to her that the tumult she was hearing was a response to the death of someone she'd known from childhood.

Burgred of Denferth lifting her onto his horse, so far above the ground, for a canter around the walls of Raedhill. She'd been three, perhaps four. Terror, then pride, and a hiccoughing laughter, giddy breathlessness. Her father's softened, amused face when Burgred brought her back and, leaning in the saddle, set her down, red-faced, on chubby legs.

Did you remember things because they'd happened often, or because they were so rare? That one had been rare. A stern man, Earl Burgred, more so than Osbert. A figure of action, not thought. Carried the marks of the past in a different way. Her father's fevers, Osbert's leg, Burgred's… anger. He'd been with Aeldred, and had been loved, when they'd all been very young, even before Beortferth.

An Erling had killed him tonight. How did one deal with that, if one was king of the Anglcyn?

Her father was riding out. Could die tonight. They had no idea how many Erlings were south of them. How many ships. Jormsvik, Thorkell Einarson had said. She knew who they were: mercenaries from the tip of Vinmark. Hard men. The hardest of all, it was said.

Kendra turned then, away from woods and stream and solitude, to go back. She saw her younger brother, standing patiently, waiting for her.

She opened her mouth, closed it. Athelbert would have sent him, she realized. In the midst of chasing down his horse and armour and joining the fyrd amid chaos, he'd have done that.

It was too easy to underestimate Athelbert.

"Father wouldn't let you both go?" she asked quietly. Knew the answer before she asked.

Gareth shook his head in the darkness. "No. What happened here? Are you all right?"

She nodded. "I suppose. You?"

He hesitated. "I wouldn't mind killing someone."

Kendra sighed. Others had sorrows, too. You needed to remember that. She came forward, took her brother's arm. Didn't squeeze it or anything like that; he'd bridle at obvious sympathy. Gareth knew the Rhodian and Trakesian philosophers, had read them aloud to her, modelled himself (or tried) on their teachings. Conduct yourself in the sure knowledge that death comes to all men born. Be composed, accordingly, in the face of adversity. He was seventeen years old.

They walked back together. She saw the guard at the gate, white-faced. The one who had let her out. She nodded reassuringly at him, managed a smile.

She and Gareth went to the hall. Osbert was there, amid a blaze of lanterns, giving instructions, men coming and going in front of him. Something he'd done all Kendra's life. His face looked seamed and gaunt. None of them was young any more, she thought: her father, Osbert, Burgred. Burgred was dead. Were the dead old, or young?

There was nothing for her to do, but it was too late to go to bed. They went to morning prayers when sunrise came. Her mother joined them, large, calm, a ship with the wind behind her, sure in her faith. Kendra didn't see Judit in the chapel, but her sister found them later, back in the hall, soberly garbed, hair properly pinned but with a wild fury in her eyes. Judit did not subscribe to the doctrines of composure advocated by Rhodian philosophers. She wanted a sword right now, Kendra knew. Wanted to be on a horse, riding south. Would never, ever, be reconciled to the fact that she couldn't do that.

By then, someone had found the dead Erling in the alley and had reported it to Osbert. Kendra had expected that, had been thinking about it when she was supposed to be praying.

Waiting for a pause in the flow of messages to and from, she went over and told Osbert, quietly, what she knew. He listened, considered, said nothing by way of reproach. That was not his way. He sent a messenger running for the guard who had been on the wall, who came, and another one for the Erling servant of Ceinion of Llywerth, who did not.

Thorkell Einarson, they discovered, had gone south with the fyrd. So had the Cyngael cleric, though that had been known: a night ride beside Aeldred on a horse they'd given him. A different sort of holy man, this one. And Kendra knew Alun ab Owyn was also with them, and why.

Someone named Ragnarson. She remembered the way he'd looked, coming out of the wood. She still didn't want to acknowledge what it was she seemed to know about this, about him—without any idea how she knew. The world, Kendra suddenly thought, heretically, was not as well-made as it might have been.

She pictured him riding, and the grey dog running beside the horses towards the sea.

+

Earlier that same night, a woman was making her way carefully across the fields of Rabady Isle, not precisely sure of her direction in the dark, and more than a little afraid to be abroad after moonrise alone. She could hear the sea and the waving grain at the same time. Harvest was coming, the grain fields were high, making it harder to see her way.

A little before, under the same waning blue moon, her exiled husband and only son had spoken together in a stream near Esferth. A coming-together that could only having been shaped—she would have said—by the gods for their own purposes, which were not to be understood. The woman would have been grateful for tidings of the son; would have denied interest in the father.

Her daughters were also away, across the strait on the Vinmark mainland. Neither had sent word for some time. She understood. A family disgrace could make ambitious husbands cautious about such things. There was a king in Hlegest now with increasingly clear ambitions of his own to rule all the Erlings, not just some of them in the north. Times were changing. It meant, among other things, that young men had reason to think carefully, mind their tongues, be discreet with family connections. Shame could come to a man through his wife.

Frigga, daughter of Skadi, once wife to Red Thorkell, then to Halldr Thinshank, now bound to no man and therefore without protection, was not bitter about her daughters.

Women had only so much control over their lives. She didn't know how it was elsewhere. Much the same, she imagined. Bern, her son, ought to have stayed by her when Halldr died instead of disappearing, but Bern had been turned from a landowner's heir into a servant by his father's exile, and who could, truly, blame a young man for rejecting that?

She'd assumed he was dead, after they'd gone looking for him and the horse in the morning and found neither. Had spent nights mourning, not able to let anyone see how much she grieved, because of what he'd obviously done, taking the dead man's funeral horse.

Then, a short while ago, at summer's end, had come tidings that he hadn't died. They'd stoned the volur for helping Bern Thorkellson get off the isle.

Frigga didn't believe it. It made no sense at all, that tale, but she wasn't about to say that to anyone. There was no one to whom she could talk. She was alone here, and still had no true idea if her son was alive.

And then, a few days ago, they had named the new volur.

One-handed Ulfarson, now governor, did the naming, which was a new thing. There were always new things, weren't there? But the young volur was kin to her, nearly, and Frigga had offered some small kindnesses when the girl had first arrived to serve in the women's compound. It seemed now to have been a wise thing to have done, though that wasn't why she'd done it. A woman's road was hard, always, stony and bleak. You helped each other, if and when you could. Her mother had taught her that.

She needed help herself now. It had brought her into the night (windy, not yet cold) and these whispering fields. She was afraid of animals, and spirits, and of living men doing what they were likely to do if they had been drinking and came upon a woman alone. She feared the moment, and what the future held for her in the world.

Frigga stopped, took a deep breath, looked around her by moonlight, and saw the boulder. They had done the stoning here. She knew where she was. Another breath, and a murmured thank-you to the gods. She had been to the women's compound four times in her life, but the last visit had been twenty years ago, and she had come by daylight, each time with an offering when she was carrying a child, and three of her children had lived. Who understood these things? Who dared say they did? It was Fulla, corn goddess, who decreed what happened to a woman when her birth pangs came. It made sense to seek intercession. Frigga moved to the stone. Touched it, murmured the proper words.

She didn't know if what she was doing now could be said to be sensible, but she was, it seemed, no more willing to be a servant than her son had been—to be ordered to bed any man-guest at the behest of Thinshank's first wife, the widow who'd inherited, with her sons.

Second wives had little in the way of rights, unless they'd had time to establish their ground in the house. Frigga hadn't. She wasn't far, in fact, from being cast out, with winter coming. She had no property, thanks to Thorkell's second murder. Nor was she young enough to readily persuade any proper man to take her to wife. Her breasts were fallen, her hair grey, there were no children left waiting in her womb.

She had lingered through a spring and summer, endured what she'd known would come from the day Halldr died, followed by that disastrous funeral: burning him without the horse, the omen of it, the unquiet spirit. She had hoped troubles would pass her by, seen they would not, and finally decided to come out tonight. Much the same path—though she did not know this—her son had taken with a dead man's horse in the spring. A roll of the gambling dice.

Women were not actually allowed to touch the dice, of course, for fear of putting a curse on them.

She saw the first trees, and the light, at the same time.

Anrid wasn't asleep. She hadn't been sleeping since the stoning. The images that came when she closed her eyes. It was wearing her away. Her elevation to volur hadn't changed this; it hadn't even been a surprise. She'd seen the unfolding of events in her mind, as if played out on some raised platform, from the time she'd gone to the governor. In truth, from the time she'd devised her course of action after he'd summoned her to come to him.

It had happened as she'd seen it, including the stoning, when she'd worn the serpent about her body for all of them to see.

She hadn't known this about herself: that anger could make her cause people to die. But the volur had had the snake bite her before knowing if its poison was gone. Anrid had been the newest girl, and alone here. Her dying wouldn't have mattered to anyone in the world. They had made her stand still, eyes closed in sick terror, and had goaded the released serpent with sticks, and it had bitten her. Then they'd sent her back out on watch duty, waiting curiously to see if she died. Anrid had been sick to her stomach in the yard, and then limped out through the gate to where she was supposed to watch. What else had there been for her to do?

And that night Bern had come. She'd seen him tie the horse and walk into the compound, and the volur had arranged to send him to a savage death. No uncertainty about that one, no testing of poison. He'd enter the town at sunrise, thinking he was safe, and would be taken and killed. A man who'd come to the seer for help. She had sheathed him in her wrinkled, dried-out flesh, deceiving him entirely. Laughed about it after. The crude jibes of the other old ones, peering through cracks in the wall, complaining they hadn't had their turn.

Anrid, turning away in disgust to the darkness again, limping, had taken her own first steps towards the stonings (savage death) later that same night when she spoke to the man, warning him. Bern Thorkellson was kin to her, almost. She told herself that now, over and again. You stood by kin in this world because there was no one else to stand by, or who might ever stand by you. A rule of the northlands. You died if you were too much alone.

But she saw stones striking flesh whenever she closed her eyes now.

When they knocked at her door and she rose and opened it and they told her a woman had come, she knew—they would think it was her power—who this had to be, even before her brother's wife's mother was led to her chamber. It wasn't power, it was a quick mind. A different sort of mystery; women weren't ever credited with that.

While she waited, Anrid let the snake coil around her; she did that all the time now. The serpent had been her doorway to this. It was important that the others see her handling it, confront their own fear of doing the same. She was still the newest, still the youngest, and now volur. She needed to find a way to survive. Volurs could be killed. She knew it.

A knock, the door opened. She gestured for Frigga to enter, closed the door herself, letting no one else in. She had already blocked up the holes through which she and the others used to peek. She put the serpent in the basket they'd made for it.

She hated the snake.

Anrid turned to the older woman, looked at her a moment, opened her mouth to speak, and began to cry. The tears stunned her with how desperately they fell. Her hands were shaking.

"Oh, child," said Frigga.

Anrid couldn't stop weeping. You'd have had to kill her to make her stop. "Will you…?" she began. Choked on her words, tears in her throat. Hands in trembling fists to her mouth. A shuddering of breath. Tried again. "Will you stay with me? Please stay?"

"Oh, child. Have you a place for me?"

Anrid could only nod, again and again, a spasm of the head. The older woman, nearly kin, closest thing she had, came forward and they wrapped each other in arms that had not known or given comfort for so long.

Only the younger one wept, however. Then, later that night, she slept.