The balance seemed to tilt in Bern's mind as he turned from watching the horse lifted aboard to regarding the twist-mouthed, dripping wet, white-faced, white-haired, pale-eyed grandson of Siggur Volganson, last surviving heir of the greatest of all their warriors.

Ivarr strode to stand directly in front of Leofson.

"How dare you leave shore without me, you worm-eaten lump of dung!" he said. You couldn't get used to his voice. No one else talked like that. It was icy, and it cut.

Brand Leofson, so addressed, looked at Ivarr with what seemed genuine perplexity. This was his ship, he was leader of a Jormsvik raid, a captain of many years' standing, surrounded by his fellows. He shook his head slowly, as if to clear it, then he knocked Ivarr to-the deck with a backhanded blow to the face.

"Pull away!" he called over his shoulder. "Hard on the benches, all of you! Out of sight of shore, sail up, whichever way the wind takes us. We'll have a lantern council at darkfall. Signal the others. And you," he said, turning back to Ragnarson, "will stay where you are, on the deck. If you stand up I will knock you down again. If you do it twice I swear by Ingavin's eye and my own I will throw you into the sea."

Ivarr Ragnarson stared up at him but didn't move. The too-pale eyes, Bern decided, held more black rage than he'd have ever thought to see in a man. He looked away. His father (he didn't want to think about his father) had warned him.

The youngest of the mercenaries turned away. Ivarr saw fear in his face. Ivarr was used to both: people avoided looking at him all the time, after furtive glances of horror and fascination, and there was often fear. Ivarr Ragnarson was white as a bone, malformed at one shoulder, his eyes were strange (and not good in bright sunlight)—and men were riddled with fears of the unknown, of spirits, of angry, unassuaged gods.

This young one—he couldn't remember names, people didn't matter enough—had a different quality to his apprehension, though. Something more than the obvious. Ivarr couldn't say what it was, but he could sense it. He had a skill that way.

To be considered later. As was the fact that he was going to kill Brand Leofson. He'd been struck twice today by mongrels from Jormsvik. One of them, Skallson, had already been slain by the Anglcyn, denying Ivarr the pleasure. This one here would have to be allowed to live a little longer: Leofson was needed, if this raid was still going to work. Sometimes pleasures had to be deferred.

Lying on the deck of a ship, salt-soaked, bruised and exhausted and bleeding, Ivarr Ragnarson felt sure of his control of events, even now. It helped that almost everyone you dealt with was a fool, weak, though they might think themselves hard, undermined by needs and desires, friendships and ambitions.

Ivarr had no such weaknesses. He was cut off by his appearance from any possibility of leadership and acceptance. That disposed of ambition. Friendship, as well. And his desires were… other than those of most men.

His brother Mikkel—dead in a Cyngael farmyard, one of Ingavin's great hulking fools in life—had actually thought he could be a leader of the Erling people, the way their grandfather was. That was why Mikkel had wanted to go to Brynnfell. Revenge, and the sword. With the Volgan's sword in hand, he'd said, ale cup sloshing about, he could rally people around him, to the family's name.

He might have, if he hadn't been thick in the head like a plough ox, and if Kjarten Vidurson—a man Ivarr had to admit he wondered about—hadn't clearly been readying himself for a claim of kingship in Hlegest, with infinitely more weight than Mikkel would ever have had.

Ivarr hadn't said anything about that. He'd wanted Mikkel's raid to happen. His own reasons for going were so much simpler than his brother's: he was bored, and he liked killing people.

Vengeance and a raid made killing all right in the eyes of the world. With nothing to aspire to, no status to seek or favour to attain, Ivarr's was an uncomplicated existence, in some ways.

When you looked only to yourself, decisions came more easily. People who harmed or crossed you were to be dealt with without exception. That now included those Cyngael at Brynnfell who had sent him fleeing through a night wood, then desperately back to the ships last spring. That also meant this maggot, Brand One-eye, right here, but only after he'd done what Ivarr needed him to do, which was get him back west.

There were deaths to be accomplished there first. And he still wanted to see if he could grasp and spread someone's lungs out on the red, cracked-open cage of their ribs while they remained alive, bubbling, blood-soaked. It was a hard thing to do. You needed opportunities to practise before you could do something so delicate.

When your needs were uncomplicated, it was easy enough to spend a good part of the resources you had (last of the Volgans, heir to all they possessed) buying two hundred mercenaries at the end of a summer.

If people had trouble looking at your face for long it was hardly difficult to lie to them. The Jormsvikings were smug, complacent, full of self-love, beefy and drunken, amusingly easy to deceive, for all their celebrated prowess on ship and in battle. They were what they were, Ivarr thought: tools.

He had dropped gold and silver onto a trestle table in a Jormsvik barracks hall, and told them that Aeldred's coastal burh at Drengest was unfinished, under-defended, with ships they might seize for themselves and a newly dedicated sanctuary with too much gold.

He'd seen this, he said, when he and his brother went west in spring. And a watchman they'd taken and killed for information, along the coast, had told them before he died that the king and fyrd were spending the summer at Raedhill, hunting north of it, leaving Esferth exposed. Another lie, but Ivarr was good at lying.

Ale went round a smoke-filled room, then round again, and songs were sung about Jormsvik glories in days gone by. And then came another predictable song (Ivarr had heard it too many times, but made himself smile, as if in rue and remembrance) about Siggur Volganson and the great summer of twin assaults on Ferrieres and Karch, and the famous raid on the hidden sanctuary at Champieres, where he'd — claimed his sword. More drinking during that, and after. Men asleep at the tables, heads down among spilled ale and guttered candles:

In the morning Ivarr formally paid the mercenaries to make it worth their while to sail, even if they should find little enough for the taking in the Anglcyn lands. He stung their pride—so easily—pointing out how long it had been since they'd challenged Aeldred on his own soil.

There was glory to be won, swords to be reddened, Ivarr said, before dark winter came to the northlands again and closed the wild sea. Make it sound like music, he'd found, and listeners would dance to your song—while not looking at your face.

Simple, really. Men were easy to deceive. You needed only to be clear in your mind about what you wanted them to do. Ivarr always had been, was even more so now. Brynn ap Hywll and any of his family found were to be staked out naked, alive, in the slop and mud of their own farmyard while Ivarr carved them one by one. Ap Hywll was fat as a summer hog, he'd need to cut deep. That was all right, it was not a difficulty.

The blood-eagle rite was a final act of vengeance for his slain brother and grandfather, he would say, sadly. A ritual done in honour of Ingavin's ravens and eagles and in memory of the Volgan line, of which he was the last. After him, they would be no more. And men would hear it and look sorrowful. Would even honour him for it around winter fires.

Amusing. But to make it happen he had to get these ships to Cyngael shores. That was the only uncertain part, if you excepted the fortune that underlay his finding those merchants with a horse earlier today. That, he didn't actually want to think about right now. He'd have missed the ships, otherwise, been left on a hostile coast alone. Perhaps he should think about it. Perhaps Ingavin or Thünir was showing his lordly countenance to a pale, small, crooked figure after all. And what could that mean, after so many years?