He nodded, looking over me, to the village. “Then let’s go.”
I should have told him that he didn’t have to come. That he’d repaid whatever debt he thought he owed me twice over. But inside, I was weak enough that I couldn’t hide from myself.
I didn’t want to be alone. I didn’t want him to leave.
“Thank you.”
He nodded and I turned against the wind, watching his shadow move next to mine on the ground as we walked. We climbed the beach and made our way back onto the path. I led us back to the house, feeling a chill run up my spine as I ducked into the doorway, headed for our saddlebags. The scream froze in my throat as the head of an arrow lifted in front of my face. Red hair glowed in the dark and the creak of the bowstring pulled tight.
Mýra.
Aiming for Fiske.
“No!” I wheezed, throwing myself forward. I plowed into her as her fingers slipped from the bowstring.
The arrow hit and I scrambled over Mýra to look. Fiske stood in the doorway, his eyes wide, holding the pail of fish up in front of him. It swung from the handle on his fingers with the arrow plunked into its side.
I could see his mind racing, his hand going for the sword at his hip.
Mýra shoved me aside and I rolled into the stone circling the fire pit. The muscle in my shoulder ripped away from the bone and I groaned as Mýra shot up from the ground with her axe in her hand. Ash clouded the air as she grunted, swinging it to catch Fiske in the neck, but he flung himself back, falling into the wall. The house shook around us.
“Mýra!” I grabbed for her leg but I could hardly see, choking on the dust.
She ignored me, swinging again, and then Fiske was after her, pushing off the wall and catching her by the neck with his hand. She dropped the axe, clawing at his grip as he pushed her into the opposite wall. Her small body flailed against his strength.
“Stop.” I pushed against him but he didn’t budge. “Let her go!”
He looked at me from the corner of his eye before his fingers unwound from her neck and he replaced them with the knife clutched in his fist.
She stilled, looking from him to me.
“Fiske.”
“Who else is here?” He bent over her with the blade still pressing into her skin.
Her eyes flitted back to me, her jaw clenching.
I reached up slowly and put my hand over his. “Let her go.”
“Who is she?”
“She’s my friend.”
Mýra looked at me wide-eyed as he lowered the knife and the tears spilled over before I could reach her. She threw her arms around me and her cries muffled into my hair as I held her, looking over her shoulder to Fiske. He stood half-lit in the shadows, sliding his knife back into his belt.
“How are you here?” Her words tripped over one another. “What are you doing here?” She pushed me back, looking up at me. The faded kol around her eyes dragged down her wet cheeks.
I bit my lip, trying to decide how much to tell her. How much she could understand. “I was captured at Aurvanger. I came when I heard what happened.”
“How did you get off the mountain before the thaw?”
I nodded to Fiske.
She dragged her palms over her face and her breaths slowed. “Why?”
But none of that mattered. I leveled my eyes at her, bracing myself as I spit the word out. “Is he dead?”
“No.” She took hold of my wrist, squeezing. “He’s alive. He’s in Virki.”
I looked back at Fiske, the smile breaking onto my face as I leaned over, putting my hands on my knees to steady myself. “How many? How many survived?”
Her face turned grave and the house went quiet with it.
“Most died. Maybe forty from our village survived. And some were captured.”
I sank back on the stone, trying to stop the spinning. The world was moving around me in blurred, colorless lines. I shook my head, trying to cut her words from the truth. “Your family?”
She didn’t answer, her face stone.
I stood again, going for the door, desperate for the air.
She came out behind me. “What are you doing with a Riki, Eelyn?”
“I need to get to Virki.”
“What is he doing here?” She shoved me and I recoiled, hissing. “What is it?” She pulled me to her, pushing the neck of my tunic open to look at the wound that festered in my shoulder. “Arrow?”
I nodded.
She checked the back of my shoulder and her hands suddenly stilled on me. “Is that…?” Her gaze fell to the burns circling my neck. “Did they…?”
I dropped my eyes, the shame of it too overwhelming.
She pushed past me, squaring off in front of Fiske as he came out the door. Her hands pushed into him hard. “What did you do?”
He looked down, expressionless, his frame towering over her.
“Why is he helping you, Eelyn?” She turned back toward me.
“The Herja came into the mountains.” I leaned into the tree that stood beside my home. The one Mýra and I climbed as children. “They’re everywhere.”
I watched her think. She brought her hands together, pressing her thumbs into her bottom lip.
“The Riki lost many. Too many.”
“Good,” she muttered, shooting her eyes to Fiske.
He tensed, pressing his mouth into a line.
“They’ll kill us, Mýra. All of us. I need to get to my father.”
Her eyes were still on Fiske, who silently stood in the doorway. “What about him?”
“He’s coming with me.”
“No.” She shook her head, taking a step back. “I’m not taking him to Virki. He’ll come back with the rest of the Riki and finish us off!”
“No, he won’t. The Riki are weak. They can’t fight.” I swallowed. “Not on their own.”
Mýra gaped at me. “You aren’t serious. The Aska will never fight with them. And Sigr will never allow peace with Thora.”
“Even if it means surviving? The Herja will come back. Look at this!” I flung my arms out around me to the village. “The thaw is coming, Mýra. And when it does, they’ll be back!”
“Vegr yfir fjor.” She bit down, her nostrils flaring. “We can’t trust them, Eelyn. You know that.”
I glanced at Fiske. Even if I did trust him, I would never trust his people. Not really. “I know.”
He lifted his chin, looking down at me.
“Fine. Bring him. The Aska will kill him when we get to Virki anyway.” Mýra looked at us both before she turned on her heel, slinging her bow over her head and starting down the path alone.
THIRTY-SEVEN
We walked in a single file line down the edge of the coast. The wind blew up the cliff faces in gusts, pushing us back as we moved south. I clutched my throbbing arm to my body as the blood seeped out of it and soaked into my tunic.
Hylli grew small in the distance and the trees grew thicker, turning into the coastal forest that most of the other Aska villages were nestled into. It was a trail Mýra and I had taken many times, going with my father to Utan and Lund to trade fish for things Hylli needed like timber and herbs that could only be found in the forest.
She didn’t look back at me as we walked, but her shoulders were set in a hard line. She kept one hand on the handle of her knife and the other hooked into the string of her bow. She wouldn’t hesitate to kill Fiske and I wasn’t sure her loyalty to me outweighed her hatred of the Riki. She’d lost her father to fever when we were young and then she lost her sister the day I lost Iri. Now, she’d lost everyone else to the Herja. And I should have been there.
I didn’t want to imagine her, watching the bodies burn with the ritual words on her lips. I didn’t want to think of her holding the last of her family in her arms. I knew Mýra as well as I knew myself. I knew the way she held every broken piece of her heart in place, refusing to fall apart. And she was left to face it alone, because I was selfish. I’d left her in Aurvanger. Just like I’
d left Iri.
Whether or not she would forgive me, I’d never forgive myself.
* * *
We came upon the bay carved into the cliffs like a half moon. The sea was still crusted with ice at its edges in the shallows. Schools of fish swam beneath it like a shifting plume of smoke.
Fiske hadn’t spoken a word since we left Hylli. His attention was on the slick, rocky ground as his boots struggled to find footholds. This wasn’t his terrain just like the snowy mountain wasn’t mine. I pulled the hood of the cloak up when the wind turned bitter and watched the fog roll into the land, spilling over the ground as the sun went down. The water below crashed harder onto the rocks and when we could no longer see it, we stopped, making camp inland near the forest.
Mýra watched Fiske moving through the trees as he gathered wood. “How could you tell him about Virki?” she ground out in a furious whisper.
I pulled the fish from my bag, choosing my words carefully. “What were you doing in Hylli?”
“I went back for my family’s things. What was left of them.”
I took a deep breath. “Iri’s alive, Mýra.”
Her hands froze on her axe’s handle and her eyes left the trees, coming to land on me hard. “What?”
“He’s alive. He’s been living with the Riki this whole time.” The words sank in and as they did, I listened to the way it sounded, saying it out loud. Saying it to Mýra was one thing. Saying it to the rest of the Aska would be another. Iri had been beloved and admired in Hylli, but they would have his life for what he’d done. And I was tainted by it too. So was my father.
“How? Why?” She stood.
“He wasn’t dead when we left him in Aurvanger. The Riki found him. They saved his life. Fiske saved his life.”
“No. I saw him. We saw him.” She paced before me, her eyes frantic.
“It’s true.”
“And what? Now he’s one of them?”
“Yes.” It was the first time I really believed it.
“You can’t change your blood, Eelyn! You can’t just erase all the Aska the Riki have killed!” Her voice was raw and I knew she was thinking about her sister.
“We can’t erase any of it.” And that was the most terrifying part of all.
Fiske came out of the trees with a pile of wood under his arm and started on the fire as Mýra watched. The glare in her eyes fell heavy on him but he ignored her.
She returned her axe to its place on her back. “I’ll take watch.”
“Sleep, I’ll do it.” I stood.
“So he can cut my throat?” She huffed, pulling the idols of her sister and her father from inside her vest. “You’re a fool if you think I’m going to sleep this close to a Riki.” She turned and stalked off into the dark, leaving us.
Fiske worked at the fire as if he hadn’t heard her, his face lit up.
“She doesn’t trust you.” I handed him another piece of wood. “None of them will.”
Behind us, in the darkness, I could hear the faint sound of Mýra’s prayers.
He sat against the tree, taking the axe from his back so he could lean into it. “Do you trust me?” His face was hard. Unreadable, like always.
“Yes.” His eyes lifted to meet mine and they looked into me. The way they had in Hylli. “But I don’t know if the Aska will listen to us.”
“You think this is the end?” He looked at his hands.
“The end of what?”
“The end of everything. The Riki. The Aska.” The words hung in the air over us, burning in the fire.
“Is that what you think?”
“No. I think you’ll convince them.”
The stillness of the night turned to something fragile, threatening to break. Because I wasn’t sure. “How do you know?”
He smiled at the corner of his mouth. “Because you have fire in your blood.”
It was what Inge said about me the night I watched them from the loft and he told Halvard I was dangerous.
“Do you trust me, Fiske?”
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
The memory of his lips on mine came flooding back. His hands finding me in the dark, pulling me across the stone. I fisted my hands, resisting the urge to touch him. “And if the Aska do join the Riki and together we defeat the Herja? What then?”
He reached into the fire with his axe, knocking a log closer to the flames. “Then things change.”
“What things?”
He leaned back against the tree, his eyes running over my face, and his voice softened. “Everything.”
* * *
We came up over the hill, too far from the sea now to see it through the forest. We lay against the incline on our stomachs, peering over the top, to the glade in the distance. It was still. Quiet.
“How many Aska?” I kept my eyes on the trees.
“At least ten. Hagen should be with them,” Mýra answered.
I’d known Hagen since I was a child. I’d fought with him. And I knew how he’d feel about me bringing a Riki into our camp.
“Take his weapons.” Mýra nodded toward Fiske.
He slid back. “No.”
“If they see them, they’ll put an arrow in you before we have a chance to talk.” I held out my hand.
“I’m not going into an Aska camp without weapons.”
“Like I did when I was tied up and dragged into Fela with an arrow in my arm?” I raised an eyebrow at him. “They won’t kill you. I won’t let them.”
“At least not right away. They’ll torture you first.” Mýra laughed, but it was dark. I turned to see the wicked smile on her face. “Then they’ll kill you.”
I pushed my open hand toward him. “My father is down there. I can talk to them.”
He looked at it before he unbuckled his scabbard and belt, winding the length of the leather around the sheaths in a tight bundle. He handed them to me, shaking his head.
“I’ll go first.” Mýra scanned the trees one more time before she stood, stepping over the top of the hill and walking into the forest slowly with her hands out to her sides.
I held Fiske’s weapons to me with my good arm, waiting a few paces before we followed.
But Fiske caught my waist, stopping me. “If they…” He glanced over me, his fingers finding the soft skin above my hip and holding onto me. I knew what he was going to say. “I have to get back to my family. If that means killing Aska to get out of Virki and back up the mountain, I will. Do you understand?”
I followed the length of him with my eyes. He didn’t need weapons to be a threat to my people. And once he went to Virki, there was no going back. He could bring every Riki down on the vulnerable Aska. They hung like the last leaves of autumn, waiting to drop. He’d do what he had to, and so would I.
“I understand.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
A ball of firelight glowed in the darkness ahead. As we neared, it turned into many, stretching out to each side, and the night fog flowed toward us like a hungry breath until my feet disappeared beneath its thick cover.
Mýra called out and we stopped, waiting. I kept my eyes on the torches until one of the orbs began to move. A man jumped down from a tree, seeing Mýra standing up ahead of us. Then he looked past her, to Fiske and me. “Eelyn?” He squinted in the dark, holding up the torch between us.
“It’s me,” I answered.
“Who’s this?” He stepped forward.
“He’s a Riki, Hagen.” I spoke the words as calmly as I could. “He’s alone and he’s here to speak with Espen.”
But Hagen’s sword was already drawn before I’d finished, his eyes looking into the trees around us. The other men stepped out of the brush, followed by the sound of more blades sliding from their sheaths.
“We’re alone.” I held up a hand to him.
“Check.” He called out over his shoulder, eyeing me angrily as the others followed his order. They spread out into the forest and the glow of their torches fanned out around us.
He he
ld his sword at the ready, checking Fiske for weapons.
“He’s not armed.” I lifted my hands higher as the men returned from the trees.
Fiske was wound tight beside me, eyes alert and catching every movement.
“It’s clear, Hagen,” one of the men shouted.
He looked at me for a long moment with his jaw working, before he finally lifted his hand and grasped my right shoulder. I did the same, meeting his eyes. “Espen won’t like this. Neither will your father, Eelyn.”
I nodded for Fiske to go first and followed behind him, deeper into the trees where the humming sound of moving water took over the quiet. The torches stilled and the sound of feet stopped at a wall of black.
“We’re going down.” Mýra came through the men to meet me.
“Down where?” I followed her to where the others stood and it wasn’t until my feet were at the ledge that I realized it was a drop-off.
She handed me a rope. “Tie it around you like this.”
I watched her carefully, doing as she instructed. When the knots were tight, Hagen clipped his rope into the metal hooks of one that was lying on the ground. He gave the other men a look before crouching down and throwing himself back over the cliff without warning. My heart jumped, watching the rope pull taut and then go slack again.
Mýra followed, backing up to the cliff’s edge and meeting my eyes before disappearing. I looked down, trying to see her, but there was only the movement of water catching moonlight. The men pulled the ropes back up and the clips at the end were empty. Two others were next, pushing out from the cliff without any hesitation.
Fiske tied his own ropes and I clipped a metal hook into the knots around me. He backed up, bringing his heels in line with the edge, and braced me with his hand as I did the same, trying to secure my arm against me. It would hurt no matter what I did.
“Ready?” I whispered.
He gave me a nod.
I crouched down and threw my weight back as hard as I could, sinking into the air. The length of the rope rippled out before me like a snake against the night sky above. The light of the torches disappeared over the cliff above us and the rope caught us at an angle just as the others came into view, putting their hands up, fingers splayed to catch us.
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