Restag grunted skeptically. “Perhaps. But tell me, why would a human king, one with such apparent wealth and stature, receive and send….”

“Friend-speech?”

“Trinket-speech with the ruler of a small tribe such as ours. High Thane you may be in blood and title, but few recognize it beyond the safety of the old songs. Why should this King Aleukus take such interest in a gleam-less crown fallen from its once high throne seven-hundred years passed?”

Witheric opened his mouth to answer, but nothing came to mind. Eventually, he could only lay the letter on the table beside him, lean against the wood, and say, “I don’t know.”

His eyes searched the floorboards, tracing the whorls and lines of the wood’s grain as if they were a river that could carry him to the answer. When they led him nowhere, he removed the band of iron from his brow, turning it in his hands, examining the ancient runes that told the story and purpose of the crown’s fashioning, the origin of his people and his blood right as High Thane over all Asgradi. Bitterness welled in his chest, an emotion he could not quite hide as he said, “I expect it is hard to believe. As hard to believe for you as it is for many of our own people to believe I am a thane worth serving.”

Restag once again glanced up, taking stock of his lord and friend. It was true that Witheric Iron-Brow, first son of Witheow Wolf’s-Arm and heir to his father’s crown, was not the image of the High Thanes of legend. Since infancy, he had been small and thin, even for their people, and often sickly. He had his father’s hair, the color of fresh straw, but his restless, pale blue eyes indicated a mind more like his mother’s, who had died of grief soon after the loss of her husband and their second son a few years before to the endless blood wars of the Asgradi tribes, leaving Witheric as the last of his family line. Yes, there were others who carried within their veins the blood of High Thane due to past marriages within the tribe, but he alone remained directly of the Sons of the High Thanes and the true heir to the Eisenband. The Council of High Elders, whose role was to advise the thane and aid him in ruling and meeting out judgments, had at first appeared to accept that truth, but only up until the new high thane had declared his intentions to cease invading the territories of other tribes, instead focusing on their own lands and trying to establish some form of peace with the peoples around them.

For a thousand generations, the wearer of the Eisenband had ruled over all the Asgradi tribes. From the Great Sea in the north to the islands known as the Dragon’s Spine in the west to the southern Halls of Getergrad, the great dwarf kingdom and former border of the human lands, the High Thane had ruled as rune-speaker, ring-giver, and bond-carver. Then, seven-hundred years ago, it all fell apart. How was not remembered. There were hints in songs and poems of oath-breakers and thane-slayers, but little more. For centuries now, the high thane and those clans closest to him, the tribe of the Eisensaet, had been at war with the other tribes. War that, over time, had gradually chipped away at the high thane’s reach like water to a stone until all that remained was that small collection of families who remained loyal to the Band and its bearer.

Like most of his forefathers, Witheow Wolf’s-Arm had carried on the campaign and had even significantly expanded their borders for the first time in generations, though the peoples remained unsubdued. The high elders had seen hope for continued conquest in the thane’s second son and had counseled the thane to make the boy his heir, only to be thwarted when those very wars claimed their greatest warlord in living memory and that very son they had placed their hopes upon. Despair seized the Eisensaet. What could they hope for from the first son, one who shared his father’s temperament as little as he did his stature?

Then the Leikgaard tribe from the south, one of the enemies with whom the Eisensaet shared a blood-debt as wide and as deep as the Great Sea, seeing the turmoil of the lost thane as a chance to finally destroy what they called the evil of the Eisenband, attacked. With no other choice, the Eisensaet gathered their men and marched out under the command of their new High Thane. He was not a man unfamiliar with war, having accompanied his father before and watched over many battles, but never had he entered the field himself nor spilt a drop of blood. Their doom seemed assured. Yet it did not come. For, so the common man said, the gods still knew the brow that bore the Band and came to his aid, revealing to him the secret words and paths to rout the enemy. Under the arms and eyes of Restag Far-Sighted, spear-man and chosen Thanesman of the new ruler, and the gods’-speech of Witheric Iron-Brow, High Thane, the hated and deceitful Leikgaard were driven back, a victory that promised many more to come under the new ruler.

The Council remained skeptical, but as other battles arose and the young thane’s plans found victory again and again by the hands of his thanesman, their hopes rekindled, plans of conquest again filling their hall. But when they brought these plans to the young thane, he rejected them at once. They appealed to him again and again, but every time they were denied, so they began to spread seeds of doubt against the young thane among the people, leveraging his youth and weakness against him to hinder his purposes until they could work their will over his own. Perhaps if the Leikgaard had not attacked so soon as they did and the Council had brought doubts against the young thane from the start, the attempt would have had a stronger impact. However, it was too late. Men had witnessed victories over old foes. Mothers had seen their sons and husbands return home on their own feet. Already, some among the people called him Witheric Dar’s-Mouth. The Council’s working was not without fruit, and much skepticism remained against the young thane, but to their frustration, with each victory the fear and despair among the people following the death of Witheow lessened, and doubts in his older son diminished. Then there was the ongoing threat of war. To again change the ring-giving hands, the Elders at last saw, was foolish in the face of the blood-debts they and the High Thanes had bought for centuries. And so, they shrank away from visions of glory regained, contenting themselves with regaining first their dignity and influence with the thane himself.

Or so was Restag’s interpretation of the three years since Witheric’s crowning, one that informed his understanding of the thane, not yet twenty-five, who bore the heaviness in his eyes of a man twice his years. But the image passed, replaced by sorrow as Witheric turned the Band in his hands, absently caressing the runes and said, “I am not the thane they wanted.”