“They are the common enemy,” he corrected.
I crossed my arms in front of me. I had been thinking the same thing, but I couldn’t picture it. I couldn’t imagine a world where the Aska and Riki were on the same side. The age-old tangle of brown and red leathers, bronze and iron on the battlefield. But fighting together.
“And if we won? Then what?” I asked, watching as the eagle turned, tilting its wings to the side as it made its way back toward us.
He let go of the saddle, scratching at the horse’s mane. “I don’t know.”
We started again, taking a more level decline and slowing our progress so the horses didn’t tire. My body shook from the tension of controlling the animal, my jaw sore from biting down as I focused on preventing a slide. Once we were back on the slope, I looked behind us, up the towering face of the mountain piled with heavy snow. I could feel the power of it, hovering like it was waiting for the chance to come rolling down over us. And I imagined, for just a moment, what it would be like to be buried in it. To slowly give way to the cold and close my eyes in surrender to death. Like the night Thorpe left me in the forest. Like the days Iri spent lying in the trench, dying. But now, something about the idea was almost comforting. It meant no more wondering. Wondering if the Aska had survived. If I’d get home or what would happen to Iri. Wondering about the thread that seemed to be tied between Fiske and me, slowly tightening.
The sun sunk lower in the sky, making the world blue and cold again as we headed into the trees. The forest was quiet, the horses’ breaths and hooves the only sound. When we met a break in the thicket, the light was almost gone.
Fiske moved out from under the trees ahead of me and the white moonlight spilled down on him as he slid off the horse. I tried not to stare at the way his form looked against the frigid night.
I came through the trees and my horse stopped at the gravel edge of a large frozen lake. The surface stretched out in both directions like frosted black glass. “How do we go around it?” I dismounted, walking to the edge and tapping the heel of my boot on the thick ice.
“We don’t.” He pulled the bag from the saddle and dropped it over his head to hang across his shoulder. “We walk across.”
“Across?” I stared at him.
“Across.”
The mountain stood over us, watching. “There’s no way to go around?”
“There is, but it will take another full day to go that way.” He worked on my saddlebag, pulling at the riggings.
I stared at the lake. “What if we fall in?”
“We won’t.” He smiled, and I looked away when I felt heat painting across my skin again.
He tossed me the bag and I hung it over me as he turned the horses back toward the mountain and slapped them above their hind legs. They took off, their galloping steps like distant thunder in the dark forest.
“They know the way back.” He stepped out onto the ice.
It groaned beneath his feet, making my heart twist up on itself. I gulped down a chest full of air, lifting my eyes to the other side, invisible in the dark. I started behind him, walking at an angle like my father had taught me to keep too much weight off of the ice. The powdery snow slid under my boots as we got farther on the surface, and then dissipated, leaving the ice smooth and polished.
The sound of the wind blowing whistled around us and I gasped when I finally looked down, stopping mid-stride. I turned in a circle, my eyes going wide. The night sky was reflecting on the ice in crisp shapes and colors, bright strings of stars swirling out around each other and a huge, round, speckled moon staring up at me.
It hung above its reflection, like the sky was folded in on itself. We were standing on it. Like the world was upside down.
I touched my lips with my fingertips, my eyes flitting over the surface. Fiske stopped, one thumb hooked into the strap across his chest, watching me. The light bouncing off the ice lit up the side of his face.
He looked up at the moon. “It only does this for a week or two. The ice starts to cloud as it thins.”
I squatted down and pressed my hand to it, watching it fog around my fingers. When I lifted them, the hazy outline was still there, frozen onto the surface. “When we were little, I almost drowned in the fjord. I fell through the ice.” I looked at myself in the reflection. “Iri and I were trying to see how far out we could make it and when I heard the crack, I looked up and saw his face just before it gave way beneath me.”
He took a step toward me.
“It was so dark. I could hardly see. And then his hands had me, yanking me up and throwing me back onto the ice.” I remembered the way it looked. The water was a darker blue than I’d ever seen. “I don’t know how he didn’t fall in. I was so angry with him for coming to the edge like that.” My words trailed off.
Once, he’d loved me enough to jump into the frozen water for me. But then he left.
“We do things we have to do.” Fiske broke the thin silence between us. “If he hadn’t jumped in, you would have died.” He paused. “If I hadn’t taken you that night in Aurvanger, that Riki would have killed you.”
I stood to face him. “I know.”
“If I hadn’t put the arrow into your shoulder, someone else would have put one in your heart. If I hadn’t taken you as a dyr, you’d be in one of those other burned villages on the mountain.”
“I know,” I said again.
“I would do it again,” he said. “All of it.”
But still, those things singed. Another moment and Fiske’s sword would have been the end of me. And that night, I would have killed him without thinking twice. Now, the thought made me feel like I was trapped under the ice beneath us, sinking into the dark.
I looked at him. “Why did you come with me?”
He let go of the strap on his chest and shifted on his feet.
“Why are you here?”
And when his eyes finally met mine, they were open. They let me in.
I took a step back.
My mouth opened to say something, but the words wouldn’t come. They were stuck in the back of my throat, wrapped tightly around my windpipe. I was suddenly aware of the icy, opaque depths beneath us again, waiting for the smallest crack to pull us down into it. Waiting to feed on us. My heart pulsed in my veins as the fear pressed down on me, making me feel heavier. It was terrifying—that feeling—like there was something tying me to him. Because if one of us fell into the darkness, the other would too.
I stepped around him, walking faster toward the other side. Toward solid ground and safety. The lake grumbled beneath my weight. Growling. Hungry. I closed my eyes, trying not to see it. That depth within me, sealed down under the surface. I kept my eyes ahead, leaving Fiske standing in between the middle of the two night skies, the stars and the moon encircling him. The only hot, living thing on the ice. The only thing I could feel.
THIRTY-FOUR
We didn’t stop. Because I couldn’t.
We walked through the forest in the dead of night as the sky darkened and lightened with the clouds passing overhead. The moon disappeared beyond the valley as the sun pulled up over the mountain behind us.
I stayed ahead of Fiske, each step coming a little quicker as I felt the fjord getting nearer. The trees thinned as we reached the valley, spreading out from one another as the ground pushed up from under the snow. The shadow of treetops gave way to a sun-drenched sea of new green grass so bright I had to blink at the sight. It was the first push against winter that would make its way up the mountain in the coming weeks.