Ragned did not drop his sword.
Men like him rarely parted with a weapon that had settled every dispute for them all their lives.
But he lowered the point.
Not at once, and not meekly. First he looked at his men, at Brand, at Steinar, at Farin, as though searching for someone who still acknowledged the old law. But the law no longer came from his sword alone.
"This is not over yet," Ragned said.
Steinar nodded.
"That would be too fine an ending."
Brand went over to Saiva.
He held one of her broken strings in his hand. In a single day he seemed to have aged several years.
"You made the song heavy."
"Yes."
"Men do not like carrying heavy songs across the sea."
Saiva answered:
"But it is harder to lose the living in them."
Brand said nothing.
He laid the broken string beside the shard of the cup.
It was not yet an apology: one gesture was not enough for that. But it was Brand's way of showing that he had seen what had happened and acknowledged it. For now, he knew no more than that.
After the thing, spring on the Grey Land grew neither warmer nor more generous.
The new song brought them no more grain. The fish did not enter the nets out of respect for the new names, and the stones did not grow warmer. Ragned's people and Steinar's still argued over water, timber, a place by the fire, a measure of salt and whose turn it was to mend the sail.
But now they argued differently. Not every dispute began with the question of who ruled here. People do not change in one good day, but the cracked cup now stood by the common hearth, with the board of shares beside it. When the shouting grew too loud, Nera struck her wooden measure and asked:
"Whom did you forget while you were shouting?"
The question annoyed everyone, but it made them fall silent and look around.
Three times Steinar was asked to become jarl of the Grey Land.
The first time it was the people of the old North: they were afraid to live without the rule they knew. The second time it was some of his oarsmen: they loved Steinar and were weary of endless disputes. The third time it was Ketil: he hoped to become the new jarl's chief adviser and win back his old advantages.
Steinar refused all three times.
On the third occasion Nera said:
"You could have agreed and hanged Ketil for his long tongue."
"Too easy a pleasure."
"Pity."
After that, Ketil spoke more quietly for a week.
They left the empty, cracked cup by the common hearth, not as a sacred thing but as a reminder. Before reaching for their weapons, those in dispute had to answer: whom had they forgotten?
Borri fixed the board of shares beneath the shelter. He said that if they left it out in the rain, he would bring back the old ways for the sake of earning the right to cuff fools round the head.
Farin began teaching the young how to read the water by the black rocks. When someone called him master of the oar, he answered:
"An oar serves no one for long. It obeys only hands that do not argue with the water."
Eska carried the newly carved tablet from the Green Shore in a pouch sewn from an old sleeve. Nera recognised her sleeve after all and berated the girl at length. Eska listened with the trace of a smile: for the first time, she was being scolded as one of their own.
In summer they had to answer the question everyone had been putting off.
What were they to do about the Green Shore?
Ragned proposed fitting out a large ship and filling it with their best warriors. Brand wanted to see the outsiders' hearth first and only then decide who had the right to call himself first. Borri meant to take good axes for cutting timber, not men: without a stout hull, even a peaceful voyage would come to nothing. Nera refused to go until there was salt to spare. Farin warned that the current would not let every man reach the shore. Eska asked them to take gifts: the palm carved on the tablet had not closed into a fist.
Steinar listened.
Then he said:
"We will go to learn, not to take. We will ask what they call themselves. If they will not let us land, we will turn back. If they give us water, we will drink as guests. If they meet us with spears, we will try to leave without a fight."
Ragned snorted.
"Playing the coward again."
Steinar smiled.
"It seems my cowardice keeps afloat rather well."
That evening Saiva finished singing the reckoning-song of the first winter.
Steinar's name came neither first nor even second, but after the First Oarsman, Asmund, Auli, Nera, Farin, Borri, Eska, Laggi, Ingvi, Harek and many others whom the old hall would have deemed unworthy of a song.
Steinar listened and understood: the best revenge for being forgotten before was not to become the chief hero, but to remain in a song with room enough for others.
When the people began to leave, Saiva came over to him.
"Did that offend you?"
"That my name came so late?"
"Yes."
"All my life there was emptiness where my place in the song should have been. Now it is among living people. What more could I want?"
She smiled wearily.
"That sounded almost beautiful. Be careful."
"I will try to spoil it all in time."
They did not kiss by the fire. There was no need to give the crowd a ready-made line for a new song.
Saiva merely took his cut palm, turned it upwards and laid a length of new string across it, twisted from horsehair and fine sinew. Not the one Brand had cut, but a new one.
"Keep it until I return from the western waters."
"You are going too?"
"Someone must hear what they call themselves. Otherwise the men will decide that every unknown word means 'spoils'."
Steinar closed his hand around the string.
"Then I will go with you."
"You may go beside me."
At the next dawn Eska brought a new tablet to the fire, freshly carved with a sign. She did not ask permission. She simply added one last, uneven and stubborn line to the song:
"And beyond the distant water stands a city of iron. They say living people are not crossed out there."
Steinar looked at the sign.
He did not know whether it was Gunnvald. Nor did he know whether the outsider's carving truly told of a city where iron served the living rather than songs. Perhaps it was only a rumour that had outrun a ship.
But now they knew what mattered most.
The world did not end where the northern song ran out of words.
And to survive, their song would have to learn to speak anew on every new shore.
Open in the reader