The Last Light of the Sun

FIFTEEN

Kendra would remember the days before and during the fair that year as the most disconnected she'd known. Intensity of joy, intensity of fear.

The fyrd had been home for two nights, after riding in loud triumph through the wide-open gates of Esferth amid shouts and cheering and music playing. The city was thronged with merchants. There could not have been a better time for Aeldred to achieve such a victory over the Erlings. Slain in numbers, driven away, no losses at all for the Anglcyn.

If you didn't count a prince, gone into the godwood.

Riding up the main street from the gates, a screaming, colourful crowd on either side, her father had waved, smiled gravely, let the people see a king calmly aware of achievement, and as calmly set on repeating it as often as necessary. Let his subjects know this, and let all who were here from abroad carry word back to their homes.

Kendra, with her mother and sister and brother (the one brother here), in front of the great hall, had looked at her father as he'd dismounted, and she'd known—right then—that he was dissembling.

Athelbert outweighed sixty Erlings killed, by so much.

There had been sea-raids for a hundred years, and they would not stop with this one. But the king of the Anglcyn had only two sons who'd survived infancy, and the older was gone now into a deadly place, and the younger (they all knew) had never wanted to be a king.

Truth be told, it was Judit, thought Kendra, beside her red-haired sister on the steps, who ought to have been a boy at birth, and now a man. Judit could have sat a throne, incisive and confident in the fierce brightness of her spirit. She could have wielded a sword (she did wield swords!), commanded the fyrd, drunk ale and wine and mead all night and walked steadily away from a trestle table at dawn when all those who had been with her lay snoring amid cups. Judit knew this, too, Kendra thought; she knew she could have done these things.

Instead, she was going off this winter, escorted by most of the court, to marry a thirteen-year-old boy and live among the people of Rheden to bind them close: for that is what young women in royal families were born to do.

Things went awry sometimes, Kendra thought, and there was no one to give her a good answer why Jad had made the world that way.

They'd feasted that night, heard music, watched jugglers and tumblers perform. The rituals of victory. Theirs were lives on display, to be seen.

More of the same at sunrise. At chapel to pray, then she and Judit (dutiful just now, more shaken than she'd want to admit by what Athelbert had done) had made a point of walking through the thronged, roped-off marketplace three separate times (to be seen), fingering fabrics and brooches. They'd made Gareth come with them the third time. He'd been quiet, extremely so. Judit bought a jewelled knife and a gelding from Al-Rassan.

Kendra bought some fabrics. She made her way through the duties of the day with difficulty, then after the evening rites she went looking for someone. She had questions that needed answering.

Ceinion of Llywerth had not been at the royal chapel for the sundown services. There were a small number of Cyngael merchants here for the fair (they'd come along the same coastal path he had, or been granted passage through the Rheden Wall). She found the cleric with his own people at a chapel on the eastern side of Esferth, leading the rites there.

He had just finished when Aeldred's younger daughter arrived, with one of her women in attendance. They waited until the cleric was done talking with some of the merchants, and then Kendra had her woman withdraw and she sat down with the grey-haired cleric towards the front of the old chapel, near the disk. It needed polishing, she noticed. She'd tell someone tomorrow.

Ceinion's eyes, she thought, were curiously like her father's. Alert, and just as unsettling when you had something you wanted to hide. She wasn't here to hide. She wouldn't be here if she were hiding.

"Princess?" he said calmly, and waited.

"I am afraid," she said.

He nodded. His face was kind, smooth-shaven, less lined than was usual for a man his age. He was small and trimly formed, not a laden-table, wine-cup cleric like the other one here, from Ferrieres. Her father had told them some time ago, before the first visit, that this man was one of the most learned scholars in the world, that the Patriarch in Rhodias sought his views on clashes of doctrine. In some ways it was hard to credit—the Cyngael lived so cut off from the world.

"Many of my people are greatly afraid just now," he said. "You are generous to share it with us. Your father has been very good, sending a ship to Arberth, messengers to the Rheden Wall. We can only hope—"

"No," she said. "That isn't it." She looked at him. "I knew when Alun ab Owyn entered the wood with my brother and the Erling."

A silence. She had shaken him, she saw. He made the sign of the disk. That was all right; she'd have done the same. "You… you see spirits?"

He was very direct. She shook her head. "Well, once I did. One of them. A few nights ago. That isn't what I… from the time you came across the river, the other morning? When we were lying on the grass?" She heard herself sounding like a child. This was so difficult.

He nodded.

"Well, from that time, I… I can't explain this well, but I knew… ab Owyn. The prince. I could… read things in him? Know where he was."

"Dear Jad," whispered the high cleric of the Cyngael. "What is it that is coming among us?"

"What do you mean?" she asked.

He was looking at her, but not with eyes that spoke denunciation or disbelief. "Strange things are happening," he said.

"Not just… to me?" She was extremely determined not to cry. "Not just to you, child. To him. And… others."

"Others?"

He nodded. Hesitated, then moved a hand sideways, back and forth. He wasn't going to say. Clerics, she thought, were good at not telling what they didn't want to tell. But he'd already said something, and she'd needed to know it, so much. She wasn't alone, or going mad.

He swallowed, and now she did see a hint of fear, which frightened her, in turn. She knew what he was going to ask, before he spoke.

"Do you… see him now? Where they are?"

She shook her head. "Not since they went in. I've been having dreams, though. I thought maybe you could help me."

"Oh, child, I have so little help to give in this. I am… enmeshed in fears."

"You're the only person I can think of."

Her father's eyes, very nearly. "Ask me, then," he said.

It was quiet here. Everyone had gone, except the aged cleric of the chapel, straightening candles at a side-altar near the door, and her own woman in a far row, waiting. This chapel was one of the oldest in Esferth, the wood of the benches and flooring worn smooth with years. It was dark where the lamps didn't reach, softly lit where they did. A feeling of calm. Or there ought to have been, Kendra thought.

"What can you tell me," she asked, "about the Volgan's sword?"

+

The ambit of a woman's life could not be said to be very wide. But how wide might it be for the majority of men alive on the god's earth, struggling to feed themselves and their families, to be warm in winter (or sheltered from the sandstorms in the south), safe from war and disease, sea-raiders and creatures in the night?

The Book of the Sons of Jad, more and more widely used in chapels now, even here in the Cyngael lands, taught that the world belonged to the mortal children of the god, saying so in words that were incantation: eloquent and triumphant.

It was difficult for Meirion mer Ryce to believe this to be true.

If they were all the glorious children of a generous god, why did some of them end up blood-eagled, soaked in blood, ripped apart, though they had only been a girl walking back from pasture with brimming pails after milking the two cows on a morning at the end of spring?

It was wrong, thought Meirion, defiantly, remembering her sister, as she did every single time coming back from the milking in the mist before dawn. Elyn was not a person who ought to have died that way. It wasn't what life should have held for someone like her. Meiri knew she wasn't wise enough to understand such things, and she knew what the cleric in the village had been telling them over and again since summer began, but Cyngael women were not particularly submissive or deferential, and if Meirion had been asked by someone she trusted to describe what she really felt, she would have said she was enraged.

No one ever asked (no one was trusted so much), but the anger was there, each day, every night, listening for sounds that never came now from the empty pallet along the adjacent wall. And it was with her when she rose in darkness to dress and go past the bed where Elyn wasn't any more, to do the milking her sister used to do.

Her mother had wanted to take the pallet apart, make more space in the small hut. Meiri hadn't let her, though lately, as summer had turned towards harvest and autumn, a chill now some nights, she'd begun thinking she might do it herself one afternoon after work was done.

She'd choose a clear day, when flame and smoke could be seen a long way, and she'd burn the bedding on the sun-browned tor above the fields as a memorial. Not enough, no remotely adequate answer to loss and helpless fury, but what else was there?

Elyn hadn't been a noblewoman or a princess. There was no consecrated place in the vault of a sanctuary for her bones, no carved words above or image on stone, no harp songs. She wasn't Heledd or Arianrhod, lost and lamented. She'd been only a farmer's daughter in the wrong place one too-dark pre-dawn hour, raped and carved open by an Erling.

And what was there that a sister could make for her remembering? A song? Meiri didn't know music, or even how to write her own name. She was a girl, unmarried (no man to fight for her), living with her parents near the border between Llywerth and Arberth. What was she going to do? Take fierce and fell revenge? Intervene in some battle, strike a blow against Erlings?

In the event, she did do that. Sometimes, despite all the weight of likelihood, we can. It is a part of the mystery of the world and needs to be understood that way.

In an hour before sunrise at the end of that summer Meirion heard sounds, muffled in mist, to her right, as she made her way home along the worn, grassy path from the summer pasture.

The path ran parallel to the road from Llywerth, though to call it a road was somewhat to overstate. Roads weren't much a part of the Cyngael provinces. They cost a great deal in resources and labour, and if you made a road it was easier to be attacked along it. Better, times being what they were, to live with some difficulty of travel and not smooth the way for those who meant you ill.

The rough path south of her, running past their farm and the hamlet, was one of the main routes to and from the sea, however, cutting through a gap in the Dinfawr Hills to the west and continuing east below the woods along the north bank of the Aber.

That's why Elyn had died. People passed too near them all the time, going east and west. That's why Meirion stopped now and carefully, quietly, set down her neck yoke with the brimming pails on either side. She left it in the grass, stood a moment, listening.

Horse hooves, harness, creak of leather. Clink of iron. There was no good reason for armed horsemen to be on this path before sunrise. Her first thought was a cattle raid: Llywerth outlaws (or noblemen) crossing into Arberth. Her village tried to stay out of these affairs; they didn't have enough cattle (enough of anything) to be a target for raiders. Better to let them go by, both ways, know nothing or as little as possible if pursuit came after (either way) with questions asked.

She'd have gone quietly back along her own path, walking home with the morning milk, if she hadn't heard voices. She didn't understand the words—which was the point, of course. She would have, if these men had been from Llywerth. They weren't. They were speaking Erling, and Meiri's sister, fiercely loved, had been slain and defiled by one of them at the beginning of summer.

She didn't go home. Anger can channel fear sometimes, master it. Meiri knew this land as she knew the tangles of her own brown hair. She crouched down, leaving the milk behind in the path (a fox found it later in the day, drank its fill). In the greyness she moved towards the voices and the trail. After a bit she went on her belly among the grass and scrub and wriggled closer. She didn't know anything about how Erlings (or anyone else) arranged themselves on a march-and-ride, so it was good fortune more than anything else that no outriders were sweeping the scrub-land north of the trail. Much of what happens in a life turns on good fortune or bad, which unsettles as much as it does anything else.

What she saw, peering through brambles, was a company of Erlings, some horsed, more of them afoot, stopped to talk, barely visible in the darkness and not-yet-lifted fog. What she heard was "Brynnfell," twice, unmistakably, the name springing at her from snapped and snarled words that made no sense at all, over the hammering of her blood.

She knew what she needed to know. She started to wriggle backwards on knees and elbows. Heard something behind her. Froze where she was, not breathing. She didn't pray. Ought to have, of course, but was too bone-frightened.

The lone horseman continued moving, passing just behind where she lay. She heard him cut down beyond the bushes she'd been peering through and rejoin the company on the road. Any raiding party had outriders, especially in hostile country where you weren't sure of your way. A dog would have found her, but the Erlings had no dogs.

Meirion fought a desire to stay where she was, motionless, forever, or until they went away. She heard the riders dismount. The river was close here, just to the south. They might be stopping for water and food.

She wanted that.

Listening carefully, behind her as well now, she crawled backwards, regained her own path. Left the milk where it was and began to run. She knew where these raiders were going and what needed to be done. She wasn't certain if the men in the fields would listen to her. She was prepared to kill someone to make them do so.

She didn't have to. Sixteen farmers and farmhands, and ten-year-old Derwyn ap Hwyth, who never let himself be left behind, set off before the sun was fully up, running east to Brynnfell, taking the old track. That one stopped at their forest. It was a known and tamed wood, though, source of kindling and building logs, and there was a trail that would bring them out, eventually, near Brynn ap Hywll's farm.

Meirion's father, whose bad leg meant he couldn't keep up, took the one horse in the village and went north to Penavy. Found twelve men working by there. Said what needed to be said. They, too, went running, straight from the harvest fields, seizing whatever came to hand that was sharp and could be carried for a day and a night at speed.

Almost thirty men. Meirion's response. Not trained fighters, but hardy, knowing the land, and filled—each one of them—with anger bright and cold as a winter sun. This wasn't a vast invading fleet of dragon-prows from Erling lands. This was a raid, skulking through their land. They would fear the northmen, always, but they would not run from them.

It was crippled Ryce's daughter, his surviving daughter, who had come upon the raiders and carried—like a queen of legend—needful tidings back of where they were bound. A woman of the Cyngael, worthy of song. And they all knew, in the lands and villages around, what had been done to her sister.

They would reach Brynnfell half a day before the Erlings did.

The afternoon of the day she saw the raiders, Meirion—in a frenzy born of waiting—took Elyn's pallet apart. She began to carry the straw and bedding up the tor. Her mother and the other women saw what she was doing and set themselves to help, gathering wood, arranging it on the flat summit. All of them working, women walking up and down the hill. Late in the day, the sun westering and the last crescent of the blue moon rising (no moons at all tomorrow), they lit a bonfire there for Elyn. Only a girl. No one important at all, by any measure you might ever think to use.

+

Bern could not shake a premonition, death hovering like some dark bird, one of Ingavin's ravens, waiting.

Fog among encroaching hills. Sounds muffled, vision limited. Even when day broke and the mist lifted, that sense of oppression, of a waiting stillness in the land, lingered. He felt they were being watched. They probably were, though they saw no one. This was a strange land, Bern thought, different from any he'd known, and they were moving away from the sea. He had no illusions of being prophetic, of any kind of truesight or knowing. He told himself this was no more than apprehension. He'd never been in a battle, and they were heading towards one.

But it wasn't fear. It really wasn't. He had memories of fear. The night before his Jormsvik fight he'd lain beside a prostitute, hadn't slept at all, listened to her untroubled breathing. He'd been quite certain it was the last night he'd know. Fear had been within him then; there was something different now. He was wrapped in a sense of strangeness, something unknown. Fog in these hills and the nature of the lives men lived. His father entangled in it, much as he might want to deny that.

Denial would be a lie, simple as that. Thorkell had told him not to let them sail to the Cyngael lands. Brand had killed the last of the Volgans for his deception, yet here they were now, on the quest Ivarr had tried to deceive them into taking on.

Brand One-eye and the other leaders had seized upon Ivarr's idea: vengeance and the Volgan's sword. A way out of humiliation. So they were doing what he'd wanted them to do, even though they'd killed him for it and tossed him to the sea. It could make you feel things had gone awry.

Brand had spoken of it calmly enough, sailing west and then north with the wind to where they'd beached. How this was a bad time for them to suffer defeat. (Was there a good time, Bern had wondered.) How claiming the sword would be a triumph, hewn brilliantly out of failure and defeat. A talisman against ambitious men in the north who thought they could be king and impose their will upon the Jormsvikings.

Bern wasn't so sure. It seemed to him that these named reasons were covering something else. That Brand Leofson was wishing he'd thought of Ivarr's quest himself, that what the one-eyed man was seeing, in his mind, was glory.

That would be fair enough, ordinarily. What else, as the skalds sang to harp by hearth fire all winter, was there for the brave to seek? Wealth dies with a man, his name lives ever.

Ingavin's halls were for warriors. Ripe, pliant maidens with red lips and yellow hair did not offer mead (and themselves) to farmers and smiths at the golden tables of the gods.

But his father had told them not to come this way.

They weren't even certain where they were going in these hills and narrow valleys. Brand and Carsten had known the harbour from years before, but neither of them, nor Garr Hoddson, had ever been as far inland as Brynnfell. They'd started east, thirty riders, sixty on foot, fifty left to the ships to get them offshore if they were found. Scarcely enough for that, Bern had thought, but he was one of the youngest here, what did he know?

Carsten had urged a fast out-and-back raid with just the horsemen, since they were only going to kill one man and find one thing. Brand and Garr had disagreed. Ap Hywll's farm would be defended. They'd have to go more slowly, with men on foot, a larger force. Bern, on Gyllir, was one of the horsemen sweeping both sides of the path (just a track, really) as they went.

They saw no one. A good thing, you might have said, preserving their secrecy—but Bern couldn't shake the feeling that others were seeing them. They didn't belong here—somehow the land would know it—and the sea, their real haven, was farther away every moment.

On the second day, going through a range of hills in a drizzle of rain, one of the outriders had found a woodcutter and brought him back, hands tied behind him, running before the horse at sword-point.

The man was small, dark, raggedly clothed. His teeth were rotting. He didn't speak Erling; none of them spoke Cyngael. They hadn't expected to be here, hadn't chosen any of those who did know the tongue. This was supposed to have been a raid on undefended Anglcyn burhs. That's what Ivarr had paid them for.

They tried talking to the woodcutter in Anglcyn, which should have been close enough. The man didn't know that language either. He'd soiled himself in terror, Bern saw.

Brand, impatient, edgy, angry now, had drawn his sword, seized the man's left arm and sliced his hand off at the wrist. The woodcutter, hair plastered with rain, drenched in his sweat and stink, had stared blankly at the stump of his wrist.

"Brynnfell!" Brand had roared in the falling rain. "Brynnfell! Where?"

The woodcutter had looked up at him a moment, vacant-eyed, then fainted dead away. Brand had sworn savagely, spat, looked around as if for someone to blame. Garr, scowling, put a sword through the Cyngael where he lay. They'd moved on. The rain continued to fall.

Bern's feeling of oppression had begun to grow then. They'd travelled through the evening, stopping only briefly at night. They heard animals moving, owls overhead and in the trees on the slopes around, saw nothing at all. Before morning they'd come out of the hills into more open lowlands though the mist was still there.

There would be farms here, but Brand thought Brynn's was another day away, at least. He was going by half-remembered stories. They made a stop before dawn, doled out provisions, drank at the river just south of them, moved on as the sun came up.

Bern thought of his father, mending a barn door on Rabady, a sunset hour. Glory, it occurred to him, might come at a heavy price. It might not be the thing for every man.

He leaned forward, patted Gyllir on the neck. They continued east, a forest appearing north of them, the river murmuring south, running beside their path and then turning away. Bern didn't like the secretive, green-grey closeness of this land. The sun went down, the last crescent of the blue moon was in front of them, and then overhead, and then behind. They stopped for another meal, continued through the night. They were mercenaries of Jormsvik, could do without sleep for a night or two to gain the advantages of surprise and fear. Speed was the essence of a raid: you landed, struck, left death and terror, took what you wanted and were gone. If you couldn't do that you didn't belong, you shouldn't be on the dragon-ships, you were as soft as those you came to kill.

You might as well be a farmer or a smith.

It was a brighter morning, at least. They seemed to have left the mists behind. They went on.

Late in the day, with a breeze and white clouds overhead, they were met by Brynn ap Hywll and a company of men at a place where they were moving up a slope and the Cyngael were waiting above them. Not soft, not surprised, or afraid.

Looking up, Bern saw his father there.

Alun didn't see Ivarr Ragnarson. The sun was behind the Erlings, forcing him to squint. Brynn had taken the higher ground, but the light might become a problem. The numbers were close, and they had twenty men in reserve, hidden on either side of the slope. The Erlings had horsemen, twenty-five or so, he guessed. They weren't the best riders in the world, but horses made a difference. And these were Jormsvikings they were about to face, with a company that was mostly farm labourers.

It was better than it might have been, but it wasn't good.

The Erlings had stopped at first sight of them. Alun's instinct would have been to charge while the horses were halted, use the downslope to effect, but Brynn had given orders to wait. Alun wasn't sure why.

He found out, soon enough. Ap Hywll called out, the big voice carrying down the slope, "Hear me! You have made a mistake. You will not get home. Your ships will be taken before you return to them. We had warning of your coming." He was speaking in Anglcyn.

"That is a lie!" A one-eyed man, easily as big as Brynn, moved his horse forward. Battles began this way in the tales, Alun thought. Challenge, counter-challenge. Speeches for the harpers. This wasn't a tale. He was still scanning the Erlings for the man he needed to kill.

Brynn had the same thought, it seemed. "You know it is true, or we wouldn't be here with more men than you have. Surrender Ivarr Ragnarson and give hostages and you'll sail alive from these shores."

"I shit upon that!" the big man shouted. And then, "Ragnarson's dead, anyhow."

Alun blinked. He looked at Thorkell Einarson, beside him. The red-bearded Erling was staring at the opposing forces. His own people.

"How so?" Brynn cried. "How is he dead?"

"By my blade at sea, for deceiving us."

Amazingly, Brynn ap Hywll threw his head back and laughed. The sound was startling, utterly unexpected. No one spoke, or moved. Brynn controlled himself. "Then what in Jad's name are you doing here?"

"Come to kill you," the other man said. His face had reddened at the laughter. "Are you ready to find your god?"

A silence. Late afternoon, late summer. Late in life, really, for both of the men speaking now.

"I've been ready a long time," said Brynn, gravely. "I don't need a hundred men to go with me. Tell me your name." "Brand Leofson, of Jormsvik."

"You lead this company?"

"I do."

"They accept that?"

"What does that mean?"

"They will follow orders you give?"

"Kill any man who doesn't."

"Of course you will. Very well. You leave two ships to us, twenty hostages of our choosing, and all your weapons. The rest of you will be allowed to go. I will send a rider to Llywerth and another to Prince Owyn in Cadyr—they will let you leave. I cannot speak to what will happen when you sail past the Anglcyn coast."

"Two ships!" The Erling's voice was incredulous. "We never leave hostages, you shit-smeared fool! We never leave our ships!"

"Then the ships will be taken when you die in these lands. You will never leave, any of you. Decide. I am not of a mind to talk." His voice was cold now.

One of the Erlings came forward on foot, stood by the stirrup of the one-eyed man. They whispered together. Alun looked at Thorkell again. Saw that the other man was gazing over at Brynn.

"How do we know you aren't lying about Llywerth and Cadyr? How would they know about us?" It was the second Erling, standing by the one named Leofson.

A horseman twitched his reins and moved forward to sit his mount beside Brynn. "You know because I tell you it is true. We rode through the spirit wood, three of us, to bring warning of your coming here."

"Through the spirit—! That will be a lie! Who are…?"

The Erling fell silent. He'd sorted the answer to his own question. It was the accent, Alun realized. The flawless, courtly Anglcyn tones.

"My name is Athelbert, son of Aeldred," said the young man beside Brynn, who had ridden with them through the godwood to serve a cause that wasn't his own. "Our fyrd killed sixty of you. I will be unspeakably happy to add to that number here. My father has sent a ship from Drengest, right behind yours, with a warning for Cadyr. They will have had it days ago, while you were coming here. Ap Hywll speaks truth. If we do not send to stop them, the Cyngael will take your ships or drive them offshore, and you will have nowhere to go. You are dead men, where you stand. Jormsvik will never be the same. They will mock your names forever. You cannot possibly imagine the pleasure it gives me to say these words."

A murmuring among the Erling host below them. Alun heard anger but no fear. He hadn't expected to. He saw some of them begin to draw blades and axes. With a hard, fierce sense of need, he unsheathed his sword. It had come, it had finally come.

"Wait," said Thorkell quietly beside him.

"They're drawing weapons!" Alun rasped.

"I see it. Wait. They will win this fight."

"They will not!"

"Trust me. They will. Ap Hywll knows it too. Numbers are close, but they have horsemen and fighters. Brynn has his thirty men but the rest are farmers with scythes and sticks. Think!"

His voice carried towards the front. Later, Alun decided he had meant it to do so. Brynn turned his head slightly.

"They know they cannot leave these shores alive," he said, softly.

"I think they do," Thorkell Einarson said, still quietly, speaking Cyngael. "It won't matter. They cannot give you hostages or ships and go back to Jormsvik. They will die first."

"So we fight. Kill enough of them so that tomorrow or the next—"

"And what will your wives and mothers say, and the fathers of these two princes?" Thorkell never raised his voice.

Brynn turned around. Alun saw his eyes in the late-afternoon light. "They will say that the Erlings, accursed of Jad and the world, slew yet more good men before their time. They will say what they have always said."

"There is a way out."

Brynn stared at him. "I am listening," he said. Alun felt the breeze blowing, making their banners snap.

"We challenge him," Thorkell said. "He wins, they are allowed to leave. He loses, they yield the two ships and hostages." "You just said—"

"They cannot surrender ships. They can lose a fight. Honour requires they deal fairly then. They will. This is Jormsvik." "That difference matters enough?"

Thorkell nodded. "Always has."

"Good," said Brynn, after a moment, smiling. "Good. I fight him. If he will do it."

Looking back, Alun remembered that four people said No at the same moment, and he was one of them.

But the voice that continued, when the others stopped in surprise, was a woman's. "No!" she said again.

Alun turned, they all did. On the side slope, quite close in fact, on horseback, were the lady wife and the daughter of Brynn ap Hywll. He saw Rhiannon, saw her looking at him, and his heart thumped, a barrage of memories and images falling like arrows from the bright sky.

It was the mother who had spoken. Brynn was gazing at her. She shifted her mount to come forward among them.

"I told you to stay at home," he said, mildly enough.

"I know you did, my lord. Chastise me after. But hear me first. The challenge is proper. I heard what he said. But it is not yours this time."

"It has to be mine. Enid, they came to kill me."

"And must not be allowed the pleasure. My dear, you are the summit and glory of all men living."

"I like the sound of that," said Brynn ap Hywll.

"I imagine you do," said the lady Enid. "You are vain. It is a sin. You are also, I grieve to tell you, old and short-winded, and fat."

"I am not fat! I am—"

"You are, and your left knee is aching as we speak, and your back is stiff each day by this hour."

"He's old too! That one-eyed captain carries his years—"

"He's a raider, my lord." It was Thorkell. "I know the name. He is still a fighting man, my lord. What she says is truth."

"Are you here to shame me, wife? Are you saying I cannot defeat—?"

"My love. Three princes and their sons stood aside for you twenty-five years ago."

"I see no reason why—"

"Do not leave me," said Enid. "Not this way."

Alun heard birdsong. The doings of men here, the wrack and storm of them, hardly mattering at all. It was a summer's day. The birds would be here when this was over, one way or another. Brynn was gazing at his wife. She dismounted, without assistance, and knelt on the grass before her husband. Brynn cleared his throat.

It was Athelbert who broke the stillness. He twitched his reins and moved towards the Erlings, down the slope a little way. "Hear me. We are told that you cannot surrender the ships. You must understand you are going to die, if so. A challenge is now offered you. Choose a man, we do the same. If you are victorious, you will be permitted to sail from here."

"And if we lose?"

They were going to accept. Alun knew it, before they'd even heard the terms. It was in the quickened voice of the one-eyed captain. These were mercenaries, bought to fight, not berserkirs lusting after death. He was feeling something strange, a circling of time.

Three princes and their sons. His father had been one of those sons, twenty-five years ago. Alun's age, very nearly. Brynn had been, too. What was unfolding here felt as if it were part of a skein spun back to that strand in Llywerth.

Athelbert was speaking again. "You forfeit two ships, your weapons, including those on the ships, and ten hostages as surety, to be released in the spring. Not a surrender. A challenge lost."

"How do we get home without weapons? If we meet anyone at all—"

"Then you had best win, hadn't you? And hope you don't encounter my father's ships. Accept now, or fight us here."

"Accepted," said Brand Leofson, even faster than Alun had thought he would.

Alun's heart was beating hard now. It had come. He was thinking of Dai, of course. Ragnarson was dead, but there was an Erling raider below them with a sword. The skein was spun. He drew a steadying breath. His turn to twitch reins, move his horse forward towards the destiny that had been shaped for him at the end of spring.

"I'll do it," said Thorkell Einarson.

Alun pulled up his horse, looked quickly back.

"I know you will," said Brynn, very softly. "I suppose that's why Jad led you here."

Alun opened his mouth to protest, found he had no words. Reached for them, urgently. Thorkell was looking at him, an unexpected expression in his eyes.

"Think of your father," he said. And then, turning away, "Prince Athelbert, have I leave to use the sword you gave me in the wood?"

Athelbert nodded, did not speak. Alun wondered if he looked as young as the Anglcyn did just now. He felt that way, a child again, allowed passage among the men, like the ten-year-old who had joined them with the farmers from the west.

Thorkell swung down from his horse.

"Not a hammer?" Brynn asked, brisk now.

"Not in single combat. This is a good blade."

"Will you suffer a Cyngael helm?"

"If it doesn't split because of cheap workmanship."

Brynn ap Hywll didn't return the smile. "It's my own." He took it off, handed it across.

"I am honoured," said the other man. He put it on.

"Armour?"

Thorkell looked down the slope. "We're both in leather. Leave it be." He turned to the woman, still kneeling on the grass. "I thank you for my life, my lady. I have not lived a life deserving of gifts."

"After this, you will have," said Brynn, gruffly. His wife looked at the red-bearded Erling, made no reply. Brynn added, "You see his eye? How to use that? Kill him for me."

Thorkell looked at him. Shook his head ruefully. "The world does strange things to a man if he lives long enough."

"I suppose," said Brynn. "Because you are fighting for us? For me?"

Thorkell nodded. "I loved him. Nothing was ever the same, after he died."

Alun looked at Athelbert, who was looking back at him. Neither said a word. The birds were singing, all around them.

"Who fights for you?" shouted the big Erling down the slope. He had dismounted and come up alone, halfway to where they were. He'd put on his helmet.

"I do," said Thorkell. He started down. A murmur rose from below, when they saw it was an Erling.

Alun saw that Enid was wiping at tears with the back of one hand. Rhiannon had come up beside her mother. He still didn't have his own heart's beating under anything like control. Think of your father.

How had he known to say that?

Bern watched his father coming down. He had been staring in disbelief from the moment they saw the Cyngael. Thorkell was easy to see, he always had been, half a head taller than most men, with the red banner of his beard.

So the son had known, without hearing a word spoken but watching the telltale gestures of the men above them, that it had been Thorkell who had spoken of single combat when battle had been upon them. So many of the stories told and sung—all the way back to Siferth and Ingeld in the snow—were of single combat. Glory and death: what brighter way to find either of them?

He'd heard others beside him, calculating swiftly, trying to decide if there were Cyngael hidden behind the slopes either side, and if so, how many. Bern had no sense of such things, could only register what he'd heard: they could win this fight, it was judged, but would take losses, especially if there were arrows among those in reserve.

And they wouldn't leave these lands. They had understood that from the moment the Anglcyn prince—impossibly here among them—said what he did.

Bern had had those premonitions of disaster, on the longship coming here and all the way through the black hills east. It seemed he might have more claim to foresight than he'd ever thought. Not the best time to discover that.

Then the Anglcyn prince came forward a second time and offered the challenge. It would be easy to hate that voice, that man, Bern thought. Terse muttering beside him, experienced men: if they gave up their weapons they might as well be naked, one said, heading back through a hostile land, then trying to get home, rowing into the wind, desperately vulnerable to anyone they met, with Aeldred's ships waiting for them. Without weapons, they couldn't winter over, either.

It was a challenge that offered the illusion of survival if they lost; not more than that. But they were dead if they did battle here, win or lose.

"Brand, you can slice the fat man apart," he heard Garr Hoddson rasp. "Do it, we get home. And you'll have killed Brynn ap Hywll. Why we came!"

Brynn ap Hywll. Bern looked up at the Volgan's slayer. Erling's Bane. He was an old man. Brand could do it, he thought, remembering the speed of Leofson's blade, looking at the hard, scarred tautness of him. He would save them, as a leader should. There was a window opening, Bern thought.

Brand shouted, "Accepted!" and drew his sword.

Then he cried, "Who fights for you?" And the window closed. Bern heard his father say, "I do," and saw him start down towards where Brand was waiting.

The setting sun made a firebrand of Thorkell's beard and hair. They were so far, Bern thought, looking up at him, from the barn and field on Rabady. But the light—the light now was the same as on evenings he remembered.

Neither man was young. Both had done this before. Combat could start a battle or avert it, and there was fame for the winning, even if this was a skirmish, a raid, not a war.

They approached each other, both eyeing the ground, in no obvious haste to begin. Brand Leofson smiled thinly. "We're on a slope. Want to move to flatter ground?"

The other man—Brand had a vague sense he ought to know him—shrugged. "Same for both. Might as well be here."

The two swords were the same length, though Brand's was heavier than the other's Anglcyn blade. They were both big men, of a height, pretty much. Brand judged he had several years' advantage. Still, he was disconcerted to be facing another Erling. It was unexpected. Just about everything on this Ingavin-cursed raid had been.

"What did they do? Promise to free you if you won?"

The other was still looking around at the grass, gauging it. He shrugged a second time, indifferently. "I imagine they might do that, but it didn't come up. I suggested this, actually."

"Hungry for death?"

The other man met his gaze for the first time.

He was still higher up, looking down. Brand didn't like it, resolved to do something about that as soon as they started. "It comes for us. No need to be hungry, is there?"

One of those, it seemed. Not the sort of man Brand liked. Good. Made this even easier. He took a few more moments to do what the other was doing; noted a fallen branch to his left, a depression in the ground behind it.

He looked at the other man again. "You suggested it? Did me a service, then. This has been the worst voyage."

"I know. I was with Aeldred when they butchered you. It's because of Ragnarson. Ill luck in the man. You really killed him?" "On my ship."

"Should have turned home, then. Didn't someone tell you to? A good leader cuts losses before they grow."

Brand blinked, then swore. "Who in Thünir's name are you to tell me what a leader does? I'm a Jormsvik captain. Who are you?"

"Thorkell Einarson."

Only that, and Brand knew. Of course he knew. Strangeness piled on strangeness. Red Thorkell. This one was in the songs; had rowed with Siggur, his companion, one of those on the Ferrieres raid when they'd found the sword. The sword Brand had come to regain.

Well, that wasn't about to happen.

A weaker man, he told himself, would have been disturbed by this revelation. Brand wasn't. He refused to make too much of it. All that history just meant the other man was older than he'd guessed. Good, again.

"Will they honour the terms?" he asked, not commenting on the name or showing any reaction. It was on his mind, though: how could it not be?

"The Cyngael? They're angry. Have been since the raid here. You kill anyone on the way?"

"No one. Oh. Well, one. Woodcutter."

The red-beard shrugged again. "One isn't so much."

Brand spat, cleared his throat. "We didn't know how to get here. I told you, a terrible raid. Worst since a time in Karch."

That was deliberately told. Let this one know Brand Leofson had been about, too. Something occurred to him. "You were the Volgan's oarmate. What are you doing fighting for the pig who killed him?"

"A good question. Not the place to answer it."

Brand snorted. "You think we'll find a better place?" "No."

Einarson had courteously moved down and to one side, so they stood level on the slope, facing each other. He lifted his blade, pointing to the sky in salute. The conversation, evidently, was over. An arrogant bastard. A pleasure to kill him.

"I'm going to slice you apart," Brand said—Hoddson's words a moment ago, he liked the ring of them. He returned the salute.

Einarson seemed unruffled. Brand needed more from him. He was trying to work himself into anger, the fury that had him fighting his best.

"You aren't good enough," Thorkell Einarson said.

That would help. "Oh? Want to see, old man?"

"I suppose I'm about to. You've charged your companions with what you want done with your body? Have you a request of me?"

Courtesy again, Erling ritual. He was doing everything properly, and Brand was beginning to hate him. It was useful. He shook his head. "I am ready for what comes. Ingavin watch now and watch over me. Who guards your soul, Einarson? The Jaddite god?"

"Another good question." The red-haired man hesitated for the first time, then smiled, a curious expression. "No. Habits die hard, after all." With that same odd look on his face he said, exactly as Brand had done, "I am ready for what comes. Ingavin watch now and watch over me."

And whatever all that meant, Brand didn't know, nor did he care. Someone had to start. You could kill a man at the start. They were only wearing leather. He feinted a thrust and cut low on his backhand. If you took someone in the leg he was finished. A favourite attack, done with power. Blocked. It began.

What he knew of fighting he knew from his father. A handful of lessons as he'd grown through boyhood, offered irregularly, without notice or warning. At least twice when Thorkell had been suffering the after-effects of stumbling at dawn out of a tavern. He'd grab swords, helms, gloves, order his son to follow him outside. Something in the way of a father's duty, was the sense of it. There were things Bern needed to know. Thorkell told them, or showed them, briskly, not lingering to amplify, then had Bern take the weapons and armour back in while he carried on himself with whatever else needed tending to on a given day. A son's footwork as important—not necessarily more so—as a milk goat's bad foot.

You noted your opponent's weapon, looked to see if he had more than one, studied the ground, the sun, kept your own blade clean, had at least one knife on you always, because there were times when weapons could clash and shatter. If you were very strong you could use a hammer or an axe, but they were better in battle, not individual combat, and Bern was unlikely to grow big enough for them. He'd do better to be aware of that, work at being quick. You kept your feet moving, always, his father had said.

Nothing ever in the tone, Bern remembered, beyond simple observation. And observation, simple or otherwise, was the underlying note to all the terse words spoken. Bern had killed a Jormsvik captain with these injunctions in his head: judging the other man to be hot-tempered, overconfident, too full of himself for caution, riding a less-sure horse than Gyllir. Bern was a rider, Gyllir his advantage. You watched the other, his father had said, learned what you could, either before or while you fought.

Bern watched. The late-day light was uncannily clear after the mist of the mornings through which they'd come to this ending.

The two men circling each other, engaging, breaking to circle again, were etched by brilliant light. Nothing shrouded now. You could see every movement, every gesture and flex.

His father was years removed from fighting days, had the bad shoulder (his mother used to rub liniment into it at night) and a hip that nothing really helped in wet weather. Brand was harder, still a raider, quicker than such a big man ought to be, but had the bad, covered eye.

He also, Bern realized, after the two men had exchanged half a dozen clashes and withdrawals, did something when he tried a certain attack. Bern was watching; saw it. His father had taught him how. His father was fighting for his life. Bern felt unsteady, light-headed. Couldn't do anything about that.

"Jad's blood! He's too old to keep parrying. He needs to win quickly!"

Brynn was at Alun's side, swearing and exclaiming in a steady, ferocious undertone, his own body twisting with the two men fighting below. Alun didn't see either man faltering yet, or any obvious opportunities to end it quickly. Thorkell was mostly retreating, trying to keep from being forced below the other man on the slope. The Jormsvik leader was very fast, and Alun was putting real effort into resisting a deeply private, shaming awareness of relief: he wasn't at all sure he could have matched this man. In fact

"Hah! Again! See it? See? Because of the eye!"

"What?" Alun glanced quickly at Brynn.

"Turns his head left before he cuts on the backhand. To follow his line. He gives it away! Holy god of the sun, Thorkell has to see that!"

Alun hadn't noticed it. He narrowed his gaze to concentrate, watch for what Brynn had said, but in that same moment he began to feel something strange: a pulsing, a presence, inexplicable, even painful, inside his head. He tried to thrust it away, attend to the fight, the details of it. Green kept impinging, though, the colour green; and it wasn't the grass or the leaves.

Rhiannon, watching two men fight, was dealing with something so new to her she couldn't identify it at first. It took her some moments to understand that what she was contending with was rage. A fury white as waves in storm, black as a piled-up thundercloud, no shading to it, no nuance at all. Anger, consuming her. Her hands were clenched. She could kill. It was in her: she wanted to kill someone right now.

"We should not have come," her mother said, softly. "We make them weaker."

Not what she wanted to hear. "He'd have taken the fight himself if you hadn't been here."

"They'd have stopped him," Enid said.

"They'd have tried. You're the only one who could. You know it."

Her mother looked at her, seemed about to say something, but did not. They watched the men below. It was eerily clear and bright just now.

The men below. What, Rhiannon mer Brynn thought savagely, was a woman? What was her life? Even here in the Cyngael lands, celebrated—or notorious—for their womenfolk, what, really, could they ever hope to be or do at a time like this? A time that mattered.

Easy enough, she thought bitterly, as swords clashed. They could watch, and wring their delicate hands, her mother and herself, but only if they first disobeyed clear and specific instructions to stay away and hide. Hide, hide! Or they could be targets for an attack, be violated, killed, or taken and sold as slaves, then mourned and exalted in song. Song, Rhiannon thought savagely. She could kill a singer, too.

Women were children till they first bled, then married to make children, and—if Jad was kind—their children would be boys who could farm and defend their land or go off to fight one day. There was a ten-year-old boy here with a small scythe. A ten-year-old.

She stood by her mother, aware that Enid was still trembling (uncharacteristically) because she'd been so sure Brynn would fight and die here. There might be some pattern or purpose at work, that her mother had saved a red-bearded Erling's life in the farmyard that night, claiming him, and now that man had taken Brynn's fight upon himself.

There might be a pattern. Rhiannon didn't care. Not right now. She wanted them all dead, these Erlings, here simply because they could come, in their longships with their swords and axes, because they exulted in killing and blood and death in battle so their gods would grant them yellow-haired maidens for eternity.

Rhiannon wished she had the powers of the Cyngael goddesses of old, the ones they were forbidden even to name since they'd embraced Jad here in the west. She wished she could invoke stone and oak, kill the raiders herself, leave bodies hacked in pieces on this grass. Let those yellow-haired maidens put them back together. If they wanted to.

She'd blood-eagle them. See if the so-fierce raiders of the sea came back here after that. Her mood of the long summer was entirely gone, swept like fog before wind: that wistful, aching, sleepless sense that things had gone awry. They had, they had. But there was a lesson to be learned: love and longing were not what life in the northlands was about. She knew it now. She was seeing it. The world was too hard. You needed to become harder yourself.

She stood beside her mother, her face expressionless, showing no least hint of what was raging within her. You could look at Rhiannon, limned in that brilliant light, and see her as a dark-haired maiden of sorrows. She would kill you, if she could, for thinking that.

Another young woman, in Esferth far to the east, would have entirely understood these thoughts, sharing many, though with a different fire in her, and one she'd lived with all her life, no sudden discovery.

The bitterness of a woman's lot, the helplessness with which you watched brothers and other men ride out to glory with iron at their sides, was nothing new for her. Judit, daughter of Aeldred, wanted battle and lordship and hardship as much as any Erling raider cresting waves in a dragon-ship, coming ashore in surf.

Instead, she was readying herself for her wedding this winter to a boy in Rheden. She was working, this day, with her mother and her ladies, embroidering. There were skills a highborn lady was expected to bring to her marriage house.

By contrast to both of these, King Aeldred's younger daughter saw the world in a very different way, although this, too, had been suffering change, moment by moment, through these last, late days of summer.

Right now, with a pulsing pain behind her eyes and images impinging, erratic and uncontrollable like sparks from a fire, Kendra knew only that she needed to find the Cyngael cleric again, to tell him something important.

He wasn't at the royal chapel or the smaller one where he'd been before. She was in real distress. The sunlight, late in the day, forced her to screen her eyes. It occurred to her to wonder if this was what happened to her father when his fever took him, but she wasn't warm or faint. Only hurting, and with a terrifying, impossible awareness of fighting in the west, and a sword in her mind, flashing and going, and coming again, over and over.

It was her brother who found Ceinion for her. Gareth, summoned by a messenger, had taken one frightened look at Kendra sitting on a bench in the small chapel (unable to go back into the light, just yet) and had gone running, shouting for others to join him in the search. He came back (she wasn't sure how much time had passed) and led her by the elbow through the streets to the bright (too bright), airy room her father had had made for the clerics who were transcribing manuscripts for him. She'd kept her eyes closed, let Gareth guide her.

The king was there, among the working scribes, and Ceinion was with him, blessedly. Kendra walked in, one hand held by her brother, the other to her eyes, and she stopped, desperately unsure of how to proceed with her father here.

"Father. My lord high cleric." She managed that much, then stopped.

Ceinion looked at her, stood quickly. Could be seen to make a decision of his own. "Prince Gareth, of a kindness will you have a servant bring the brown leather purse from my rooms? Your sister needs a remedy I can offer her."

"I'll get it myself," said Gareth, and hurried out the door. Ceinion spoke a quiet word. The three scribes stood up at their desks, bowed to the king, and went out past Kendra.

Her father was still here.

"My lady," said Ceinion, "is this more of that matter of which we spoke before?"

She hesitated, in pain, in something more than pain. They burned witches, for heresy. She looked at her father. And heard Ceinion of Llywerth say, gravely, changing the way of things one more time, "There is no transgression here. Your royal father also knows the world of which you speak."

Kendra's mouth fell open. Aeldred had also stood, looking from one to the other of them. He was pale, but thoughtful, calm. Kendra felt as if she were going to fall down.

"Child," said her father, "it is all right. Tell me what you are seeing from the half-world now."

She didn't fall. She was spared that shame. They helped her to a high stool where a cleric had been working. The manuscript in front of her on the tilted surface of the desk had a gloriously coloured initial capital, half a page in height: the letter «G» with a griffin arched along its curve. The word it began, Kendra saw, was Glory.

She said, as clearly, as carefully as she could, "They are through the spirit wood. Or the Cyngael prince, Alun ab Owyn, is. He's the one I can… see. There are blades drawn, there is fighting."

"Where?"

"I don't know."

"Athelbert?"

She shook her head. The movement hurt. "I don't… see him, but I never did. Only the Cyngael, and I don't know why."

"Why should we understand?" her father said after a moment, gentle as rain. He looked at Ceinion, and then back at her. "Child, forgive me. This comes to you from me, I believe. You have the gift or curse I carry, to see that which most of us are spared. Kendra, there is no sin or failing in you."

"Nor in you, then, my lord," said Ceinion firmly, "if that is true, and I believe it is. Nor need you punish yourself for it. There are purposes we do not understand, as you say. Good, and the will of the god, are served in different guises."

She saw her father look at the grey-haired cleric, in his pale yellow robe of the god. The brightness of the robe hurt her eyes. "They are fighting?" her father said, turning back to her. "Someone is. I see swords and… and another sword." "Close your eyes," said Ceinion. "You are loved here and will be guarded. Do not hide from what you are being given. I do not believe there is evil in it. Trust to Jad."

"To Jad? But how? How can I—"

"Trust. Do not hide."

His voice held the music of the Cyngael. Kendra closed her eyes. Dizziness, disorientation, unrelenting pain. Do not hide. She was trying not to. She saw the sword again, the one she'd asked the cleric about before, small, silver, shining in darkness, though there were no moons.

She saw green again, green, didn't understand, and then she remembered something, though she still did not understand.

Green was wrapped around this, as a forest wrapped a glade. She cried out then, real pain, grief, in a bright room in Esferth. And on a slope in Arberth above where two men were fighting to the death, someone heard her cry, in his mind, and saw what she saw, what she gave him, and knew more than she knew.

She heard him say her name, in fear, and wonder, then another name. And then, with exquisite courtesy, given what she'd just done to him and what he had understood from it, he paused long enough to offer clearly to her, mind to mind, across river and valley and forest, what she surely needed to be told, so far away.

Who can know, who can ever know for certain, how the instruments are chosen?

Kendra opened her eyes. Looked at her father's hand which was holding hers the way he hadn't done since she was small, and she gazed up at him, crying, first time that day, and said, "Athelbert is there. He came alive through the wood."

"Oh, Jad," said her father. "Oh, my children."

+

If you wanted to defeat a man like this you had a narrow path to tread (and you kept your feet moving). Brand Leofson wasn't going to fall to some reckless thrust or slash and he was too big to overpower. You needed enough time to mark him, discover inclinations, the way he responded to what you tried, how he initiated his own attacks, what he said. (Some men talked too much.) But the time passing cut both ways as it slashed by: the Jormsviking was fast, and younger than you were. You'd be lying to yourself, fatally, if you thought you could linger to sort things out, or wear him down.

You had to do your watching quickly, draw conclusions, if there were any to be drawn, set him up for whatever it was you found. Such as, for example, a habit—clearly never pointed out to him—of turning his head to the left before he slashed on the backhand, to let the good right eye follow his blade. And he liked to slash low, sea-raider's attack: a man with a wounded leg was out of a fight, you could move right past him.

So you knew two things, quite soon in fact, and if you wanted to defeat a man like this you had an idea what needed to be done. You were also, a quarter-century past your own best years, still more than good enough to do it.

And no lying to the self in that. Thorkell Einarson hadn't been prone to that vice for a long time. There was a hard expression on his face as he retreated again and read the backhand cut one more time. He blocked it, didn't let it seem too easy. Circled right around again, below and then back to level, denying the other man the upslope he wanted. Not hard, not really hard yet. Knew what he was doing still. Could be worn down, would grow tired, but not too soon if Leofson kept signalling half his blows like that. There was a sequence you could use when you knew the other man had committed to a backhand slash.

The light was really very bright, an element in this combat, the westering sun shining along their slope, striking the two of them, the trees, the grass, the watchers above and below. No clouds west, dark ones piled up east—and those, underlit, made the late-day sky seem even more intense. He'd known evenings like this among the Cyngael, perhaps more valued because of the rain and mist that usually wrapped these hills and silent valleys.

A land some men could grow accustomed to, but he didn't think he was the sort, unless in Llywerth by the sea. He needed the sea, always had; salt in the blood didn't leave you. He parried a downward blow (heavy, that one) then feinted a first low, forehand blow to see what Leofson would do. Overreacted—he would worry more on that side because of his eye. Hard on the hip, though, slashing that way. Ap Hywll's wife had named her husband's ailments. It might have been amusing, somewhere else. Thorkell's could have done the same with his. He briefly wondered where Frigga was now, how the two girls were faring, the grandsons he hadn't seen. Bern was here. His son was here.

It had been, thought Thorkell Einarson, a long-enough life.

Not without its share of rewards. Jad—or Ingavin and Thünir, whatever was waiting for him—hadn't been unkind to him. He wouldn't say it. You made your own fortune, and your own mistakes.

If you wanted to defeat a man like this… He smiled then, and began. It was time.

The raider facing him would remember that smile. Thorkell feinted again, as before, to draw the too-wide response. Followed, quickly, with a downward blow that Brand blocked, jarringly.

Then he let himself seem to hesitate, as if tired, unsure, his right leg still forward, exposed.

("Watch!" said ap Hywll sharply, higher up the slope.) (Bern, below them, caught his breath.)

Brand Leofson went for the deception, signalling his backhand again with a turned head. And once he'd committed himself—Thorkell's blade moved high, to his own backhand.

Too soon.

Before Leofson had fully shifted his weight. A terrible mistake. Right side and chest wide open to a man still balanced. A fighting man with time (It was time) to change from a sweeping backhand slash to a short, straight-ahead thrust with a heavy sword. Heavy enough to pierce leather and flesh to the beating, offered heart.

Watching, Bern sank to his knees, a roaring in his ears. A sound like the surf on stones, so far inland.

Leofson pulled free his blade, not easily. It had gone a long way in. He had an odd expression on his face, as though he wasn't sure what had just happened. Thorkell Einarson was still standing, and smiling at him. "Watch the backhand," the red-haired man said to him, very low, no one else in the world to hear it. "You're giving it away, every time."

Brand lowered his bloodied sword, brow furrowing. You weren't supposed to… you didn't say things like that.

Thorkell swayed another moment, as if held up by the light, in the light. Then he turned his head. Not towards ap Hywll, for whom he'd taken this fight, or the two young princes with whom he'd gone through a wood and out of time, but to the Erlings on the slope below them, led here to what would have been their dying.

Or to one of them, really, at the end.

And he had enough strength left, before he toppled like a tree cut down, to speak, not very clearly, a single word.

"Champieres," he seemed to say, though it could have been something else. Then he fell into the green grass, face to the far sky, and whichever god or gods might be looking down, or might not be.

A long-enough life. Not without gifts. Taken, and given. All mistakes his own. Ingavin knew.