When he hesitated, I picked up my knife and slashed it across the meat of his arm. He fell to his side, trying to crawl away as voices rose behind me.
“We raided six of their villages, along the fjord.”
The words cut deep into my gut. They stuck me to the ground and held my heartbeat in place.
“And the Riki? How many villages?” It was the Tala’s voice.
She stood beside Vidr, their village leader, before a swelling crowd. The sky swayed above us. I shook my head, trying to quiet the sound roaring within it.
The Herja looked down to his blood-covered hands. “Four Riki villages. Fela is the fifth.”
The Tala looked back to Vidr, the graveness of it not hidden on her face. If they’d been able to raid that many villages in only a few weeks, there were many of them. Too many. The panic flooding my mind drowned out the sound of his hoarse voice, rattling off the names of villages they’d been to and ones they hadn’t yet attacked.
“Send riders. Warn the others.” Vidr barked out orders and a set of footsteps broke into a run down the path. He stepped forward, his feet beside mine. “Where is your camp?” He looked down at the Herja.
I stood, trying to think as quickly as my thoughts could move. But they were stuck. Sewn to the image of my father. Covered in his own blood. Floating in the blue-gray water of the fjord. I turned to face the Riki gathered behind me, watching. My hands twitched at my sides and I realized I was still holding the Herja’s eye. It was warm and slick in my palm. I dropped it into the snow and my knife fell from my other hand. Iri picked it up, going back to the Herja.
I took a step back, stumbling, before someone caught me by the elbow. I looked up to see Fiske standing beside me, his hand taking my upper arm and gently pulling me toward the house. The cold air burned against my hot skin. I blinked again, trying to focus, rubbing my eyes with my numb hands. Outside, the Riki were shouting. Angry, bloodthirsty, vengeful. And I knew that Iri was probably dragging the Herja to the ritual house. They would find out where the camp was and then they would string him up. They would make him suffer.
Fiske pulled my scabbard and sheath off and I stared into the fire. He watched me, making me feel like I was going to break into pieces. Like he was waiting to see it.
“I have to go to the Aska,” I whispered. “Now. I can’t wait for the thaw.”
The shouting outside was getting farther away.
“I have to go,” I said again.
“I know.” He didn’t look away. He didn’t blink. “I’ll go with you.”
I stared at him.
“You can’t get off the mountain before the thaw unless someone shows you the way. I’ll go with you. I’ll take you to Hylli.”
He was right. But I wanted to say no. To ask why. I wanted to run as far from Fela as I could. As far from the deep whisper inside of me that spoke when Fiske looked at me the way he looked at me now. The way he did at the river. Like he knew something I didn’t.
TWENTY-NINE
“Fiske.” I could hear the warning in Inge’s voice.
They stood facing each other, both with their arms crossed. I traced the resemblance of their faces with my eyes. I’d never noticed how much he looked like her. Eyes rimmed with dark lashes. The square of their faces.
Iri leaned into the table, watching Runa, who lay asleep against the wall with her back to the fire.
“We’ll take her to Hylli,” Fiske repeated. “And then we’ll come home.”
“You’re needed here.” She looked between them.
“We’ll come back to fight.”
Inge looked into the fire for a long time, breathing evenly. She was still in the same bloodstained dress, the lack of sleep carved deep into her face, with her hair a mess around her.
Fiske didn’t move, waiting.
She reached up and touched her lips with light fingers, like she did when she was thinking. She didn’t look in my direction, but her thoughts drifted toward me. She was asking questions. Wondering.
I moved past them, climbing the loft and leaving them below. Halvard was still asleep on his cot with a bearskin pulled up over him and I stopped, hands on the top rung of the ladder. Gyda was lying on her side with her body curved around a small wiggling lump and Kerling was folded behind her, peering over her shoulder. She held the tiny thing to her, pressing it against her bare skin and kissing its head.
Kerling’s face had changed. The barrenness in his eyes was gone. He was missing the weight that usually showed there. Gyda looked up at me and I froze, lifting my foot to climb back down. But instead of the bitterness I’d seen in her eyes the days before, her face was smooth. Quiet. When she looked back down to the baby, trailing her fingertips over its soft dark hair, Kerling pressed his face into her back, closing his eyes.
I found my braid with my hand and wound it around my knuckles, watching them. As if it all hadn’t happened. The raid. The battle in Aurvanger that took his leg. The blood feud that burned in their hearts for me and my people. There was no room for it in that moment. There was only a beginning. And its light hid everything else. It was so beautiful that it hurt, touching every wound uncovered inside of me.
I quietly climbed back down the ladder, leaving them in the dim light of the loft, and walked outside to wash the blood off my face and arms. I could hear Inge and the others arguing inside, hushed whispers working their way through the cracks in the walls.
I plunged my hands into the barrel of melted snow, cringing at the sting of it on my skin, and scrubbed until the water turned pink. My reflection wavered on its surface. Circles under my eyes and the glow of a bruise still healing across my cheek.
I could see Inge through the door, setting the saddlebags onto the table and packing. Her face was twisted into a knot, her lip sucked in between her teeth. She’d given in, and although it was what I wanted, some part of me trembled.
“I came to thank you.”
I turned, holding the edges of the barrel, the water still dripping from my hair.
The Tala stood on the path with her hands folded in front of her clean dress. Her hair was pulled up off her shoulders and her green eyes were brighter against her reddened face. The same rope burns that encircled Halvard’s neck wrapped around hers.
“Why did you help me?” She tilted her head to one side, looking me up and down. When I didn’t answer, she stepped closer. “I know you saw me that night. When Thorpe left you in the forest.”
I didn’t know what to say because I didn’t know the answer. I had no reason for helping her. I just did. And I almost wished I hadn’t. No one would have ever known if I’d left her there.
Her lips parted in a grin. “Thora has her eye on you, Aska. I could see it the first time I met you.”
“I don’t serve Thora,” I reminded her. “I don’t care about her will and I don’t want her favor.”
She smiled wider. “Neither did Iri.”
My eyes drifted back to the house. The defenses in me readied.
“Inge told me this morning.”
I felt my mouth drop open and my heart soured inside me. Inge said she wouldn’t tell anyone.
“When we returned from the forest, I could see it. When you came through the door. I feel foolish for not seeing it sooner, really. You look just like him, Eelyn.”
I tried to pick apart the tone in her voice. I tried to line it up with the calm look on her face.
“You don’t have to worry about Iri.” She waved a hand at me. “We’re beyond that now, I think. I’ll speak to Vidr. You’ve earned our trust. Now maybe we can earn yours.”
My eyes narrowed. “Why would you want my trust?”
“You’re a warrior. And something tells me we will need every warrior from here to the fjord on our side if we are going to keep the Herja from coming back here and finishing what they started.”
“The Aska?” I laughed. “On your side?”
“Depending on what you find in Hylli, there may not be two sides anymore.”
I looked over my shoulder, to the door. “How did you know I was going to Hylli?”