They approached the low headland in grey light. The strait narrowed there, and a voice from the shore carried far across the water.
Brand was waiting on the rocks.
Hroald stood beside him. Ragned was nowhere to be seen, but his sworn men had gathered on the shore with swords and spears, ready to laugh at the first sign.
The skald held his lyre against his chest.
He did not shout. He had no need. The water carried his words for him.
The song began without Steinar's name.
That was familiar.
But then the song struck deeper.
Brand sang of those who followed the Empty Cup; of rowers who willingly traded their place by the hearth for a wet plank; of people whose names no one would speak if the sea took them with Steinar.
He did not promise them death outright. He promised that even after death no one would remember them.
Skardi, the rower with the frostbitten ear, was the first to stop his oar. Two more stopped after him.
The ship lost way and swung broadside to the waves. Borri swore so fiercely that even Nera raised an eyebrow.
"Row!" the old shipwright shouted.
"If we're going to die anyway and no one will remember us, why row?" one of the rowers answered.
It was an honest fear.
Steinar could have called them cowards. Then he would have become like those who had called him a coward all his life. He could have promised that Saiva would sing of them. But the old order had stripped her of the right to begin a song, and everyone on the ship would have heard the lie at once.
Brand continued.
His voice was even, strong, almost kind. He did not call the people back. He frightened them with oblivion after death.
Steinar raised an oar and struck the side twice. The sound was crude, with no music in it at all, merely wood striking wood.
"Anyone who wants to return can go ashore now," Steinar said. "Not at night, not in a storm and not after eating someone else's salt. Now."
The rowers looked from the shore to the water and back.
"Brand will strike us from the songs," Skardi said.
"Yes."
The people flinched at his honesty.
Steinar went on:
"Brand strikes men out better than anyone. So decide which frightens you more: remaining in his songs as faceless rowers, or leaving for a place where he will not decide who you are."
Steinar promised them nothing. Now each of them could decide for himself.
Saiva stood.
"Don't," Steinar said quietly.
She did not even turn.
"You already said that at the storehouse."
She had no lyre. Brand could forbid her to sing at feasts, but here on the water there was no one to forbid her. Saiva laid a palm against the mast, drew breath and sang a short, stern line.
"It is not the sea the hearthless fear, but a shore where only the dead are given names."
Saiva's voice carried across the water over Brand's song.
The old skald sang on without faltering, but the people on the rocks beside him turned their heads towards the ship.
Saiva repeated the line. The third time, Nera joined her, rough and tuneless. Then Farin. Then Eska from the hold, too loud and out of tune. Borri came in last, his singing no more than a rasp.
The rowers put their oars back into the water.
Brand broke off his song.
Everyone heard the skald fall silent.
In the brief silence, the people on the shore exchanged bewildered glances.
"Saiva," Brand said.
In Brand's tone, her name sounded not like a summons but a sentence.
"From this day on, you are no apprentice of mine. Let one who sings against the kin upon the water seek a teacher among the waves."
Saiva stood straight. Her face was white, but her voice did not tremble.
"If the waves remember more names than your hall, then they are the ones we should learn from."
Steinar wanted to thank her, ask her forgiveness and admit that she had lost more than he had ever possessed.
But the rowers were watching him, as were the people on the shore and Brand himself. If Steinar spoke openly now, everyone would understand how much Saiva's act meant to him, and his pretence of stupidity would deceive no one again.
He said:
"Next time, shout louder. That damned sail makes it hard to hear you from the shore."
Several people laughed.
Saiva did not.
She gave him a cold look and turned away.
Farin laid a hand on his shoulder, not as a servant or a friend, but as one rower warning another of danger.
"Birds," he said.
Steinar looked up.
To port, dark birds flew low and steadily above the water, not towards the shore but away from it. Green ribbons of weed stretched between the waves. The water beside the hull grew colder and denser, the oars met an unfamiliar resistance, and the ship was being pulled west with increasing force.
"The western current," Farin said. "We're already in it. To go back, we'd have to row against it."
The shore astern dwindled to a thin strip.
The people no longer looked at Brand.
The current was already carrying them away, and it was too late to choose.
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