"Garr?"

"Do it. We've shipmates to avenge."

But not in the west, Bern thought. Not there. It didn't matter. He felt, with genuine surprise, a quickening of his own heartbeat. His father hadn't wanted them to go west, but Ivarr was dead, they weren't listening to his tune, they didn't have to listen to Thorkell's, either.

To get the Volgan's lost sword back from the Cyngael. On his first raid. That would be remembered, it would always be remembered. Bern touched Ingavin's hammer, his father's hammer, at his throat.

There was another part of the verse he'd spoken to his father in the stream; they all knew it, throughout the Erling lands:

Cattle die kinsmen die.

Every man born will die.

Fierce hearth fires end in ash.

Fame once won endures ever.

The ships were being unlashed. Bern moved to help. The risen wind was from the east, a message in that. Ingavin's wind, carrying them in the night, dragon-prows on a summer sea.

Jadwina was never quite clear, looking back, whether they received the tidings of the earl's death (she always got his name wrong, but it was difficult to remember things from so long ago) and the slaughtered Erling raiders before or after the evening her life changed—or even that same night, though she didn't think so. It felt as though it had come afterwards. It had been a bad time for her, but she was fairly certain she'd have remembered if it had been that same night.

The troubles had begun a fourteen-night earlier, when Eadyn lost his hand. An accident, an entirely stupid accident, clearing trees with his father, bending a branch for Osca's axe. A clean severing, at the wrist. His life marred, all hope of good fortune spurting from him with his blood. The hand on the grass, fingers still flexed, a thing of its own now. Discarded. A young man, broad-shouldered, fair-haired, picked to marry her, and her own inward choice for that (by Jad's pure grace), turned cripple in a moment's inattention at the edge of wood and scrubland.

He lived. Their cleric, summoned, knew more than most about leechcraft. Eadyn lay in fever for days, his wrist wrapped in a poultice his mother changed at sunrise and sunset. Osca wasn't at the bedside or even at home. He spent those days drinking, swearing, weeping, cursing the god, abusing those who tried to comfort him. What comfort was there under the heavens? He had only the one living son, and a farm that needed Eadyn's strength as his own began to fail.

It was a calamity. Lives turned, lives ended, with such moments. The cleric, wisely, kept his distance until Osca had drunk himself into a vomiting stupor and awoke, a day and night later, ashen and heart-scalded. The god had made the world this way, in his unknowable wisdom, the cleric said to the villagers in their small chapel. But it was hard, he conceded. It could be intolerably hard.

Jadwina thought so too. Her own father had shaken his head grimly when he heard the tale. He had politely waited to see if Eadyn would conveniently die, before calling off the proposed match. What else could he do? A cripple was no marriage. He could never swing an axe properly, handle a plough, mend a fence alone, kill a wolf or wild dog. Couldn't even practise with a bow as they were ordered by the king to do now.

It was a sorrow for Eadyn and his family, a lesson for every-one else, as the cleric said, but you didn't have to make it your sorrow, too. There were healthy lads in the village, or near enough. You needed to marry daughters usefully. It was a matter of survival. The world, here in the north, or anywhere else probably, wasn't going to make life easy for you.

At some point during that time—it blurred for Jadwina, looking back—Bevin, the smith, had appeared at their door and asked to speak with her father. Gryn had gone walking with him and returned to say that he'd accepted an offer for her.

The younger son of the village smith wasn't the match Eadyn, son of Osca, had been—land was land, after all—but he was better than a one-handed cripple. Jadwina received the tidings and—as best she remembered—she dropped a pitcher on the floor. It might have been on purpose; she couldn't recall. Her father beat her about the back and shoulders, with her mother calling approval. It had been a new-bought pitcher.

Raud, the smith's son, now plighted to her, never even spoke with Jadwina. Not then, at any rate.

Some days later, however, towards twilight, as she was bringing the cow back from the northernmost field, Raud stepped out from a copse by the path. He stood before her. He had come from the forge; there was soot in his clothing and on his face.

"Be wed come harvest," he said, grinning. He had poxed cheeks and long, skinny shanks.

"Not by my will," Jadwina replied, tossing her head.

He laughed. "Wha' matters that? You'll spread legs by will or wi'out."

"Eadyn is two men to your one!" she said. "And you knows it." He laughed again. "He's one hand to my two. Can't even do this now."

He grabbed at her. Before she could twist away, he had a hand twisted in her hair, spilling her kerchief, and another over her mouth, too tightly for her to bite, or scream. He smelled of ash and smoke. He pulled the hand away quickly and hit her on the side of the head, hard enough for the world to rock and sway. Then he hit her again.

The sun was going down. End of summer. She remembered that. No one on the path, home a long walk from where they were. She couldn't even see the nearest houses of the village.

"Take what's mine now," Raud said. "Get a baby in you, they'll just make me wed you, won' they? What matters that?" She was on the ground by the path, beneath him. He straddled her, a boot on either side, started untying the rope around his trousers, fumbling in his haste. She drew breath to shout. He kicked her in the ribs.

Jadwina gasped, began to weep. It hurt to breathe. He dragged his leggings down around his muddy boots. Lowered himself to his knees then forward onto her. Began pushing, clumsily, at her lower clothes. She hit him, scratching at his face. He swore, then laughed, his hand groped hard at her, down there.

Then his whole body lurched crazily to one side, his head most of all. Jadwina had a confused, frightening sense of wetness. She was in pain, dizzy and terrified. It took her a moment to understand what had happened. Raud's blood was all over her. He'd been hit in the neck from above, behind, by an axe. She looked up.

An axe swung one-handed.

Raud's body, his sex exposed, still erect, his trousers around his ankles, lay sprawled on one side, next to her in the shallow ditch where he'd thrown her down. Instinctively, she shifted away from him. He was, Jadwina saw, already dead. She was afraid she was going to be sick. She put a hand to her side where the worst pain was, then brought it to her face. It came away wet with Raud's blood.

Eadyn, his face ghost-pale, stood above her. She struggled to sit up. Her side felt as if a blade were in it, as if something were broken and sliding within. He stepped back a little. Her cow was behind him, in the grass on the other side of the path, cropping. No sound but that, and the birds flying to branches at end of day; fields and trees, dark green grass, the sun almost down.

"Was out here trying," Eadyn said, finally, gesturing with the axe. "See if I can chop. You know? Saw you."

She seemed able to nod her head.

"Can't do it rightly," he said, lifting the axe a little again, letting it fall. "No good."

Jadwina drew a careful breath, a hand to her side again. She was covered in blood. "Just started, though. You'll get better at it."

He shook his head. "Useless man." She tried not to look at the bandaged stump of his right hand. His good hand, it had been.