It was only then that she saw that one of them was an Erling.

Ebor, the son of Bordis, never minded being posted to night duty on the walls, wherever the court happened to be. He'd even made some friends by taking watches assigned to others, leaving them free for the taverns. A solitary sort of man (much the same when a boy), he took a deep, hard-to-explain comfort from being awake and alone while others feasted or drank or slept, or did the other things one did in the night.

Sometimes a woman, walking near the walls, offering her song to the dark, would call up to him from the bottom of the steps. Ebor would decline while on duty, though not always afterwards. A man had his needs, and he'd never married. Youngest son of a farmer, no land, no prospect of it. He'd joined the standing army of the king. Younger sons did that, everywhere. The way the world was made, no point brooding on it. The army gave you companions, shelter, enough money (usually, not always) for ale and a girl and your weapon. Sometimes you fought and some of you died, though less often of late, as the Erling raiders slowly took the measure of Aeldred of the Anglcyn and the forts and fortified burhs he'd been building.

Some of the Erlings were allies now, actually paying tribute to the king. Something deep, passing strange in that, if one thought on it. Ebor wasn't a thinker, exactly, but long nights on watch did give you time for reflection.

Not tonight, however. Tonight, under drifting clouds and the waning blue moon, had been raddled with interruptions, and not from night-walkers offering interludes of love—though one was a woman. If you forced a man to make two decisions in haste, Ebor would later tell the king's chamberlain, humble and contrite, chances were he'd make a bad one, or two.

That, Osbert, son of Cuthwulf, would say quietly, is why we have standing orders about the gates at night. To remove the need to make a decision. And Ebor would bow his head, knowing this was so, and that this was not the time to point out that every guard on the wall disobeyed those orders in peacetime.

He would not be punished. The one death in the night was not initially thought to be connected in any way with events at the gate. This was, as it happened, another error, though not his.

The women were beginning to leave the hall, led by Elswith, the queen. Ceinion of Llywerth, placed at the king's right hand, had the distinct impression that the older princess, the red-haired one, was disinclined to surrender the evening, but Judit was going with her lady mother nonetheless. The younger daughter, Kendra, seemed to have already left. He hadn't seen her go. The quiet one, she was less vivid, more watchful. He liked them both.

His new Erling manservant, or guard (he still hadn't decided how to think of him), had also gone out; he'd come and asked permission to do so, earlier. Not a thing he'd really needed to do, under the circumstances, and Ceinion wasn't sure what to make of it. A request for dispensation, in some way. It had felt like that. He'd wanted to ask more about it, but there were others listening. Thorkell Einarson was a complex man, he'd decided. Most men, past a certain age, could be said to be. The young ones usually weren't, in his experience. The youths in this hall would want nothing more than glory, any way they could find it.

There were exceptions. The king, expansive and genial of mood, had already announced that they would essay the Cyngael's well-known triad game later, in honour of their visitors. Ceinion had glanced along the table at Alun then, wincing, and had known, immediately, that he would not linger for that. Alun ab Owyn had made his excuses, prettily, to the queen, asking leave to go to evening prayer, just before she walked out herself.

Elswith, clearly impressed by the young prince's piety, had offered to bring him to the royal sanctuary, but Alun had demurred. No music from him tonight, either, then. He hadn't brought his harp east on the journey; hadn't touched it since his brother had died, it appeared. Time needed to run further, Ceinion decided, a memory tugging at him from that wood by Brynn's farm. He pushed that one away.

With the food now being cleared and the restraining presence of the ladies gone, serious drinking could be expected at the long table running down the room. There were dice cups out, he saw. The older prince, Athelbert, had left his seat at the high table and moved farther down to join some of the others. Ceinion watched him set a purse in front of himself, smiling.

Beside Ceinion, King Aeldred leaned back in his cushioned chair, a pleased, anticipatory expression on his face. Ceinion looked past the king and the queen's now-empty seat to where a portly cleric from Ferrieres was brushing at food on his yellow robe, visibly content with the meal and wine he'd been offered in this remote northern place. Ferrieres prided itself, lately, on being next only to Batiara itself, and Sarantium, in cultivating the elements of civilization. They could afford to do so, Ceinion thought without rancour. Things were different here in the northlands. Harsher, colder, more… marginal. The edge of the world.

Aeldred turned to him, and Ceinion smiled back at the king, his hands clasped loosely on the tabletop. Alun ab Owyn was ravaged by his brother's death. Aeldred, at the same age, had seen his own brother and father killed on a battlefield, and learned of unspeakable things done to them. And he had accepted homage, not long after, from the man who had slain and butchered them, and let the man live. That same Erling's son was at this table now, in an honoured place. Ceinion wondered if he could talk to Alun about that, if it would mean anything. And then he thought again of the forest pool north of Brynnfell, and wished he'd never been there, or the boy.

He drank from his wine cup. This was the hour when, at a Cyngael feast, the musicians would be summoned to claim and shape a mood. Among the Erlings in Vinmark, too, for that matter, though the songs were not the same, or the mood. There might be wrestlers now, among the Anglcyn, jugglers, knife-throwing contests, drinking bouts. Or all of these at once, in a loud chaos to hold back the night outside.

Not at this court. "I now wish," said Aeldred of the Anglcyn, turning to one and then to the other of the clerics flanking him, "to discuss a translation thought I have, to render into our own tongue the writings of Kallimarchos, his meditations on the proper conduct of a good life. And then I would hear your reasoned opinions on the question of images of Jad and suitable decoration for a sanctuary. I hope you are not fatigued. Do you have a sufficiency of wine, each of you?"

A different sort of king, this one. A different way of pushing back the dark.

+

Thorkell hadn't wanted to go south from Brynnfell with the cleric and the younger son of Owyn ap Glynn and the dog. And he most emphatically hadn't wanted to continue east with them later in the summer to the Anglcyn lands. But when you cast the gambling bones (as he had) in the midst of a battle, and changed sides (as he had), you lost a large measure of control over your own life.

He could have fled once the eastern journey started. He'd done that once before, after surrendering to the Cyngael and converting to the sun god's faith. That had been a young man's wild flight: on foot, with a hostage, to finally arrive, wounded, bone-weary, among fellow Erlings in the north-east of this wide island.

A long time ago. A different man, really. And without the history he'd accrued, since. Thorkell Einarson would be known now to the survivors of that raiding party as having turned on his companions to save a Cyngael woman—and her father, the man who'd slain the Volgan, the man who was the reason they'd come inland so dangerously far. He was, to put it delicately, unsure of a welcome among his people in the east.