Fiske looked me in the eye as he came to stand over me. “It’s going to hurt.”
Iri handed me a piece of leather and I took it. “Just do it.” I bit down hard on the strap, pulling in a deep breath and pinning my eyes to the rafters above.
Iri came around the front of me, hooking his arm beneath my neck to brace the back of my head and I held onto him with shaking fists. The arrow cracked behind me, releasing an explosion of white light behind my eyes and filling the whole room. I groaned into Iri’s chest, twisting my hands into his tunic as Fiske dug at the front of the arrow until he’d caught it with his fingernails.
When he had it, he waited, letting me catch my breath. “Ready?” He looked down at me.
I pushed the air out in three hissing spurts, steeling myself before I gave a quick nod.
He yanked his arm back, pulling it free.
I bucked beneath Iri’s weight and felt my body go limp as the arrow hit the floor. Fiske’s hands quickly replaced the hole with a wadded cloth and clamped down on my shoulder so hard that I couldn’t breathe. I blinked slowly, trying to see it, but my eyes weren’t working.
“What in the name of Thora…” The high-pitched whisper of a girl trailed off and a pair of boots beneath a long wool skirt stopped at the door. “Iri?”
He stood, going to the door and leaving only Fiske’s hand to keep me from rolling off the table. My head fell to the side and Fiske came back into view, his dark hair falling around his face as he worked at cleaning my shoulder. I couldn’t feel the pain anymore. I couldn’t feel anything.
“Who are you?” The words cracked in my chest.
He stilled, the hard angles of his face severe in the dim light.
The heat of a tear slowly trailed down the side of my face. “Who are you to my brother?”
His mouth pressed together before he answered, his hands stilling on the wound. “He’s my brother. And if you get him killed, I will cut your throat like I should have done in Aurvanger.”
SEVEN
I was alone when I opened my eyes. The thin blue light of morning seeped between the wooden boards above me in the barn. I sat up on the table and the throbbing began, making me tremble. I reached my hand beneath my tunic and gently touched the hot, inflamed hole in my shoulder. Below it, new stitches were sewn into the gash in my arm. I rolled my wrists on each other, feeling the raw, pink skin pull sharply where the rope had been.
My bare feet found the cold ground and I slid off the table to stand. My boots were sitting neatly on top of my armor next to the empty fire pit. The little idol of Iri I had tucked into my vest stood on the table next to me. I picked it up, running my thumb over the small face, and blinked, seeing him in the fog again. Feeling that lightning strike in my soul. That Iri was alive. And not just alive. He’d betrayed us. All of us.
The boy I’d shared my childhood with. The boy I’d fought side by side with. He was worse than any enemy. And the blood we shared was now poison in my veins.
Through the planks on the walls, I could see the silent Riki village stretch out down the slope, covered in a shallow snowfall. The deep green of pine trees reached up behind the houses like a thick wall.
I fought with my boots, grinding my teeth against the pain coming from the entire left side of my body. My ribs were stabbing again from the fall off the horse. Maybe rebroken. I made my way to the door and lifted the latch gently with my finger but when I pushed, the door wouldn’t open; it was barred from the outside. I huddled down into the corner, wrapping my arms around myself and tucking my injured arm into my side tightly. I waited.
The village slowly came to life with the sounds of livestock calling for their breakfast and iron pots swinging on wooden rails over morning fires. The smell of toasted grains filled the air and my stomach ached. I closed my eyes and tried to push down the nausea boiling in my belly.
Iri’s voice found me in the dark room after hours of sitting in the damp cold. The door opened, swinging out and pulling the daylight in. A gray-haired man wearing a clean black tunic stepped inside. He was too old to have been fighting in Aurvanger. His eyes surveyed me, crouched in the corner like a frightened animal.
“Is she even of use?” His lips moved behind his thick beard. “Runa says she had an arrow in her yesterday.”
Iri stepped in behind him, ducking beneath the low doorframe and setting a bundle of firewood onto the floor. He was clean, his hair rebraided and his clothes fresh. “She looks strong. She’s an Aska warrior.”
He said something else I couldn’t hear over the thoughts racing through my mind, like wind inside my head. Iri with the Riki. Iri acting like my captor.
The old man’s eyes ran over me, thinking. “Runa also told me how she got that arrow in her.”
The irritation in Iri’s eyes wasn’t hidden when they finally landed on me. “Fiske took her down.”
“She’d probably just spend the whole winter trying to escape.” The man shook his head. “No one will want her. I think it’s best to get some coin for her when the traders from Ljós come in a few days.”
I stood, keeping my back to the wall. The pain in my arm spread into my chest as I looked from Iri to the old man.
He went back out into the snow and my lip curled up as I set my furious gaze on Iri. “Trade me? To who?” I whispered.
He pulled the latch, clicking it into place, and set the fire-steel onto the table. “One of the other Riki villages.”
“You can’t do that.”
“I’d planned to keep you here through winter, until I could get you off the mountain.” He rubbed his face with his hands. “But you’ve made a mess of this, Eelyn.”
“I made a mess of it? You’re the one who brought me here!”
“Quiet.” He looked out the crack in the door.
The blood in my body seethed, pushing through my veins and waking me up. “You’re the one who abandoned your people and your god to serve our enemy, Iri.”
His eyes snapped back to me and he made the distance between us fast, taking me by the tunic and pulling me toward him. “The Aska abandoned me. Left me for dead. The Riki saved my life.”
I pushed him away with my uninjured arm and snatched the idol up from the table. I threw it at him. “I have mourned you every day for five years.” The wave of it hit me, threatening to knock me down. “And you’ve been here the whole time! You haven’t even asked about Aghi!”
Iri froze, the tension in his face falling and revealing something fragile, ready to break.
“My father.” I took another step toward him, my voice shaking.
He looked to the ground. “Our father.” His jaw clenched and the room fell silent. “I was afraid of what you might tell me.”
“He’s alive, Iri. He was fighting in Aurvanger. And he’d be ashamed to call you his son if he knew the truth.”
He shook his head, refusing to fight me. “Do you think he’ll come for you?”
“If I’m not back after the thaw, he’ll come looking.”
His eyes moved to the idol on the ground. “Did you tell him I’m alive?”
My father running across the field toward me, his eyes glittering with fear, flashed in my mind. “I tried to. He didn’t believe it. He thought Sigr had sent your soul to me.”
Iri seemed suddenly far away, his eyes looking off into the dark corner of the room. “Maybe he did.”
“Sigr didn’t do this, Iri. Thora did.” My voice flattened, my eyes narrowing. “You’ve killed your own people. What will you do when you die? You’ll be separated from us forever!” The words buckled under the weight of their meaning. Even as I’d grieved for Iri, I always believed I’d see him again. That we’d all be together one day. But Sigr would never allow him to enter Sólbjǫrg. Not after what he’d done.
“You don’t understand.” His voice lost the last of its anger. He dragged his fingers through the scruff on his jaw before he picked up the idol from the ground, turning it over in his hand. “I saw you and…”
I leane
d into the wall, trying to hold myself up as I watched the thoughts move over his face.
“I saw you and I thought I was about to watch you die. I thought my heart was going to stop beating inside of my chest.” He swallowed hard, the place between his eyebrows wrinkling.
It wasn’t what I was expecting him to say. The heat in my face pushed up, leaking out of my eyes. The tears stung in the cold. “We thought you were dead, Iri. We tried to get down into the trench for your body. We tried to…” I swallowed down the words. There was no undoing it. “We have to leave. We have to get back to the fjord.”
His eyes shifted around the room. “I can’t.”
“Why?” I studied him, my voice rising again.
“I have to find a way to convince them to take you as a dýr.”
“No!” My voice filled the room, ringing in my ears.
“Quiet! If anyone knows I’m talking to you like this…” He sighed. “If they trade you, you’re on your own. You won’t make it back to the Aska. We have a couple of days before the traders from Ljós come. I’ll figure something out.”
I thought of my father, his blue eyes looking into me, heavy and wide with shame. I could feel the weight of a dýr collar around my neck.
“You know I can’t become a dýr, Iri. I’ll never be accepted into Sólbjǫrg.” I couldn’t believe he would even suggest it. “I’ll take my own life before I let that happen.”
It was what we’d been taught our entire lives—vegr yfir fjor—honor above life.
He leveled his eyes at me, his voice dropping low. “If you take your own life, you’ll leave our father alone in this world. But if you forfeit your pride and wait out the winter, you’ll be back with him after the thaw. You’ll go back to the Aska and earn back your honor.”
I gritted my teeth, clenching my fists at my sides. Because he was right. “I hate you.” The words released the full force of whatever I’d held back from him. The rage. The disgust.
But he took it. He let it roll off of me onto him, and he didn’t fight it. He looked at me for a long moment, his eyes moving over my face like he was seeing me for the first time.
“I know.”
EIGHT
I sat before the fire pit, inching closer to warm the numbness in my fingers and toes. I could wait for dark and break through the wall, but I had no idea where I was. And there was no way I would survive on the mountain with a sickness stewing in the muscle and sinew of my shoulder, writhing like a snake under the skin.
The latch on the door lifted again when the dark finally fell and I stood, backing against the wall. A small face crowned with dark winding braids appeared.
“I’m here to check your wounds and help you clean up.” One hand clutched at the woven shawl draped over her shoulders and the other held a basket to her hip. “If you try to hurt me, I’d be happy to let you die of that infection.” She nodded toward the spot of fresh blood seeping through my filthy tunic.
The girl was about my size, but she was too clean and soft to be a warrior. It wouldn’t take more than two breaths to have my hands around her neck.
She moved toward me warily, her large, dark eyes inspecting my face where I could feel the bulge on my cheek and the crack in my lip. She swung the basket onto the table and set a pot on the ground in front of the fire pit, watching me from the corner of her eye. When she handed me a small loaf of bread, I tore it into pieces with my grimy fingers and ate as fast as I could. The pain in my jaw was nothing compared to the hollow feeling in my stomach.
She set a jar and a stack of neatly folded cloths onto the table and then filled a carved wooden bowl with the steaming water, sending the smell of lavender and comfrey into the air.
I pulled my tunic over my head, trying to be careful with my shoulder, and lifted myself up with my only strong arm to sit on the table. The girl peeled the soiled bandage from the arrow wound and leaned in, examining it. Her fingers spread the skin slowly and I hissed.
“He’s a good shot,” she murmured. “Right in the center of the joint.”
My jaw clenched against the throbbing. She may have looked clean and soft, but she wasn’t weak-minded. And she knew I was dangerous but she wasn’t afraid of me. She wanted me to know it.
She dipped a cloth into the fragrant bowl of water and pressed it firmly to the broken skin on my arm. I looked at the ceiling, biting down on my lip, and my hair fell down my bare back as she cleaned the wound. “This one looks okay. It’s deep but it’ll heal.” She looked up at me. “Sword?”
I nodded, realizing that she must have been the one that came in last night. She’d stitched it cleaner than Kalda ever had. “Are you a healer?”
Her eyes shot up, as if she was surprised I’d spoken. “I’m learning.”
She wrung the bloody cloth into the water as the door opened behind us, making me jolt. I turned to see Fiske standing at the opening. I sat up straight, keeping my back to him and pulling the length of my hair down over my shoulder to cover myself.
He stared at the hole in my shoulder. The hole he put there. In fact, they were all his marks. “Iri told you to wait for me, Runa.” He shifted his eyes back to the girl.
“You took too long. I have others to tend to tonight.”
He leaned into the wall, facing the side of the room as she went back to work.
“Let’s get you cleaned up.” She handed me another cloth and lifted the pot of hot water to the table.
I worked at washing the front of my body and she scrubbed down my back and neck. Once my skin was free of most of the dirt and blood, she braided my hair, still dusty and tangled, pulling the strands back away from my face. When she was finished, she picked up a clean tunic from the basket and helped me dress.
She unrolled a long cloth bandage and set my arm against me at an angle across my chest. “Hold here.”
I obeyed, watching her wrap it around my body to hold the arm in place.
She stood back, looking at me. “I didn’t come in here to help you wash the blood of my clansmen from your pretty blond hair because I’m kind. I did it because Iri asked me to. He’s earned his place here and you’re not going to threaten it.”
I raised an eyebrow at her. “And what exactly did he have to do to earn his place?”
She picked up the basket, setting it back onto her hip. She didn’t look back as she opened the door and Fiske followed her out. The latch slammed behind them and I looked down at my useless arm. If we’d gotten here a few days earlier, I may have been able to make it off the mountain before the first heavy snow. But I knew better. I could smell the cool burn of winter creeping into the village, closer every hour.
I would be a fool to try now. But if I could last the winter without getting a knfe in my heart, maybe I had a chance.
NINE
The door flew open, slamming on its hinges. I sat up on the table, searching the dark. Hands grabbed me before I could make out the forms in the shadows. I fought, trying to shift myself free, but a thick arm wrapped around my body, throwing my ribs into agony and sending the world turning sideways.
The hands pulled me by my tunic out the door, into the snow and I trudged down the path barefoot, kicking it up as I stumbled. I tried to get my bearings, but there was nothing but white below me and the dark mist surrounding the village.
“Where are you taking me?”
The man glanced over his shoulder before he reached back and slapped me. My head flew to the side, my mouth filling with blood. “Speak again and I’ll put another arrow through you, Aska.” I bit back the acid on my tongue.
We walked through the dark to the end of the village, where the sound of a hammer on an anvil pinged, echoing up the silent mountainside. The orange glow of a forge lit beneath a thatched canopy ahead.
The man shoved me forward and another one caught me, pulling me into the tent. He wrenched my head up by my hair and a Riki with a leather apron looked me over, holding iron tongs in his hand. He turned, fishing something from the forge, and my
eyes went wide as he lifted an iron dýr collar up before him. I pushed back, trying to back out of the tent but the two men had hold of me. The blacksmith hammered the glowing hot collar on the anvil, bending and stretching it to size as I fought, shoving into the bodies behind me.
“If you’re still, I’ll be sure not to burn you,” he instructed, his eyes on my neck.
I looked around the tent, searching for something to fight with. There were tools everywhere, but nothing within reach. The hand in my hair pushed me forward, forcing my face to the frozen anvil, and the other man leaned all his weight into my body to keep me still.
I screamed, thrashing, but they were too strong. The luminous metal ring moved closer as I kicked, but my bare feet only slid on the icy ground. Another Riki took hold of my shoulders and I was pinned, completely powerless. I grunted and spit as the blacksmith slowly spread the still-hot collar with the tongs and carefully positioned it around my neck. I kicked again, this time finding a leg, and I slipped. My skin sizzled as the metal touched me and I sucked in a choked breath, freezing.
“Hmph.” The blacksmith hovered over me, his brow scrunching. “I told you to be still.”
My face slid on the anvil, slick with snot and silent tears, as they held me in place, letting the collar cool. It was too late. The weight of the warm metal sat heavy around my neck.
Down the path, a torch lit in the dark and they pulled me back out into the snow. When we stopped, one of the men hooked the collar in his fingers and slid a length of rope through the circular opening, securing the other end to the trunk of a tree.
He left me shaking there as he went to the group of men standing near the torch stuck in the ground. They were talking and laughing, wrapped up in bearskins against the morning cold.
I reached up and touched the burn that was now scalded above my shoulder, trying to make out my surroundings. It looked maybe an hour before dawn, but the stars were still strung out across the sky, colors dancing behind the trees to the north.
The first sound of a cart made me stand up straight, pulling against the rope to see down the path, where a caravan came around the trail between two large, jagged boulders. The last cart pulled a line of cattle behind it. I knew what was happening as soon as I saw the Riki greet each other. These were the traders from Ljós. The stone in my chest grew heavier. They were going to trade me.
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