Sky in the Deep(4)

In the next breath, I joined with her, saying the ritual words we knew by heart. “We ask Sigr to accept your soul into Sólbj?rg, where the long line of our people hold torches on the shadowed path.”

My voice faded, letting Myra speak first. “Take my love to my father and my sister. Ask them to keep watch for me. Tell them my soul follows behind you.”

I closed my eyes as the prayer found a familiar place on my tongue. “Take my love to my mother and my brother. Ask them to keep watch for me. Tell them my soul follows behind you.”

I swallowed down the lump in my throat before I opened my eyes and looked down into the woman’s peaceful face one more time. I hadn’t been able to say the words over Iri’s body the way I had when my mother died, but Sigr had taken him anyway.

“Have you ever seen something like that before?” I whispered. “Something that wasn’t real?”

Myra blinked. “It was real. Iri’s soul is real.”

“But he was older—a man. He spoke to me. He touched me, Myra.”

She stood, shifting an armful of axes up onto her shoulder. “I was there that day, Eelyn. Iri died. I saw it with my own eyes. That was real.” It was the same battle that took Myra’s sister. We’d been friends before that day, but we hadn’t really needed each other until then.

I remembered it so clearly—the picture of him like a reflection on ice. Iri’s lifeless body at the bottom of the trench. Lying across the perfect white snow, blood seeping out around him in a melted pool. I could still see his blond hair fanned out around his head, his empty eyes wide open and staring into nothing.

“I know.”

Myra reached up, squeezing my shoulder. “Then you know it wasn’t Iri—not his flesh.”

I nodded, swallowing hard. I prayed for Iri’s soul every day. If Sigr had sent him to protect me, he really was in Sólbj?rg—our people’s final sunset. “I knew he would make it.” I breathed through the tightness in my throat.

“We all did.” A small smile lifted on her lips.

I looked back down to the woman lying between us. We would leave her as she was—as she died—with honor. Like we did with all our fallen warriors.

Like we’d left Iri.

“Was he as handsome as he was before?” Myra’s smile turned wry as her eyes flickered back up to meet mine.

“He was beautiful,” I whispered.





THREE


I bit down on the thick leather strap of my scabbard as the healer worked, sewing the gash in my arm closed. It was deeper than I wanted to admit.

Whatever Kalda was thinking, her face didn’t betray it. “I can still fight,” I said. It wasn’t a question. And she had treated me after battle enough times to know it.

Myra sighed beside me, though it looked as if she was enjoying it a little. I shot my eyes to her before she could say a word.

“That’s your decision.” Kalda looked up at me through her dark eyelashes.

It wasn’t the first time she had stitched me up and it wouldn’t be the last. But the only time she’d ever told me I couldn’t fight was when I broke two ribs. I’d waited five years to avenge Iri in my second fighting season and I spent a month of it sitting in the camp, cleaning weapons and seething with anger while my father and Myra went out into battle without me.

“It won’t stay closed if you’re using your axe.” Kalda dropped the needle into the bowl beside her before wiping her hands on her bloodstained apron.

I stared back at her. “I have to use my axe.”

“Use a shield in that hand.” Myra glowered, flinging a hand toward me.

“I don’t use a shield,” I bit back at her. “I use a sword in my right and an axe in my left. You know that.” Changing the way I fought would only get me killed.

Kalda sighed. “Then when you tear it open again you’ll have to come back and let me restitch it.”

“Fine.” I stood, pulling my sleeve back down over my swollen arm and trying not to let the wince show on my face.

The Aska man waiting behind us sat down on the stool and Kalda got to work on the cut carved into his cheek. “I heard Sigr honored you today.” He was a friend of my father’s. Everyone was.

“He did,” Myra said through a traitorous smile. She loved to see me embarrassed.

I didn’t know what to say.

He reached up with his fist, tapping me on my good shoulder with his big knuckles as I reached for his shoulder and did the same.

We ducked out of the foul smell of the tent and walked through camp as the sky grew warm with the setting sun and my stomach growled at the smell of supper cooking over flames. My father was waiting for me in front of our fire.

“See you in the morning.” Myra squeezed my hand before she broke off from me.

“Maybe,” I said, watching her walk to her tent. I wasn’t convinced the Riki wouldn’t be back before the sun rose.

My father stood with his arms folded over his chest, staring down into the fire. He had washed his hands and face, but I could still see the blood and dirt clinging to the rest of him.

“Taken care of?” His bushy eyebrows lifted up.

I nodded, raising my scabbard over my head. He unbuckled the axe sheath on my back and took my arm into his hands, inspecting it.