Aeris was not a patient bird. That was perhaps part of what had gotten her into trouble as a fledgling when Sibba had found her on the ground without a nest or a mother. The horses plodded laboriously through the forest, following Aeris as she hopped from branch to branch. Sometimes she would fly ahead but she always came back and screamed her disappointment at the girls.
“We're coming!” Sibba shouted up at her. “Not all of us can fly.”
They were riding single file down a barely-discernible wildlife path, Sibba in front and Tola bringing up the rear. Between them, Estrid kept up a one-sided conversation with herself about the situation, blaming herself for what had happened, for not divining the truth about Evenon, for letting him come along in the first place.
“This whole disaster is all my fault,” she was muttering.
“You brought on the storm, did you?” Sibba called back to her as Aeris flapped her wings impatiently overhead.
“No,” Estrid said, “but I shouldn’t have let him come. I should have—”
“And I shouldn't have been so stupid,” Sibba said, cutting her off.
“Besides,” Tola called from the back, “the storm was mine.”
Sibba and Estrid whipped around in their saddles to find Tola grinning back at them. It was a striking grin, a gash across her face, softening the lines but making it impossible to tell if she was serious.
They kept to the forest as the day wore on, but when it was nearly midday, it became clear that Aeris was leading them out. The trees grew thinner and dry, brown grass began to poke through the underbrush. Sibba turned her face up to the warm sun.
“Shouldn't we stay off the road?” she asked. Aeris was just above her, watching her with one large eye from a high branch.
“Between the threats on the road and the wights of the draugnvithr, always choose the road,” Tola answered.
Sibba scoffed before she could stop herself.
“You do not believe in the ghost forest?” Tola asked, turning her green eyes on Sibba.
Estrid laughed as she dropped her horse back to ride beside Tola, leaving Sibba in the lead. “Sibba does not believe in much except for her ax and her bow,” she said. The words stung, and though Sibba would not admit it, her next words had a sharp bite to them.
“No,” Sibba said, “I do not believe in fantasies and stories told to keep children in line.” Her voice was her mother’s, but even as she said it, she remembered the figure she thought she had seen on Ey Island, watching her from the edge of the abandoned village.
She was raised in a place that believed in things like nature spirits and shadow-men by a mother who presented it all to her as just stories. Did she believe there was a forest that bordered Malos, the Realm of the Dead? Did she believe that the spirits trapped there would keep anyone who trespassed, warping their minds until they were nothing but shadows hiding among the trees? It was impossible to say. The part of her that visited the sadj and buried her mother with gold and weapons thought that yes, she did. But there was another part of her that wanted to side with her mother, as she had always done, and dismiss them as silly stories.
“Do you believe in me, then?” Tola asked as they emerged from the trees and turned south on the road to Ydurgat.
Sibba turned back around in her saddle so she would not have to look the girl in the eyes. “Yes,” she said. “Because I have seen you and what you can do.”
The girls rode on in silence for a time after that, sometimes side-by-side across the road which was wider than the forest path had been, and at other times spread far apart when they grew weary of each other’s companionship. All the while, Sibba kept glancing behind them, expecting Silentarm riders to come pounding out of the distance. But no one came.
“Stop worrying,” Tola finally said, nudging her horse forward to Sibba's side. “They will not catch us.”
“How can you be so sure?” Sibba asked, not able to stop herself from another look over her shoulder.
“They ride in the wrong direction,” she answered. “Chasing phantoms east across the Fields toward the Towering Mountains.”
Sibba didn't understand how Tola knew or what Tola had done, but she was beginning to accept that she might never know those things when it came to the vala. It was hard for her to let someone else handle something, but maybe Tola was the right person to start with. She had certainly proven herself trustworthy so far, but hadn’t she thought the same about Evenon? Look where that had gotten her.
“Do you smell that?” Estrid asked from behind them, her nose lifted to the sky. “Smoked pork.”
“You're just hungry,” Sibba teased.
“No, she's right,” Tola said, drawing her horse to a stop. “This must be—”
But Sibba didn't hear anything else. Aeris had stopped leading them and was instead circling around a barely-visible stream of gray smoke just to the west of the road. Sibba kicked her horse twice and her mount surged ahead, cutting through the grass and up the rise. A small farm sat in the valley, consisting of a longhouse, an outbuilding, and a few vacant fields. Aeris landed silently on the edge of the thatched roof and looked back at Sibba before preening her feathers in satisfaction.
The three girls hid at the very edge of the forest until night fell. Tola had forbidden them to go any deeper into the trees, and Sibba had forbidden them to light a fire, and so they had shivered there for hours in silence, exposed to anyone coming down the road, but no one appeared. Smoke never stopped wafting from the hearth fire within the small house, and they all gazed longingly at it but none of them said a word. Sibba wanted to wait until it was dark to make any move, and so they would.
“Why is he there?” Estrid asked as the last light from the sun sank behind the gently rolling hills. “Wouldn't he want to get to Ydurgat as quickly as possible?”
“Something happened,” Sibba answered, rising to her feet and checking her weapons belts. The ax was still secure, and the sword was safe in its scabbard. She wondered if he would make her use one, and which one she would choose. “I think he’s injured.” Sibba remembered the vision that had come upon her by the fire, the boar and the blood.
“If only Hefdis would be so kind,” Estrid said. Hefdis was the goddess of vengeance. Sibba agreed that it would be nice to have her on their side and was glad that the ever-faithful Estrid was there to ask for her help. “What are we doing?” Estrid asked, also standing.