Page 44 of Sky in the Deep
“Did the baby come?” Iri caught her hand as she passed and pulled her to him.
She smiled, touching her nose to his. “Not yet.” Her fingers slipped through his grasp and she went back out the door.
Halvard’s snoring rumbled in the loft and Fiske and Iri sat in front of the fire, mending opposite ends of a net. I listened to them, talking about the next hunt. The next fighting season. The next visit from the Riki traders. Making plans.
Their lives would go on when I left. I would fade like a bruise or a memory.
Fiske rubbed the salve into the broken skin on his knuckles that appeared after he went to see Thorpe. I ran my fingers over the wound on my arm and the same sting that had crawled over me when he touched me ignited again, making me feel too warm by the fire.
A screech echoed through the air outside and we all straightened, Iri and Fiske falling quiet. I stood, looking out the door, into the dark village, but I couldn’t see anything. It was quiet again.
“Maybe it was Gyda.” I leaned into the doorpost.
Iri relaxed back into his seat, throwing another log onto the fire. “Eelyn’s good with nets.”
I looked back at them. “What?”
“We need a new net made. Can you make it?”
I looked back out the door, remembering. Sitting on the dock with salty rope in my hands. Tying knots and repairing broken strands while Iri cleaned fish beside me. I nodded.
Another scream rang out and Iri shot to his feet and froze. Listening.
Then another. And another.
I knew that sound. We all did. Screaming in the middle of a clear night. Wood breaking. Metal clanging.
They were the sounds of a raid.
TWENTY-SIX
As soon asIthought it, the warning bell sounded in the ritual house and Iri and Fiske moved like one person, going for their weapons on the wall.
I pulled the door, leaving it cracked open just enough to peer out. The only thing I could see was the warm glow of the fire in Gyda’s house across the path. When I turned back around, Fiske was holding my weapons in his hands. They hovered in the air between us. My sword and my axe. My knife.
I stared down at them, my mouth falling open.
“Fiske?” Halvard’s sleepy, wavering voice came down from the loft.
He pushed the weapons into my hands and I clutched them to my chest as that still quiet poured into me. That sure, steady thing I knew. The fight inside of me. The whistlesounded again and the bellowing grew, getting closer. Fiske looked at the door and then back to Halvard.
“Go.” I dropped the scabbard over my head, tightening the straps. “I’ll stay with him.”
He looked at me and then back up to Halvard. “Get across the path to Gyda’s when it’s clear.” He waited for me to nod.
Iri went to the door, sliding his knife into his belt and taking an axe into each hand. I swallowed hard, turning back to the fire, and they slipped out into the dark, where more wailing echoed in the village.
I fit the axe onto my back and it centered me. Brought me back into myself. The familiar weight of my sword at my hip was an anchor.
Above me, Halvard peered over the edge of the loft. “What’s happening?” Tears glistened in his eyes.
There was no point in coddling him. He knew what a raid was. “Where are your weapons?”
He disappeared over the ledge and a few minutes later, he came down the ladder with his scabbard fit to him. He went to the trunk against the wall and pulled out a belt with a knife in it.
He handed it to me. “It was my father’s.”
I pulled it around his waist, tying the leather into a knot because it was too big to fit him. But it would do. He could reach it and that was all that mattered.
