“A new path?” The skepticism in my father’s voice mirrored the look on Myra’s face. She was stone beside me.
“We don’t always understand the gods’ ways, do we? What we do know is that the Herja have emerged again from whatever hell they come from. I don’t know how the Aska have fared, but they have wiped out more than half our clan in a matter of weeks. Another month and we may all be gone. They’ll go back down the mountain and do the same to the Aska.” She looked to each of us. “Or we could join together.”
My father wasn’t convinced. I could see doubt in every shift of his eyes. He didn’t trust them to keep the truce. Niether did I. Not really.
“The Aska live and die by their word,” he said.
Vidr’s voice rose in defense. “So do the Riki.”
“The Riki who killed my sister are probably out there, right now,” Myra muttered.
“Two sons,” Freydis snarled. “Two sons I’ve lost in Aurvanger in the last ten years. I don’t want to stand around the same fire as the Aska. I don’t want to trust one at my back in a fight. But I have two more sons.” She raised a hand, pointing to the door. “Out there.”
Inge pulled Halvard to her. “You can abandon your blood feud, Freydis?”
“To save them? Yes.”
“But can the others?” I looked to the Tala before my eyes drifted back to Myra. “Can we?”
The Tala reached to Vidr’s belt and pulled his knife free. In one quick motion, she slid the blade across her palm. Her hand filled with blood.
“Tala?” Vidr reached for her.
She stepped forward, looking to my father before she held her hand out to me.
I pressed myself to the wall. “What are you doing?”
“I’m offering a blood oath.” Her hand hung in the space between us, blood dripping to the floor.
They all stared at her, but her eyes were on me. It was the most precious thing she could offer and she knew it. She couldn’t break a blood oath without sacrificing the afterlife. And if anyone wanted to go against the Tala, they’d have to kill her. Slaying a Tala would bring the same bleak fate.
I pulled out my knife before anyone could object, cutting into my flesh and taking her hand. She smiled, pressing her palm to mine.
Vidr watched us, clearly worried. She’d put herself in a vulnerable position, binding herself to me. If he’d harbored any secret plans against the Aska, they were undone.
The Tala turned to my father. “Do this and we will owe each other a debt—a debt that can never be repaid.”
Fiske was quiet, standing with Iri and Runa behind the table piled high with fresh bundles of sage. He looked at me.
I didn’t want to think about what it all meant. What a future like that could mean. The same weight that had been with me since the day I looked into the bear’s eyes at the river pressed me further into the ground. I pulled my sore shoulder back to stretch it. To feel something else, even if it was pain.
The room suddenly felt small. The air was too hot. I couldn’t breathe.
I stepped to the side, finding a path to the door, and quietly slipped out into the air, gulping it in as I paced toward the garden, where Inge had plowed rows for planting. I pulled my axe free from its sheath and opened the neck of my tunic trying to cool my skin. The tree at the edge of the forest was marked up with the slashes of axe throws. I threw my arm back over my head and swung it down hard, flinging my axe forward and sending it through the air. It landed with a loud crack in the trunk of the tree.
The door latch rattled and I didn’t turn around to look at him. Feeling him was enough. It was something I recognized now. I stared at my axe, lodged in the wood.
“They’re leaving at first light to go back to Virki.” Fiske spoke behind me.
I walked toward the tree and pried the blade free, pressing against its edge with my thumb. “And then what?”
“And then they return with the Aska. We’ll meet them in Aurvanger in two days.”
I pressed my thumb harder to the metal. “And then we all die?”
“Maybe.” He kept his distance from me. “Will you go with them? Back to Virki?”
I looked at the house, where my father was still talking with the Riki. How did we get here? How could we ever go back? I wanted to push my face into the snow. I wanted to scream.
He stepped toward me, taking my cut hand into his. He turned it over before wrapping a strip of cloth around it, knotting it on my palm. I breathed through the feeling flowing through me, like candle wax melting. “Don’t.” The word hit me in the chest as he said it.
I bit down on my lip until my eyes watered. To keep myself from speaking. I was afraid of what I would say if I did.
“Stay with me and come with us to the valley. We’ll meet the Aska there.”
I closed my eyes as a tear rolled down my flushed face. Trying to escape. Trying to leave this moment and pretend like I hadn’t chosen a path to get here. It wasn’t a command. It was a request. One that I didn’t think I could deny. He’d left his family and come with me down the mountain as his people reeled in the aftermath of a raid. He’d taken me home. Helped me find my father. Now it was my turn to make a choice.
To choose him the way he’d chosen me.
I turned back toward the tree as he left, boots crunching all the way to the door, and the latch clicked again. I crouched down and put my face into my hands, feeling the village spinning around me. I tried to remember who I was.
Strong. Brave. Fierce. Sure.
I tried to summon her to me—that Eelyn who would choose her people over anything else. I searched for her within myself, but she was different now. I was different. And it was something that was already done. Something I couldn’t change.
FORTY-THREE
They were talking about numbers.
The number of Aska.
The number of Riki.
The number of Herja.
After hours of discussion, the Riki village leaders left the house quiet. The fire crackled in the pit between Iri’s old family and his new one. I swallowed hard, wondering which one I was part of now.
My father asked questions, but not too many. He didn’t want too many answers. He just wanted to be happy that Iri’s heart was still beating. But Iri would have to answer for what he’d done eventually, and we all knew it.
Inge came down the ladder with two mats for my father and Myra. “Your cot is still in the loft.”
I knew it wouldn’t take long for them to put it together. The understanding sunk into Myra’s face, followed by my father’s. And the confusion written there quickly turned to disgust. “You were their dyr?” Myra spat, standing.
I sighed, running a hand through my hair. I was exhausted. I didn’t have the will to explain. And there was no explanation that could satisfy them. Not ever. If I were Myra, I’d feel the same way.
My father looked down at Inge with a hard, cold stare before he wrenched the mats from her arms and went outside. Myra followed him, slamming the door behind her, and Inge flinched.
“I’m sorry.” Her face fell.
I didn’t answer. I didn’t say it was alright, because it wasn’t. Instead, I took the newly bound bundles of sage from the table and pulled a torch from the wall. I leaned over the fire, lighting it, and then headed for the door. I needed the sky stretching out over me and drowning out the swirl of everyone and everything in this village.
I walked out into the dark and could sense the bodies behind the closed doors and in the trees. Fela had become a sanctuary, seething with the anger of the Riki. The houses glowed with night fires burning to keep mourning families warm.
I swallowed it down.
The dead Aska. The dead Riki. All of it.
The path curved toward the incline until I reached the cellar. I kicked the snow from before the door so I could open it and put the torch into the mount on the wall. The scent of the sweet sage made my head swim with the memory of the first time I’d walked into Fiske’s home. And I couldn’t understand the feeling that followed it. I wanted it all to fit into a place inside me that made sense. I wanted to hate them all for everything that had happened.