He made the hammer sign, invoking both Ingavin and Thünir. He shivered again. A stubborn man he was. Too clever for his own good? His father's son in that? He'd deny it, at a blade's end. This had nothing to do with Thorkell. He was pursuing his own feud with Halldr and the town, not his father's. You exiled a murderer (twice a murderer) if need be. You didn't condemn his freeborn son to years of servitude and a landless fate for the father's crime—and expect him to forgive. A man without land had nothing, could not marry, speak in the thringmoot, claim honour or pride. His life and name were marred, broken as a plough by stones.

He ought to have killed Halldr. Or Arni Kjellson. Or someone. He wondered, sometimes, where his own rage lay. He didn't seem to have that fury, like a berserkir in battle. Or like his father in drink.

His father had killed people, raiding with Siggur Volganson, and here at home.

Bern hadn't done anything so… direct. Instead, he'd stolen a horse secretly in the dark and was now heading, for want of anything close to a better idea, to see if woman's magic—the volur's—could offer him aid in the depths of a night. Not a brilliant plan, but the only one that had come to him. The women would probably scream, raise an alarm, turn him in.

That did make him think of something. A small measure of prudence. He turned east towards the risen moon and the edge of the wood, dismounted, and led the horse a short way in. He looped the rope to a tree trunk. He was not about to walk up to the women's compound leading an obviously stolen horse. This called for some trickery.