Ragnar had refused to send soldiers ashore. Instead, a single steam launch carried six unarmed quartermasters and Kaelen's chief clerk to the point, loaded with crates stamped by Leach's office. The crates had been boiled, steamed and scrubbed in lye until their seams had warped.
They opened them on the sand, ten paces from the waterline, and stepped back.
There were iron knives, gleaming and sharp. There were copper kettles, steel axe-heads, and woven wool blankets in dyed red and blue. There were small hand mirrors and bars of salt, and, tucked in one crate, a bundle of colored glass beads.
The old man in the white deer-hide cape came forward alone.
He crouched beside the nearest crate. He turned a knife in his fingers and ran a thumb along the edge.
The skin split.
He looked at the blood, then at the steel, and said something very softly.
Then he lifted a mirror.
For a long moment, he stared at his own face.
When he looked up again, he was laughing.
