There was no assault. No arrows, no fire, no shouting from across the river. It was worse.
On the far bank, opposite the fort, the jarl set up a market.
It was a real market, with awnings, scales, barrels and bales of goods. The jarl paid silver on the spot for grain, salt meat, hay and honey. At first the clans of the Forest went there reluctantly, but before long whole wagon trains were making for the bank. No silver had been seen in the Forest for winters, and here it was handed over without bargaining. The scales were honest, the scribe recorded every sack and people left with silver in their pockets. The jarl was buying up every store on the river, down to the last sack. By the time the clans understood that they would have nothing to eat in winter, it would be too late.
But no one came to the mire. The jarl did not forbid anyone to sail there. He simply stationed one of his longships at every landing. Those making for the fort were politely asked where they were going, why and why they did not wish to visit the market first. After such a meeting, everyone turned towards the jarl's bank.
The smell of bread came from the far bank. The jarl had set up a bakery in the market, and its ovens burned from dawn until night. They baked more bread than they could eat, and the wind carried the smell straight to the mire. In the mornings children stood at the edge of the ice and silently watched the bakery. Kres saw them breathe in the warm scent and swallow. That was what the jarl was counting on.
Then the mire began baking its own bread every day. There was little flour left, so the flatbreads were made thin, but the children were given them warm. Let them smell their own bread, not a stranger's. Milava put it briefly: "He fights with bread. We will answer with bread."
The jarl also began letting people go. Anyone who packed up and left for the mire was given bread for the journey: generously, where everyone could see. "The jarl holds no one here," Torop would say at the market, spreading his hands. "You want to go to the smith? Go. Here is bread for the road. Our smith is a rich man. He will feed you."
Kres understood the plan on the third day, when four families who had lost their homes to fire, two old men and a widow with five children all appeared at the gates at once.
"He is using our own rule against us," Kres said at the council. "We promised to take everyone in. Now he will send us everyone the clan cannot feed."
"Close the gates?" someone asked.
"If we close the gates, we become like them," Kres answered. "Let everyone in. We will count the stores again. Anyone who can work will work."
Vyun went round every dugout with his tally sticks. He counted mouths, working hands and the food that remained. Even with the new, smaller ration, the stores would last only until midwinter. Kres announced it himself at the common cauldron. He gave the number of days and the size of the ration and promised to hide none of the truth. Hungry people cannot be deceived anyway.
There was one cauldron for everyone. Rations were measured out equally, with no extra ladleful for anyone. The children ate first, then the workers, then the old folk. Kres sat down last and ate where everyone could see him. The people saw that he received the same as they did.
The refugees were put to work on the second line of palisade, on watches by the ice and at making charcoal. The old folk twisted rope, sewed mittens and minded the little ones while their mothers carted clay. Everyone did what was within their strength. There was no one superfluous on the mire.
Soroka was everywhere in those days. He helped, hauled, joked and spread rumours along the way. At the ice hole, as he handed a woman her bucket, he asked as if by chance, "Is it true the jarl offered the smith silver and honour, but he refused for all of us without asking us?" At the cauldron he wondered aloud what day the food would run out. He accused no one and merely asked questions, but after his questions people began to doubt Kres and grow more afraid.
Kres tested the ice himself every morning with a marked pole. The shelves of shore ice grew out from both banks, grey and granular, and every morning the mark sank deeper. The river still breathed in the middle, but its breaths were growing shorter.
One of those nights he dreamed of the city from his old dreams. Warm, tall, flooded with steady light that needed no fire. No one there counted the days until the ice, and the bread smelled the same as the bread on the far bank, only there it was given out without scales. Kres walked along a stone street and in the dream knew everything: where to go, what to say and that no one here would die in winter.
He woke before dawn and realised he wanted to return to the dream. Once he had been afraid to wake, but now, for the first time, he wanted to stay in that warm city. The thought frightened him more than hunger. Kres rose, lit a spill and worked on the tally sticks until morning so that he would not think about the dream.
And on the tenth day of the siege that was no siege, Vyun brought birchbark from the far channel. It had been rolled into a tube and wedged into the split end of a pole driven into the shallows opposite the slipway: a place where only one pair of eyes on the whole mire could see it.
There were runes on the birchbark. Kres could not read runes, but he gave it to Jorunn and watched her read: twice, three times, more slowly each time. He watched the knuckles whiten on the fist clenched around the brooch.
"What does it say?" he asked.
"My father's shipyard," Jorunn said evenly. "It is untouched. Both my companions are alive. Torop writes that the jarl will return the shipyard, the men and my father's mark to me. In exchange he wants one service." She raised her eyes. "Do not ask what. You already understand."
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