The prisoners were put in a pit beyond the palisade, and on the very first night whispers stirred across the mire.
The elders among the refugees whispered, those who remembered the old fear: the bog wants an offering. Eleven foreign heads: there is your offering, come of itself. Give them to the mire, smith, and the mire will shelter us from now on. That was how the grandfathers did it. That was how it had always been.
Kres listened and answered for the whole rise to hear, both his own people and the prisoners in the pit:
"The mire does not devour people. People devour people and blame the mire. Here, prisoners are fed. Anyone who wants it otherwise can go downstream: the jarl does things otherwise."
The pit was guarded closely, and people came from all across the mire to stare at the prisoners. Up close, the terrible Northmen proved to be ordinary men: wet and angry with their own jarl for abandoning them in the quagmire. One of them, a red-haired man whose hands had been frostbitten in a long-ago winter, begged a knife and a willow switch from the guards and had carved several whistles by evening. At first the children were afraid to take them, then they found their courage, and soon the whole rise was whistling. Kres understood that the fear of the Northmen was vanishing by itself, without an order.
That night he woke at the silence, as he had that summer. Jorunn's sleeping bench was empty, and her knife was not on the belt hanging by the entrance.
He found her by the pit. Jorunn was crouching over the sleeping Ketil. She held a knife in her hand and did not tremble. Kres did not call to her, just as he had not by the boat. She had to make the choice herself.
Jorunn crouched there for a long time. Then the knife moved, quick and precise, and Kres closed his eyes for one heartbeat.
She did not touch his throat. She cut through the buckle strap, took her father's mark from a stranger's chest, weighed it in her palm and rose.
"Father built ships so people could return," she said, knowing Kres stood behind her. "I will not be the cause of their deaths."
The next morning Ketil talked. Not from fear: this man was not afraid. He had calculated that silence would not help him, and he respected Kres for outwitting his force. The captain spoke calmly and carefully. He lied about the number of longships, and Kres saw it, but did not interrupt: service was service. He said little about himself and spoke of Gunnvald as though the jarl might hear him even on the mire.
He did not tell them everything about the buckle, but what he did say was more terrible than a lie. Ari was dead, and of that Jorunn could have no doubt: the jarl himself had stood on the bank. But the master's shipyard was still working. Gunnvald had taken Ari's mark, his patterns and three of his apprentices. Now the jarl's new longships were launched 'under the wing', and every hull bore the dead master's name. That was how the jarl had built the finest fleet on the whole northern sea. He liked things with a pedigree.
Jorunn heard this without a change of expression and left before he had finished speaking about the fleet. From that day on she wore the buckle around her neck on a plain strap, and did not take it off even in the smithy.
After that, Jorunn worked at the slipway for three days with almost no rest. On the fourth, she came to Kres herself. "The jarl likes things with a pedigree," she repeated the captain's words in a level voice. "Father is not a thing. And I am not a thing. When he comes asking about Ari's daughter, I want to stand at the gates, not hide behind other people's backs." "You will stand there," said Kres. Both understood what that promise might bring and knew he would keep it.
The drummer boy was the first to be released. His name was Orm. For three days he ate as though taking revenge on someone through food, and he was reluctant to leave. Kres gave him bread for the journey and a message he ordered him to repeat word for word: here prisoners are fed, the wounded are bandaged and your dead will be returned with honour. Orm repeated it three times, gave Kres a long look and asked only, "Is it true you pulled me out yourself?" "It is." "Why?" "Because you are not a warrior. You are the rowing beat. A beat is not killed."
Orm went downstream and did not speak the whole way. Kres did not know what the boy would make of everything he had seen and heard on the mire.
The exchange was settled a week later, honourably, on a spit belonging to neither side: eleven Northmen for two fishermen the jarl had taken from the hamlet 'as security for the talks', with five sacks of salt besides. The jarl paid without bargaining. He wanted not only his men but the knowledge Ketil was carrying away from the mire.
Already aboard the longship, Ketil set one foot on the gunwale and looked back:
"You have made yourself a fine place here, smith. But understand this: the jarl will not ask about the iron. He has already reckoned the iron." Ketil nodded towards the bank, where Jorunn stood by the slipway. "He will ask about Ari's daughter. He likes everything that remains of the master."
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