Word spread along the river before the freeze: a lame sorcerer lived on the Rust Mire, whose axes never dulled and whom the bog obeyed.
The first to come were fire refugees from the Bobrichi clan: a man and woman with three children, all their belongings on a single drag-sledge. Northmen had burned their hamlet over unpaid tribute, and their clan could not take them in: too many mouths. The man stopped at the edge of the causeway, took off his cap and asked if it was true that iron could be had here for work.
"For work and grain," said Kres.
He forged them a ploughshare. A real iron ploughshare for an ard: with one of those, a man could break not only a burned slash-and-burn clearing under the Forest, but virgin ground beside the rise, and the work was far easier. When the man understood what he was being given, he wept. Kres turned away: he did not like it when grown men wept.
Others followed the fire refugees. One at a time, two at a time: runaways, outcasts, widows, the clanless. There was work for everyone: digging ore, burning charcoal, cutting turf, laying the causeway. The mire took in everyone the clans had cast aside. For the first time in his life, Kres had people who waited for his decisions.
And so a custom arose on the mire. Newcomers were met at the causeway with bread and salt. The bread was baked from grain grown on the fire refugee's first slash-and-burn clearing, and the costly salt had to be bartered for, so the welcome was no empty rite. The dugouts stood in a row along the dry rise, facing the water. Over their doors, each person carved the charms they remembered from their own clan, and Kres told no one which were the right ones. By the end of summer they had begun calling the rise a street, and the mire was no longer called the Bane Mire: people simply said 'at the smith's'. Vyun moved there for good, arriving empty-handed and staying. No one in the hamlet missed him. On the mire, they would have missed him within the hour.
Kres divided the work into shifts and marked it on tally sticks: every newcomer had a stick of their own, notched with what they had done, what they had received and what they had been promised. At first people laughed: counting one another like sacks of grain. Then they grew used to it: where things are counted, no one cheats. In his dreams, this order had a short foreign word. Here there was no word. There was order.
Other visitors came as well. Three strong, well-fed men with bronze plaques on their belts: men of an elder clan, who lived two bends away and had long borne a grudge against the Vyazichi over disputed hunting grounds. These men did not take off their caps.
"Forge us arrowheads, cripple. Three dozen. Come autumn we'll pluck the Vyazichi, and that should please you: they drove you out. We'll pay in furs."
"My iron serves the earth," said Kres. "Ask for ploughshares and sickles. There will be no arrowheads against the Vyazichi, or against you."
The eldest spat at his feet. "You'll regret that, cripple. A man who stints on iron gets taught with iron."
They left, and Kres stood by the forge for a long time. He knew the price of his refusal: those three would tell everyone that the sorcerer on the mire was defenceless, and soon someone would come to test it. But if he began forging weapons for other men's feuds, the mire would become just another hamlet where the strong attacked their neighbours. Kres was building something else. He did not yet know what to call it, but he knew very well what would have no place here.
At the end of summer, a lean, sinewy old man hobbled onto the mire, using an axe haft for a staff. This was Old Koren, a woodwright from a distant hamlet who had outlived everyone of his own. He had come, as he put it, 'to have a look at the fool'.
"You're the one laying a causeway across the Rust Mire?" Koren stood at the edge, working his lips. "There'll be no causeway here. The bottom's alive. It eats a pole in two springs. No bridge can cross this place."
"What if we use oak for the piles, and put iron shoes on the piles?" Kres picked up a forged clamp from the ground. "And bind them with clamps instead of bast?"
The old man was silent for a long time. He took the clamp, tried it against his teeth and, for some reason, sniffed it.
"Wood laughs at iron until iron embraces it," he said at last. "Show me where people sleep here. I'm staying."
Three days later, on the last high water, a dugout boat pulled in at the mire, and Torop stepped onto the causeway without wetting his boots.
He was alone, without the Northmen. He smiled as though meeting kin. He praised the causeway, the bloomery and the axes, while looking everything over and reckoning its worth. Then he sat by the fire, broke off a piece of the bread he was offered and dipped it in salt: all proper and correct, a guest like any guest.
"Jarl Gunnvald has heard of you, smith," Torop said warmly. "The jarl is a clever man. He values rare things. Here is his word: all the iron you smelt, he will take at the price of good bronze. And he calls you to serve as master smith to his warband. A house, silver, honour. And of course I'll make my living beside the pair of you. No getting round that." Torop laughed, inviting Kres to laugh with him.
"Give the jarl my thanks," said Kres. "My iron is not for sale. Nor am I."
Torop stopped laughing. He sat looking into the fire for a while, nodding at his own thoughts. At the dugout boat he already had one leg over the side, but suddenly turned back:
"You shouldn't do that, smith. By leaf-fall the clans will carry in their tribute. Those who come up short will pay the rest in heads. Ten heads, now: who do you think they'll choose? And they always choose the one without a clan, smith. So what does that make you now?"
The dugout boat went downstream. Torop did not spell it out: men like him never do.
That night Kres woke because the dugout had grown too quiet.
Jorunn's sleeping-place was empty. He went outside: mist hung over the mire, the boats stood black beside the causeway, and one was missing. Kres saw Jorunn farther down the channel. She sat in the boat with her back to the mire and did not take up the oars. Downriver lay the sea, and by the sea she had what passed for a home. The current was carrying the boat there of itself.
He did not call out. As with the knife before: if she wanted to leave, let her leave; no one held her here. He stood in the mist and waited, his heart beating slowly and painfully.
The oars splashed. The boat turned and came back: against the current, labouring, stroke by stroke. Jorunn hauled it onto the bank, walked past Kres as though he were not there and, only when she reached the dugout, said without turning:
"Downstream the river carries you. Upstream you have to row. I thought: let it be upstream."
They never spoke of it again. Ever.
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