"My grandfather's blade, taken when ap Hywll killed him. The death never avenged, to my shame—and our people's."

"That was twenty-five years ago! We're mercenaries, for the great gods' sake!"

Ivarr lifted his head, let his pale eyes seem to blaze in the torchlight. "How much glory do you think you'd gain, Brand Leofson, you and every man here, all of Jormsvik, if you were the ones to regain that sword?"

A satisfying silence on the deck, and across the water. He'd spoken loudly, ringing it out, that the other boats, approaching, might also hear. He pushed on, next part of the song. "And more: do you not think it might even give you, give all of us, some power and protection from Vidurson should he prove… other than some think he is?"

He hadn't planned this, either. He was very happy with it. "What does that mean?" Leofson snarled, now pacing like a bear on the deck.

Ivarr allowed himself to straighten, an equal speaking to an equal. It was necessary to have that status back. "What does it mean? Tell me, men of Jormsvik, how joyously will a northern man who sets himself as king over all the Erlings—the first in four generations—look upon a walled fortress of fighting men in the south who answer only to themselves?" It was like music, a poem, he was shaping a

"If this is so," interrupted a voice again, "you might have raised it with us, and let us take counsel at home. You said no single word about Kjarten Vidurson. Or about Arberth, or the Volgan's sword. Instead, tricked to sea with outright lies, sixty good men are dead." It was the boy, the scarcely bearded one. He snorted. "Didn't that watchman you say you captured in spring tell you about the new fair starting this year?"

Ivarr's flaring anger calmed quickly. So easy, it was. They made it so easy. He wanted to laugh. They were fools, even when they weren't.

"He did say that," he replied, keeping his voice mild. The second question had so nicely taken him off the harder first one. "But he said that because the fair was just beginning—as you say—the king was leaving it to his stewards. That's why I thought there'd be merchants to raid, with few to guard them, rich takings for brave men."

"Just beginning?"

"As you said," Ivarr murmured.

The young one, not as big a man as Leofson but well-enough made, began to laugh. Laughing at Ivarr. With others watching and listening. This was not permitted. He'd killed his sister for laughing like that, when she was twelve and he was nine.

"I will not be made mock of," Ivarr snapped, a hotness in his brain.

"No?" said the other man. His amusement subsided. He had looked away before; he wasn't doing so now. Lights had been hung on the ships' railings, all five of them, and at prow and stern. They were aglow, these ships on the water, marking the presence of mortal men on the wide, darkening sea. "I don't think I'm mocking you, actually. Or not only that."

"What are you saying, Bern?" asked Leofson, quietly. Bern. The name. To be remembered.

"He's still lying. Even now. You know the peasants' saying. To trap a fox, you let him trap himself. He just did. Listen: this is the third year of the Esferth Fair, not the first. Every man we met on the road knew it. The city was thronged, Brand, overflowing. Tents in the fields. Guards everywhere, and the fyrd. I said `first year' to see what this fox would do with it. And you heard. Don't call him a maggot. He's too dangerous."

Ivarr cleared his throat. "So the ignorant peasant we captured was wrong about—"

"No," said the one called Bern. "I planted that thought in your head, Ragnarson. You captured no watchman. You never put ashore here. You went straight to Brynnfell in Arberth, and failed. So you wanted to go back—there, nowhere else—for your own blood-hunger. Ingavin's blind eye, sixty men are dead because you lied to us."

"And he killed an earl we took," someone shouted from the ship nearest to them. "An earl!" Voices echoed that.

Greed, thought Ivarr. They were driven by greed. And vanity. Both could be used, always. The hotness was making it harder to think clearly, though, to take back control of this. If the one named Bern would only shut his mouth. If he'd been on one of the other ships… such a small change in the world.

Ivarr looked at the man more closely. A ship on either side of theirs now, men lashing them together, practised ease. It had grown darker. His eyes worked better in this twilight with lanterns. Ingavin's blind eye.

Something slid into place with that phrase.

"Who is your father?" he said sharply, anger cracking through, with awareness. "I think I know—"

"He's a Jormsviking!" snapped Brand, his voice crashing in, heavy as a smith's hammer. "We are born when we pass through the walls into brotherhood. Our histories do not matter, we shed them. Even maggots like you know that of us."

"Yes, yes! But I think I know… The way he speaks… I think his father was with—"

Brand struck him, a second time, harder than before, on the mouth. Ivarr went down on his back, spat blood, then a tooth. Someone laughed. The hotness went red. He reached towards the dagger in his boot, then stopped, controlling himself to control men. He could be killed here, going for a weapon. Sprawled on his back, he looked up at the big man over him, spat red again, to the side. Spread his hands, to show they were empty.

Saw a sword, then another one, both bright, as if flaming, torchlight upon them. He died there—astonished, it could be said—as Leofson's heavy blade spitted him, biting deep into the deck beneath his body.

Bern reminded himself to breathe. His arm, holding a sword, was at his side. Brand had knocked it away with his own before killing Ivarr with a thrust that had the full force of his body behind it.

Leofson levered his weapon free, with difficulty. There was a silence amid the lanterns, under the first stars. Brand turned to Bern, a curious expression on his scarred countenance.

"You're too young," he said unexpectedly. "Whatever else he was, this was the last of the Volgans. Too heavy a weight to carry all your life. Better it was me."

Bern found it difficult to speak. He managed a nod, though he wasn't sure he really understood what the older man was saying. There was a stillness, a sense of weight all about them, though. This was not an ordinary death.

"Put him overboard at the stern," Brand said. "Attor, do the `Last Song, and properly. We don't need any god angry tonight."

Men moved to do his bidding. You put Erlings into the sea if they died on the water. Last of the Volgans, Bern thought. The phrase in his head kept repeating itself.

"He… he killed sixty men today. As if he'd done it himself." "True enough," said Brand, almost indifferently.

He was moving on already, Bern realized. Leader of a raid, other things to consider, decisions to be made. He heard a splash. Attor's voice rose. They would be able to hear it on the other boats.

Bern found that his hands were shaking. He looked at his sword, which he was still holding, and sheathed it. He went to the side of the ship, by his own oar, next to the roped ship beside them, and stood there listening as Attar sang, deepvoiced in the dark.

Hard the journey

heavy the waves,

Brief our lingering

on land or sea.

Ingavin ever mind

his Erling-folk,

Thunir remember

who honour you.

Let no angry spirit

still be here,

No soul be lost

without a home.

Salt the sea-foam

by ship's prow,

White the waves

before us and behind.