the floor; the vibration skittered up Hod’s legs. He rose, for his voice came from several feet higher than moments before.
“What do you want me to do?” Banruud asked. “I am a king, not a keeper. I am but a man. I am not a master of runes. We support the temple on the mount, the people worship the keepers, and yet they cannot answer our prayers. My daughter is the last girl child to be born to a son of Saylok. In twenty-four years, she is the only one.” Banruud paused, letting the reminder sink in around him. It was almost as if he believed his own lie.
“Yet you come to me as though I can heal your seed,” Banruud continued. “Why do you not ask the keepers what they have done to end the scourge? Do they not guard the holy runes? Do they not commune with the fates? Do they not have Odin’s ear?”
Banruud waited again, fervor ringing in his voice, and when no one disagreed with him, he continued.
“Five daughters have grown to womanhood in the temple walls, yet they have not been returned to you, to their clans. Their wombs are empty. What hope have they given you, Chieftains of Saylok? What hope have they given your people? Our sons turn on each other. And you come to me with your hands extended, asking me to cure this ill. Why do you not ask the keepers?”
The men behind Elbor all began to grunt in raucous agreement, the sound like a herd of starving pigs.
The chuff and growl of the warriors of Berne, the Clan of the Bear, became a competing swell, and Hod resisted the urge to cover his ears. Lothgar of Leok threw back his head and roared just to compete, the sound reverberating like the lion he claimed to descend from.
“There . . . is . . . no . . . order,” Bayr said, each word succinct, and the cacophony ceased.
“It is not the keepers who rape and pillage. It is not the keepers who send their warriors to plunder the lands of their neighbors,” Dred added, his fury billowing over his grandson’s head.
“We take what we must to survive,” Benjie barked.
“You are lazy, Benjie. Your land is overrun with young men who follow your lead. Our women are few, but it is not the women who plow the fields or trap or fish or fight the Northmen. It has never been the women. So what is your excuse?” Dred argued.
“You are not a chieftain, Dred of Dolphys!” Benjie yelled, and the scraping of chairs and the rattling of swords indicated a battle of some sort had ensued.
Bayr bellowed, and from the sound of it, Benjie had made the mistake of lunging for Dred of Dolphys and had been tossed head over tail and landed with a crash behind Lothgar of Leok. His blade rattled across the floor and thudded against Hod’s foot. Hod kicked it back toward him as gasps of shock rippled from the table to the warriors who lined the walls. Hod wasn’t certain if it was awe at Bayr’s feat or fear at what it would incite.
Lothgar roared again, but this time in laughter. “I didn’t know bears could fly, Benjie.”
From Benjie’s silence, Hod could only ascertain that he was not conscious or he too had been stunned by his newly discovered ability.
“Help the man off the floor,” Lothgar instructed his men.
“The chieftain from Dolphys is not wrong,” Aidan contended as Lothgar’s merriment subsided. “We too have been beset by raiders from Berne. The fish have not stopped filling our nets. There is bounty in the land, and our men continue to be fierce in battle. But there are too many of them without families or female companionship. And some grow aimless . . . and vicious.”
Josef of Joran, a man who was more farmer than warrior, raised his own weary complaints to the king. “We are under constant threat from Ebba. Some of the Ebbans who seek refuge have nothing but the clothes on their backs, but they are willing to work and we welcome them. Others who come want only to take what does not belong to them. We have had to put warriors on the border, and now all who seek entry are turned away. We simply cannot absorb all of Ebba. Elbor sends his poor to me, and he sits like a pig on the spit, an apple in his fat snout.”