The Girl the Sea Gave Back(13)

“Perhaps you changed the fate of our people when you took Ljós. This is your chance to right it.” Jorrund waited for Vigdis to speak, but he didn’t. “The Nādhir will find their end when Eydis wills it. Not a moment before.”

Vigdis didn’t argue, but anger still etched the dark circles beneath his eyes. He glanced over his shoulder to the man riding behind us. “Don’t take your eyes off her until we’re back through those gates, Gunther.”

I froze, my hands twisting into the reins as I looked back over my shoulder to find him. Gunther rode on his horse behind us, his gaze cast over me, to Vigdis. He didn’t argue with the order, but I could see in the way his jaw clenched that he didn’t want the responsibility of watching me. No one would. There was more gray streaked through his hair since the last time I’d seen him, but in most ways, he looked the same as he had the day I first met him in the meadow as a girl. He’d never liked me then, either, but I knew that he wouldn’t hurt me unless he had to. And that was more than I could say for any other Svell.

Jorrund looked between Vigdis and Gunther nervously. Vigdis didn’t know about the deal he’d made with Gunther all those years ago and Jorrund didn’t want him to. In fact, no one knew about those days in the meadow. Not even Bekan.

Gunther stopped his horse beside mine, holding his hand out before me, and his eyes went to the bow slung over my shoulder. I looked around me, to the armed Svell riding into the trees. I wasn’t trained to fight like the rest of them. My bow was the only way I could protect myself. When I didn’t move, he kicked at his horse, moving closer.

Jorrund jerked his chin up, ordering me to obey and I gritted my teeth as I unbuckled the quiver and tossed it to Gunther. He fastened it to his horse’s riggings and let the small bow drop over his head.

Of course Vigdis would have me watched. He’d never trusted me, but it was the night his niece Vera died that I first realized that he wanted me dead. He’d wept over her still body, broken in a way that I’d never seen him, and when his eyes found me in the shadows, he’d made me a promise.

I’ll kill you for this.

The same look was painted on his face now. He spat onto the ground between us, kicking his heel into the horse and moving ahead to catch up to Siv.

Gunther fell back behind me as we started again and I glared at him, pulling the bear fur tighter around my shoulders. The wind picked up, winding through the trees as the village grew small behind us, and without the familiar weight of my quiver at my back, I shivered against it. I’d never been away from Liera and the feeling of leaving the forests I knew made my breath hitch. It curled around itself inside my chest and a feeling like eyes watching me from the dark crept up my spine.

Jorrund stared ahead, his face unreadable. “Why was there no other stone overturned in the cast?”

“I don’t know.” I gave him the only answer I had. In all the years I’d cast the stones for him, I’d never seen them fall the way they had that night. The future was always changing and shifting. The Spinners were always spinning. But Hagalaz had found the center, its parallel lines perfectly vertical. And every other stone had been turned down, erased from the web of fate.

He sighed. “Tomorrow, we will fix this.”

But it sounded like a question on his lilting voice. For maybe the first time, Jorrund wasn’t sure. He was more uncertain than I’d ever seen him and that’s why he’d brought me. To see the things he couldn’t see—fate, omens, and signs that were invisible to him.

He leaned forward, taking the clay bottle from the side of his saddle and uncorking it before he handed it to me. “It’s a long ride and it will be a cold night. Drink. It will warm you.”

I brought the bottle to my lips and breathed in the sweet smell of the mead. It reminded me of being a small girl, perched in the rafters of the ritual house while Jorrund and Bekan talked below beside the altar fire. Even then, their conversations had been about the future and the generations that would follow after they’d long been in Djúpr, where the Svell went after death.

“The Nādhir changed more than their own fates when they ended their blood feud. Perhaps we should have listened to Vigdis long ago, when he first suggested we invade their lands. They were weak then. And for the first time, we were strong.”

I still remembered the first time I heard the word Nādhir. Two clans, one people, who had buried the blood feud that had defined them for generations. It was something no one thought possible.

I took a long drink, thinking. Jorrund had never outright disagreed with Bekan. He’d only ever supported him. But I wondered how strong the bond of loyalty between them was. And I wondered what Jorrund would do if Bekan found a blade at his throat and his brother sitting in his seat before the altar fire. Jorrund believed in Bekan, but the hearts of mortals were dark. Darker than they wanted to believe.

I still remembered the night the news came about the Herja. They were called a demon army because the stories about them couldn’t be true—that they had come up from the depths of the sea to attack Sigr’s fjord and Thora’s mountain. The people called it the work of some vengeful god, but it sounded more like the work of the Spinners to me. I only wondered what the clans had done to deserve such a fate.

The Svell had gathered when the messenger arrived, filling the ritual house until people were spilling out the door and into the village. That was the first time I’d ever seen the brothers argue and the last time I’d seen Jorrund sleep soundly. Since then, the Svell had been torn, pulled in two directions.