Cenric!Snapper trotted after him, running in lazy circles.Friends?He cocked his head at the strange ships, tail wagging.
Ash and a few of the younger dogs followed, though the strangers seemed to be less novel for them.They must have already had time to investigate.
“Where is Berdun?”Cenric called, speaking Valdari
A man with a wide leather girdle around his waist stepped forward to meet them.He was thicker than the last time Cenric had seen him, but mostly the same.
Berdun took a moment, but then his eyes widened.“Cenric?I didn’t recognize you without your beard.”
Berdun probably meant nothing by it, but Cenric felt a twinge ofsomethingat the words.He wasn’t clean-shaven, few men this far north were, but he kept it trimmed after the style of Hylden.He used to have braids and rings, but it had made his Hyldish subjects uneasy.
“Alderman, yes?”Berdun bowed to Cenric, acknowledging his superior station.
Cenric reached out and clasped the other man’s forearm to show he was unarmed.“It’s good to see you, Berdun.”
“I still can’t believe you’re an alderman.”Berdun surveyed Cenric and the surrounding village as if this was a marvel worthy of legend.
“My brothers were courteous enough to die,” Cenric said drily.
Berdun chuckled at that, then glanced to the thane at Cenric’s side.“Edric?Not as skinny as you once were.”
“I have a lord who feeds me well.”Edric smiled tightly as he spoke the words in Valdari.
Ovrek had promised freedom to any thralls who turned against his enemies.Edric had taken him up on the offer.
Edric had been more skeleton than boy when Cenric had first met him.The Valdari who’d kept Edric as a thrall had thought to make him obey by starving him and when that hadn’t worked, had tried beatings.
Edric had laughed hysterically the day he’d stumbled into Ovrek’s camp, covered in blood and bruises.They’d all thought him mad, especially when he’d brandished the head of his former master.Edric had killed his master by using the gate of a sheep pen to trap him against the wall, then sawed through the man’s neck bit by bit with his own eating knife.
To hear Edric tell the story, his master had screamed and fought, but none of the other thralls had helped him—or Edric, for that matter.When Ovrek’s army had taken his late master’s farm and Ovrek had offered him the chance to free the other thralls, Edric had declined.He said they hadn’t helped him when he’d been starved and beaten, so why should Edric help them?Those men and women had remained thralls.
“It’s good to see you, Berdun,” Cenric said.“But why are you here?I’m surprised Ovrek can spare you these days.”
Berdun exhaled.“Ovrek would invite you to visit him in Istra, to be his guest for the Althing.”
The Althing was the largest gathering of people in Valdar.It was a time for disputes to be settled, justice prescribed, and laws decided.Since most of the islands’ inhabitants were gathered in one place for a week or more, it was also peak trading season.Whether it was walrus ivory from the farthest northern reaches, woven cloth, newly captured thralls, smoked reindeer, or precious stones from across the sea and beyond, one could trade for it at the Althing.Raids increased in the weeks immediately before the Althing as men tried to acquire goods to trade.
Cenric’s great-grandfather had once been chosen as the Lawspeaker, a fact of pride in his mother’s family.His great-grandfather had memorized all eighty-six laws of Valdar in those days and had recited them annually for the gathered crowds.
Since Ovrek had taken over Valdar and declared his word as the only law, it had become more of an annual festival.
The Althing had always been held in a great cleared field around Istra and its harbor, so Istra was where the first king of Valdar had established his capital.It was the largest city in Valdar and had nearly one thousand residents when Cenric had seen it last.
“The Althing?”Edric balked at that.
Under different circumstances, Cenric might not have thought anything of this.He might even have been flattered, but Brynn’s warnings rippled across his mind.
Berdun must have misinterpreted Cenric’s silence.“For old times’ sake.”
Old times?He had fought alongside Edric, his cousin Hróarr, and many others to bring Valdar under Ovrek’s control.Proud and stiff-necked Valdari had been forced to bow before the new king.Cenric’s heart thrummed as he considered the possibilities of why Ovrek would want to see him.
“If I go to Istra,” Cenric said, “and stay through the Althing, that will be six weeks of absence.During the high raiding season.”
“There will be no raids,” Berdun promised, with a little too much certainty.
Cenric wasn’t sure he believed that.Raiding might sometimes be taxed by jarls and powerful men on the islands, but it wasn’t uncommon for individual communities to take it up discreetly, too.A few farmers with spears and a boat might come to steal extra sheep, grain, or iron from undefended settlements along the coast.
Ovrek might be powerful, but Cenric didn’t believe for a second he had the power to stop raids altogether.Not unless he had gained omniscience in the past few years.
