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carefully, to merchants visiting the isle. Bern, a watchful child, had seen it happen.
    Other men had told the boy tales; he knew something of what his father had done. Companion and friend to Siggur Volganson himself right to the end. Voyages in storm, raids in the dark. Escaping the Cyngael after Siggur died and his sword was lost. A journey alone across the Cyngael lands, then the width of the Anglcyn kingdom to the eastern coast, and finally home across the sea to Vinmark and this isle.
    “I recollect a night like this, a long time ago,” his father said, leaning back against the boulder that marked the boundary of their land. “We went too far from theboats and they cut us off—Cuthbert’s household guard, his best men—between a wood and a stream.”
    Cuthbert had been king of the Anglcyn in the years when Thorkell was raiding with the Volgan. Bern knew that much.
    He remembered loving moments such as that one had been, the two of them together, the sun setting, the air mild, his father mild, and talking to him.
    “Siggur said something to us that night. He said there are times when all you can do to survive is one single thing, however unlikely it may be, and so you act as if it can be done. The only chance we had was that the enemy was too sure of victory, and had not posted outliers against a night breakout.”
    Thorkell looked at his son. “You understand that everyone posts outlying guards? It is the most basic thing an army does. It is mad not to. They had to have them, there was no chance they didn’t.”
    Bern nodded.
    “So we spoke our prayers to Ingavin and broke out,” Thorkell said, matter-of-factly. “Maybe sixty men—two boats’ worth of us—against two hundred, at the least. A blind rush in the dark, some of us on stolen horses, some running, no order to it, only speed. The whole thing being to get to their camp, and through it—take some horses on the run if we could—cut back towards the ships two days away.”
    Thorkell paused then, looking out over summer farmlands, towards the woods. “They didn’t have outliers. They were waiting for morning to smash us, were mostly asleep, a few still singing and drinking. We killed thirty or forty of them, got horses for some of our unmounted, took two thegns hostage, by blind luck—couldn’t tell who they were in the dark. And we sold them back to Cuthbert the next day for our freedom to get to the boats and sail away.”
    He’d actually grinned, Bern remembered, behind the red beard. His father had rarely smiled.
    “The Anglcyn in the west rebelled against King Cuthbert after that, which is when Athelbert became king, then Gademar, and Aeldred. Raiding got harder, and then Siggur died in Llywerth. That’s when I decided to become a landowner. Spend my days fixing broken doors.”
    He’d had to escape first, alone and on foot, across the breadth of two different countries.
    You act as if it can be done.
    “I’m crossing to the mainland,” Bern said quietly to the girl in that darkness by the wood.
    She stood very still. “Steal a boat?”
    He shook his head. “Couldn’t take the horse on any boat I could manage alone.”
    “You won’t leave the horse?”
    “I won’t leave the horse.”
    “Then?”
    “Swim,” said Bern. “Clearly.” He smiled, but she couldn’t see it, he knew.
    She was silent a moment. “You can swim?”
    He shook his head. “Not that far.”
    Heroes came to thresholds, to moments that marked them, and they died young, too. Icy water, end of winter, the stony shore of Vinmark a world away across the strait, just visible by daylight if the mist didn’t settle, but not now.
    What was a hero, if he never had a chance to do anything? If he died at the first threshold?
    “I think the horse can carry me,” he said. “I will … act as if it can.” He felt his mood changing, a strangeness overtaking him even as he spoke. “Promise me no monsters in the sea?”
    “I wish I could,” said the