Page 58 of The Girl the Sea Gave Back
“We’re not sure. Maybe eight hundred.”
The number’s weight fell heavily between us. The odds weren’t good, but my brothers, Eelyn, and Mýra had faced bad odds before. When they defeated the Herja, they’d been outnumbered.
“What’s our plan?” Fiske asked.
“We’ll either meet them in the bottomlands or we’ll try to keep them in the forest. Once they get past the tree line, they’ll have the advantage and it will be a quick end.” I stared into my cup. Really, it was only a matter of how long it would take them. “If we can take enough down before they reach the clearing, it will be a better fight out in the open.”
I watched as Iri and Fiske both nodded in approval.
“You looked handsome up there,” Eelyn said, changing the subject with a half smile almost reaching her reddened eyes.
“You looked scared. White as a goat headed for slaughter.” Fiske laughed into his cup and Iri followed before I reached across the table and shoved him, sending his ale sloshing.
He tipped the cup back, still laughing.
Mýra set her chin into her hand, watching us. “Aghi would have been very proud.”
“He would have.” Iri refilled his cup. “It was a good death, Halvard. It was a death he’s wanted for a long time.”
I wanted to believe it, but only part of me did. I knew he would be proud to die for his people, but I also knew that he had more years to live. He had more to teach me.
“He felt left behind by our mother.” Iri sounded suddenly tired. “When the Herja came the first time and she died in the raid, he was haunted by it. He thought he should have died protecting her. But Sigr preserved him and he’d always been angry about that. Now, he’s in the afterlife withher, waiting for us.” He reached across the table for Eelyn’s hand and she took it, laying her head onto Mýra’s shoulder.
The quiet returned until a soft rumble of thunder sounded in the distance. Before he was the man I’d met in Fela, Aghi was a husband who’d lost a wife and never found love again. He was a father who’d raised his children alone. Then, he’d helped lead both clans into one people. It was hard to imagine him as anything other than the warrior that went running to the center of battle in the glade. At times, I had wondered if Aghi and my mother would find love again in each other, but they’d both been alone too long, content with only friendship.
“I left a stele for him in Aurvanger. It’s by the river.” I pressed my thumb to the sore wound in my palm, reopened by the Tala’s knife.
“Thank you.” Iri’s deep voice broke the silence.
“And I killed him,” I said, “the Svell chieftain who killed Aghi. I killed him.”
Fiske looked up at me then, leaning onto the table with both his elbows. There was nothing to say. It didn’t lessen the blow of losing Aghi or even begin to make it right. But it was a blood feud that felt like my own. Even if our people had left those ways behind, they still lived in me. And I’d taken my first life, which had its own cost. I’d killed without even the slightest bit of hesitation or guilt. Even now, I wished I could do it again. And I wasn’t sure what that meant.
I stood, setting down my empty cup before any of themcould say anything. I didn’t want to talk about it, I just wanted them to know I’d done what they would have done. And I didn’t want them seeking revenge for Aghi in battle when the sun rose. I wanted them to fight with the peace of knowing it was made right.
“Where are you going?” Eelyn wrapped her hand around my wrist, holding me in place.
“To walk.”
She almost objected until Fiske gave her a look and she let me go. “Alright.”
I unbuckled my father’s armor vest, pulling it over my head and setting it on the trunk with my sheaths. The door closed behind me and I listened to the sound of my brothers’ voices drift away on the warm wind as I walked up the path that led to the beach.
The stave burning on the hill in the distance had gone out, the Svell sleeping before their march down to the fjord. It was so dark that the place where the water met the black rocks was invisible, only the gleam of moonlight shining in a blade-straight line on the water.
It was the same path I’d walked for more than half of my life. The same steps I’d taken as a boy, as a young man, and now, as the chieftain of a people that didn’t even exist when I was born. There was no accounting for the will of the gods or the futures that the Spinners gave to mortals. It was the reason Aghi, Latham, and Espen spoke the wordslag mund.Fate’s hand.
The battle that awaited us was only a knot in the threadon the tapestry of our people. And though I’d known for the last two years that I’d eventually stand before them, I’d never been so aware of how incapable I would feel in the face of leading.
The Nadhir would follow me into the mist of the forest when the sun rose. And only the gods knew if we’d ever come out.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
TOVA
I dreamed of the water.
The slice of cold against my skin and the twinkling light, dancing on the surface far above me. Slowly, it pulled farther away, growing smaller and the darkness spreading wider as I sank into the depths of the sea. And there, the woman’s song found me, the lilt of a quiet, gentle hum in the emptiness.
