The Girl the Sea Gave Back(62)

“Going with us?”

“I told you. I want to help.”

“You did. Now go home.”

“I don’t have a home.” My fingers dropped from the bronze clasps at his side.

His lips parted on a long breath, his gaze narrowing. “Can you fight?”

“I can shoot.” I smiled, hooking my fingers into the bowstring stretched across my chest.

His eyes jumped back and forth on mine. “You know we’re probably all going to die, don’t you?”

I reached around him, taking the knife from the back of his belt. “I told you. You don’t die today.”

He crossed his arms over his chest, watching as I cut away the length of my skirts. The bell sounded again and I dropped the torn linen to the floor. I handed him the knife, and the corner of his mouth lifted, but he turned before I could see him smile.

I ran to keep up with him in the flood of warriors all headed for the gate. We reached the back of the line and I tightened the straps of the quiver and started up the hill after him. A hand lifted into the air ahead as we made it to the trees, and I saw the fair-haired man from the house waving from the front of the line. Halvard reached for him, catching his arm and taking hold of my wrist, pulling me with him as he pushed through the tightly packed bodies.

When we broke through the line, we were standing at the top of the hill, shoulder to shoulder with the others. A blonde woman and a red-haired woman stood beside them, both casting sharp glares at me.

“What’s she doing here?” A man with shorn hair looked down at me with a crooked smile. It took a moment to recognize him as one of the men who’d been with Halvard in Utan.

“It’s a long story,” Halvard muttered, pulling his sword free.

“They aren’t afraid of me.” I spoke lowly beside him.

“Who?”

“All of them. Why aren’t they afraid of me?”

His blue eyes were the same color as ice in the morning light. “Why would they be afraid of you?”

“Halvard!” Latham walked the line of warriors spread through the forest and Halvard signaled him with a whistle. Latham stopped before him, setting one hand on Halvard’s shoulder. “On your signal.”

Halvard let him go and Latham left us, finding his place down the line. We stood at the front before hundreds of warriors at our backs and spread to our left and right. Halvard’s brothers both took him into their arms and kissed him before the blonde woman took hold of his armor, checking it again.

When I looked around us, every face was looking to Halvard, waiting. He took a breath before he pulled his axe free and whistled out into the forest, the sound echoing in the trees. A silence fell over the clansmen until there was only the sound of the cold, crashing waves that encircled Hylli below. I tried not to think about what I was doing, walking into battle alongside strangers to fight the Svell. But it suddenly seemed as if it had all led to this, fate twisting and turning since that day on the beach with Jorrund. To this exact moment in time, my feet planted beside Halvard’s.

The line suddenly moved forward, one step at a time, and my hand tightened around the bowstring slung across my chest, my heart racing. The trees spread out in every direction and we wove around them like a flood of water, moving through the forest as the brightening light pushed the mist through the trees ahead of us.

Halvard walked beside me, every muscle wound tight around every bone, his weapons heavy at his sides. Behind us, Hylli lay peacefully by the calm sea, but the storm was only minutes from breaking. The sharp taste of it was thick in the air.

I held on to my bow so tightly that the skin on my fingers threatened to break against it and when Halvard whistled again, the line abruptly stopped, every sound erased. He reached into his tunic, pulling a small stone from beneath his armor vest, and his thumb rubbed over its surface before he kissed it and whispered something I couldn’t hear. The sound was echoed behind me, the soft, reverberating voices of the Nādhir murmuring prayers to their gods.

My face lifted to the darkening clouds and the first cold drop of rain hit my cheek. I didn’t know any gods to ask for help. Even if I did, I doubted they’d come. It was the Spinners I knew, and they weren’t protectors. They didn’t care about the spider walking on the web of fate, but they had given me a second chance. A chance to make things right.

Instead, I prayed to the woman in my vision. I closed my eyes and conjured her. Delicate hands in the firelight and the hum of a song. Silver waters and the great statues of the headlands like giants in the fog.

The prayers faded and I opened my eyes to see shadows appearing ahead. The storm growing in the sky above us suddenly seemed to be thundering inside my chest. It snatched the breath from my lungs as a sharp sting lit there, like the tip of a knife carving the heart from between my ribs.

The Svell stretched out in the trees ahead, a never-ending line of warriors to the right and left. Their leathers blended with the colors of the forest until they were almost invisible, but the unsettled surprise was written on their faces. They hadn’t expected to meet the Nādhir this deep in the bottomlands. Even if they made it to Hylli eventually, they’d do it with fewer warriors. They’d return to Svell territory dragging their dead behind them.

I blinked when a face I knew appeared among the others and I clenched my teeth, the sting of heat burning behind my eyes. In the distance, the Tala’s gaze was fixed on me.