Ironjaw Hold

The Ring. The Ring is the top of the knoll, inside the inner palisade, holding Kruman's hall, the spring and the storehouses. His sworn men and their families live here, and the hall's benches seat three hundred. The Ring smells of smoke and wet hound and sounds like an argument that has lasted two years.

The Guest Ground. The Guest Ground is the flat space between the two palisades on the south side, where the Guest Hall stands and the Fur-Road Qaflan pitch their wagons on the way to Krasvuv. Every caravan stops here, because Kruman feeds it, and every caravan pays for the food with news.

The Red Bog. The Red Bog is the wet ground east of the knoll, where bog iron is dug out of the peat, roasted and smelted in clay furnaces. The water runs rust-red, and the smiths are the only people in the hold who take no side, because Kruman needs them too much to ask.

The Kennels. The Kennels are long low sheds west of the knoll, where the finest war hounds in the west are bred. Judurn the Hound-Master lives among them and is said to prefer their company.

The Lower Steads. The Lower Steads are scattered rye farms and pastures down the trail to the south, poor and open to the wind, and full since 1144 with men from other clans who came to Kruman because Selra's grain never reached them.

Kruman's Hall. Kruman's Hall is a longhouse of black-tarred pine with a dragon-prow gable at each end and the Hearth-Stone of Clan Ironjaw set in its hearth. Kruman sits at the high end, chewing on the left side of his crooked jaw, and he reads the Storm-Runes on its posts himself.

The Open Door. The Guest Hall on the Guest Ground is called the Open Door, because its door has no bar. Any traveler may eat and sleep there as long as he likes, and Kruman will avenge him if he is harmed within sight of the palisade. Southern merchants find this charming, until they see that it also makes Kruman the best-informed man in the north.

The Stelis. The Stelis, "holm, island," is a gravel islet in the tarn below the hold. Duels are fought on it, and Kruman has killed men there. The Ironjaw say eleven stakes stand on its shore, one for each man he has killed in single combat, and that there is room for a twelfth.

The Sons' Mound. This long barrow on the tarn shore is where Kruman buried four sons and two wives. He walks out to it alone on the night after Midwinter Silence and speaks for exactly as long as it takes a torch to burn down.

The Thalmirn Gate. The south gate stands under the painted shield from Thalmirn. Kruman lost his eye to a spear at Thalmirn in 1127 and hung the shield up himself when he came home.

Ironjaw Hold lives by the road. The Fur Trail brings every caravan from the Vargate past its gate, and though Kruman takes no toll, no caravan leaves without leaving a gift, and the gifts are weighed. Furs go south and grain, salt and steel come north, and a fair share of both stops here. The Red Bog's iron makes axe heads for the whole west, and Ironjaw hounds sell as far as Krasvuv, where nobody admits to buying them.

Life in the hold is harder and plainer than in Krasvuv. Kruman keeps the old feasts to the letter, forbids foreign drink at his own table, and lets no Sun-Turner, Deep Cold or Hearth-Maker live inside the Ring, though he would feed any of them at the Open Door. The Ironjaw call the Deep Cold "frozen women," as he does. They sing the saga of Thalmirn the old way, with Kruman in it, and a hrind who sings Sauld Half-Sung's version at the Open Door is fed, housed, and asked very politely to sing something else. In winter the young men race sleds on the tarn and fight on the Stelis for practice. In autumn, when the Farvig geese fly south, some of them still slip away down the Fur Trail to raid, and Kruman does not ask where they went.

• Kruman is making ready to go to the Vuvud this Barerk. His sworn men have been polishing their shields, and Judurn is picking the hounds that will go with them.
• Golen No-Clan, Kruman's nephew and chieftain of the Wolfmarch Outlaws, has been seen at the Open Door, eating at his uncle's table under Kruman's own peace.
• Kruman has no living son. If he dies on the Speaking Mound, his clan has no heir, and half the men in the Lower Steads belong to other clans.
• A Vargate Clans rider comes to the hold every month from Grerik Coldbrook, and nobody knows whether he carries word for Kruman or about him.
• The eleven stakes on the Stelis have been counted again, and there are twelve.

RISING. In 1144 Ironjaw Hold was one clan's fort at the end of a trade road. Now it is the other seat of the north, the place where everyone who thinks Selra is wrong goes to eat. Every winter the grain fails to reach a clan, more men come up the trail to the Open Door, and the benches in Kruman's Hall grow longer. The hold rises exactly as far as Kruman does. He is fifty-five, one-eyed, heirless and very strong, and the whole north is waiting to see whether he will walk back onto the Vuvud-Field or die of the waiting.

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