In the end the fairest thing, Cynehelm decided, was to put it to a vote. Even on our voyages he had always sought his crew’s opinion when he could. When you’re out at sea, far from shore, at the mercy of the winds, being battered by rain and hail, there’s nothing worse than knowing your oarsmen are cursing you behind your back.
Anyway, we voted. Of the fourteen, twelve wanted to go after Malger, either out of anger or because they wanted revenge or simply because they didn’t know any better. And so it was settled. For the two who had voted against, that was it. Cynehelm insisted that they should be allowed to depart with honour and without reproach, since they’d been staunch friends who had served well. Even so, it was hard to see them go, not just because they’d been there since the beginning, but also because they were two of our best warriors.
?scmund I loved like a brother and trusted more than any other man in the world. He had served Cynehelm for nearly ten years. And there was his cousin Uhtferth, whose hide I’d saved more than once and who had saved mine in turn, whose good humour we could always rely on to lift our spirits in our darkest moments. Everything we’d seen and everything we’d done, though, had doused his fire. There was no laughter left in him, nor hunger to keep on fighting. They were good men, but they were spent, and so we had no choice but to say farewell. They begged me to join them, said it was pointless to keep fighting and that I should come with them.
*
‘They asked you to abandon your lord?’ Merewyn asks.
‘They tried to sway him as well. They said we’d done everything we could but that it was time to give up the struggle. That this was a fight we could never win.’
‘And what did he say to that?’
‘His mind was set. So was mine. When they saw this, they shook their heads and turned away so that we wouldn’t see their tears, but they didn’t change their minds, and I didn’t expect them to. They wished us well, and then with heavy hearts we parted ways. Where they went and what became of them, I don’t know. It was only once they’d gone that I began to feel nervous. We were only twelve men then, a sorry knot of bedraggled warriors with little in common except the wish to bloody our blades. Maybe I should have stopped then to think about whether what we were doing was wise.’
‘Would your lord have listened, if he was as single-minded as you say he was?’
‘Yes,’ Beorn says abruptly. ‘Yes, he would have listened. To me, he would have, if to no one else. I’d always been closest to him. He trusted me like no other. He respected my judgement. And besides, I was the only one left.’
Tova asks, ‘What do you mean, the only one?’
He gives her a strange look as he hesitates. ‘Of Cynehelm’s men. We were five to begin with and now there was just me, keeping company with men and boys who until a few weeks ago had been complete strangers.’
‘So why didn’t you say anything?’ asks Oslac. ‘If your lord trusted you and respected your counsel, why did you hold your tongue?’
‘Because even then I still wanted what everyone else wanted. I suppose pride was part of it as well. If I’d changed my mind I would have looked a fool. And what else was I going to do? Where else was I going to go? So you see I didn’t have much choice. Anyway, it was only a moment’s misgiving, nothing more than that. As a warrior you always have doubts, but if you let them grow too powerful they turn into fears, and those fears cripple you, so you quickly learn how to push them away. You learn or you die.’
He pauses to swallow, as if the words are sticking in his throat and he is having trouble getting them out. There is silence. No one, Tova supposes, wants to be the one to ask what happened next. She isn’t sure she really wants to know, but she has the feeling they’re about to find out.
*
For three days we watched the great hall that Malger had ordered built. It stood on a mound within a loop of the river, surrounded by ditches and ramparts and a timber palisade. It was nearing midwinter; the frost lay heavily across the land and the ground was hard. Many of the streams were frozen, and there was a biting wind that stung our cheeks. We rubbed our hands and huddled deeper inside our cloaks, and all the while we kept imagining ourselves inside by a blazing hearth, feasting, swilling ale, playing games, telling riddles and sharing tales of things we had done and seen and others that we had heard, with our loved ones gathered around us, with beautiful women perched on our knees and children’s shouts filling the air as they scurried around our feet.