Slowly, Krol Gawel got up and walked over to where some sacks lay stacked against the side of the boat. Without a word, he took out a handful of seeds and let them fall between his fingers. Here was reality, something that could be touched, not like Wislaw and his demon. But there was something else as well. Even now Krol Gawel could not take his eyes from them. Such simple things – he could crush them between his fingers – yet a whole future lay within. Such was the eternal riddle of wheat and barley.
‘We must act soon,’ he said. ‘There is a season for the plough and it fast approaches. Already there is a change in the air and the land cries out for sowing.’
‘Whatever we do by day, the hunters destroy by night,’ Grunmir said wearily, as if this was an old conversation, ‘and the men won’t stand guard during the night, not with that demon lurking in the trees. To go into the woods after dusk is to invite certain death. You can’t expect men to sacrifice their lives, not to that thing. If Wislaw is so mighty, let him cast the demon back to whatever dungheap it was spawned from.’
‘It is all I can do to save the camp,’ Wislaw interrupted, ‘not even Piórun could do more.’
‘Six nights, and the thing has not come upon us.’ Grunmir let the words hang in the gloom. There was a sharp intake of breath. Iwa could feel the grip on her shoulders tremble, the woyaks filled with hope. Perhaps this thing had really gone.
‘No,’ Wislaw said slowly. ‘The thing prowls the woods by night. It’s only my barrier that keeps it at bay.’
‘Then I shall face this demon spawn myself,’ Krol Gawel said softly.
‘Nothing harms the demon,’ Grunmir replied. ‘No blade forged by men can prove itself against the creatures of the night. A krol cannot throw away his life on a fool’s gamble.’
‘No.’ Krol Gawel put up his hand. ‘I am the krol and I must free my people. For some time now I have realised that my fate is bound up with this creature. We must be able to defend the crops.’ In the dark Wislaw smiled, but as he relaxed he forgot to keep his grip on the manikin and she felt his power ebb. She wanted to speak but some vestige of the doll still remained within her, choking her words.
‘If you were to sow your crops during the day,’ Alia said, ‘I doubt that the clans would have the wit to dig up the seeds. They are fools without such sense. They still wonder why Jezi Baba hasn’t ridden down on her birch branch to grind your bones with her pestle and mortar.’
‘Not unless somebody told them,’ Krol Gawel said, and all eyes turned to Iwa, who tried to make herself appear as small as possible. ‘Perhaps I underestimated this girl.’
‘No, you haven’t,’ she gulped as she looked round, desperate to find a friendly face.
‘There’s no telling what damage a sharp-eyed girl could do. So what would happen if I let you go? Would you run to your hunters and tell them how to dig up my crops?’
‘The hunters hate me almost as much as they hate you.’
‘What lies,’ Wislaw sniggered. ‘Look,’ he grabbed Iwa’s wrist and twisted it savagely, ‘see the clan marks borne upon her arms?’
‘She’d make an excellent spy,’ Grunmir agreed. ‘Who would suspect her?’
‘Who’d trust her with such a mission?’ Alia mocked. ‘A mere chit of a girl who couldn’t even pick berries without running off to play childish games. Do you think anyone would listen to her?’
‘They might,’ Krol Gawel said, ‘if they were desperate. Sometimes victory may hang on the most slender of hopes, the merest scraps of information. Many’s the time before now when I’ve had to trust even my life to such slender means.’
Alia had come down to stand by the krol, the wine jug ready in her hands. She no longer wore the clan marks. Her wrists were bound with a silver bracelet where the runes should have been. ‘She’s nothing to the clan; an outsider, never to be trusted. She killed her mother by her birth. We should have cast her body on the mountainside for the snows to take.’
There was a long silence. All eyes watched the krol, but he didn’t move. ‘Once I had such vision,’ he said, almost to himself. ‘I believed that we could be something more than woyaks, built for war and easy plunder.’ Krol Gawel put his hand into the sack again and felt the seeds run against his skin. ‘One grows tired of war and slaughter, and the simple joys of hearth and home beckon. Once I was young and felt I could take on the whole world, the gods if need be. Now I’ve had my fill of battle.’
‘We’ll plant your grain,’ Grunmir said. ‘There will be wheat and barley too, whatever the hunters might do.’
But the krol was lost, his eyes distant as he let the last of the seeds fall between his fingers. ‘I used to pity the farmers, even as we slaughtered them, burnt down their houses and left their carcasses to rot in the fields. My father had land far up north, good pastures and plough land too. There I should have stayed, but my heart was always drawn to the sea. I was young and maybe I could have lived on the shifting tides back then; but a man wearies of such things. We are not built for endless wandering, but must put down roots, to feel the earth of our ancestors beneath our feet.’
‘Many men have lost their birthright,’ Grunmir said softly.
The krol looked up at him. ‘Yes, and others have simply given it away.’ Krol Gawel paused and looked at Grunmir, an uneasy silence growing between them.
‘Fate does not always chart an easy course,
