We camped in the forest, huddling together around small fires to keep warm, and Fiske took a turn scouting with a group that went out with Latham. The Herja still lingered below, at the foot of the mountain in the northern valley. The light of their fires showed how big their camp was and I was glad we couldn’t see their numbers. I didn’t want to know how many there were when I stepped onto the battlefield. I wanted to fight the way I always had. Without thinking about odds.
Inge, Halvard, and I slept side by side on the forest floor and I woke in the middle of the night to Fiske sliding beneath my blanket in the dark. His face went into my hair, his arms winding tightly around me. I dreamed until he was pulling free again to meet with Vidr and the others in the very first light of morning. He kissed me between the eyes and I listened to his footsteps fall quiet as he moved back into the trees.
I rolled over to see Inge buried in a bearskin, facing me. Her tired eyes were half opened, looking at me over Halvard’s sleeping body, and my heart twisted in my chest. I waited for fear or disapproval to find its way onto her face, but it didn’t come. Instead, her hand reached for me. When I took it, she lifted up the bearskin and pulled me closer to Halvard’s side, tucking its edge around me. She smiled before she slipped back into sleep and I watched them breathing in and out peacefully, until the camp broke up to move again. Halvard stretched, his feet finding mine beneath the blankets.
We took the long way around the lake because there were so many of us. I kept my eye on Runa, staying close to her as we walked through the second night. When we came around the last bend of the mountain, the Aska were visible in the eastern valley, gathered behind the switchbacks. They looked so small compared to the Herja camp.
They were the last of us. The last of my people.
Fiske stopped beside me at the edge of the drop-off, looking down at them. We stood there in silence for a long time as the line of Riki passed, the wind rushing over us in big gusts. The sound of it roared in my ears.
“What are you thinking?” He took my hand.
“I’m thinking I don’t want to fight anymore.”
His fingers tightened around mine. It seemed so foolish now, all the fighting. All the death and loss and mourning. The feud between our clans was nothing in the shadow of the heartbreak that had befallen us.
“What will you do?” he asked, his voice low. “After.”
I looked at him, but his eyes stayed on the camp, not meeting mine. “My father and Myra are in Hylli.” It was the only answer I could give him. I tried to imagine going home and leaving him in Fela. But there was no point in trying to imagine what may never come. We could both die fighting the Herja.
His lips parted, as if he might speak, but he didn’t. His arm came around my shoulders to pull me close.
The sun was setting by the time we reached the valley, and the Riki made camp across the river. The leaders agreed that keeping the clans separate would give us the best chance at avoiding complications. The Aska stood in a line at the edge of the water, looking out to us. But this time, not for battle.
I made my way across the river and walked the path through the white tents, searching for my father and Iri. Hagen pointed in the direction of the meeting tent and I found them sitting around a fire with Espen. Iri stood, coming to meet me. The sight of him standing among them, still wearing Riki armor, was strange and unfamiliar. But that’s what it would look like in battle. Aska and Riki together.
“Runa?”
“She’s with Inge.” I nodded. “Where’s Myra?”
“Helping Kalda prepare for the wounded.” He nodded toward the healer’s tent, where shadows moved against the canvas in the firelight.
“Vidr wants to meet in the morning. Tonight, they’ll make camp and watch the edge of the valley to make sure the Herja don’t know we’re here.”
“We won’t have much time. Maybe a day before we have to attack.” Espen spoke behind him.
My father nodded. “I agree.”
The sun finished sinking as I walked with Iri back to the river. We found the shallows and when I stopped, he turned to wait for me.
“I’m staying here tonight.”
The Riki camp across the water in the distance was beginning to glow with night fire. We stood shoulder to shoulder, looking out at it.
“I’ll tell Fiske.” His deep voice was delicate. Careful.
I tried to read the look on his face, but he was doing the same to me. “I don’t know what to do.” I’d already made a choice, but I didn’t know if it was one my clan could live with.
“Yes, you do.” He looked at me again.
“I can’t leave the Aska,” I whispered. “Not now.”
“Maybe you won’t have to.”
But Fiske living among the Aska the way Iri lived among the Riki was something I’d never ask of him.
I stood, watching Iri cross the river as night fell. When I scanned the water’s edge, I spotted Fiske. A silhouetted outline standing on the bank of the river. He looked out over the water toward our camp and I wondered if he could see me in the darkness. If he could feel me watching him.
“Eelyn.” My father’s voice found me and I took one last look over my shoulder to where Fiske stood before I went to him. I ducked into the tent where he and Myra were waiting for me. Her hair fell over her shoulders, reaching down to her hips. She looked just like she did when we were young. I sat on a stool and she tilted my face to the side, dragging her blade carefully over the shorn part of my scalp, beneath the length of hair on the right side of my head. When she finished, I reached up, running my fingers over it.
“What happened in Fela?” She wiped her blade against her pants. “Before you came to Hylli?”
My eyes drifted to my father, but he was bent over his sword, sharpening the blade. “What do you mean?”
“You’ve given your heart to that Riki.” There was nothing in her tone that revealed her thoughts.
I wasn’t going to deny it. Myra knew me as well as my father did. But he’d had the sense not to ask what he didn’t want to know. “You won’t understand,” I whispered. And I pinched my eyes closed, remembering Iri speaking the same words to me.
She slid the knife back into its sheath and looked down at me. “I don’t need to understand.” She offered me her hand and I took it. “You’re alive and you’re with us. That’s all I care about.”
They settled down onto their knees and I found my place beside them, pulling the idol of my mother from my armor vest. Beside me, Myra held the idols of her entire family in both her hands. Her mother, her father, her sister, and her brother. I could still see their faces in my mind and guilt, hard and solid in my throat, made it difficult to breathe.
I let out a long exhale, warmed in the familiar sound of the prayers. Their whispered words lifted in the tent and I stayed quiet, listening to their voices. I closed my eyes, pressing the idol to my heart, but I didn’t cry. The unsteadiness was gone, being near them and knowing that Iri and Fiske were on the other side of the river, safe. Inge, Halvard, and Runa too.
I touched the face of my mother’s idol. I pressed my lips to it and prayed. The same prayers I’d prayed to Sigr since the day she died.
And then I did something I’d never done in my life.
I prayed to Thora.
FORTY-FIVE
Those who weren’t fighting set out for Virki in two separate groups, mostly the elderly and the children. Halvard was given to Gyda, who had her baby strapped to her back. He walked behind Kerling’s horse, looking back at us as they crossed the valley. He didn’t argue, but he didn’t like it, and neither did Kerling. They wanted to fight. It blazed like an inferno on their faces.
I helped Inge prepare bandages and waited for Fiske to come, but he didn’t. And when the Riki settled down into their tents, I stood outside, waiting. The smell of the altar fire was in the air, riding on the wind across the river from the Aska camp. They were making sacrifices and asking Sigr to bless our battle.
Fiske didn’t come down the path until after dark. He stood in the tent’s opening, his face drawn and tired, watching me.