Hort returned at dawn.
The jarl had not released him out of mercy. The old man had given up every hidden store, could be of no further use and merely consumed food. They returned his staff, opened the camp gates and told him to be gone. Hort walked all night over the ice of the river he had listened to all his life. At the gates of the mire he managed ten more steps and fell into the snow.
They carried him inside, warmed him and gave him hot broth to drink. Milava listened to his chest for a long time, then drew Kres aside and quietly told him the old man would not live five days.
That same day Hort summoned Kres and ordered everyone else out. The old man lay beside the fire, covered in hides. He waited until the smith had sat beside him before he spoke.
"I heard your forge as I walked over the ice," said Hort. "Heard it a mile away. A good sound. The hamlet never had such a sound." He fell silent for a moment. "All my life I guarded the clan from the wolf, smith. I hid, bowed and paid. Not once did I think there might be another way: to make the clan so strong that the wolf itself would fear it. But you thought of it. You proved wiser than I was."
"You kept the clan alive for forty years," said Kres. "Without iron, without walls. With nothing but words and fear. I do not know whether I could have done it in your place."
"Do not flatter a dying man," Hort said, waving the words away, though it was plain they pleased him. "Call everyone here tomorrow. Before the people, I must speak of what I kept silent for twenty years."
On the second day he asked to be carried to the forge, where the fire kindled from the clan ember was burning. By evening the whole mire and the whole clan had gathered around it: refugees from the hamlet, old folk, women and children. Everyone who had stood at the dawn judgement a year before came. Hort sat straight and held his staff. His voice had weakened, but the people still caught every word.
"Clan, hear my last word," said Hort. "Twenty years ago a smith came to us from the south, a widower with a babe in his arms. The smith's name was Zhdan. We ate his bread, and after his death we slandered him and tried to forget even his name. Remember it now: Zhdan. Zhdan. Zhdan."
The old folk repeated the name first: "Zhdan." Then the women and children. Within a minute everyone standing around the forge knew it and spoke it aloud.
He caught his breath. In the silence, the forge crackled.
"Zhdan the smith brought no plague and angered no gods. Torop slandered him because Zhdan refused to serve the north. And I believed the lie because it suited me. Had I spoken the truth, we would have had to defy the powerful. I was afraid, and with my word I gave the slander weight. That is my sin. Set Zhdan among the clan's remembered dead, with the forefathers. And to his son…"
Hort turned his head towards Kres, and his hand, dry as a winter branch, rose from the staff.
"To Zhdan's son I return what I took from him. You are not strange blood, Kres. You belong to our clan. I wronged you, and we all wronged you. I will soon be gone, but let them repay evil with good. Forgive me if you can. If you cannot, I will not blame you. I ask only one thing: guard your father's fire."
"The fire burns," said Kres. His throat closed, and he could force out nothing more. Kres took the old man's hand and held it until Hort closed his eyes.
Hort died that same night, in his sleep. They held the funeral feast in the snow, on the high bank. For the first time, clan and mire stood in a single circle. They lit a great fire and remembered him over kutya made from the last rye. Old Gostyona led the mourning lament and sang of the priest's whole life. After the lament, as custom required, the young wrestled and raced one another. Vyun and Orm ran around the palisade and never did decide who had won. No one thought their laughter showed disrespect for the dead: this was how the forefathers had held a funeral feast.
As the funeral fire burned low, Kres remained beside it alone. Now he thought of two dead men: the priest who had restored the name, and the father to whom the name belonged.
"Did you hear, Father?" he asked, looking into the fire. "Three times. Before everyone. Sleep now. I am keeping the fire lit, as you can see."
When the fire had burned out, a long, booming crack sounded from the river. They had waited for it and feared it all winter.
Cracks spread through the ice. The river was breaking earlier than it should.
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