Sky in the Deep(8)

Fiske was already reaching for me.

I pitched myself from the tree, propelling my weight forward, but he caught me, wrenching me back toward him. His fingers wound around my throat, his thumb pressing to the pulse at my neck. I kicked, trying to slide free, but his grip tightened until I couldn’t pull the air into my lungs. I clawed at his hands as the black pushed in at the edges of my vision. Behind him, Iri’s tight eyes were pinned on the ground.

Fiske’s gaze locked on mine, his hands like iron. My heartbeat slowed, my body growing heavier with every missed breath. I blinked, my eyes turning up to where the stars glimmered through the treetops. The pounding of my heart thrummed in my ears. One beat. Two.

Then dark.





FIVE


I woke to the sound of wooden wheels cracking over stones in the dirt and light passing like shadows over my closed eyelids. I tried to place the smell.

Winter. Pine and woodsmoke. My eyes opened to a stretch of empty blue sky overhead. The footfall of horses. The shifting of a cart.

I threw myself forward, sitting up, and struggled to get my feet beneath me before I fell back down. My hands were bound at the wrists, the wound on my arm bleeding fresh through my sleeve. A few Riki glanced up from where they rode on their horses around me, and my eyes widened, trying to focus.

We were in the eastern valley. Headed toward the mountain. Thora’s mountain.

The Riki marched in a massive group stretching out before and behind me.

My heart rammed against my chest, my breath frantic, sending puffs of fog out before me in the cold air. I crouched back down, studying the edge of forest to my right.

He came into view as I fixed my hands on the side of the cart, ready to make a desperate leap for the ground, and I froze. Iri was riding a silver horse behind me, his eyes boring into me, strained. He gave the slightest shake of his head and glanced up ahead of me. I turned to see a line of archers riding side by side, bows slung over their backs with full quivers of speckled feather arrows at their knees.

I measured the distance between myself and the trees; I’d have five or six arrows in my back by the time I made it to cover. If one of them didn’t run me down with their horse first.

I tried to think. The wound on my arm was still seeping and the swelling on the side of my face was pounding. I licked my lips and tasted dried blood. In the cart in front of me, two men lay on their backs, one missing a leg and the other with his face wrapped in bloody bandages. I sat back down, pulling my knees into my chest.

Iri was still watching me. The dark leather of his armor vest made his hair look like an icy waterfall of bloodstained braids. The scruff on his face sat below sharp cheekbones and round, blue eyes.

Eyes I’d known all my life.

I pressed the heels of my hands into my forehead, thinking about the last time I’d seen him. Five years ago. Fighting beside me in the snow-covered glade with an axe in each hand. Snowflakes in his hair. Blood on his hands. He was tangled in the fight with a young Riki before they fell over the edge of a deep crevice carved into the earth. I could still hear the sound of my own scream as I watched him disappear. I’d crawled on my hands and knees to the edge, where the ground almost gave beneath me. He was lying on his back, his insides spilling out from a gaping wound. His eyes were already empty, staring up into the sky. And beside him, the Riki boy was half-buried in the snow.

I looked up, and Iri’s eyes fixed on mine for another wordless breath, as if he was remembering the same moment. And then he kicked his horse, cutting left into the group, and disappeared.

Ahead, the mountain rose up over the valley. Dark slate rock melting into green forest beneath strokes of snow-crested peaks. Away from the fjord. Away from home.

I didn’t know where the Riki lived, but we had to be on our way to one of their villages. And there’d be no way back to the valley until after the thaw. If I could get free, I could make it back to the fjord.

The cart jolted, coming to a stop as I came onto my feet. The Riki were moving into the trees, where a river snaked into the dense forest. They were stopping to water the horses. I could pick out the back of Iri’s head, weaving in and out of the others.

A Riki woman’s angry eyes met mine as she passed, headed for the water. They hadn’t killed me yet and I’d been fighting the Riki long enough to know why. There weren’t many uses for an Aska prisoner. They would either make me a dyr or sell me to another clan who would. Either way, it would cost me Sólbj?rg.

A hand slapped me hard in the back of the head and the man driving the cart grunted, spitting at me before going back to his horse. “Sit down or I’ll tie your feet and drag you.”

I obeyed, watching over the side of the cart. Iri stood with his horse in the shade of the forest. He wore two crossing axe sheaths on his back, missing the scabbard the others wore. Just like he did when we were children. His gaze was fixed down the tree line, on Fiske, before they drifted in my direction again. They landed on me for only a moment before he turned his attention to his horse, checking the riggings and running his hands over its spotted hide. In the cart in front of us, the man missing his leg was groaning.

The cart rocked as the driver climbed back up onto his horse and he called out as one of the archers came out of the forest. He walked across the clearing toward us with a water skin in his hand, his horse sauntering behind him. His long red hair matched his beard, braided into three haphazard strands.