“You are Eyolf Sólhrafn, the famous seiðmaðr! I've seen you at blótar1 and Things, and I know you're in business with my son. But I never knew you before! Surely I was wrong about... that thing I mentioned to Gorm... I'm old, my memory fails me...”

explained Gorm's father in pleading gruff voice.

The long wiry silver beard spread on his chest, and the short thin strands of white hair visible under his cap were a proof of his age. The seiðmaðr circled the chair he was seated on:

“So, you launched a declaration that might end my career based on a fading memory? Why, that's almost more wicked than if you had said it on purpose! Say, Gunnarr Flatnose - for this is what you used to be called, isn't it? - how old were you twenty years ago?”

“Forty-three.”

“Forty-three,” he hummed. “A long fruitful life you've had. Tell me, does your son know how you kept yourself entertained in your mid-life? He's not much older than me, he too must've been in his teens back then. Does he know you were one of those men he told me about? The men with special tastes?”

Gorm looked at them – at his father – from the other side of the table, hands bound at his back and mouth kept silent with a string of cloth. Eyolf wanted him to listen, not to talk.

“Was I your first and last, Gorm? Or were there other boys? Other children?”

Flatnose stared in the ground, avoiding his son.

“What do you want? I'll give you anything... I will! Just leave me and my son alone... especially him, he wasn't a part of it.”

“Wasn't he?” the seiðmaðr's eyes squinted. “Wasn't he threatening to take my business and money? destroy my career? all I've worked for my entire life...? Did he not,” he emphasized, “wave my past misfortunes before me like they are my fault? My fault that I was piss-poor and an orphan... that my mother is a simpleton and a drunkard... that I had to resort to any lawless deed that brought me a scrap of food... that I had to be fucked by old men and pretend to like it...?”

“I didn't tell anyone else, Eyolf. And I never will -”

But the response he received was a dark, ominous smirk:

“Oh, of that you can be sure.”

Gunnarr Flatnose turned to pleading:

“Come on, you have everything you want now, those days are behind you. Please, Sólhrafn... Do you want me to beg?”

Without warning, the seiðmaðr jerked and his fist slammed down onto Gunnarr's hand on the table, and the man yelped gutturally – when Eyolf pulled his hand back, his thin knife revealed, thrust between the man's thumb and index finger. The seiðmaðr changed his voice, imitating a weak and weepy plea:

“Please, Flatnose... Just let me go, please! Do you remember now?” he grunted. “Or do you only know me knelt before you?”

The man groaned:

“You came to me! I didn't even know you were a boy, until... That peddler I had been in ties with, that peddler came to me one day and said he'd bring me a clever whore who could put up a show... And you came along. You came for the money - like the whore that you are, that you've always been! You came to me because you liked it, Eyolf, this is what you're made for. It's what you're still doing.”

The seiðmaðr's lips trembled a moment. A clever whore, all that his wit and talents were reduced to.

“For the money, yes, but not for the ordeal you put me through, for the humiliation, for the pain... You're a sick man, Flatnose. The things you had me do... Your friends asked you to leave me be, but instead you took me inside and...” he swallowed. “I was thirteen, did you know?”

“Were you?" he smirked. "You looked younger. Tell me, Eyolf, was I your first?”

Eyolf's nostrils flared but he pretended to ignore the retort, stepping away from the old man and heading towards Gorm:

“It took a while - years, mind you - but I eventually forgot about it. And I forgot about you, until...” he made him stand up, which he did with difficulty, propped against the table, “until your son had to threaten me, to extort me using my past misfortunes - my most painful memories - to try steal my business and ally with my rivals. Like father, like son, eh? You two've made a habit of fucking me over,” and grabbed him by the hair. “Perhaps it's time you learned what that's like...”

And the seiðmaðr pushed Gorm against the table. With his free hand he unbuckled his belt.

But for a moment he paused from what he was determined to do and glanced over his shoulder somewhere in the corner, towards the shades. Towards Yngvar.