Page 47 of Sky in the Deep
Halvard turned as a figure knocked into him. A Herja wrapped his arms around his body, hoisting him up and running as Halvard flailed in his arms.
“Halvard!” I shouted, my feet digging into the deep snow as I ran.
But the Herja was ahead of me, moving faster. When he reached the trees, I pumped my arms harder. I was losing him in the chaos as more Herja poured into the forest, retreating.
I turned back to the village, my eyes darting from one side to the other as bodies flew past me. “Iri!” I screamed. He couldn’t possibly hear me. He couldn’t possibly be close enough. “Fiske!” I screamed again, until my lungs felt like they were bleeding.
Behind me, Halvard’s screams echoed in the dark.
Something sounded deep inside my chest. Something grinding, breaking against me, like the crack of an avalanche. Something so desperate and angry that it could tear me open.
Hands grabbed me and I turned, swinging my axe, and Fiske ducked.
I gulped in a breath, dropping the axe to the ground and grabbing hold of his armor vest. “Halvard—they have him!”
He looked down into my face, trying to understand. Trying to put it together. “No.”
I didn’t have enough breath left to explain. I pointed into the trees.
He picked up my axe and shoved it back into my hands. Without hesitation he took off, and I ran after him. We weaved in and out of the trees, the snow thinning beneath our feet as we went downhill. Behind us, no Riki were coming and I knew what that meant—that whatever was going on in the village was bad enough to let the Herja leave alive.
We came up on the last of them on light feet, staying low to the ground. Fiske threw his knife, dropping the first man as it stuck in his throat, and I took the second, sliding on the frozen ground as his blade flew over me. I reared back and stabbed him between his shoulder blades. He arched, throwing his head back, and landed on his side. When I turned around, Fiske already had another one on the ground.
We closed in on the swarm of them moving down the wooded slope a few minutes later and stayed in the thick ofthe trees, melting into the dark. They walked in a long line, their armor vests shining in the moonlight.
We stopped, crouching close together behind a fallen, rotting tree, and peered up over it. The Herja were pulling the captured Riki by ropes tied around their necks, like leashes. I cursed under my breath, trying to make out Halvard’s body, but there were so many Herja I couldn’t see him. A horse brayed and my eyes shot to the animal at the back of the line. Three figures were being pulled behind it, one of them limp and dragging. I lifted up onto my knees, my eyes going wide.
Fiske breathed heavily beside me. “Can you see him?”
I dug my fingers into the bark of the tree. “I think the small one behind the horse is him. I’m not sure.”
“I can’t see him.” He swallowed the words. “Maybe they…”
“If they wanted to kill him, they would have done it in Fela. The Herja take people when they raid. You know that.”
But he also knew why. If the stories were true. The Herja sacrificed the ones they captured. We’d found the blood-drained bodies in the forest after they came to Hylli.
He looked at me, the same thought like a storm on his face. A long breath pushed between his lips and he set his forehead against the tree, closing his eyes.
“We can get to him, but we can’t get the others,” I whispered. “There are too many of them.”
He looked at the snow, thinking. “We’ll take Halvard. We’ll come back for the others.”
I nodded. “And then we’ll kill every last one of them.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
We stayed low, cutting east and heading down the slope parallel to the Herja as they moved deeper into the forest. The cold found its way through my armor as we crept closer and I kept my eyes on Halvard, being pulled by the black horse at the rear. When the line had spread enough that they were falling behind, I stopped, pointing in the right direction.
The moonlight came through the trees and lit Halvard’s face in a quick flash. His nose looked broken, a stream of blood pouring down onto his tunic. I winced against the sting behind my eyes. Probably his first broken bone. Maybe his first glimpse of violence and the life the rest of us lived.
As soon as Fiske caught sight of his brother, he tensed, almost launching himself forward. I grabbed hold of his arm, lowering him back down to the ground. But he was all angles and sharp edges, his eyes strained. The construction of hisface shifted and pulled, sending my heart into my stomach. He was afraid. And it looked so foreign on him.
I let my fingers wrap around his arm, squeezing, and he came back into himself, pulling his eyes from Halvard’s shadowed form and setting them on me. He sunk back down, slowing his breaths, and I held his gaze until I knew he wouldn’t fly down the slope swinging his sword.
We were far enough ahead to see Halvard as he struggled to keep up with the horse, stumbling along the trail with his fingers hooked into the rope around his neck to keep the sliding knot from tightening. If he fell, it would choke him.
A woman was tied beside him and they walked alongside the bloodied body being dragged over the trail. Whoever it was, they were dead.
