The Girl the Sea Gave Back(42)

Fiske kissed his cheek gruffly before he took Halvard’s face into his hands, forcing him to meet his eyes. “I will never leave you. You know that. And when the time comes to follow you, I will.”

He let Halvard go, moving past him to the doors, and when they closed, his shadow reached down the aisle, painted onto the stone. The fire blazed hot at his back and he watched the shadow waver in the shifting light before he looked up to the two faces that looked down on him from the carvings above the archway.

Thora and Sigr.

The gods of the mountain and the fjord, enemies turned allies. The mother and father of a new people. He stood, unmoving, as their gazes fell heavily upon him. And in the next breath, he dropped to his knees and begged them to change their minds.





CHAPTER EIGHTEEN


HALVARD


War is easy.

Aghi’s words found me as I rode, and I remembered the way his eyes looked sad as he’d said them. But he had been wrong when he said war was easy. The faces of the dead in Utan rose up in my mind. They filled the forest around me. Strangers, but Nādhir. My people.

People I’d failed to protect.

I couldn’t help but think that if Espen had survived the attack in the glade, that he would have found a way to keep them safe.

We rode for hours, through parts of the forest I’d never seen. They were places the raiders knew well, lands where no one went looking for anything. But it was Hylli that I saw all around me. I could feel it. The thought was a trail of footsteps that followed behind every thought. The wind that hit my face as I rode was the sea air coming up the cliffs. The sound of the trees above me was the roar of white-capped waves.

Myra would be waiting for me beneath the gate, her eyes on the stretch of earth that rolled down toward the village from the forest. If my brothers and Eelyn had made it back from Fela, they’d be standing beside her. But I wasn’t there to meet them. Maybe I never would be.

I tried to draw in a breath that wouldn’t come, my chest tight beneath the armor vest as I searched for the words I would need to tell them about Aghi. About Ljós and Utan and the glade. There were no words for that. There was no name for it. My family had risked everything to give me a different life than the one they knew. They’d believed that things were different now. But if I made it back to Hylli, I would be leading them right back into it.

We came up on the ridge that overlooked the river and Asmund whistled ahead, letting it ring out behind him to let us know he was stopping. The horses slowed, their gaits uneven after running all night.

Asmund helped Bard dismount and he was careful as his boots hit the ground, limping on his left leg. I came down before him, inspecting the wound. It looked like the work of a sword, one clean gash deep enough to cut through most of the muscle, but the bleeding had stopped.

Asmund helped his brother cut the wool of his pants back. “What happened?” He spoke gruffly.

Bard looked up at the sky as Asmund wiped the dirt from the broken skin. “I told them the Svell were coming, but only a few left for the mountain.” He swallowed. “They didn’t want to leave their homes.”

I stared at the ground, my jaw clenching. They had known the Svell were coming. They knew, and still they stayed. And I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t known that’s what they’d do. It’s what my family would have done. It’s what every soul in Hylli would have done.

I got down onto one knee and pulled the sides of the wound open, searching for the white bone of his leg. It was similar to the one that had given Aghi his limp in the battle against the Herja. The cut was deep, but if it was kept clean, he’d walk again.

“Here.” Bard reached into his armor vest and tossed a small tin to me. “I got it from the healer in Utan for you before…” He swallowed the rest of the sentence.

I wondered if the healer who’d made the medicine had gone to M?or or stayed in Utan, but I knew the answer. The healer wouldn’t have left the people if a fight was coming. “Thank you.” I nodded, turning it over in my hand.

Asmund helped Bard to the water and he pulled the saddlebag from his horse to stitch him up. I pried off the lid of the tin to smell the sweet scent of honey and pine sap. Smells that reminded me of my mother and the sting of memory burned in the center of my chest.

Kjeld pulled up the sleeve of his tunic, eyeing a deep cut at the back of his arm and setting a piece of dry linen over it.

“You know her, don’t you?” I said.

He tied off the bandage. “What?”

“The girl with the Svell. How do you know her?”

He tore another cloth with his teeth. “I didn’t say I knew her.”

“You didn’t have to.” I waited for an answer, but he ignored me, pulling the sleeve of his tunic back down. “Why did she help us? She could have called out. She could have screamed, but she told us to run.”

Asmund looked between us from where he worked over Bard’s leg.

Again, I waited for Kjeld to answer. But he looked straight at me, his gaze level. Whatever he knew, he wasn’t going to tell us.

I unclasped my vest, pulling it over my head with my tunic, and walked straight out into the freezing water until I was waist deep, cupping handfuls of it up to scrub my face and pinching my eyes closed against the sting it shot beneath my skin. It was a welcome pain. It was better than the memory of the woman and her child lying in the open doorway. Anything was better than that.