It was that last, he was sure, that had induced the cleric to nod sagely, stroke a weak, beardless chin, and agree that the simpler ways were often best, fulfilling the god's purposes entirely well.

They left the horizontal wheel alone. Brogan took the chapel's share of the mill's earnings (in coin or kind) to them every second week. He was prompt about that sort of thing; it kept people from coming round and talking.

He did hold back a slightly higher portion for himself. If you set that up from the outset, they were unlikely to have questions. He'd been through this before. The cleric had asked about written records on that first visit, Brogan had explained he didn't know how to write. He'd declined an offer of reading lessons. Leave it to the young ones, he'd said.

People were always wanting to change things. Brogan couldn't understand it. Change was going to come, why hurry it along? The king had even sent around new instructions for farmers at the end of this past winter, with the archers from the fyrd, on how to properly handle their fields. Alternating crops. What to grow. As if anyone at court knew anything about farming. Brogan had never been near the king's court (only twice up to Esferth town, which was twice more than enough) but he knew what he thought of it. You didn't need to eat dung to know you wouldn't like the taste.

He leaned out the window and looked upstream to his right. Modig had fed the chickens, was at work in the herb and vegetable garden. A virtue to having a farmer's son here: the garden was looking better than it had in years. Brogan wasn't fussy about what he ate, but he liked turnips and parsnips with his bread and broth and fish, and a decent seasoning as much as the next man, and Modig had a way with the garden. Of course, thought the miller sourly, if he'd had counsel from the courtiers on what seedlings and how much dung to use, it would doubtless be far better.

He spat again into the stream below, saw the pale harbinger of sunrise in the east, and muttered his customary two-sentence version of the rites. His own idea of Jad was not of a god who needed a lot of words. You acknowledged him, gave thanks, and got on with what you had to do. And it didn't need to be done in a chapel. You could pray in a mill over water, gazing out at the fields.

Gazing out at the fields, Brogan the miller saw—in the last near-darkness of a summer night—twenty men or more downstream from him, kneeling beside the water or knee-deep in it, drinking and filling flasks.

He drew his head back quickly, because he saw that they carried weapons. Weapons meant—since they were being quiet and were nowhere near the north-south road—that these were outlaws, or even Erlings, and not simply passing by on their way to trade peacefully at the Esferth fair. Brogan swallowed, his palms suddenly sweaty, scalp prickling. He thought of his coins buried in the yard and just outside it. He thought of death. Armed men across the stream. A large number of men.

Not, in the event, large enough.

From the north, Brogan suddenly heard a dog. His heart lurched. It was a deep, fierce, triumphant howl; not one of his own dogs, though they immediately started their own wild barking in the fenced yard. He looked out, carefully. The men in the stream had begun scrambling from the water, splashing, stumbling, unsheathing swords. They formed, at a shouted string of commands, a tight, disciplined order and began running south.

They were Erlings, then. The language gave it away, and no outlaws would be nearly so precise in their formation and movements. Brogan leaned out, looking past where Modig had now stopped working in the garden and was standing rigid, also watching. That howling came again, a sound he would remember. Wouldn't ever want to be hunted by that. Brogan heard hoofbeats and shouting over the barking of his own dogs, and into his field of vision, streaming down from the north, came a galloping company, swords drawn, spears out, hurtling through the stream.

In the pre-dawn light he saw a banner, and Brogan the miller understood that this was the king's fyrd, and that they had seen the Erlings and were going to catch up to them just across the water from his mill. His heart was pounding as if he, too, were running or riding. He had been expecting, moments ago, to be killed here, fingers broken one by one—or worse things—until he told where his money was. The nightmare that came in his sleep.

Leaning out, he saw the Erlings turn to face the horsemen bearing swiftly down upon them. He didn't like King Aeldred, all his changes, the new taxes levied to support fyrd and forts, but at this particular moment, watching those horsemen surround the Erlings, such feelings were… suspended.

Brogan left the mill, went out the door, walked down to the stream. Modig, holding a spade, opened the garden gate and came over, stood beside him. The dogs were still barking. Brogan snapped a command over his shoulder and they stopped.

There was a grey mist on the millstream, rising. Through it, as the pale sun came up, they watched what happened in the meadow on the other side. The millwheel turned.

+

It occurred to Alun at some point during the night ride south that he was surrounded now by Anglcyn warriors, who had traditionally been his enemies, racing to intercept Erlings, who were enemies as well. One of Athelbert's archers had given him a sword and belt, at the prince's command. You could name it a friend's gesture. You had to, really.

For the Cyngael, he thought, friends were hard to come by in the world. And that, if you stopped to think about it, really did make the feuds between Arberth and Cadyr and Llywerth harder to justify. That wasn't something people did think about, though, west of the Rheden Wall. Their endless internal warring was… the way things were. The three provinces raided and goaded each other, fought for primacy, always had. His father, Alun knew, would have preferred stealing a herd of cattle from an arrogant Arberthi and hearing his bard sing about it after, to any foray across the Wall into Rheden, or even mauling Erling raiders.

Though that last might not be true any more, not since Dai was killed. He couldn't be sure, but he thought his father had changed through the spring and summer. Alun was aware of changes within himself, shaped around loss and what he'd seen in that pool by Brynnfell. He didn't know where the changes had taken him, but he knew they were there.

He wasn't sure exactly where he was right now, galloping south-east between copses of trees, but he did know—or believe—that the man who'd led the raid that killed his brother was somewhere ahead of them. Ivarr Ragnarson had eluded pursuit near Brynnfell, fled to his ships and away—and had now killed a good man here. He needed to die. It was… important he be killed.

If you stopped to think about it. There was no time to stop tonight—two short rests allowed by the king, no more than a pause to drink at streams, fill flasks, then riding again—but he had plenty of time to think under the summer stars as the blue moon westered through clouds and went down behind the woods. There were riders all around him, but their faces—and his—were shielded from scrutiny. The shelter of darkness, the… need for it. And with that, the memory came back to him, inescapable, who had said exactly that, and when: Needful as night.

Rhiannon mer Brynn, clad in green at her father's table, the night his brother had died and had his soul stolen away. He realized he hadn't let himself think about her, those words, his own song, since then, as if flinching from too fiercely bright a fire. Do you hate me so much, my lord?

Alun looked over towards the woods. More darkness, blurred in distance, the river somewhere between. He thought of the faerie, her hair changing colour, the light she'd made, and he began to wonder, riding, exactly what the world was, how it was crafted, how he'd make his own peace with Jad… and the high cleric on the horse ahead of him, beside King Aeldred.