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landed here, knowing that Finn’s raid took this shore not long ago, I assumed there was more than plunder you wanted. I would be more surprised if I am the only among us who considered that you intended to take the castle.” Leif took a breath and added, “I am surprised you thought it necessary to keep the knowledge close.”
     
    “I mean to make a settlement here, and I mean to claim this all in my father’s name alone.”
     
    Leif drew up short. Half of the raiders were sworn to Snorri. Taking claim of and credit for the spoils of the raid would break the alliance and be seen as an act of war. It had been Åke who’d sought the alliance in the first place. “Then why ally at all?”
     
    Calder didn’t respond, and Leif stretched his mind for an answer. Before he could find one, Calder gave him an affectionate slap on the back. “Do not fret, my friend. All will be made clear. The seer has shown my father that the gods are with us. I tell you now so that your surprise is between us only, and so that your judgment will shape the way I speak with the others.”
     
    Understanding what Calder needed of him, and what he expected of him, Leif considered his words. “Breaking the alliance here in Estland would tear the camp apart, Calder. Be temperate. Your father is jarl. If a move is to be made, it should be he who makes it.”
     
    “But he is not here. It was my blade that washed Vladimir’s blood over the earth.”
     
    Calder had grown impatient over the past few years to step out from his father’s great shadow. Leif saw that impatience at work now and sought a way to allay it.
     
    “And you will have that glory. Return to Geitland and your father with laden ships. If we fight among each other here, we will take losses, and you will diminish the greatness of your return.”
     
    After a long, heavy silence, Calder nodded. “You are wise, Leif. You see reason when I can only feel need.”
     
    Such had always been true. Though Calder was the older of them, Leif was the wiser.
     
    The men embraced and returned to the camp.
     
     
    ~oOo~
     
     
    After the meeting, Calder stalked off on his own. Leif stood at the God’s-Eye’s side and watched him turn into his tent. The fabric shook as he drew the walls closed; his friend was angry.
     
    Leif had not planned to volunteer to stay behind in Estland and hold the castle. But then Vali Storm-Wolf and the God’s-Eye had both volunteered, and Leif saw the trouble there. Besides, nothing and no one awaited his return to Geitland. The last of his family, his last son, was in this earth—what little of him they’d reclaimed. He was not ready to leave him behind.
     
    “You should go to him,” the God’s-Eye said. “Make him see that it is right to leave strength behind.” She turned and stared at the healer’s tent, into which Vali had just returned.
     
    Everyone, Calder perhaps especially, had been shocked to see the great man standing on his own power at the meeting, and speaking with a strong, true voice. Vali had challenged Calder’s claim and changed his intention, and Leif had seen the killing urge light his friend’s eyes.
     
    But Leif believed the meeting had gone as well as it could have gone. A balance of both jarls’ raiders had volunteered to stay and hold the claim. At least in Estland, the alliance would remain intact, and Leif would do all he could to ensure that remained true.
     
    As for home, Calder would return victorious, and Snorri’s fiercest warrior and strongest voice would not be there to dispute the credit. If Åke had some other plan, some dark purpose, then Vali’s absence at home would weaken Snorri and further Åke’s cause.
     
    Leif was sorry for that; it sat hard on his shoulders to think that oaths had been made in bad faith, but he had made no such bad oath. He was sworn to Åke, and his allegiance rested in Geitland.
     
    The God’s-Eye walked away without a word, headed toward the healer’s tent again. Leif