The Girl the Sea Gave Back(15)

If the nighthawk had tried to warn her, she hadn’t heard him. She’d only opened her eyes to the sound of boots hitting the stone floor and before she’d even been able to think, she was being dragged through the forest screaming.

It wasn’t the first time someone from the village had tried to take her fate into their own hands. In the five years since Jorrund had brought her through the gates of Liera, she’d heard the whispers. She’d felt the stares pinned to her back. But no one had ever come so close to killing her.

She was a living curse. A betrayal to the Svell god. And even though she lived under the unspoken protection of Bekan and Jorrund, the disagreements over the clans to the east had fractured the people’s resolve to trust their Tala and chieftain. In the eyes of the Svell, she wasn’t just an eleven-year-old girl. She was a scourge. And there were many who wanted to see her dead.

The angry waves crashed onto the rocks behind her and she watched the water slide up onto the land, covering her bare feet. Jorrund opened his satchel and pulled a small bottle from inside. He dabbed the stinging oil onto her mouth and the cut across her forehead as he spoke. “Not everyone can see the will of the gods, Tova.”

He’d told her that before. But it wouldn’t be the last time a Svell from the village would come to her little house in the forest and try to take her life. The laws that protected the Svell from each other didn’t apply to her. There would be no consequences for killing a Kyrr girl.

Footsteps hit the sand behind her and she turned to see a man standing against the trees. The worn fur draped over his shoulders wrapped around him like a cloak, the old Svell leathers hidden beneath it.

Tova stood, stepping deeper into the water. If she’d ever seen the man, she didn’t remember. He towered over her, hiding her in his shadow as he stopped in the sand before them.

“Tova, this is Gunther.”

She waited for him to speak, but he only looked at her. His worn face was unreadable, his sharp eyes on Jorrund. “You ever tell anyone about this and—”

But Jorrund lifted a hand, cutting him off before he pulled the length of his robes into his arms and started back toward the trees. Tova watched him with wide eyes, looking from the man back to Jorrund as she realized that he was going to leave them.

She reached for the small knife at the back of her belt and pulled it free. The handle was slick in her sweaty palm as she stepped back, feeling the pull of the cold water against her legs. The waves soaked the wool of her dress as Gunther looked down at her, his eyes running over her small frame.

“You won’t need that. A bow would be best,” he said, taking it from where it hung across his back and unbuckling the strap of the quiver. It dropped to the sand beside his feet as he took a step toward her. “If anyone gets close enough for you to use a knife, you’re dead already.”

Tova stared at the bow in his hands, confused.

Gunther leaned forward, taking hold of her wrist and jerking her forward, out of the shallows. He squeezed hard until her fingers opened and the knife dropped to the water, the blade sinking into the wet sand.

“We’ll start with the bow,” he said again. “Then the knife.”

He plucked an arrow from the quiver and held it out to her. She looked around them before she took it, running her thumb over the edge of the black speckled feather that made the fletching. “Why are you helping me?”

The wind blew the hair across his face as he looked down at the marks on her bare arms. He was old enough to be her father, but she couldn’t find anything tender or warm in the way that he studied at her.

He turned into the wind, not waiting for her to follow. “First the bow. Then the knife.”





CHAPTER SIX


HALVARD


We gathered the bodies.

The broken skeletons of homes in Ljós jutted up from the blackened earth and dead Nādhir covered the ground like birds fallen from the sky. Most of them weren’t even wearing their armor or their boots, cut down as they tried to flee in the dark. They’d been sleeping when the Svell came out of the forest and set fire to their homes. They’d never had a chance.

The sight was familiar, even if it had been ten years since the Herja came. They’d drifted into our village as the moon rose when I was only eight years old. It was the first time I killed a man and the first time I’d thought I was going to die. The bodies of people I’d known my whole life had been strewn through the village, bright red blood staining the crisp, white snow, and I’d never forgotten it. I never would.

I blinked the memory away and took hold of the wrists of a man my age who lay at my feet. I dragged him down the path, his open gray eyes looking up at me, and lifted him onto the pyre we’d built outside the village gate. I straightened what was left of his burned tunic, crossing his arms over his chest.

The smoke of the fire lifted like a cloud into the sky and we stood before it in silence, watching it burn as Espen led the funeral rites. His deep voice carried over the sound of the wind and we spoke them in unison, the eyes of every warrior on the flames.

“Take my love to my father. Ask him to keep watch for me.” I whispered the last words, “Tell him my soul follows behind you.”

I wondered what my father would say if he could see what had become of us, those who were once enemies, mourning each other’s dead. My mother said that he would be proud, but I didn’t remember enough about him to know if it was true. I was six years old when he died of fever and even when I tried to pull the image of his face from where it was buried in my mind, he was only a shadow.