They came on the last open water, in two dugout boats: three burly men with bronze badges and five others with them. The same men who had demanded arrowheads in summer. Now they spoke differently: softer and more frightening.
"The Vyazichi have full grain pits, smith. A rich clan, with grain from two slash-and-burn clearings. Whisper to the jarl that they are hiding what they owe: he will shake them down, take the grain and leave the river until spring. Easier for the river, easier for the mire. And the Vyazichi… they cast you out to die, remember? A debt is fair when repaid."
The mire council gathered that same night beside the cold forge.
People he knew to be good kept silent and did not say no. The refugee woman with five children looked Kres straight in the eye. "I have five of them, smith. The Vyazichi are nothing to me. Tell me I am a bad mother and I will be quiet." No one did. Then an old man of the Turovichi, who stood the winter watch, rose. "Hear me. The same lie was told about us last summer. Our neighbours were told the Turovichi were hiding what they owed. The neighbours are alive and we are gone. Betray another clan's stores to the jarl, and someone will betray yours next." Both spoke the truth: the woman wanted to save her children, and the old man remembered how his clan had perished. Even Old Koren worked his lips for a long while before saying, "A rotten business, but this is a rotten winter. You decide, smith, and we will abide by it."
The easiest thing was to agree. One word, and the jarl would leave that reach of the river, there would be more food in the pot and the refugee woman's children could eat twice a day. All Kres had to do was betray another clan. The very clan that had once believed a slander and cast him out.
"The jarl conquers clans with the hands of other clans," said Kres. "If we betray the Vyazichi to him, he will not become our friend. He will simply make us go on betraying others. And when he has no more use for us, he will deal with us too."
He looked round the circle and finished quietly:
"The clan cast me out, that is true. But I swore that not one more person would be taken from this river as tribute. I did not say: except those who wronged me. If I start looking for loopholes like that, the oath will be worth nothing."
The three men with badges left angry. Five people left the mire with them: two refugee families and one watchman. Kres himself saw them as far as the causeway. He brought out their rightful share of salt, weighed it before everyone and added dried fish for the journey. "Leave alive," he said. "And if you ever want to return, we will take you in." Those leaving hid their eyes. It hurt Kres to look at them: for the first time, it was not strangers who were leaving him.
Soroka stood by the causeway among those seeing them off. He watched the smith weigh out salt with his own hands for people who were abandoning him, then give them fish besides. And for the first time he doubted what Torop had taught him. The interpreter said that every man was sold to someone and the only difference was the price. But Kres did not buy people, nor did he take revenge on those who left him. Soroka tried not to think about it, but could not.
Before dawn, silence woke him. That same silence. Worse than an alarm bell.
Jorunn's sleeping bench was untouched: she had not come back for the night. At the slipway, exactly in the centre of the anvil, lay Ari's buckle. All the boats were still there, but she would not have needed one. By morning the shore ice had met in the middle of the river. It was still thin, but a light person could cross it to the far bank.
Soroka was the first to find out, and by midday a rumour was already spreading through the mire: the Northwoman had gone back to her people and betrayed Kres for the shipyard she had been promised.
Vyun, his face streaked with tears and twisted with anger, stood before Kres in the middle of the yard:
"She will come back! Like before, in the boat! Downstream the river carries you. Upstream you have to row. And she rowed upstream, I saw her myself! Tell them all!"
Kres went to the edge of the ice alone. There was a trail: narrow, light and straight, crossing the greyest strip, where the ice would bear one person but not two. She had chosen a night when no one could follow her. She always chose everything for herself.
He stood at the edge, gripping the buckle until the bird's wing bit into his palm. He remembered the birchbark with the runes and the words about a single favour. He remembered Jorunn rowing alone against the current. He believed her, but feared that he merely wanted to believe and was deceiving himself. He thought about it all day and all night.
"Back to work," he told the people. "The ice does not care who believes whom."
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