Only a few moments passed before Ragned proposed abandoning the search. Not because he wanted those people dead: he simply thought them less important than the dispute over rule.
"Three people against two settlements," he said. "The water is cold. If they were swept away, they are dead already. If not, they will come back on their own. Finishing the dispute matters more now."
Nera looked at him as though deciding how much food to give a man without a heart.
Brand said nothing, offering no objection to Ragned.
Steinar asked:
"Who went?"
Farin answered:
"Ingvi with the black tooth. Lagga, the one who mends nets. Young Harek."
Farin named them at once instead of calling them 'the three from the boat'.
Saiva raised her head and quietly repeated the names, trying to remember them.
Ragned frowned.
"This is what your new order does. While you name every man, you waste the time needed to save the whole settlement."
Steinar looked out to sea.
The mist moved in bands. The current did not run straight out from the shore, but along the black rocks and then farther on, towards the dark line of water. Farin was already looking that way.
"Do you see it?" Steinar asked.
"Yes."
"Are they alive?"
Farin tightened his grip on the oar.
"I don't know. But the boat was not carried into the open sea. A side current took it towards the place the wood came from yesterday."
Brand said:
"If you leave now, Steinar, Ragned will have the right to speak first in your absence."
Brand spoke the truth. If Steinar left to search for the boat, the skald would tell those who remained his version of the dispute. If he stayed, three people might die and be turned into a single convenient word: missing.
Saiva stood beside him without touching his sleeve.
She advised him neither to go nor to stay.
Steinar turned to Borri.
"Will the bad boat hold?"
Borri looked at the water, at the sky, at his own injured arm.
"If she is steered by someone who is not trying to look brave."
Farin was already walking towards the shore.
"I will steer."
Ragned stepped forward.
"A former thrall will steer a jarl's son?"
Farin did not even turn round.
"No. The current will steer us."
Eska suddenly held out to Steinar her sleeve with its crooked notches.
"Take it."
"Why?"
"If you don't come back, they should have more than Brand's cup."
Steinar wanted to refuse.
Then he understood: refusing would show the same condescension with which adults had belittled her work all her life. Eska took Modra's knife, cut away the inner strip of the sleeve bearing the copied notches and gave it to Steinar.
"Nera will notice anyway," she said darkly.
"I will tell her it was my fault."
"Don't. Then she'll scold me even worse."
For the first time in those hard days, Steinar gave a short, mirthless laugh.
Four of them took to the water: Steinar, Farin, Borri and Saiva.
Saiva settled herself in the bow without asking permission.
"You should not be coming with us."
"I know."
"Brand can sing without you."
"He will sing anyway. I want to hear the living first, not his song."
The boat moved heavily, the waves striking her side. Farin steered along the dark band of current beneath the foam, not straight towards the place where they expected to see the missing people. Steinar rowed in silence; his shoulders ached after the sleepless night. Borri sat in the stern, listening to the boards creak. Saiva stared ahead.
Before long the shore was barely visible, and the voices behind them faded into the mist.
Then Saiva said:
"You could have stayed and won the dispute."
"I could."
"Why did you leave?"
Steinar answered plainly:
"Because Brand once turned me into a convenient coward in his song. I will not let him do the same to them."
Saiva was silent for a long time.
Then she said:
"It does not undo yesterday."
"Nor should it."
For the first time that day, the old coldness was gone from her gaze.
"Good."
One short word did not yet mean forgiveness, but Steinar felt relief all the same.
Farin raised a hand.
Through the mist came the knock of wood against wood, not oars against water or waves against stone.
They found the boat by the black rocks where the side current carried wreckage. It had overturned but had not broken apart. Ingvi with the black tooth lay alive on a nearby rock. Higher up sat Lagga, holding young Harek close. His lips were blue, but he was breathing.
"Ingvi, Lagga, Harek," Saiva whispered, making certain they were all there.
Farin helped them into the boat. Borri cursed every loose board as he settled the rescued people. Steinar was about to turn back when Lagga seized his wrist.
"We saw land."
He went still.
"What land?"
"Not this one. Farther west. The current carried us there in the night. It smelled not of stone, but of green forest and smoke."
Harek, his voice almost gone, drew a piece of wood from beneath the wet hide.
This piece differed from the first: the wood was fresh, and it still bore bark that smelled of sweet resin. Marks of water, a leaf and a hand with spread fingers had been carved into the surface. Beside the hand were three short notches and one long one; their arrangement looked more like marks for a journey than a reckoning of objects.
Borri said very quietly:
"This wood could not have drifted for a whole year."
Farin looked west.
The mist was lighter there.
Saiva touched the carving.
"Someone left this board for another person, not for the sea."
By the time they returned, the dispute on the shore had resumed.
Ragned stood before the people, saying that Steinar had fled to the water again when he should have been defending his rights. Brand said nothing, waiting for a useful moment.
Steinar was the last to step out of the boat.
Ingvi, Lagga and Harek came out behind him.
First the people saw that the missing three had returned alive, and then they saw the fresh board.
Brand saw the wood before Ragned did.
The old skald's face did not change, but a short breath told Steinar that the fresh carving had frightened him.
Steinar raised the board above his head.
"The Grey Land was not the first. Beyond the western water lies a Green Shore. People live there, and they already leave marks of their own."
Ragned stepped forward.
"Hide it."
Everyone turned towards the voice.
At first Steinar thought it was Ragned speaking. But no: Brand was asking him to hide the board.
He stood with the cup in his hands and, for the first time, spoke not as a judge but as a frightened man.
"Hide it," Brand repeated. "If the west already has names of its own, our song of the beginning will become a lie before it is born."
Saiva answered:
"Then do not sing it as a song of the beginning."
Anger and pain mingled in Brand's gaze: his former pupil had openly refused to obey him.
Steinar gave the board not to Brand, but to Eska.
The girl took it carefully, not as a toy, but as proof that somewhere there were people whose names they did not yet know.
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