On the night before the thing, Steinar came to the water not to talk.
He came to demand that Farin and Eska at least be freed from their ropes until morning. After the tale of the cup, even Ragned's men understood: if the prisoners were not released, everyone would see that they were driven not by right, but by fear.
He thought he would be alone, but Ragned came without his spear. Perhaps it was a sign of trust, or perhaps his elder brother merely wanted to show that he did not fear an unarmed conversation.
They stood side by side and watched the water strike the black stones.
"Father sent you to bring back the cup," Steinar said.
Ragned gave a wry smile.
"Father sent me to bring you back. The cup too, but you first."
That was worse.
Steinar said nothing.
Ragned rubbed his thumb along the edge of his belt where his knife usually hung.
"Before we sailed, he opened an old chest, thinking I could not see. He held your cup and scraped at the dirty mark by the rim with his nail. Then he said: if Empty Cup survives, bring him back together with this thing. If he does not, let Brand sing it so the kin does not look foolish."
"He knew?"
"He knew something. Or feared something. With Hroald, they are often the same."
Ragned said it without a son's tenderness.
For the first time, Steinar saw his elder brother's jealousy.
"You do not want to bring me under your rule only for the sake of the land," Steinar said.
Ragned looked at the water.
"If you return of your own accord, Father will say that was what he intended all along. If I bring you back bound, at least he will see that I can hold on to what he entrusted to someone else."
"And if I do not return?"
"Then I take the land. That is simpler."
The thing was assembled where the common fire had burned all winter.
Not on level high ground, as Ragned would have done, and not by the ships, as Brand wanted. The people gathered at the hearth where Nera had divided the food, Saiva had named the names in the evenings, and Eska had dried clothes. It was here that Steinar had realised how quickly power passed to the one who apportioned the food.
The stones were set in a circle.
Farin was freed from his ropes, and Eska was released. After Modra's words, even Ragned's men were ashamed to look at the prisoners. Ragned wanted to object, but Brand stopped him with a look.
Modra struck the shard of the cup against a stone.
"Let everyone know what we are deciding now. If the people accept Brand's song, Ragned will decide whose shares count as real, whom to return to the kin's rule, and whom to allow to speak by the fire. He will go to the Green Shore as its master. But if Saiva's song is remembered, everyone named here will be able to tell of their own labour, and no one will dare declare them spoils."
Skardi, the oarsman with the frostbitten ear, muttered:
"Then we are not arguing over fine words."
Nera answered:
"Fine words often conceal a threat."
Before Brand rose, Saiva stepped towards the shard of the cup.
"You kept stolen goods and called it memory."
Ragned's men stirred. Turi, the man with the crooked thumb who stood behind Ketil, lowered his eyes.
Brand did not look away.
"Yes. The cup came to me through dirty hands. I will not sing as though all of it were honest. But the theft does not undo the notches. Name that too, if your broad song can bear it."
Brand rose first. Steinar hated his skill, but could not deny it.
The skald began quietly, yet everyone turned towards him. He carried the old song with such assurance and purity that even Saiva clenched the severed strings in her fist. The force of those lines could not be denied: through them children learnt where their home lay, and old people heard the names of their forebears before they died.
Ragned's men listened with genuine relief: since childhood they had been taught that without such a voice the world would fall apart. Grain dust still clung to the sleeve of a young shield-bearer from the first ship. He looked at Brand with gratitude: in the old song, even the sack brought to Steinar's camp became service to the kin. The grey-haired helmsman from the second ship moved his lips, knowing the next line before it came. Even Ketil straightened, hoping the skald's word would vindicate his dealings once more.
At first they nodded not from malice, but from relief.
Brand sang that Hroald had given the cup.
That was true.
He sang that Ragned had given the blood of the kin and the ships.
That too was true.
He sang that Steinar had left the shield ring and Asmund had fallen at its edge. That was true as well.
He sang that the kinless had followed Steinar, eaten under his protection, wintered by his wall and argued under his name.
Almost true.
The young shield-bearer with grain dust on his sleeve looked at the turf walls and seemed to wonder for the first time whose hands had laid the stones. The grey-haired helmsman lowered his eyes to his palms. They were like Farin's: swollen, cut, with salt in the cracks. Ketil tried to broaden his smile, but it quickly faded.
That was the chief danger: Brand hardly lied at all. The people would have rejected a plain lie, but most of the facts he named were true. The skald merely removed the people and the reasons without which the meaning of events changed entirely.
There was no smoke from the barn in his song.
There were no children whom Steinar had carried out of the fire.
There was no nameless oarsman beneath the lower bench.
There was no trace of Eska's hand on someone else's carving.
There was no truth about Asmund dying to defend the people whom Brand later denied a place in the song.
Nor was there Skardi, who had argued, been afraid and still held the wall when the food had to be divided anew that winter. Ingvi, Lagga and Harek vanished too: all that remained of them was a nameless boat that would have been declared lost if Steinar had kept listening to the fine dispute. Even Ragned's men who had brought the grain were absent, though they had suddenly realised that in the song they would become no more than the elder son's nameless hands.
When Brand finished, the shore was silent.
Ragned was smiling now not with amusement, but with hunger: he saw the people leaning back towards his side.
Steinar could have answered with a speech about himself.
He could have said: I saved, I led, I found, I refused.
All those words were true.
But then Steinar would merely have replaced one hero and master at the centre of the song with another.
Steinar turned to Saiva.
"Do not begin with me."
She looked at him for a long time.
The severed strings hung from her hand. Her fingers were cut, and her voice had grown hoarser since yesterday. But her gaze no longer held the mistrust that had appeared after the word 'mine'.
"Who do I begin with?"
Steinar looked at the shard of the cup.
"The one we did not leave even a name."
Brand smiled almost wearily.
"Name me even one name that people will remember when there are too many names."
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