The Girl the Sea Gave Back(46)

I could tell by the shape of it that it was Jorrund, his robes bundled around him. He stood in the opening of the tent silently. Maybe he’d changed his mind about what I’d said. Maybe he’d come back to apologize. But just as I was going to open my mouth and speak, he disappeared.

I let out a long breath, pinching my eyes closed against the sting on my hand where the coal had seared my skin. I rolled over, reaching beneath the cot for the rune stones and returned them to the pouch, slipping it back over my head.

Dagaz. Pethro. Othala.

It wasn’t the dark fate I’d expected to see.

But it was Eihwaz in the center. The yew tree. And the shape of it pulled a thought like thread on a spinning wheel. It was the symbol that was marked into the skin at the hollow of my throat, above the symbol of the Truthtongue.

My mouth dropped open as I remembered, my eyes going to Halvard’s axe on the ground. I sat up, reaching for it, and swallowed hard before I lifted it into the sliver of moonlight cast through the opening of the tent. I rubbed at the dried blood on the iron blade with my thumb until the shape of a branch was revealed. And not just any branch.

A yew tree.





CHAPTER TWENTY


HALVARD


There were seabirds in my chest.

I could feel their wings beating behind my ribs. Their calls drifting away from shore, the sun hot on my skin even though the wind was ice.

The first time I ever saw the sea, I was eight years old. I sat on the back of my brother’s horse, my fingers hooked into his armor vest as we came up over the hill and the land disappeared beneath the water ahead. I’d seen glimpses of it from up on the mountain, on the warmest days of summer when the fog was clear enough. But to see it up close, it scared me as much as it fascinated me. It was deeper than the mountain was high and it seemed to go on forever.

After only a few weeks in Hylli, the village felt like home. But the unsettling feeling of peace was something that took longer. It felt like something that couldn’t be trusted. Something that couldn’t be real. The holding of breath between fighting seasons had been our way of life until the Herja came and changed everything. It was hard to let go of, and I didn’t know if the Nādhir ever truly had.

“Halvard.”

I didn’t realize I’d fallen asleep until the sound of Asmund’s voice broke into the vision of the sea lit behind my eyes. I opened them to bits of purple sky poked like holes in the tree branches above and pulled in a deep breath, remembering where I was. I rubbed my hands over my face, breathing through my fingers. I hadn’t slept in days, and the hunger for it made my body shake as I sat up.

Asmund stood over me, the afternoon sunlight bright behind him. “Kjeld’s gone.”

I looked behind me, where Kjeld had been sitting against the trunk of the tree. His saddle was missing, only the rustle of pine needles left as evidence that he was ever there.

“He was gone when I woke,” Asmund said, picking up his saddle and setting it back onto the horse.

“He’s superstitious.” Bard leaned into the boulder beside the water, wincing against the pain in his leg. “Whoever that girl is, I think she spooked him.”

“But where would he go?”

Asmund shrugged. “Maybe he’ll wait out the war up on the mountain. Maybe he’ll go south or meet up with the others.”

I wanted to be angry, but I couldn’t be. The Nādhir weren’t Kjeld’s people. He’d come to the mainland with nothing and even if he’d found a place among Asmund and the others, he didn’t owe them anything. That’s not how life among raiders worked.

Asmund and Bard readied their horses, meeting eyes over their saddles. If Kjeld was going to run, I wondered why he didn’t do it after the glade. Why had he gone with us to Aurvanger? Maybe seeing the army in Utan was enough to scare him. Or maybe Bard was right and seeing the girl had driven him to leave. Whoever she was, he’d taken the secret with him, and that thought weighed more on my mind than it should have. Because even in the midst of war and all that was coming, I couldn’t stop thinking about her or the way she’d looked at me in Utan as I wrapped my hands around her throat. Like she knew me, somehow.

I brushed the dirt from my pants and picked up my saddle. “You should both do the same. I can make it from here.”

“We’re going with you,” Asmund said, waiting for me to look at him. “We’re staying with you.”

I buckled the straps, pulling the saddle into place. “You said you’d get me to Hylli. You nearly have.”

“I want to fight with you,” he said.

Bard watched his brother, a gleam of pride in his eyes. Maybe it was seeing what happened in Utan or thinking he’d lost his brother to the Svell. I didn’t care why.

“If you’ll have me,” he added, waiting.

“We can be in Hylli in a few hours if we ride hard.” I grinned. “They’ll be waiting.”

Asmund led the way as we pushed across the last stretch of forest and I kept my eyes on the storm building over the fjord. In a matter of days, the rains would come and I didn’t know if they’d work in our favor in battle or in the Svell’s. There was only one way to win against an army like that, and it was to keep them from ever breaching the tree line above the village. But it seemed an impossible task with so few warriors. We would need the help of the gods, and I wasn’t sure if they’d come when I called, the way they’d come for Espen ten years ago.