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further came of the strange events. The King made certain the child with his
    Queen, at least in pretense, remained his heir. The barons stopped plaguing odd strangers and resumed their squabbles. Wessons returned to their scheming, mer-chants to their counting houses. Within a year the mystery seemed forgotten, though countless eyes kept tabs on the King’s health.
     
     

TWO: The Hearth and the Heart
     
    I) Bragi Ragnarson and Elana Michone
    Suffering in silence, brushing her coppery hair, Elana Ragnarson endured the grumbling of her husband.
    “Bills of lading, bills of sale, accounts payable, accounts receivable, torts and taxes! What kind of life is this? I’m a soldier, not a bloody merchant. I wasn’t meant to be a coin counter...”
    “You could hire an accountant.” The woman knew better than to add that a professional would keep better books. His grumbling was of no moment anyway. It came with spring, the annual disease of a man who had forgotten the hardships of the adventurer’s life. A week or so, time enough to remember sword-strokes dangerously close, unshared beds in icy mud, hunger, and the physical grind of forced marches, would settle him down. But he would never completely overcome the habits of a Trolledyngjan boyhood. North of the Kratchnodian Mountains all able males went to war as soon as the ice broke up in the harbors.
    “Where has my youth gone?” he complained as he began dressing. “When I was fresh down from Trolledyngjan, still in my teens, I was leading troops against El
    Murid... Hire? Did you say hire, woman?” A heavy, hard face encompassed by shaggy blond hair and beard momentarily joined hers in her mirror. She touched his cheek. “Bring in some thief who’ll rob me blind with numbers on paper?
    “When me and Mocker and Haroun were stealing the fat off Itaskian merchants, I never dreamed I’d get fat in the arse and pocket myself. Those were the days. I still ain’t too old. What’s thirty-one? My father’s father fought at Ringerike when he was eighty...”
    “And got himself killed.”
    “Yeah, well.” He rambled on about the deeds of other relatives. But each, as Elana pointed out, had died far from home, and not a one of old age.
    “It’s Haroun’s fault. Where’s he been the last three years? If he turned up, we could get a good adventure started.”
    Elana dropped her brush. Cold-footed mice of fear danced along her spine. This was bad. When he began missing that ruffian bin Yousif the fever had reached a critical pitch. If by whim of fate the man turned up, Bragi could be lured into another insane, Byzantine scheme.
    “Forget that cutthroat. What’s he ever done for you? Just gotten you in trouble since the day you met.” She turned. Bragi stood with one leg in a pair of baggy work trousers, the other partially raised from the floor. She had said the wrong thing. Damn Haroun! How had he gotten a hold on a man as bull-headedly independent as Bragi?
    She suspected it was because bin Yousif had a cause, a decades-deep vendetta with El Murid which infected his every thought and action. His dedication to vengeance awed a man like Bragi.
    Finally, grunting, Ragnarson finished dressing. “Think I’ll ride over to Mocker’s today. Visit a spell.”
    She sighed. The worst was past. A day in the forest would take the edge off his wanderlust. Maybe she should stay home next time he went to Itaskia. A night on his own, in Wharf Street South, might be the specific for his disease.
    “Papa? Are you ready?” their eldest son, Ragnar, called through the bedroom door.
    “Yeah. What you want?”
    “There’s a man here.”
    “This early? Tramp, huh, looking for a handout? Tell him there’s a soft touch next house north.” He chuckled. The next place north was that of his friend Mocker, twenty miles on.
    “Bragi!” A look was enough. The last man he had sent north had been a timber buyer with a fat navy contract.
    “Yes, dear. Ragnar? Tell him I’ll be down