Page 65 of The Girl the Sea Gave Back
“Who?”
“All of them. Why aren’t they afraid of me?”
His blue eyes were the same color as ice in the morning light. “Why would they be afraid of you?”
“Halvard!” Latham walked the line of warriors spread through the forest and Halvard signaled him with a whistle. Latham stopped before him, setting one hand on Halvard’s shoulder. “On your signal.”
Halvard let him go and Latham left us, finding his place down the line. We stood at the front before hundreds of warriors at our backs and spread to our left and right. Halvard’s brothers both took him into their arms and kissed him before the blonde woman took hold of his armor, checking it again.
When I looked around us, every face was looking to Halvard, waiting. He took a breath before he pulled his axe free and whistled out into the forest, the sound echoing in the trees. A silence fell over the clansmen until there was only the sound of the cold, crashing waves that encircledHylli below. I tried not to think about what I was doing, walking into battle alongside strangers to fight the Svell. But it suddenly seemed as if it had all led to this, fate twisting and turning since that day on the beach with Jorrund. To this exact moment in time, my feet planted beside Halvard’s.
The line suddenly moved forward, one step at a time, and my hand tightened around the bowstring slung across my chest, my heart racing. The trees spread out in every direction and we wove around them like a flood of water, moving through the forest as the brightening light pushed the mist through the trees ahead of us.
Halvard walked beside me, every muscle wound tight around every bone, his weapons heavy at his sides. Behind us, Hylli lay peacefully by the calm sea, but the storm was only minutes from breaking. The sharp taste of it was thick in the air.
I held on to my bow so tightly that the skin on my fingers threatened to break against it and when Halvard whistled again, the line abruptly stopped, every sound erased. He reached into his tunic, pulling a small stone from beneath his armor vest, and his thumb rubbed over its surface before he kissed it and whispered something I couldn’t hear. The sound was echoed behind me, the soft, reverberating voices of the Nadhir murmuring prayers to their gods.
My face lifted to the darkening clouds and the first cold drop of rain hit my cheek. I didn’t know any gods to ask for help. Even if I did, I doubted they’d come. It was the Spinners I knew, and they weren’t protectors. They didn’t careabout the spider walking on the web of fate, but they had given me a second chance. A chance to make things right.
Instead, I prayed to the woman in my vision. I closed my eyes and conjured her. Delicate hands in the firelight and the hum of a song. Silver waters and the great statues of the headlands like giants in the fog.
The prayers faded and I opened my eyes to see shadows appearing ahead. The storm growing in the sky above us suddenly seemed to be thundering inside my chest. It snatched the breath from my lungs as a sharp sting lit there, like the tip of a knife carving the heart from between my ribs.
The Svell stretched out in the trees ahead, a never-ending line of warriors to the right and left. Their leathers blended with the colors of the forest until they were almost invisible, but the unsettled surprise was written on their faces. They hadn’t expected to meet the Nadhir this deep in the bottomlands. Even if they made it to Hylli eventually, they’d do it with fewer warriors. They’d return to Svell territory dragging their dead behind them.
I blinked when a face I knew appeared among the others and I clenched my teeth, the sting of heat burning behind my eyes. In the distance, the Tala’s gaze was fixed on me.
Jorrund’s face twisted in fury, his teeth clenched so tightly they looked as if they may break in his mouth. Vigdis stood broad-shouldered beside him and I knew what he was thinking. That he should have killed me when Vera died. That he should have let me burn when Bekan fell inthe glade. Every drop of blood spilled from here to Liera was the sea I was cursed to drown in. Somehow, Vigdis had known it. He knew that I’d bring death since the moment he first laid eyes on me.
And he was right.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
HALVARD
The signal moved through the wind like thread through a needle as the Svell came into view.
The front line of their warriors stretched as long as ours, but there were rows upon rows of them waiting to press forward, toward the slope that led down to the village. Vigdis stood at its center before the others, his hair picked up by the wind, and even from this distance I could see that the blade clutched in his hand was the jeweled sword that Bekan had brought to the glade as the offering of reparation. It was the weapon that took Espen’s life. The amber stone at its hilt almost seemed to glow in the palm of his hand.
I looked to Fiske and he gave me a tight nod before he slid his own sword free. I’d never seen him in battle. I’d only ever heard the stories. But looking into the face of my brother, it was as if a different person had come alive behind his eyes.
“I’m with you, brother.” His deep voice carried the words in the silence and they were the only ones I needed. With Iri, Fiske, Eelyn, and Mýra at my side, I was suddenly unafraid.
Tova set her dark eyes on the Svell army. The Tala I’d seen her with in the glade stood beside Vigdis in the distance, his face full of horror at the sight of her. But she looked back at him with no expression, the bow light in her hands.
Their warriors came to a stop and Vigdis looked to the trees around us, studying the space between the two multitudes. In more than one way, meeting them in the forest gave us a disadvantage, but if fate was on our side like Tova said it was, it would be the only way to win. From the look of Vigdis, he was suspicious of the move.
I kneeled down, taking a handful of cool, damp soil into my hand and crushing it between my fingers, the feel of the earth centering me. I breathed, summoning the sight of Hylli at sunset to the front of my mind. The smell of the sea and the golden light. The sound of the water against the hull of the boat and the shells chiming in the windows. I’d been born on the mountain but I’d become a man on the fjord. Its waters flowed through my veins.
I whistled again as I stood, letting the sound ring out, and drew a last steady breath. It was the end, and I couldn’t help but think it felt right. I let the weight of my sword pull me back to the battlefield and my gaze settled on Vigdis before I tipped my head back and screamed.
The rush of wind slid past me as I took off running and the war cries of my clansmen threw me forward. My feet sank into the soft ground as we wove through the trees, the Svell racing across the forest toward us. And then there was a moment of silence. A space splintered between beats of my heart, before every raging thing collided and the earth underfoot was eaten up with war.
Vigdis’ towering frame ran straight for me at the front, his teeth shining as he roared. My steps hit the ground faster and I didn’t slow until the glimmer of light on steel made me sink low. An axe flew over my head, catching a Nadhir woman behind me, and she was knocked from her feet, hitting the ground hard. I stood just in time to catch the man who’d thrown it with my blade, dropping him with one strike before I jumped over him. I searched the haze for Vigdis as bodies flooded around me. But he was gone, lost in the sea of battle ahead.
Fiske ran past me, his sword swinging up and over his head before it sank into the back of a Svell. The man fell at his feet and he yanked it back, spinning and taking another down with a second stroke. My eyes focused on a woman lifting a bow behind him. She sighted down her arrow at Fiske, her mouth dropping open as her fingers slid from the string.
“Down!” I ran for her as Fiske dropped to his haunches and the arrow sailed over his head and hit the Svell behind him.
