All through the night after the ice broke, both sides gathered their own. The mire folk wrapped the drowned Northmen in matting and returned their bodies without conditions. In exchange, they received the two sentries taken on the distant rise. Milava tended the wounded prisoners in the bathhouse alongside her own people. The red-haired whistler, a prisoner for the second time that year, helped her hold the splints and grumbled by turns in two languages. The people on both banks were tired of war, and now helped one another carry away the dead and save the wounded.
In the morning Gunnvald walked out alone onto the last of the ice, without his shield and with a white rag tied to his spear. He stopped in the middle, where both banks could hear him, and waited.
Kres went out to meet him. Behind the smith, the mire folk stood along the palisade. Above them rose smoke from the forge, where Jorunn had kept the fire alive since nightfall. Gunnvald had to see that work in the fort had not stopped even after the battle.
"Because of you, I have lost a season," said the jarl without anger. "Twenty men, two longships and all the silver I spent over the winter. Tell me, smith, why should I not burn all this when the ice is gone and ten more longships arrive?"
"Because you have already reckoned what it would cost you," Kres answered. "Your men have drowned twice in my mire, and both times we pulled them out alive. Ask Ketil or the drummer boy. Behind you stand a hundred and fifty men who have seen that the smith feeds his prisoners and rescues the drowning. They will not want to storm this place after that. But they will agree to trade."
"What are you, smith?" Gunnvald asked. For the first time in the whole war, he was not asking for advantage. He truly wanted to understand. "A sorcerer? A prince? I have seen chieftains and priests. You are like neither."
"I know how to reckon too," said Kres. "You reckon how much you can take from people while fear keeps them obedient. I reckon how much can be earned by leaving them alive. My reckoning pays better, jarl. Your merchants will buy iron here for years and bring their own wares."
Gunnvald was silent. Then Kres spoke of Torop. He had been waiting since autumn for this conversation.
"Reckon one more thing. For twenty years, the man who records your tribute on this river has kept two sticks. One for you, the other for himself. Ask your scribe why the clans grow poorer while your treasury gains nothing. Compare the notches, jarl. You do love honest scales."
He raised a hand, and from beneath the drifted snow by the gates they brought out a box and passed it across the ice: the old oarsman's stick, the tally sticks Vyun had taken from the hollow of the old willow, every last notch. Gunnvald accepted the box, opened it and studied the notches for a long time. Then he turned towards his own bank and spoke one quiet word that everyone heard.
When they came for Torop, he was already packing silver into sacks, both his own and what he had stolen. The interpreter slipped out of the tent before they could seize him, ran from the camp and fled diagonally across the last ice towards the far bank. The sacks of silver pounded against his back.
No one pursued him. The mire folk watched from the palisade and the warriors from their bank. Everyone waited to see whether the ice would bear the fugitive.
The ice cracked beneath Torop with a crunch. The interpreter threw himself flat and crawled. Without the weight, he might have reached the bank, but he would not abandon the sacks. Even when he broke through into an open lead up to his neck, he tried to heave the silver onto the rim. The ice crumbled beneath the weight of the sacks, and soon Torop went under with them.
"Chose his own death," old Gostyona said behind Kres, and spat over her shoulder.
Ketil went to the opening after all, hoping to pull Torop out. When he stepped onto the broken edge, cracks raced away in every direction, and the captain, weighed down by heavy mail, began sinking before the eyes of the people on both banks. Kres was closest. He lay flat on the ice, crawled to the opening and held out the haft of his father's hammer. "Take it! Get that mail off, fool, it will drag you down!"
Ketil looked at the hammer. At the smith. At his own bank, where the war band stood, and at the palisade, where the mire folk stood. Then he tore open his collar, vanished beneath the water for two heartbeats, surfaced without his mail and seized the haft.
Kres pulled, and the ice cracked. Then someone lay down behind him and caught his legs, another man followed, and the chain stretched all the way to the bank. Orm, the drummer boy from the other side of the river, was the first to run up. Soroka lay down next and clasped Kres's legs tight. Later he merely shrugged. "You treated me like a man, though I did not deserve it. Now we are even. I rest easier that way."
When they pulled the captain onto firm ice, he lay there for a long time, staring at the grey sky and struggling to catch his breath. Then he spoke loudly enough for both banks to hear:
"Twice. I have drowned twice in this mire, and both times the lame smith pulled me out." He turned towards his own bank and shouted in his familiar voice of command, "Jarl! I will not go into that water a third time, and I will not lead the men into it! If you want to, go yourself!"
Gunnvald's warriors, standing along the bank, lowered their shields to their feet one by one. They did not cast down their weapons or surrender, but they made it clear that they would not storm the fort again. Gunnvald understood them without words.
He looked at his men, then at the mire folk and the box with its two sticks tucked beneath his arm.
"A pact," he called to Kres across the ice. "Come here, smith. We will reckon."
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