She laid clean tunics hemmed in golden thread out on the table. They were dress clothes similar to the ones the Aska wore for ceremonies. “You’ll need to clean and oil them. Then shine the buckles.” She dropped their armor vests, scabbards, and sheaths down in front of me.
I finished with the yarrow and picked them up off the floor, sitting beside the fire. I scrubbed the dirt and blood from the leather with a brush until it was clean and then I oiled them, rubbing the shine into the creases with my fingers the way I did with my father’s armor and mine. My arm ached and burned with the movement, but it felt good to use the muscles.
Iri pulled his tunic off, reaching for the dress clothes, and my hands froze on the scabbard in my lap. The scar reaching across the side of his body was a thick, gnarled thing, pink and shiny against his skin. It was the wound that I’d seen bleeding out as he lay at the bottom of the trench. I rarely saw scars like that. They were the echoes of wounds that people didn’t actually survive.
“Will Kerling come?” Iri looked out the door to the small house that sat across the path. Beside it, posts were driven into the ground for what looked like a barn, but it was unfinished. A small garden patch was nestled inside the gate, full of rhubarb and leeks.
Inge shook her head. “No.” She pulled the bench out from under the table and she worked at Fiske’s hair, braiding it back against the scalp before pulling the length of it into a neat knot and securing it with a leather tie. “Aska, can you do Iri’s?” She nodded toward him and my fingers curled around the leather strap.
He sat down and I stood, coming behind him to take his hair into my hands. He didn’t look up at me, but he didn’t flinch under my touch, instantly making me feel like I was going to cry.
“Do you know how?” Halvard asked, looking up at me from where he sat on the ground.
Inge laughed. “She has hair, doesn’t she?”
“I used to do my brother’s,” I answered. The breath caught in my chest.
Inge and Halvard both looked at me. Iri stilled, sitting up straighter.
“What happened to him?” Halvard’s voice turned wary.
“Halvard,” Inge scolded him, her brow furrowing.
I pulled the hair into three measured sections. “He’s dead,” I said flatly.
Halvard went quiet.
I braided the thick, waving strands back away from his face, taking the pleats all the way to the end of his hair and then tying them. I used to braid Iri’s hair all the time just like this and then he would do mine. Remembering it was like swallowing a stone.
Iri sitting before our fire, laughing.
Iri lying in the snow, bleeding.
I blinked. Fiske sat in front of him, leaning forward on his elbows and looking at me, like he could see the memories cast behind my eyes.
I looked away, brushing off Iri’s shoulders, and brought the braids to lie down his back. He stood, taking the Riki armor vest from the table and fitting it over the fine tunic. He didn’t look at me as I reached up to buckle the sides, his eyes strained behind the strength painted on his face.
I tightened the straps around his thick torso, remembering. I did the same thing before battle five years ago, in the darkness of our father’s tent. Hours later, Iri was gone.
Once he was dressed, he picked up a round, flat black stone from the table and rubbed his thumb over its surface where worn letters were carved. He looked at it for a moment before tucking it into his vest.
“You did a good job on these.” Inge worked at Fiske’s armor. “They’re cleaner than they’ve been in years.”
Hearing her say it made me wish I hadn’t done it.
When they were dressed, Inge looked them over carefully, turning them each around and inspecting them.
Halvard still watched from the floor, his face sleepy. “When do I get to go fight?”
“Never.” Iri half-smiled.
In five years, he’d be old enough. But the young ones only finished off the fallen on the battlefield. It would be ten years before he was allowed on the front line.
Inge held out a folded length of cloth to me, tied with a strand of twine. “Here.”
I didn’t take it.
Her face twisted, confused. “It’s a dress.”
“For what?” I looked down at it.
“For Adalgildi.” Halvard stood, unfolding the length of it to show me. It was a plain black wool dress with long sleeves and a long, full skirt. Little white bone buttons ran up the front torso in a simple, neat line.
I swallowed, shaking my head. “No.”
“Well, you can’t wear that.” Inge’s eyes dropped down to my tunic, armor vest, and pants. The same clothes I went to battle in.
“I’m not going.”
The edge came into her voice. “I didn’t ask.”
I looked at Iri but he was looking at Fiske.
My stomach dropped, my mouth going dry. I couldn’t go to a Riki ceremony. Especially one honoring their warriors. Sigr wouldn’t like it.
“She’ll offend her god.” Iri spoke my thoughts aloud.
“All the dýrs go. You’ll have to serve. And you can’t go into the ritual house like that.”
I stepped back. “No.”
“Aska.” Fiske’s booming reproach cut into the room, his eyes fixed on me, and I flinched.
The others, too, were staring. Halvard’s mouth hung open. The blood drained from my face.
Fiske had his hands resting on his belt, his chest pulling beneath his fitted tunic. “You’re going to the ceremony. You’ll serve. You’ll wear the dress.”
I gritted my teeth, hearing the seething of my soul inside my head. Because I didn’t care if a collar hung around my neck. I wasn’t their dýr.
“And if I don’t?” I stared back at him, my nostrils flaring.
The cold, hard set of his eyes bore down on me with his answer: I’d be punished. By him. And if I wasn’t punished for deliberately disobeying, Inge would know something wasn’t right. All of the Riki would.
Behind him, Iri was looking at me, his eyes tight. Begging me to obey.
I twisted the dress in my sweaty hands and swallowed hard before I turned for the loft.
Inge watched me climb. “I told you,” she whispered. “She’s got fire in her blood, Fiske.”
I pulled my clothes off, throwing them onto my cot, and stepped into the dress. I hadn’t worn one since before the fighting season, when our clan sent off the warriors to battle. I clasped the buttons and tied the waist, cinching the fabric around my body. The neck was wide and open, letting the collar sit completely visible.
I looked down at it with a sneer. At least it was warm.
When I climbed back down the ladder with the length of the skirt gathered in my arms, Iri and Fiske were gone and Runa was rolling the cedar garlands into circles and piling them on top of each other. She smiled at me softly.
“Runa, do something with her hair,” Inge said, pushing past me to the loft.
Runa dropped the garlands and came to the table, waiting for me. I glared at her before I sat. When she touched me, the tension shot through my whole body. I closed my eyes, feeling her hands in my hair, pulling at it with hooked fingers to unravel the old, tangled braids. She brushed it out, taking the ends in her hands and pulling the comb through as I stared into the fire.
When she stopped moving, I looked back at her. She was staring at the strip of hair along the right side of my head that was shorn over my ear. “Is that how Aska women wear their hair?” she asked.
I reached up to rub my hand over it out of habit.
She mussed the strands until it was thick and wild on top and then she braided behind my left ear, taking it around the back of my head and then over my right shoulder. She was slow and precise, taking care to braid it correctly with thin, intricate strands. When she was finished, she tied the end and stood back to look at me.
She picked up the jar of kol from the table and opened it. “The Aska wear this, don’t the
y?”
I looked from the jar up to her, trying to figure out what she was doing. Why she was being kind. But her face didn’t betray her thoughts. She dipped her fingers into the jar and then ran them around my eyes, darkening the skin and then dragging her thumbs down the center of my cheeks in a line. Something about it made the twisting in my muscles let go a little. It felt familiar. I closed my eyes, remembering Mýra in the dark of our tent, painting the kol onto my face. And then I opened them, the vision stinging too badly to hold in my mind.
Runa went back to her work on the garlands and I came to stand beside her, taking one into my hands and winding it up the way she had. Halvard shoved the door open, running in and then stopping short, his mouth falling open.
Inge came down the ladder, dressed in a dark purple dress.
“Look at her, Mama.” Halvard was still staring at me.
Behind him, Fiske and Iri came through the door and they, too, stopped to look at me, stiffening. I kept my eyes down, working at the garlands and trying to cool the red blooming over my face. Letting them dress me up for their feast was humiliating. And seeing them look at me like they liked it made me want to cut my own hands off.
Inge handed Fiske and Halvard baskets, pushing them out the door. Then she pointed to the others on the table. “Bring them up.”
Iri picked up a basket and handed it to me. “You look pretty.” The smile on his face made him look like a little boy.
I looked him up and down before my eyes met his, the anger inside of me coming back to life. “You look like a Riki.”
FOURTEEN
I stood at the entrance of the ritual house in the falling snow, holding the basket piled high with yarrow. The huge archway was a detailed carving of the mountain, the trees etched into it in slanted patterns and the face of Thora, mouth full of fire. Her wide, piercing eyes stared down at me, her teeth bared. In each outstretched hand, she held the head of a bear.
The walls were constructed of huge tree trunks, much bigger than the trees that surrounded the village. Through the doorway, a blazing fire burned in the center of the chamber and elk antlers holding candlesticks hung down from the ceiling. The heat poured out the door, warming the back of me as clusters of snowflakes clung to my dress. Out in the distance, a storm moved toward Fela, carrying a heavier snowfall within its dark clouds. One that would seal me into the village for the winter.
Another dýr held a basket of yarrow on the other side of the archway. Her eyes stayed on the ground, her body perfectly still. She wore a gray wool dress similar to mine, her hair braided back tightly. The collar around her neck was smoothed from years of wear and her blank, empty face said the same thing.
The Riki made their way up the incline in the snow, and my gaze flitted to the forest. A horde of my enemies was moving toward me, weapons strapped to their bodies and I stood there holding a basket of flowers. What was to stop one of them from throwing me on the fire?
My shoulder ached under the weight of the basket, the weak muscles straining under the skin, and I shifted, trying to adjust it to the other side.
They arrived by families, men and women walking with their children or the elderly. The first group stopped before entering, each taking a yarrow bloom into their hands and cupping it gently before them. I tried not to look up into the angry eyes cast down on me, the hatred burning through their stares. But it was quickly followed by something that looked like satisfaction—justice—as their attention fell to the collar around my neck.
They hated me like I hated them. But they’d won. And they knew it.
“Gudrick,” a soft voice called from behind us and the man before me looked up, a smile breaking onto his toughened face.
I turned to see an older woman in an amber dress standing behind me, holding a braided reed cage. A white snow owl with large yellow eyes peered out at me from inside. The long strands of wood-beaded necklaces hung around her neck meant that she was the Tala, the clan’s interpreter of Thora’s will.
The children ran to her, sticking their fingers into the cage, and she ushered them into the warm ritual house. They went inside, one family at a time, and walked down an open aisle to the fire, where they stood together for a silent moment before dropping the yarrow into the flames. The smell of the offerings burning filled the air with a floral, charred scent. It pushed out the doors and wound around me.
Dýrs moved about, refilling my basket when the yarrow was gone and helping to carry things inside for the arriving Riki until the path was clear. The village below looked empty, except for the house across the path from Fiske’s, where fire smoke still rose from the roof and light glowed in the window.
Inge appeared and took the basket from my arms, nodding toward the doors. I hesitated, looking up at it again. Going into their ritual house felt like a grave betrayal.
“Aska,” Inge prodded me and I followed the other dýrs beneath the archway where it was loud and the air was so warm it made my cold skin tingle. The doors closed, creaking on big iron hinges, and the Riki quieted. The men and women found their seats on long benches circling the fire in rows that reached to the back of the chamber and the children flooded to the front, finding space on the ground. I found a place along the back wall with the other dýrs, my hand pressing into my throbbing arm. More hard eyes landed on me.
Everyone quieted as the woman in the amber dress stood, raking her fingers through her waist-length golden hair, wild with thick streaks of silver. “Vidr, come.”
A large man with a coarse black beard stood and the room followed. He smiled, taking his place beside the Tala with his hand on the hilt of his sword. When the faces of the Riki looked up at him, it was clear he was the village leader.
“Welcome,” the man bellowed. “Welcome home.” He motioned for them to sit and they obeyed, sinking onto the benches almost in unison.
The Tala handed him the cage and he nodded to her, setting it on the altar before the fire. He lifted the lid, reaching inside with his hand to pull the owl free. As it flapped its wings, the woman set a large wooden bowl and a bronze dagger before her.
She lifted the blade, looking into the face of the owl. “We give thanks to you, Thora, for bringing our warriors home.” Her voice rang out over the Riki, finding me in the back.
Vidr held the bird as the Tala placed the tip of the dagger to the owl’s breast and carefully pushed it in between the bones. A screech broke the silence as the bird went still and Vidr held its body over the bowl as the blood ran out.
The Riki pounded on their benches, their knuckles knocking against the wood. The sound beat like wings in my chest. When the blood was finished draining, he laid the still bird down on the table and took his seat.
“Welcome to Adalgildi.” The Tala’s voice reverberated in the ritual house. But instead of turning her attention to the men and women on the benches, she sank down onto the stone altar and leaned forward, looking into the faces of the children. They straightened, sitting on their heels and whispering to each other.
“We’ve gathered together this evening to honor our Riki warriors.” She looked out over them, her eyes gleaming with pride. “We burn the yarrow in remembrance of those who did not return home. We give thanks to Thora for their lives and their courage.” The sound of fists knocking against wooden benches echoed out again, making the room feel smaller. “To understand the honor deserved, we must remember the story of Thora. We must remember why we fight.
“Thora was born of the mountain, in the great eruption that created our home,” she began, her hands extending out around her small frame. “She came forth from the flame and ash. From the melted rock, she created her people and placed them on the mountain to dwell. She named them Riki for their strength and power. But peace was short-lived.” Her voice lowered. “Sigr, the god of the fjord, saw what Thora had done and his heart was filled with envy. He sent his people up into the mountain to tear down what Thora had built. A bloody rivalry was born and Thora swore eternal revenge on Sigr. She s
ent the Riki down to the inlets of the great sea to destroy the Aska. Every five years, since that day, we have met them on the battlefield to bring glory to Thora.” She clasped her hands in front of her.
It was a different history than the one the Aska told, but the end was the same. Our hatred of the Riki was written onto our bones. Breathed into us by Sigr. What had started as a quarrel between the gods turned into the hunger for revenge—a blood feud. Every five years, we lost those we loved. And we spent the next five years counting the days to the moment we could make the Riki pay for our pain. It was a long-burning fire inside of me.
“Our warriors have brought honor to Thora this fighting season. They have cut down the enemies of our god. The same as you will do one day. All of you.” She stood back up, the hem of her skirt floating over the stone. “And Thora is pleased.”
Shouting erupted in the chamber, and I pressed myself into the wall, watching from the top of my eyelashes.
“Yes, Thora is pleased and we must now honor the warriors who have brought this great favor to our people. Come.”
The children got to their feet, funneling down the aisles and finding their families.
As the floor cleared, the Riki warriors across the ritual house came forward, their families looking up at them, and my eyes found Iri, who stood beside Fiske on the far side of the room. They filled the aisle as the Riki watched them, many with tears in their eyes. Dýrs carried the baskets of cedar garlands from the back of the room and set them down at the feet of the Tala. She crouched down, picking one up and holding it out before her in her open hands.
“We honor you, Riki, as you have honored Thora. Lag mund.” Fate’s hand.
The man before her bent low so she could lift the garland over his head and set it onto his shoulders. As he stood, she dipped her finger into the bowl of owl’s blood and lifted it to touch the place between his collarbones. He bowed before her, peeled off the line, and returned to his seat, hands touching him as he went. Below his throat, the deep red stroke of blood glistened on his skin.
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