He slowed, watching my lips move.
The furs beneath his armor vest blew in the damp breeze, pushing up around his angled jaw. He blinked, pressing his mouth into a straight line as he took the last steps toward me and I didn’t run. I wasn’t going to be brought down by a blade in my back.
The steel gleamed as he pulled the sword up over his head, ready to bring it back down, and I closed my eyes. I breathed. I could see the reflection of the gray sky on the fjord. The willow bloomed on the hillside. The wind wove through my hair. I listened to the sound of my clansmen raging. Fighting in the distance.
“Fiske!” A deep, strangled voice pierced through the fog, finding me, and my eyes popped open.
The Riki before me froze, his eyes darting to the side where the voice was coming toward us.
Fast.
“No!” A tangle of wild, fair hair barreled into him, knocking his sword to the ground. “Fiske, don’t.” He took hold of the man’s armor vest, holding him in place. “Don’t.”
Something twisted in my mind, the blood in my veins slowing, my heart stopping.
“What are you doing?” The Riki wrenched free, picking his sword back up off the ground and driving past him, coming for me.
The man turned, throwing his arms around the Riki and swinging him back.
And that’s when I saw it—his face.
And I was frozen. I was the ice on the river. The snow clinging onto the mountainside.
“Iri.” It was the ghost of a word on my breath.
They stopped struggling, both looking up at me with wide eyes, and it dove deeper within me. What I was seeing. Who I was seeing.
“Iri?” My shaking hand clutched at my armor vest, tears coming up into my eyes. The storm in my stomach churned at the center of the chaos surrounding us.
The man with the sword looked at me, his eyes running over my face, working hard to put something together. But my eyes were on Iri. On the curve of his jaw. His hair—like straw in the sun. The blood smeared across his neck. Hands like my father’s.
“What is this, Iri?” The Riki’s grip tightened around the hilt of his sword, my blood still thick on its blade.
I could barely hear him. I could barely think, everything washed out in the flood of the vision before me.
Iri stepped toward me slowly, his eyes jumping back and forth on mine. I stopped breathing as his hands came up to my face and he leaned in so close that I could feel his breath on my forehead.
“Run, Eelyn.”
He let me go, and my lungs writhed and pulled, begging for air. I turned, looking for Myra in the mist, opening my mouth to call out for my father. But my breath wouldn’t come.
He was gone, devoured by the fog, the Riki disappearing with him.
As if they were ghosts.
As if they were never there.
And they couldn’t have been. Because it was Iri, and the last time I saw my brother was five years ago. Lying dead in the snow.
TWO
I broke through the fog and ran toward the river as fast as my feet would carry me with Myra on my heels, her sword swinging. My eyes were on the trees, in the direction Iri had gone. They jumped from shadow to shadow, looking for a streak of flaxen hair in the darkened forest.
A woman leapt from the tree line, but her shriek was cut off as Myra came from the side, plowing into her with a knife. She dragged it across the woman’s throat and dropped her where she stood, falling into step with me again as I ran.
The retreat whistle for the Riki sounded and the bodies, still tangled in battle, parted to reveal the green field now painted red with the death of clansmen. I took off, weaving through the retreating Riki and grabbing hold of the fair-haired men one by one, searching their faces.
“What are you doing?” Myra wrenched me backward, her sharp face pulled in confusion.
The last of them disappeared into the trees behind her and I turned, looking for the blue wool tunic my father was wearing beneath his armor. “Aghi!”
The heads of the Aska in the field turned toward me.
Myra took hold of my arm, pressing the heel of her hand into the wound to stop the bleeding. “Eelyn.” She pulled me to her. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
I found my father’s face across the field, where the fog was still pulling up from the land like a lifting cloud.
“Aghi!” His name was raw in my throat.
His chin lifted at the strangled sound and his eyes searched the body-littered expanse. When they found me, they transfigured from worry into fear. He dropped his shield and ran to me.
I sank to my knees, my head swimming. He fell beside me, hands running over my body and fingers sliding over blood and sweat-soaked skin. He looked me over carefully, dread pushing its way onto his face.
I took hold of his armor vest, pulling him to face me. “It’s Iri.” The words broke on a sob.
I could still see him. His pale eyes. His fingers touching my face.
My father’s gaze went to Myra before the breath that was caught in his chest let go of his panic. He took my face into his hands and looked at me. “What’s happened?” His eyes caught sight of the blood still seeping from my arm. He let me go, pulling his knife free to cut at the tunic of the Riki lying dead beside us.
“I saw him. I saw Iri.”
He wrapped the torn cloth around my arm, tying it tight. “What are you talking about?”
I pushed his hands from me, crying. “Listen to me! Iri was here! I saw him!”
His hands finally stilled, confusion lighting in his eyes.
“I was fighting a man. He was about to…” I shuddered, remembering how close to death I’d come—closer than I’d ever been. “Iri came out of the fog and saved me. He was with the Riki.” I stood, taking his hand and pulling him toward the tree line. “We have to find him!”
But my father stood like a stone tucked into the earth. His face turned up toward the sky, his eyes blinking against the sunlight.
“Do you hear me? Iri’s alive!” I shouted, holding my arm against my body to calm the violent throbbing around the gash.
His eyes landed on me again, tears gathered at the corners like little white flames. “Sigr. He sent Iri’s soul to save you, Eelyn.”
“What? No.”
“Iri’s made it to Sólbj?rg.” His words were frightening and delicate, betraying a tenderness my father never showed. He stepped forward, looking down into my eyes with a smile. “Sigr has favored you, Eelyn.”
Myra stood behind him, her green eyes wide beneath her unraveling auburn braids.
“But—” I choked. “I saw him.”
“You did.” A single tear rolled down my father’s rough cheek and disappeared into his beard. He pulled me into him, wrapping his arms around me, and I closed my eyes, the pain in my arm so great now that I could hardly feel my hand.
I blinked, trying to understand. I had seen him. He was there.
“We will make a sacrifice tonight.” He let me go before he pressed his hands to my face again. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you scream for me like that. You scared me, sváss.” A laugh was buried deep in his chest.
“I’m sorry,” I murmured. “I just … I thought…”
He waited for me to meet his eyes again. “His soul is at peace. Your brother saved your life today. Be happy.” He clapped a hand against my good arm, nearly knocking me down.
I wiped at my wet cheeks with the palm of my hand, turning from the faces that were still watching me. There were very few times I’d cried in front of my clansmen. It made me feel small. Weak, like the early winter grass beneath our boots.