Sky in the Deep(51)

I sunk back into the shadow, away from the firelight. I didn’t want him to see anything my face betrayed. Because I knew what he was saying. It was the thing that folded around my heart when I looked at Halvard. It was the thought pushing into my mind, watching the Riki raise the walls of Kerling’s barn. The sound of their voices, singing.

“If you believe that, then why were you fighting in Aurvanger?”

He ran a hand through his hair. “Because whether or not we are the same, we are enemies. My people die in the fighting season. At the hands of the Aska.”

I wished I hadn’t asked. Because thinking we were the same made too many things possible. It made paths fork where they didn’t before. It was terrifying. “Are we still enemies? You and I?”

“No,” he answered, simply.

I looked up and Fiske was still watching me. His gaze trailed over my hair, back down to my face, making me tremble. I dropped my eyes back to the fire, my face burning.

The Riki quieted and silence overtook the cave. Fiske laid the bearskin out on the damp ground and I curled against the wall, facing the open space. The fire was warm, but I didn’t like having my back open and exposed. I pulled a blanket up over me, tucking it under my chin as Fiske moved the logs strategically around the flames so they’d burn longer. He wasn’t complaining about the pain in his ribs, but he held his arm closer to his body than usual and tried not to carry too much weight on that side. When he finished, he settled next to me.

I watched him draw in a deep breath and let it go, sinking into the ground as he pulled his blanket over him. I tried to picture Hylli. The dirt trails that wound around the village like river inlets. The way things looked crisp when the sun was overhead. The birds that flew over the fjord, swooping down with their wings spread and their talons outstretched to pull fish from the water.

My breaths stuttered over each other and I stuck my hands down between my thighs to try to pull the heat to the center of my body. I shook. It wasn’t just the cold. It was the Herja. It was Hylli. It was the wondering what I’d find at the fjord.

The dirt in front of me shifted and I opened my eyes. Fiske was looking over his shoulder, his eyes running over my blanket, and he slid himself back, into the space between us.

I waited for his breaths to slow before I scooted closer to him, letting the line of my body fit to his and feeling the heat come off his skin. I pushed my face into the warm place where his back met the bearskin and stared at the woven leather of his armor vest, following its pattern with my eyes until they were so heavy I couldn’t hold them open. I fell asleep to the sound of his breathing, his back rising and falling against me, like the sound of seawater kissing the fjord.





THIRTY-TWO


The first body on the trail was lying half buried in a fresh snowfall. Her long hair was splayed out around her head with the shining furs hardened in the cold wind. She was Herja.

Ahead, a string of frozen corpses spread through the forest and Fiske looked back to catch my eyes. We were close to M?or, the first and largest of the Riki villages.

The top of the huge ritual house rose before the slope of the mountain as we came down. A section of the roof was caved in, blackened by smoke, but it was still standing. The homes weren’t as fortunate. Almost every one of them was a pile of charred wood. A few Riki were already starting to rebuild, planing lumber to repair the walls, and the sound of their tools scraping over the wood rose up to us on the ridge.

They stopped as we came down the trail and a few minutes later, a group of them emerged from inside the ritual house. Large doors carved like the ones in Fela swung open and a white-haired man led them toward us. His face was stitched together down the line of a deep sword’s gash that reached up over his eye. The other men were pieced together as well, their faces and bodies showing the echoes of the raid. They hadn’t fared nearly as well as Fela.

“Vidr,” the white-haired man called out, stopping to wait for us.

“Latham.” Vidr dropped from his horse, taking Latham’s hand and pulling him close to clap him on the back.

The others dismounted and I melted into the group, trying to blend in. If the Riki in M?or looked closely, they would know I wasn’t one of them. But looking around at what remained of the village, I thought for the first time that maybe it didn’t matter anymore.

Fiske untied the saddlebag Inge packed full of medicines and bandages and we followed them up the path to the ritual house. We ducked beneath the fallen beam at the door and entered the dank, smoky room. My breath caught.

The floor was covered wall to wall with Riki children, camped on blankets and stools, a few belongings gathered here and there. They sunk down together like little birds huddled in nests. Filthy, with wounds uncared for. Their healer was either dead or tending to more serious injuries.

At the altar, one body lay on the platform with the light from the broken roof casting over him. It was a man, wrapped in a blue cloak with a scrolling iron clasp fastened at the neck. He’d been cleaned and his hands folded onto his chest neatly where strands of wooden beads hung. Their Tala.

“When did they come?” Vidr looked out over the room, probably thinking the same thing I was. Fela had been lucky.

“Five days ago. In the middle of the night.” Latham’s voice was hollow and hoarse. “They came through the trees like ghosts.”

Silence grew thick in the smoky air. The paleness was still settled beneath their skin and the shakiness still beneath their words. It had been the same after the Herja came to Hylli when I was a child.