It is strange that he speaks with the voice of Nokvi, Stronghand's last rival among the Eika.

Gasping, he flailed.

"Hey, now! Hey!" said the attendant. She poked him in the ribs with the end of her broom, and the jab got him coughing. "If you're going to be violent, I'm calling the guards!"

"No, I beg your pardon. I just—" There was nothing he could say.

Nokvi, Stronghand's last rival for the overlordship of the Eika, was dead. Stronghand had himself struck the killing blow and pushed Nokvi overboard into the grasp of the merfolk. That battle at Kjalmarsfjord Alain had fought in between breaths as he had himself fought on the hill with the doomed Lions by Queen's Grave, when he had at the last been cut down and killed by the Lady of Battles. How was it that Nokvi spoke out of the depths?

"Yes," said the crone, amused now that she saw Alain would not act rashly, "it strikes all the healthy young men so, bawling like babes when the cold water hits them. On you go, to the hot baths."

She prodded him with the broom, the straw bristles harsh on the tender skin of his buttocks, and he yelped—and she chuckled—as he hurried into the next chamber. This vaulted stone chamber was taken up with a tiled bath smelling of mineral salts. Steam rose from vents in the floor. He stepped in, sitting straight down onto a shelf resting a torso's height below the surface, but the intense heat took him by surprise. A wave of faintness swelled up into his head as might a surge in the sea, and he sank

water pouring over his face. This time will it be the end?

No.

Never.

Not this way.

He means to die peacefully in his bed, not taken by surprise in this ignominious manner by a vanquished enemy who is dead. Whom he killed.

It is only a merman, smarter than a dog and not as intelligent as a man. Nevertheless, a furious merman bent on revenge while his enemy drowns in the water remains a formidable opponent.

As the creature dives in for the kill, Stronghand rolls in the water and kicks, connecting with the torso of the merman. The move is sluggish, the reaction oddly muted, because the water causes all movement to become slow and ungainly—for humankind. The merfolk have no such restriction. The sea is their element, just as rock and fire and air are his.

There are a dozen mermen, or a hundred. He cannot see into the depths. Hulls block the light. Another Eika flails in the water nearby, trying not to sink, but that brother remains untouched as the merfolk swarm around Stronghand. In another moment Stronghand will black out and inhale seawater, and he will sink and drown. They will devour him, as they devoured all the others thrown into the sea. That was the bargain, made long ago.

Why would they desire man flesh and Eika flesh when there are, after all, so many fish in the sea?