She turns to the warrior, whose teeth are clenched. He looks as if he might kill Oslac at any moment. ‘Beorn?’
Beorn doesn’t answer. He’s shaking his head, slowly. The blade pointed at the poet’s throat trembles.
‘You thought no one would work it out, didn’t you?’ Oslac says to him. ‘Well, I did. For a long time I wasn’t sure, but as soon as I was, I knew I couldn’t—’
‘This isn’t about me,’ Beorn says, cutting him off. ‘This is about you and your lies.’
‘My lies? What about yours?’
‘I’m not the one who gave us away to our enemies. Everything I told you was the truth.’
‘Not everything. You told us Cynehelm was dead.’
‘He is. He died that day, in the fight.’
‘What does this have to do with anything?’ Merewyn asks.
But Oslac’s attention is on Beorn, and him alone. ‘Are you going to tell them, or should I?’
‘I should just kill you now,’ the warrior says.
‘You mean like you slaughtered all those others? You killed them in their beds. You burned them alive inside their own feasting halls. Yes, I heard the tales, long before I heard them from you.’
‘I’m warning you, whelp. Give me one reason why I shouldn’t just bury this blade in your gut.’
‘Do it. If that’s what you want to do, I can’t stop you. But it won’t change anything. They’ll still want to know. If they haven’t already guessed it by now. They’ll still want to hear it from your own mouth.’
‘Hear what?’ Merewyn asks.
But Tova knows. She has worked it out, even if her lady hasn’t. She turns to face Beorn – the man whom she has known as Beorn, at any rate.
‘You’re Cynehelm,’ she says. ‘He wasn’t your lord, was he? He was you.’
Cynehelm Caldheort. Cynehelm the Unfeeling. It’s him. But why would he change his name? Why pretend to be someone else?
‘Cynehelm is gone, girl,’ Beorn says. ‘He set out to kill Malger that morning and he didn’t come back, and that’s all there is to it. There’s nothing left of him now.’
‘I don’t understand,’ says Merewyn, glancing at Oslac. ‘What does it matter?’
But Oslac isn’t paying her any attention. ‘You see now why I did it, don’t you? I didn’t mean for anyone else to be caught up in it. I didn’t mean for Guthred to get hurt, or any of you. That’s why, when I saw you this morning, Tova, I urged you to leave while you still had the chance. To leave and to run as fast and as far away from him as you could.’
‘You tried to get me killed,’ Beorn says.
‘I only did what I had to do,’ Oslac answers. ‘What my heart and my head were telling me was right. I didn’t mean for Guthred to die, I really didn’t. You have to believe me.’
‘I believe you’re a worthless worm that doesn’t deserve to live.’
Beorn brings the blade closer to Oslac’s face, so close that the point is almost touching his skin.
‘No!’ Tova says.
The warrior stops. ‘What?’
‘We should let him speak. It’s only right.’
‘And suffer him to live another moment? Why should we, when he’s already as good as admitted everything?’
‘Because . . . because that’s not what we do. That’s not who we are. We don’t kill for the sake of it. We don’t murder out of hand. We’re not them.’
‘She’s right,’ Merewyn says. ‘We had the chance to tell our tales, didn’t we? Well, now it’s his turn. And I for one want to hear what he has to say for himself.’
‘And when he’s finished telling, what then?’
‘Then we can decide, all of us together. We can decide if he should die, or if we ought to let him go.’
Beorn doesn’t speak for a long time; his seax remains at the poet’s throat. Oslac watches it warily, taking shallow, quick breaths, expecting his death to arrive at any moment. He looks terrified, as well he should. Like a small child, defenceless. A wretched creature.
‘All right,’ Beorn says at last. ‘Whatever it is you have to say, spew it out. This is your one chance, you understand? So make it quick. And you can give the lady your cloak too. She looks as though she’s about to freeze.’
Oslac
This is how it’s going to be then, is it? You let me speak and then you judge me? Why should I bother? You’re not going to show me any mercy. You, of all people, Cynehelm.