Page 42 of The Girl the Sea Gave Back
“I’m only sixteen years old.” He stared at the ground, the heat burning on his face.
“I was killing Riki on the battlefield long before that age.” Espen laughed. “You begin tomorrow.”
He looked up. “Begin what?”
“Learning to father your people.” Espen smiled, raising a hand to clap him on the arm, and the others did the same as they passed him, headed for the doors.
Halvard swallowed down the feeling of nausea, the warm air of the ritual house suddenly making him feel like he couldn’t breathe.
When the doors closed, he turned to Fiske. “What did you do?”
“You think I did this?” He half-laughed, but Halvard didn’t think it was funny. In fact, he was angry.
“You have to tell them they’ve made a mistake. You have to tell them—”
Fiske took hold of Halvard’s armor and pulled him close before wrapping one arm around him. “You’re afraid,” he said, lowly. “That’s good.”
Halvard swallowed against the lump in his throat. “Fiske…” He searched for a way to say the words without making his brother ashamed of him.
Fiske kissed his cheek gruffly before he took Halvard’s face into his hands, forcing him to meet his eyes. “I will never leave you. You know that. And when the time comes to follow you, I will.”
He let Halvard go, moving past him to the doors, and when they closed, his shadow reached down the aisle, painted onto the stone. The fire blazed hot at his back and he watched the shadow waver in the shifting light before he looked up to the two faces that looked down on him from the carvings above the archway.
Thora and Sigr.
The gods of the mountain and the fjord, enemies turned allies. The mother and father of a new people. He stood, unmoving, as their gazes fell heavily upon him. And in the next breath, he dropped to his knees and begged them to change their minds.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
HALVARD
War is easy.
Aghi’s words found me as I rode, and I remembered the way his eyes looked sad as he’d said them. But he had been wrong when he said war was easy. The faces of the dead in Utan rose up in my mind. They filled the forest around me. Strangers, but Nadhir. My people.
People I’d failed to protect.
I couldn’t help but think that if Espen had survived the attack in the glade, that he would have found a way to keep them safe.
We rode for hours, through parts of the forest I’d never seen. They were places the raiders knew well, lands where no one went looking for anything. But it was Hylli that I saw all around me. I could feel it. The thought was a trail of footsteps that followed behind every thought. The wind that hit my face as I rode was the sea air coming up the cliffs.The sound of the trees above me was the roar of white-capped waves.
Mýra would be waiting for me beneath the gate, her eyes on the stretch of earth that rolled down toward the village from the forest. If my brothers and Eelyn had made it back from Fela, they’d be standing beside her. But I wasn’t there to meet them. Maybe I never would be.
I tried to draw in a breath that wouldn’t come, my chest tight beneath the armor vest as I searched for the words I would need to tell them about Aghi. About Ljós and Utan and the glade. There were no words for that. There was no name for it. My family had risked everything to give me a different life than the one they knew. They’d believed that things were different now. But if I made it back to Hylli, I would be leading them right back into it.
We came up on the ridge that overlooked the river and Asmund whistled ahead, letting it ring out behind him to let us know he was stopping. The horses slowed, their gaits uneven after running all night.
Asmund helped Bard dismount and he was careful as his boots hit the ground, limping on his left leg. I came down before him, inspecting the wound. It looked like the work of a sword, one clean gash deep enough to cut through most of the muscle, but the bleeding had stopped.
Asmund helped his brother cut the wool of his pants back. “What happened?” He spoke gruffly.
Bard looked up at the sky as Asmund wiped the dirt from the broken skin. “I told them the Svell were coming, butonly a few left for the mountain.” He swallowed. “They didn’t want to leave their homes.”
I stared at the ground, my jaw clenching. They had known the Svell were coming. They knew, and still they stayed. And I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t known that’s what they’d do. It’s what my family would have done. It’s what every soul in Hylli would have done.
I got down onto one knee and pulled the sides of the wound open, searching for the white bone of his leg. It was similar to the one that had given Aghi his limp in the battle against the Herja. The cut was deep, but if it was kept clean, he’d walk again.
“Here.” Bard reached into his armor vest and tossed a small tin to me. “I got it from the healer in Utan for you before…” He swallowed the rest of the sentence.
