“Why did you do it?” I asked. “Why did you save Iri’s life?”
He sat up straighter, letting the silence between us stretch out and pull like the thoughts in my mind, trying to find a place to land. “Because we were dying. Because it was the end. And at the end, life becomes precious.”
He looked at me for a long moment, his eyes running over my face, and I could feel it—his gaze dragging over my skin. Like he could see Iri there. Or something else. The red stung beneath my cheeks.
He pulled the last stitch free. “Iri…” But then he stopped.
I pulled my braid down around the front of my shoulder. “What?”
“Iri never planned to stay here,” he finished. “Not in the beginning.”
“I know.” I twisted the ends of my hair around my fingers. “But he did.”
He helped me work my arm back into my tunic. I shivered, suddenly cold.
“I don’t belong to you,” I told him.
“No, you don’t.” He looked at the floor. “But you aren’t going to make it through the winter without me.”
“I told you. I’m not staying.” I met his eyes again and this time, I didn’t look away. I waited to see something I hated. Some trace of the man I’d tried to kill in Aurvanger. But I couldn’t see past the soul who had saved Iri’s life. The soul who had packed snow against his wound and wouldn’t leave him behind.
“We should uncover that.” He looked at the bandage over the burn on my neck.
I reached up, touching it.
He pulled it back slowly and the cold air on the skin tingled.
“Does it hurt?” He leaned closer.
My stomach dropped, pulling my heart down with it, and the pulse in my veins beat unevenly. He was too close to me.
I stood, the bench scraping on the stone beneath us. He looked up at me, and I tried to find something to say. But there was too much. It was all buried too deep. I couldn’t reach it.
“Everything hurts,” I whispered.
I climbed the ladder and went to my cot, tears filling my eyes until I could barely see. I wanted to go home. I wanted to hear my father’s voice and see the fjord. I wanted to erase the scars lifting on my skin below the collar and go back to that moment I saw Fiske on the battlefield. I wanted to tell myself to run.
I sat down on the cot, curling up on my side and tried to stay quiet as I wept. But the thing writhing inside me was too angry to be calmed. It was too hurt to be hushed. It was a living, breathing thing and it was trying to swallow me whole. And maybe it would. I cried until I couldn’t cry anymore and only the sound of the fire remained.
Below, Fiske’s shadow reached up the wall from where he sat by the fire in the empty house. Listening to me cry myself to sleep.
TWENTY-ONE
Dawn fell on the village as Fiske was returning from the river. Halvard pulled a chest of tools from the wall and opened it, laying them out next to each other on a stretch of hide. Once Fiske had checked them, Halvard rolled them up over his shoulder, walking lopsided against its weight. He swung the door open and I could see the Riki were already gathering across the path, greeting each other in the morning cold.
Inge handed me the basket full of fish, still chilled from the river’s water. “They’re cleaned. When the sun is overhead, you can cook them and bring them over.”
I bristled, my eyes drifting back to Kerling’s house where the number of clansmen was multiplying.
Inge, Fiske, and Iri followed Halvard out the door. The Riki were already getting to work, their furs pulled tight around them. Children ran down the path, chasing the chickens, and I leaned into the wall, watching them through the window. The men hauled giant logs in from the forest and the women settled onto the ground planing them. They bent low over the fallen trees, scraping at the raw wood in long, even strokes.
I cleaned out the iron pot on the fire and shoveled the ashes from the pit, listening to them. When the deep-throated laughs of a few men echoed out into the village, my hands stilled on the hard edge of the table and my heart twisted. It was all too familiar. Too much like home.
I went around the back of the house where I couldn’t be seen and washed the clothes Inge had piled in a basket. My hands turned pink in the cold water, my knuckles stiff as I raked them over the washboard. I’d be doing the same thing if I was home. Fishing with my father or doing chores with Myra. I wondered what she was doing now. I wondered if she was training with a new fighting mate.
Winter was my favorite time of year on the fjord, when everything was dusted in a sparkling crust of ice. Each blade of grass glistened in the sunlight. It was what I’d always imagined Sólbj?rg to be like. I’d pictured my mother there, sitting on a hillside with her skirt spread out around her, almost every night.
I hung the clothes on the railing of the fence, smoothing out the fabric as it flapped in the wind. When I came around the house again, the Riki already had planks going up along one of the walls of the barn. The structure extended off of the house, just big enough for ten or fifteen goats. If they were diligent, Kerling and Gyda could get by trading on what they grew in their garden patch and what the goats produced. It was clear Kerling wasn’t a blacksmith or a healer. He had been raised a warrior. Gyda too. Maybe she would join the next fighting season in his place. Maybe I’d see her there.
I took the basket of fish from the table and started on the fire. They were perfectly cleaned, their skins smooth where the scales were removed. I stuffed the cavities with herbs and salt and set them onto the hot coals to let them cook.
The rich, savory smell filled the house and I could feel the twinge in my chest again. This, too, was like home. I looked out the window, to where they were lifting more boards, stacking them on top of the lower ones to lift the walls. In Hylli, we’d often work on the boats of the Aska who were too old. We’d care for their animals and my father had me check their fish traps on the dock when I checked ours. The Riki, too, took care of their own.
I pulled the fish from the fire when the skin was crisp and lifting up from the flesh and piled them into a large wooden bowl. I steeled myself before I opened the door and walked out into the midday sun with the bowl on my hip. My eyes fixed on Inge, where she stood with another woman, winding rope. The path widened as I passed the gate and a figure in the corner of my eye made me draw back. I stumbled, almost dropping the fish, and a hand shot out to catch me by the arm, steadying me.
Kerling.
He stood beside Inge’s gate, leaning into the post. When I had my balance, I stood, staring up at him. But his attention was pulled toward the barn that was lifting up plank by plank from the ground. He was watching the Riki work, hidden in the shade cast by the tree.
The pain and humiliation of his injury was plainly painted on his face. He was dependent upon his clansmen in a way that no one wanted to be. If it were my father, he’d feel the same.
“Thank you,” I whispered, trying not to show the pity I had for him.
His eyes drifted toward me, as if he was suddenly aware of my presence, and I turned, crossing the path until I passed the gate before his house. The banging and sawing stopped as the Riki noticed me and each head turned as I made my way toward Inge. Someone stepped into the path before me and I stopped, staring into the face of a woman with hair as red as Myra’s.
The bowl slid from my hip and I looked up to see Fiske taking it into his hands. He nodded, dismissing me, and I bit down onto my lip, meeting the eyes of the Riki who were still staring at me. I turned on my heel as pain curled in my chest and I swallowed it down, making my way back toward the gate. The sounds of work picked up slowly, followed by the soft tune of a song rising on a woman’s voice. The others joined in, singing as they swung their hammers and scraped the wood. Ancient words on an ancient melody.
My lip quivered, fresh tears springing to my eyes as I reached Inge’s gate. And there, still tucked into the shadow, Kerling still stood.