“Come, Tova.” Jorrund spoke lowly.
I looked from him to the others, my hand instinctively going to the leather purse beneath my tunic, where the stones were tucked safely against my heart. I knew what they wanted, but I didn’t know why and I didn’t like that feeling.
Their stares lifted from me as Jorrund led me to a corner and took his place at Bekan’s side. The Svell chieftain didn’t acknowledge my presence. He hadn’t since the last time I’d been brought here in the middle of the night to cast the stones for his daughter’s life.
But it was something else that drew the fury on Bekan’s face now. He cast it upon his own leaders, something I’d seen more and more in the last years as the clans to the east unified. The shift in power had put the Svell at odds, and every year that Bekan didn’t declare war only fed the division. The splinter that had wedged itself between the Svell was widening.
“You haven’t left me a choice. Already a day and a half has passed. News will have reached them by now.” His voice raked as he leaned forward to catch the eyes of his brother, Vigdis.
I’d seen the brothers argue many times, but never in front of the other village leaders. Jorrund, too, looked as if the sight unnerved him.
“You’ve always been foolish, brother,” Bekan growled. “But this…”
“Vigdis acted when you wouldn’t.” A woman’s voice rose in the shadows behind the others and the chill of the storm seemed to suddenly rush back into the room, despite the blazing fire.
Bekan’s black eyes glinted. “We act together. Always.”
I watched the others, studying the way their hands sat ready at their weapons, their muscles wound tight. All twelve of the Svell villages were represented, and more than half of the faces bore the evidence of a fight. Whatever mess they’d made, they’d done it without Bekan’s consent. And that could only mean one thing—that the blood on their armor belonged to the Nādhir.
“Tell me exactly what happened.” Bekan rubbed a hand over his face and I wondered if I was the only one who could see that he was a man coming apart at the seams. It had only been two full moons since his only child, Vera, died of fever. Every day that passed since then seemed to only cast a darker shadow upon him.
Vigdis lifted his chin as he answered. “Thirty warriors, including myself and Siv. We took Ljós in the night.”
The leader of Stórmenska stood beside him, her thumbs hooked into her armor vest. “At least forty dead, all of them Nādhir, from what we could tell.” She spoke carefully, measuring her words. Five years ago, they would have been her last. But now, the village leaders were united in what they thought should be done about the growing threat to the east and the ground the Svell chieftain stood on was crumbling.
“They are most likely calling in their warriors this very moment.” Jorrund took a step closer to Bekan, his clasped hands before him.
“Let them.” Vigdis eyed his brother. “We will do what we should have done long ago.”
“Your fealty is to me, Vigdis.”
“My fealty is to the Svell,” he corrected. “It’s been more than ten years since the Aska and the Riki ended their blood feud and joined together as the Nādhir. For the first time in generations, we are the most powerful clan on the mainland. If we want to keep our place, we have to fight for it.”
The silence that followed only confirmed that even the most loyal among them agreed, and Bekan seemed to realize it, his eyes moving over them slowly before he answered. “War has a cost,” he warned.
“Perhaps it’s one we can pay.” Jorrund leaned in closer to him, and I knew he was thinking the same thing I was. The scales had finally tipped out of Bekan’s favor. He either agreed to advance on Nādhir territory or he risked a permanent division among his own people.
The others grunted in agreement and Bekan’s gaze finally found me in the dim light. “That’s what we’re here to find out.”
Jorrund gave me a tight nod, taking a basket from where it hung on the wall behind him. I stepped into the light, feeling the eyes of the Svell leaders crawl over the marks on my skin. They moved aside, careful not to touch me, and I took the pelt from the basket as Jorrund murmured a reverberating prayer beneath his breath.
“You tempt the wrath of Eydis, keeping that thing here,” Vigdis murmured.
The chieftain’s brother had been the only one to say aloud what I knew the rest of them were thinking. That Bekan’s daughter, Vera, had died because of me. When Jorrund brought me to Liera, many said that Bekan would pay a price for the grave sin of letting me live. The morning Vera woke with fever, there were whispers that his punishment had finally come. The Spinners had carved her fate into the Tree of Urðr, but I was the one to cast the stones.
Jorrund ignored Vigdis, setting a bundle of dried mugwort into the flames. The pungent smoke filled the room with a haze, making me feel like for a moment, I could disappear. It wasn’t the first time a Svell had referred to me as a curse, and it wouldn’t be the last. It was no secret where I’d come from or what I was.
I hooked my fingers into the leather string around my neck and lifted the purse from inside my tunic. I hadn’t cast the stones since the night Vera died, and the memory slicked my palms with sweat, my stomach turning. I opened it carefully, letting them fall heavily into my open hand. The firelight glimmered against their smooth, black surfaces where the runes were carved in deep lines. The language of the Spinners. Pieces of the future, waiting to be read.
Jorrund unrolled the pelt and my palms pressed together around the stones.
“Lag mund,” Vigdis whispered.
“Lag mund,” the others repeated.
Fate’s hand.
But what did these warriors know about fate? It was the curling, wild vine that choked out the summer crops. It was the wind that bent wayward currents and damned innocent souls to the deep. They hadn’t seen the stretch of it or the way it could shift suddenly, like a flock of startled birds. Fate’s hand was something they said because they didn’t understand it.
That’s what I was for.
I closed my eyes, pushing the presence of the Svell from around me. I found the darkness—the place I was alone. The place I had come from. The call of the nighthawk sounded again and I pulled my thoughts together, sending them into one straight line. My lips parted, the words finding my mouth and I breathed through them.
“Augua ór tivar. Ljá mir sýn.
“Augua ór tivar. Ljá mir sýn.
“Augua ór tivar. Ljá mir sýn.”
Eye of the gods. Give me sight.
I held my hands out before me, unfurling my fingers and letting the stones drop until they were scattered across the pelt in a pattern that only I could see, reaching out wide to either side. The silence grew thick, the crackle of fire the only sound as I leaned forward, bringing my fingers to my lips.
My brow furrowed, my eyes moving from one stone to the next. Every single one was facedown, the runes hidden. Except for one.
I bit down hard on my lip, looking up to see Jorrund’s eyes locked on mine.
Hagalaz, the hailstone, sat in the very center. Complete destruction. The storm that devours.
For more than ten years, I’d cast the runes to see the future of the Svell. Never had they looked like this.
But the stones never lied. Not to me.
My eyes drifted over them again, the pace of my heart quickening.
“What do you see?” Jorrund’s voice was heavy when he finally spoke.
I stared at him, the weight of silence pushing down on me in the hot room until it was hard to draw breath.
“It’s alright, Tova,” he said, gently. “What lies in the future of the Svell?”
My eyes cut to Bekan, who stared into the fire, his gaze as hollow as the night his daughter died.
I reached out, the tip of my finger landing on Hagalaz before I answered.
“In the future, there are no Svell.”
CHAPTER TWO
HALVARD
&n
bsp; “How many?” Espen barked, the pounding of his boots hitting the rocky path ahead of me like a racing heartbeat.
Aghi struggled to keep up, leaning into his staff and rocking from side to side as we made our way up the narrow trail that led away from the beach. “More than forty.”
Espen stopped short, turning on his heel to face us. “You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.” Aghi’s eyes met mine over Espen’s shoulder.
I’d known by the look on his face when I saw Aghi standing on the dock that something was wrong. But this … the entire village of Ljós was gone. Aghi and I had been there only a week ago, meeting with the village leader. Now, it was most likely nothing more than a pile of ash.
Espen drew in a deep breath, his hand tangling in his beard as he thought. “Are they waiting in the ritual house?”
“Yes,” Aghi answered.
I looked up, feeling eyes on us. The people of Hylli were tending to their morning chores, but their hands stilled on their work as we passed. They could feel that something was happening even if they couldn’t see it.
“It was the Svell?” I kept my voice low as a man shouldered around us, a line of silver fish slung over his back.
Espen’s jaw clenched. “Who else would it be?”
A fire was lit in his eyes that I hadn’t seen since the day I’d first met him, after the battle against the Herja that nearly wiped out the entirety of both our clans. It was something I recognized, the same fire that had lit the eyes of so many warriors I’d known as a boy up on the mountain. The hunger to spill blood was something that ran through the veins of both the Aska and the Riki, but we were the Nādhir now. And it had been ten years since that part of us had been awakened.
“What will you do?”
He didn’t answer aloud, but I could see in his face the weary look of a man who’d seen far more death than me.
We’d spoken many times about the tensions growing along the border with the Svell. The call to act had grown more insistent in the last few months, but we needed another ten years before we’d have a strong enough army to defend our lands and our people with better odds. We’d lost too many when the Herja came, and now many of the warriors who’d survived were too old to fight.
As if he could hear my thoughts, Aghi’s gaze drifted back to me. His leg had never recovered from the wound he suffered in the battle that defeated the Herja.
Espen led us up the path, an eerie quiet dragging behind us and covering the village in our wake. Spring had melted most of the ice on the fjord, but the crisp tinge of it still cut through on the wind that blew in from the sea. Beyond the rooftops, the mountain rose before a clear gray sky. My family had spent the winter in the snow-laden village where I was born and they wouldn’t be back for weeks. But if war was coming, it would draw every Nādhir to the fjord in a matter of days.
Freydis, Latham, and Mýra were already waiting when we came through the doors, their armor oiled and their weapons cleaned. Mýra’s red hair glowed around her fair face like fire, twisting down into a tight braid over her shoulder. She was wound as tight as rope, ready to snap. Beside her, Espen’s wife stood before the altar, his axe sheaths in her hands.
He turned, taking them onto his back, and she buckled them as he spoke. “Tell me.”
“More than forty dead.” Freydis answered first. “They moved on Ljós in the night, about twenty or thirty warriors. A few survivors made it to Utan by morning and riders were sent, but the Svell were already gone.”
“How do we know it wasn’t raiders?”
“They’re dead, Espen.” Freydis’ voice faltered under the words. “All of them.”
I watched their faces, the silence falling heavy between us. If it was a band of raiders, the deaths would have been minimal. Whoever marched on Ljós had come for blood, not wool or grain or penningr.
Espen’s jaw worked as he thought. Once, the Nādhir had been two clans, both bigger and stronger than the Svell, who had been nothing more than a distant people in the eastern forests. They’d survived by avoiding notice. It was after the Herja came and our clans united that the Svell gained their strength and advantage. Now, they were finally ready to use it.
“They’ve sent a messenger,” Freydis said. “The Svell.”
“A messenger?”
“Their leader, Bekan, wants to meet. In Ljós. He wants to make an offering of reparation.”
Espen and Aghi looked to each other silently. Whispers of war had traveled across the valley for years. It didn’t make sense that their leader would make an offering of reparation after their first attack on a village. Unless attacking Ljós wasn’t Bekan’s act of war.
“It wasn’t Bekan,” I murmured, thinking aloud.
“What?” Freydis’ brow wrinkled.
I turned to Espen. “Bekan’s men moved without him.”
Mýra’s head cocked to the side. “How do you know?”
“I don’t. But we’ve known for a long time that their leaders are divided. It’s the only reason they haven’t moved against us before now. I think Bekan’s men acted without him and he wants to put out the flames before he has to call the Svell to war.”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s too late for that.” Latham spoke through his teeth.
The oldest leader among us, Latham had never shed his taste for a fight. And he’d never forgotten just how quickly you could lose everything. He’d been the first to urge a strike against the Svell when the first rumors made it to the fjord.
Freydis’ hand tightened around the hilt of her sword. “I can have every Nādhir warrior ready to fight in three days. We can take them village by village. The losses will be—”
“Too great,” I finished.
Mýra’s eyes cut to mine, her mouth pressing into a hard line. I stood a whole head taller than her now, but she was still as ferocious as the day I first saw her marching into our village with a sword in one hand and a shield in the other. “It’s a trap. They’re counting on the fact that we don’t want war. They’re trying to draw us in before they push to the fjord.”
“I’ll go,” I said, avoiding her gaze.
She stilled, her hand absently drifting to the axe at her back and her voice rising. “What?”
“I’ll meet with Bekan. They’d have taken at least two more villages by now if he was moving through the valley. He doesn’t want war any more than we do. I think he does want reparation.”
“You’re not giving orders yet, Halvard.” Latham spoke from where he stood beside me. His face was still engraved with the jagged scar from the battle that had crippled his entire village. He’d spent the last ten years rebuilding it. “Forty of our people are dead. Blood must answer for blood.”
The leaders had been in agreement when they summoned me to the ritual house two years ago and told me I’d been chosen to take Espen’s place as chieftain of the Nādhir—the once warring, now allied people of the mountain and the fjord. Since then, my days had been spent preparing for it. But I’d never seen war the way my elders had. I was among the first generation that didn’t live to fight in a blood feud. And now, a wound that would never heal had been torn back open. I’d grown up the son of a healer, but no one could mend a break like that. And no one doubted me more than Latham.
“He’s here to speak like the rest of us,” Espen rebuked, reminding Latham of his place. He was the last person to hesitate drawing his sword, but he knew I was right. War with the Svell meant the same kind of losses we’d suffered ten years ago. Maybe more.
“Let me go,” I said again. “It will take at least three days to gather and ready our warriors. I can make it to Ljós and back in that time.”
Mýra glared at me from across the fire, her green eyes sharpening. “If he’s going, I’m going.”
“You’re staying here,” Aghi grunted. He was the only father either of us had, but Mýra wasn’t one to take orders. “I’ll go with Halvard.”
She opened her mouth to object, but Espen spoke before she c
ould. “So will I.”
Freydis looked to Latham, stiffening. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Her voice turned wary.
“We’ll take twenty warriors. Latham and Freydis, you will call in the villages. Ready our people for war. Mýra will do the same here in Hylli.”
But Freydis didn’t look sure and neither did Latham.
“We leave at sundown.” Espen squeezed my shoulder.
I nodded, stepping back as he made his way to the doors. His wife followed and as soon as they were gone, Latham turned toward me. He’d never hidden his uncertainty about my ability to take Espen’s place, but he’d agreed anyway. He looked at me the way a disapproving uncle would his stubborn nephew, and I knew he didn’t really believe I could do it. If I was being honest, neither did I.
He met my eyes for a wordless breath before I followed Aghi outside. The doors hadn’t even closed behind us when Mýra was suddenly turning on me.
“What do you think you’re doing?” She squared her shoulders to mine, looking up into my face. “I’m going with you.”
“You’re staying,” Aghi said again, this time letting the edge slip into his voice.
“When they find out…” Her eyes went to the mountain behind me and I knew she was thinking of my family. They were her family, too. “Wait two days. I’ll leave for Fela now. We’ll ride through the night and—”
“We’ll be back before they even know we’re gone,” I said, but I knew she was right. Eelyn and my brothers would be furious when they found out I’d gone to meet with Bekan.
“I don’t like this.” Her voice softened, her eyes searching mine. She was eleven years older than me, but in that moment she looked so young. “You shouldn’t go, Halvard.”
“We’ll be back in three days. Four at the most.”
She nodded reluctantly and I knew that look. She was worried. Scared. I pulled her into me, wrapping my arms around her small frame and setting my chin on top of her head.
“I’m not losing any more family,” she said. “Do you hear me?”
The Girl the Sea Gave Back Page 2