Daigon allowed a small smile to play across his thin lips as he turned from Erlendr to Evar.

"Lord Regent Erlendr," he said, and though his voice remained quiet he could be heard over the shouting of the Horse Tooth and Þyrseig and a half dozen other petty clans declaring support for Evar and denouncing the Coward and the Shattered Moon, "the Jarl of Sentinel warns you against my duplicity."

He approached Evar as he spoke, and the Varvudda guardsmen and thanes eyed him warily. But the Coward was unarmed, his empty palms open and facing out as he walked.

"I am duplicitous, I am a liar," Daigon said, as the hall fell quiet. The Jarl of the Broken Hammer loudly guffawed at the melodrama and audibly slurped down more mead. Evar's hands closed into fists as the Coward came within striking distance.

"I am a murderer," said Daigon, and though his voice was barely above a whisper no one failed to hear him.

"But I am not the only one. Do you know why I fled the field, now so many years ago, Lord Erlendr? Fled before the Stonecutter and Red Knot armies?" he asked more loudly this time, "Do you know who invited me to attack the late High King? Told me where he and his men would be, straggling north from Sentinel? Do you know which jarl begged me to join him, to rid us all of the Stonecutter yoke? Promised me reinforcements that never appeared, forcing me to withdraw?"

Daigon's eyes fell on Vignar, "You never told him, your own son?"

The Coward turned, with practiced theatricality, away from Evar to the rest of the room.

"Let such matters concern us no more," he said, "Let us kill the past, and fight together for our future freedom."