The next day Ragned led the best men on a swift raid along the northern shore. He took the lightest boats, planning to strike at winter's end, when no attack was expected, and hoped to return with silver before the neighbours did, so that Brand might make a new song about him all the sooner.
Hroald approved. The warriors rejoiced. Once the hall had emptied, it became clearer how little food remained for those who had not gone on the raid.
Steinar saw the trouble before the wind came. Since his disgrace, he was no longer allowed to stand where men spoke of glory. He spent his days between the shipyard, the kitchen and the storehouses, where men counted sacks, not enemies. There Nera the Smoky cursed a boy who had brought wet straw near the grain. There an old man pointed out where the storehouse roof had bowed under the snow. There Farin, a former thrall, silently mended the rope on the door, though no one had asked him to.
"It will leak by evening," Nera said.
"By midday," Steinar replied.
She narrowed her eyes.
"Are you keeping a reckoning of the sky now?"
"No. Only of other people's idleness."
Nera looked at the roof. The wet snow lay in a smooth white cap, hiding how badly the beams had already bowed.
By midday the wind struck from the sea.
Nera did not smile.
By evening the first beam cracked.
Enough people remained in the hall to shout, and too few to work quickly. The fighting hands had gone with Ragned. Those who remained ran first to Hroald for an order. Then for the keys. Then for the senior storekeeper. Then for the man who knew where the dry poles were kept.
Steinar did not run.
He took Farin by the shoulder.
"Do you know the oarsmen?"
Farin flinched at his touch. Beneath his collar, an old iron scar showed on his neck.
"I did."
"Then remember them. We need men who can work together and will not drop their burden when it grows heavy."
Farin looked at him with distrust.
"Will you pay us?"
"I will feed you all. And in the morning I will name every man before Hroald."
"And who will listen to Empty Cup?"
Steinar nodded at himself.
"No one."
Farin almost smirked.
"Then why name us?"
"Beside my empty name, there is room enough for everyone."
For the first time, Farin did not lower his eyes.
They worked until dark. Nera gave orders better than any war leader and assigned people by skill, not kinship: some held, others cut and carried, and others did not panic even when a sack proved heavier than a child. Eska crawled beneath the logs and pulled out the dry wedges. Modra set the old men to heating pitch and kept them out of the way. Borri came of his own accord, with his stiff arm and angry voice, and saw at once which beam would fall next.
Steinar carried sacks until his fingers stopped obeying him.
When the roof finally collapsed, the grain had already been carried out.
Snow, clay and broken straw crashed down where all the yard's winter stores had stood only moments before.
The people stood in the darkness, wet, angry and alive. The wind tore the smoke towards the sea. Someone laughed hoarsely with exhaustion and relief.
Steinar leant against the wall. The smell of wet grain brought back another day.
A smoke-filled storehouse.
Screams.
He had been fifteen then, and the name Empty Cup had not yet stuck to him. His cousin Asmund, the son of his mother's sister, stood on the left edge of the shield ring. Asmund laughed as though any fear could be knocked aside with a shoulder if you struck first. That day he gave Steinar a spare shield strap and said:
"Do not let go of the edge. If it falters, they will crush us like wet cloth."
Then the wind turned the smoke.
Steinar saw not the enemy, but the storehouse. The lower door was barred from the outside, fire crawled along the roof, and inside children screamed and beat their fists against the wood. The winter stores for the whole yard were kept there. So were children Brand would never mention afterwards.
Asmund seized him by the sleeve.
"Do not dare."
Steinar tore himself free.
He remembered the heat on his face, the pitch on his palms, the children's fingers clutching at his belt, and sacks so heavy that his sight went dark. He remembered pulling out the last boy and returning to the ring only after the blow had fallen.
Asmund lay in the snow with his eyes open. The edge of the shield ring Steinar should have held was broken.
Afterwards the song kept only this: Steinar fled, Asmund fell.
In the morning Hroald looked at the rescued grain as though no people had carried it out, as though it had survived by itself.
Brand stood beside him.
"This must be marked," Nera said.
She spoke quietly, but those around her fell silent. Nera seldom asked the jarl for anything: she usually ruled the kitchen, ordered the children about and tended the fire.
Hroald turned to Brand.
The skald ran his fingers over the strings without drawing a sound.
"Grain does not look death in the face," Brand said. "It does not raise a shield or pay in blood. Grain is tended so that heroes have something to eat. But if we begin singing of every sack, we shall soon forget the men who die with weapons in their hands."
Ragned was not in the hall, but Steinar could clearly imagine how his brother would have laughed at those words.
Nera pressed her lips together.
Farin lowered his eyes again.
Brand had denied none of the facts.
Asmund had indeed died with a weapon in his hand, and Brand preserved the memory of such deaths. But for the sake of Asmund's greatness, he once again forgot those Asmund had defended.
That evening, after the people had gone, Saiva found Steinar by the storehouse. He sat on a log, scraping dark pitch from beneath his nails.
"You kept silent again," she said.
"Brand speaks better."
"Brand is better at leaving those who are not wanted outside the song."
She sat on the next log, but not close beside him.
"Do you want to hear a line?"
"If it is not about me."
"Then it is too late."
Saiva did not take up her lyre. She spoke almost in a whisper, without music, so that no one in the hall would hear.
"The man who left the line did not desert his yard. He carried children from the fire and kept the grain safe until spring."
Steinar looked at his hands.
The words were simple, not meant for a great hall and not in Brand's manner. But for the first time Steinar heard the whole truth about himself.
"Do not sing it," he said.
Saiva smiled with one corner of her mouth.
"Too late."
From behind the storehouse wall came the dry note of a string.
Brand stood in the shadows. The snow lit his face from below, making it look especially pale and hard.
"Saiva."
She rose at once, calmly, as though she had long expected Brand to hear her.
"Master."
"A song that cannot be brought to the hearth should not be made in the mud."
"Some are born only there."
Brand looked at Steinar.
There was no jealousy in his gaze, no malice, no fear. He looked intent and cold, as though he were already deciding how to put an end to this disobedience.
"Until winter ends, you will not open the feasts," he told Saiva. "You will repeat the old refrains after the juniors until you remember that pity has no place in the memory of the kin."
Steinar stepped forward.
Saiva gave the slightest shake of her head. Don't.
If Steinar argued, Brand would make the punishment harsher and say Saiva had broken the prohibition for his sake. If he kept silent, he would show that he could not protect her.
The skald left. Saiva remained standing beside the dark storehouse, the wind stirring the hair at her temples.
"Do you see now?" she asked.
"What?"
"One line about you cost me my place at the hearth."
He wanted to promise that he would win back her place at the hearth, but he did not know whether he could keep that promise.
Instead, Steinar picked up a splinter from the ground and threw it into the pitch that had gone cold.
"If one unfinished song frightened Brand so much, then you struck him harder than you think."
Saiva looked at him for a long time.
Then she said quietly:
"Or perhaps you do not yet know how all this will end, Empty Cup."
She left first.
Steinar remained beside the rescued storehouse no one intended to sing about.
And for the first time he understood: there was no reason to seek a line from Brand.
He needed another song – one that remembered not only fallen warriors, but the people who saved children and grain.
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