Brand called Steinar to the fire for a talk without witnesses, though the others remained nearby all the same.
Saiva stood behind the turf wall, pretending to check the strings. Eska sat beside Nera, pretending to be asleep. Farin sharpened a fish-hook so slowly that he was plainly listening to the conversation.
Brand sat opposite Steinar and placed the cup between them.
"You think I stole it."
"I think you're glad it came into your hands."
"That is nearer the truth."
The old skald tossed a dry piece of turf onto the fire. The smoke smelled of wet earth and salt.
"You are a good enemy, Steinar. Better than Ragned thinks. He wants you to come out with a sword, because then everything will be simple. I want you to understand why you will lose even if you do not."
Steinar said nothing.
Brand waited.
"Human memory is short," Brand said. "And not because I am cruel. A song is repeated by the fire by children, drunken warriors, widows, oarsmen, old men whose hearing is failing. Put every name into it and it falls apart. Tell every truth in equal detail and none of them will be remembered."
"A convenient thought for the man holding the knife."
Brand took no offence.
"Yes. And a heavy one for the man who understands that the knife is needed. I have seen kins where everyone was remembered. Every scrap of land had twenty dead owners. Every feast ended in an argument. Every child was born owing vengeance for a man he had never seen. Memory without choosing also kills."
Steinar did not want to admit the force of those words, but they held a truth of their own.
The old order had survived famine, bloodshed, bad winters, the break-up of yards and sons who forgot their fathers before spring. It preserved the kins precisely because it allowed only a few to be remembered. It was cruel, but it had worked until now.
"You call people spare," Steinar said.
"I speak of needless weight. Choose no one and you will have noise, not justice. You want a song that holds everyone. Good. Who will repeat it three winters from now? Eska? She will grow up and forget half the names. Farin? His children will choose debts of their own. Saiva? Her anger is beautiful, but anger is poor at keeping order."
Steinar looked at the cup.
"And your order is good at keeping empty places."
Brand ran his thumb along the rim.
"An empty place sometimes saves those who remain. Are you thinking of Asmund?"
At Asmund's name Steinar tensed, but made himself stay still.
Brand went on gently:
"I left him in the song, though I need not have done. Many boys die at the edge of the line. But Asmund held his shield while the others fled. His name teaches the young not to abandon the line."
"And what does your song teach the people saved from the storehouse but never mentioned at all?"
"To live. Sometimes the living should not demand too much from a song."
For the first time Steinar understood that Brand did not leave people unmentioned out of malice alone. That was worse: the skald believed that by casting aside some names, he made the song that remained clearer and stronger.
"Tomorrow I will not lie," Brand said. "I will say that you made it here. I will say that you fed people. I will say that you survived the winter on the Grey Land. But the kin's claim will come first, because without the kin your journey would have had no name."
"And if the west already has names of its own?"
Brand's hand stilled on the cup for no more than a moment.
Steinar noticed. Eska would have been proud.
"You mean the wood," Brand said.
"I mean the people who carved marks on it before us."
"Neither you nor I know whether they were people. A mark is not a name."
"And is a song the truth?"
Brand raised his eyes.
There was no anger in them. Steinar saw unease: Brand wanted the past to remain simple enough for one song.
"Do not show the western wood tomorrow. If you bring it into the dispute, you will destroy not Ragned's claim, but the story of the first northern settlement. People need a beginning, Steinar, even if it is not the beginning of the whole world."
Brand rose.
"At the morning dispute I will name Ragned in the song of the Grey Land. After that everyone will repeat my version. Decide whether you want to remain the brother who argued or the brother who ran away again."
He went back to the tents.
The cup remained with Brand, and at his belt Steinar felt only the empty severed loop.
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