Kres prepared for the bargaining as he would for a smelting: ahead of time and by the count. The palisade had to be shown at its full height, the gates with their iron hinges and men on the walls, shoulder to shoulder. Let the jarl try to count them. The grain, the Forest pits holding blooms and the spare boats had to be hidden. He ordered the people of the mire to keep silent, whatever they heard. Let the jarl guess for himself how many they were and what they were prepared to do.
Ten longships took up position on the open water opposite the fort, keeping beyond bowshot, and lay still as a pack with nowhere to hurry. A white shield showed on the foremost mast.
Gunnvald came ashore with six men and no sword. All two hundred swords remained aboard the longships, and so the jarl could afford to come unarmed.
Kres went out through the gates with four men. Behind him, every inhabitant of the mire stood along the palisade. No one shouted or brandished a weapon. Let the jarl see both the palisade and the people defending the fort.
They spoke through Torop. The interpreter translated smoothly and pleasantly, but at the third sentence Kres stopped him.
"The jarl said he had come to speak with the master of the iron," Kres corrected him calmly. "You translated it as 'the lame sorcerer'. Translate exactly, Torop. I have learnt more over the summer than you think."
Silence fell. Torop was still smiling, but for a moment his fear showed. Gunnvald shifted his gaze from the interpreter to the smith. Now Kres interested him.
After that the jarl spoke for himself, briefly and plainly.
Gunnvald promised the mire peace and protection: not one shield on the whole river would be raised against it. He would buy all the mire's iron at a fixed price, higher than the price of southern bronze. Kres would receive silver and honour and become elder over all the iron of the Great Forest. Every bloom would bear the jarl's mark, scales would be set at the gates and the reckoning entrusted to a reliable tallyman who knew both languages. Torop.
The offer was generous, and its price was plain at once: one buyer, another man's mark on the iron, another man's tallyman at the gates. A collar, only one that glittered.
"I have seen your scales, jarl," said Kres. "They are honest. I saw you punish the weighman for putting his finger on the pan. But instead of copper weights, you put people on the pan. The Turovichi died so that ten other clans would pay without bargaining. I do not treat people that way."
Gunnvald listened without anger. He was silent for a while, then told Kres about himself instead of threatening him.
"I was seventeen winters old when my father gave me my first ship and ordered me to subdue my first hamlet. I burned it to the ground as I had been taught: barns, boats and cradles. My father called it the generosity of fire and was pleased." The jarl was not looking at Kres, but at the smoke rising from the ovens above the fort. "I have counted ever since. Fire, smith, is a loss that screams. I did not grow sparing with fire out of mercy. I simply realised one day how much it cost me, and I did not like the price."
"And so you put the living on the pan. Silently."
"Silence is cheaper," Gunnvald agreed. For the first time in all their bargaining, weariness sounded in his voice.
Then he nodded to his men, and the hostages were brought ashore.
There were three of them. A young lad from the hamlet, white with fear. Tverdyata, the same man whose ploughshare had first cut the earth by the rise and who had said at the assembly, "But the dead man's ploughshare is alive." And Hort. The old man stood straight, leaning on his staff, and looked at Kres as though asking forgiveness for having remained alive.
"The clan handed them over itself," Torop explained gently. "Against its arrears. At the gathering they were named the instigators of the unrest."
Everyone behind the smith fell silent.
Tverdyata lunged forwards as far as the rope allowed and shouted across the open water, for the whole river to hear: "Do not dare trade us, smith! Do you hear? Do not dare! Plough with my ploughshare and do not dare!" A Northman struck him behind the knee with a spear shaft. Tverdyata crumpled, but did not lower his eyes. Hort shouted nothing. He merely gave the slightest shake of his head: do not. Kres understood him without words.
"They will eat at my table," said Gunnvald, and it sounded more terrible than any threat. "I have food. Plenty. What about you, smith? Count the days until the river freezes. When the ice grows firm, it will become a bridge. And bridges, I hear, are something you respect."
Already turning away, he tossed out one last thing in an everyday tone:
"They say you have Ari's daughter at your shipyard. Show her to me. I will offer her her father's yard: let her build for me, not for a bog."
"She has no need to be shown," came the answer from the gates.
Jorunn stood in the gateway, a smith's apron over her northern dress and her father's brooch on her breast. She came forwards herself, as she had promised, and stood beside Kres: not behind him.
"You took everything from me, jarl," she said in the northern tongue. Torop had no time to open his mouth, but Kres understood every word without him. "The shipyard, the moulding patterns, the mark, my companions. But you will not have Ari's hands. I am those hands now. And they will not serve you."
Gunnvald looked at her for a long time. He did not grow angry. His was the look a man gave another man's costly possession.
"The master's last work was his best," he said at last. "I will take you both. But not today."
The ten longships withdrew to the far bank and made camp: tents, fires and a stockade in a single day. The jarl did not leave. The jarl settled down to wait for the ice.
That night Kres found Jorunn by the slipway. She was not asleep: she was honing an adze that needed no honing and looking across the black water at the strangers' fires.
"Now he will use me to put pressure on you," she said without turning. "Perhaps I should leave."
"No," said Kres. "We are building this shipyard together. And you will leave only by your own will."
Jorunn looked at him for a long time, then nodded once and returned to the adze. They said not another word that night.
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