Aeldred turned to him, and Ceinion smiled back at the king, his hands clasped loosely on the tabletop. Alun ab Owyn was ravaged by his brother's death. Aeldred, at the same age, had seen his own brother and father killed on a battlefield, and learned of unspeakable things done to them. And he had accepted homage, not long after, from the man who had slain and butchered them, and let the man live. That same Erling's son was at this table now, in an honoured place. Ceinion wondered if he could talk to Alun about that, if it would mean anything. And then he thought again of the forest pool north of Brynnfell, and wished he'd never been there, or the boy.
He drank from his wine cup. This was the hour when, at a Cyngael feast, the musicians would be summoned to claim and shape a mood. Among the Erlings in Vinmark, too, for that matter, though the songs were not the same, or the mood. There might be wrestlers now, among the Anglcyn, jugglers, knife-throwing contests, drinking bouts. Or all of these at once, in a loud chaos to hold back the night outside.
Not at this court. "I now wish," said Aeldred of the Anglcyn, turning to one and then to the other of the clerics flanking him, "to discuss a translation thought I have, to render into our own tongue the writings of Kallimarchos, his meditations on the proper conduct of a good life. And then I would hear your reasoned opinions on the question of images of Jad and suitable decoration for a sanctuary. I hope you are not fatigued. Do you have a sufficiency of wine, each of you?"
A different sort of king, this one. A different way of pushing back the dark.
+
Thorkell hadn't wanted to go south from Brynnfell with the cleric and the younger son of Owyn ap Glynn and the dog. And he most emphatically hadn't wanted to continue east with them later in the summer to the Anglcyn lands. But when you cast the gambling bones (as he had) in the midst of a battle, and changed sides (as he had), you lost a large measure of control over your own life.
He could have fled once the eastern journey started. He'd done that once before, after surrendering to the Cyngael and converting to the sun god's faith. That had been a young man's wild flight: on foot, with a hostage, to finally arrive, wounded, bone-weary, among fellow Erlings in the north-east of this wide island.
A long time ago. A different man, really. And without the history he'd accrued, since. Thorkell Einarson would be known now to the survivors of that raiding party as having turned on his companions to save a Cyngael woman—and her father, the man who'd slain the Volgan, the man who was the reason they'd come inland so dangerously far. He was, to put it delicately, unsure of a welcome among his people in the east.
Nor did he feel like cutting alone across this country to find out. He had no hearth to row towards—even if a ship would take him at an oar—having been exiled from his own isle for a bad night's fit of temper after dice.
The young man who'd made that escape alone hadn't had a hip that ached when it rained, or a left shoulder that didn't work well first thing of a morning. The cleric had noticed the second of these on their way here. An observant man, too much so for Thorkell's ease of mind. One morning Ceinion had disappeared into the edge of the oak and alderwood forest that marched along north of them and returned with leaves he'd steeped with herbs in the iron pot the donkey carried. Without saying much, he'd told Thorkell to put the hot leaves on his shoulder, wrap them with a cloth, and leave them there when they set off. He did it the next day, too, even though the wood was known to be accursed, haunted with spirits. He didn't go in far, but he did go far enough to get his leaves.
The poultice helped, which was irritating, in a perverse way. The cleric was older than Thorkell, showed no signs of any stiffness of his own at dawn, kneeling during prayers or rising from them. On the other hand, this man wouldn't have had years of fighting behind him, or manning a longship oar in storms.
It seemed to Thorkell that Jad or Ingavin or Thünir-whatever god or gods you cared to name—had caused him to save that girl, ap Hywll's daughter, and then cast his lot with these Cyngael of the west, an oath-sworn servant to them. There were better fates, but it could also be said there were worse.
He'd had a better one as a free man and a landowner on Rabady, a farm of his own within sound of the sea. He'd ripped the skein of that destiny himself: killed a man over dice in the tavern by the harbour (his second man, unfortunately), taken with rage like a berserkir, using his fists. It had taken four men to pull him off, they told him after.
When you did things like that, Thorkell had lived long enough to know, you surrendered your life into the hands of others, even if the dead man had been cheating you. He shouldn't have had so much to drink that night. Old story.
He'd left the isle, taken work here and there, survived a winter, then found a raiding ship down south when springtime came. He ought to have considered more carefully. Perhaps. Or else a god had been steering his path towards those western valleys.
The lady, Brynn's wife, had claimed him as her own servant, then assigned him as a guard to a reluctant cleric when she'd learned that Ceinion had changed his plans, was journeying south to Cadyr to see Owyn, and from there to Aeldred's court. There was something between the two of them, Thorkell had decided, but he wasn't sure what. Didn't think the cleric was bedding Brynn's wife (amusing as that would have been).
He did know the lady had almost certainly saved his own life after the botched raid and the ensuing discovery that Ivarr Ragnarson had blood-eagled two people during his own flight to the ships. He'd had no business doing that: you used the blood-eagle only for a reason, to make a point. You cheapened it, otherwise. There was no point to be made when you were beaten and running home, and when you did it to a farmhand and a girl.
Ivarr, marked from birth, was strange and dangerous, cold as the black snake that would crush the Worldtree at the end of days and destroy its roots with venom. A coward, too, poison arrows and a bow, which didn't make him less threatening. Not with his grandfather's name to wield.
All of which knowledge did leave open the question of why Thorkell had signed on to that ship, joined a Volgan family raid in the first place. A blood feud two generations down. Ancient history for him, long put behind, or it should have been. Siggur Volganson's grandsons were, very clearly, not what Siggur had been, and Thorkell was no longer what he had been, either. Was it sentiment? Longing for youth? Or just the lack of a better thought in his head?
No good answer. A Cyngael farmhouse inland was a long way to go, and had been unlikely to offer much in the way of plunder. The family's sworn vengeance wasn't his own blood feud, though he'd been there all those years ago when Siggur was killed and his sword taken.
You could say he hadn't seen anything else to do since leaving home, or you could say that in some fashion the dark-hilled, mist-shrouded land of the Cyngael was still entangled with his own destiny. You could say he'd missed the sea, man-killer, fortunemaker. A part-truth, but only that.
Thünir and Ingavin might know how it was, or the golden sun god, but Thorkell wouldn't claim to have an answer himself. Men did what they did.
Right now, in the close, rank darkness of a foetid alley outside a tavern in Esferth, what he was doing was waiting for a man he'd recognized earlier in the day to come out and piss against the wall.