The village was still dark and quiet, the sunlight only just beginning to creep up the sky. Iri couldn’t know. Or maybe he’d changed his mind and decided to let them get rid of me.
My eyes went back to the caravan, trying to gauge my chances. I looked down to my feet, buried in the snow. The deep ache of cold was already pulsing up my legs. I couldn’t take them without weapons and I couldn’t outrun them barefoot. I sorted through every scenario in my mind, searching for an alternative. But there was nothing. No chance.
Two more dýrs were brought out and tied to the trees behind me, probably Riki criminals. The woman stared off into the forest, her face blank, and the man shifted on his feet as goats bleated beside me, reaching their noses over the railing of their pen toward my trembling hands.
Another group came down the trail to join the men already gathered. They spread out as the light lifted, starting at the far end and making their way down the line of trees to see the goods that had been laid out for trade.
Including me.
I kept my eyes on the ground, the voice in my head saying everything I didn’t want to believe. I was going to be dragged into the forest and dumped in some Riki mountain village as a dýr. I would never see the fjord again. I would never see my father. Mýra. Not in this life or the next. My heart broke inside of me. The hope of getting home seemed so foolish now, eaten up by my anguish.
All because of Iri.
Boots stopped in the snow in front of me, and a deep laugh rang out. “She’s a little thing, isn’t she?”
The burn in my face scorched like a summer sun. The leather of his armor vest stretched as he rocked back and forth on his heels, clicking his tongue before his shadow moved on the snow.
Two more Riki stopped in front of me and I pinned my eyes to my feet, refusing to look up.
“How much for her?” one of them called back to the torches.
“Four penningr,” a man shouted back.
I could feel myself sinking deeper into the snow. It was the same price I’d paid for the goat we sacrificed the night I saw Iri. I tried to blink back the flare in my eyes. It was a cruel joke. Like Sigr was looking down on me and laughing. He had to be.
The two Riki moved on, taking more interest in the livestock than in me, and a man bigger than the others stopped before me.
“What’s wrong with her?” He flung a hand toward my shoulder.
The old man who’d come to look at me in the barn came to stand next to him. “Injured from battle.”
“She’s Aska?”
“That’s right. Not much good for work right now, but she’ll heal before the thaw.”
My hands balled into tight fists. I wanted to reach up and strangle him with the rope. I wanted to watch the light leave his wrinkle-framed eyes.
The big man stepped closer as the old man walked away. “Turn around.”
I took a step back. “What?”
His hand shot out, snatching me by my bruised jaw, and he yanked me forward until the collar choked me, putting his face close to mine. I knew what he was going to do before he did it. His fingers caught me behind the knee and he ran his hand up the inside of my leg. I pressed myself against the rough bark of the tree but he moved with me, letting his body push against mine.
“Get off me,” I growled through my teeth.
A smile pulled at his lips behind his bushy beard. He flung me around, turning me to face the tree, and pushed me into it, his eyes falling down the back of my body like a hot iron. “You’re coming with me.” The words rode on a laugh.
He let go of me and the shaking stopped, my body filled with the hot fever of hatred that flowed through my veins when I swung my axe and sword beside Mýra in battle. An injured arm wouldn’t keep me from driving a blade into this man’s gut.
He walked back to the torches and I wondered if I’d ever seen him. If I’d ever killed anyone he loved. The breath filled my chest, my eyes narrowing. It wouldn’t take long to find an opportunity to kill him. When I did, the others would kill me.
But that would be alright. Sigr might see honor in that.
The collar pulled around my neck and I flinched, turning to see Fiske standing on the other side of the tree. His armor vest was loosely thrown over him, the laces of his boots undone. The length of the rope was wrapped around his fist and he pulled me forward.
“What are you doing?” I jerked against the rope.
He didn’t look at me, turning back toward the village and pulling me with him. “I just paid for you.”
A voice shouted behind us.
“Don’t turn around.” Fiske kept walking.
Arguing echoed between the trees, but it died down as we walked and slowly turned into laughing. I glanced back and Fiske yanked the rope.
“I said don’t turn around.”
The first sliver of sun peeked over the pines as I hobbled behind him, the pain in my frozen feet now shooting up my legs in spasms. We rounded the bend in the path where the snow was melting into the mud and the Riki working outside their homes turned their heads, watching me. Fiske didn’t look at them, his eyes forward as he led me down the middle of the village back toward the small empty barn they were holding me in. He was cleaned of the grime from battle, half of his hair pulled up into a knot and the rest falling down on top of the orange fox fur on his shoulders.
He stopped and I bit down hard to keep my teeth from chattering together as he opened the door and pulled out his knife. He cut the rope from my collar and stood to the side. “Go ahead.”
I stepped past him into the barn, and stood, shivering with my arms wrapped around myself. The cut on his ear from where I threw my blade at him was still red, scabbed over beneath his hair.
His eyes dropped down to my feet and he cursed under his breath. He took the pile of wood from the table and started the fire before he pulled a stool from the wall and set it beside the pit. I sat down, pulling as close to the heat as I could and setting my feet up on the warmed stone circling the flames. They were pale and numb, aching, but probably not frostbitten.
Fiske dropped a bearskin beside me as I massaged my legs with my hands to summon the warmth back into them. I sat, staring into the fire and feeling its heat against the tears running down my face.
“How did you know I was out there?” I steadied my voice.
He looked like he didn’t want to answer. “I heard you screaming. In the blacksmith’s tent.”
I closed my eyes and swallowed, thinking about the way I’d cried and begged the night they pulled the arrow from my shoulder. I had never begged for anything in my life. The humiliation of it seared hotter than the infection in my shoulder or the burn on my neck. His pity cut into me, bleeding me of my pride.
“I’ve agreed to keep you until the thaw.” His voice filled the empty space when he finally spoke.
“Keep me?” My words were ice.
“If you run, I’m not coming after you. You’ll die out there within a day. Maybe two.”
“Where are we?”
“Fela.”
I’d heard of it. It was only one of several Riki villages on the mountain. “I’ll take you to my home tomorrow.”
I sniffed. “Is that where Iri lives?”
He hesitated. “Yes, and our family doesn’t know anything about you. If you want to stay alive, it needs to stay that way.”
“Why didn’t Iri buy me?”
He leaned into the wall. “The Riki can’t know who you are. Stay away from Iri.”
I studied him, trying to read the look on his face. Fierce, but pleading. He loved Iri—I could hear it folded beneath each word. “Why did you agree to take me?”
He ran a hand through his hair. “Iri is my brother.”
“Iri is a prisoner you kept as a pet,” I muttered. I could feel the change in him, the edge of him sharpening. “I won’t run. But if you think I’m going to act like a dýr—”
He didn’t wait for me to finish. He pushed the door open and left, leaving me
sitting before the fire. I stared at the closed door as he locked it and watched his outline flit through the light coming through the slats.
When he was gone, I reached into my pocket and pulled my idol of Iri free. The wood was smooth and shining where I’d held it in prayer under every moon that rose in the sky. I carried it against my heart as I fought. I slept with it beside me. We became warriors together. And long before that, we were friends.
It was Iri who’d wrapped his arms around me in the dark when I dreamed of the white-eyed Herja who’d slit our mother’s throat. It was Iri who’d held me together when I was cracked down to the bone with the pain of losing her. I ran into my first battle with my brother at my side. I washed the blood of his first kill from his hands and pretended not to see the gleam of tears in his eyes. He’d been stronger than me in every way, but we had taken care of each other. And honoring him had been where I’d found my own strength after he was gone.
I dropped the idol into the flames, tears catching in my chest.
I let him go. I erased him. Every memory. Every small hope.
Because the Iri I loved was gone. The boy who had once known every shadowed corner of my life was dead the moment he spilled the blood of our people. That boy was gone just as our mother was, but his soul was lost.
I watched the charred black catch the edge of the wood, eating its way across until the idol was just a part of the fire. Turning to smoke and gathering up above me. It stretched and curled around itself, reaching out into the air.
Until it was nothing.
TEN
I didn’t sleep for fear that the door might open again.
The burn under the collar came alive around my neck, stinging deep down into the skin. I pulled on my boots, sitting in the empty barn alone, my eyes on the closed door. I’d spent the hours with a broken piece of firewood clutched in my fist, finding the veins beneath my skin that would bleed the life out of me the quickest. If I killed myself, Sigr might accept me. I’d never have to be a dýr. But Iri’s words haunted me. I imagined my father as an old Aska, alone in our home on the fjord. He’d already lost my mother and Iri. I was all he had. The thought of abandoning him was too much to bear.
I could make it through winter. I could make it back to Hylli, to my father and Mýra. I could earn back my honor.
Footsteps crunching in the snow brought me to my feet and I stood to face Fiske as he opened the door. When the light spilled in, the snow was falling softly, some of it caught in his hair.
The door closed behind him and he looked at me for a long moment, his eyes searching for something in mine. “Iri says I don’t need to worry about you being a danger to our family.”
Iri was a liar. I wouldn’t hesitate to kill every one of them if I thought it would get me home, but it probably wouldn’t.
“I saved your life. I’m hoping that’s good enough reason to believe him.”
I pressed my tongue to the top of my mouth. “By my count, you’ve tried to take my life more times than you’ve tried to save it.”
I pushed past him, opening the door and ducking out into the open air. I fell to my knees, scooping up a handful of snow and holding it against my neck where the skin was blistered. A long, hissing breath pushed out of me as I tried to breathe through the sting.
He started down the path ahead of me and my feet followed him in the direction we’d walked the day before. I studied the incline. The village crawled up above us, houses set beside and behind each other in uneven rows. At the top of the hill, their ritual house sat, much like the one in our village. The smoke from the fire was floating up from its roof, fading into the fog that hugged the treetops.
Again, the Riki stopped to stare as we walked in the falling snow, stilling their hands on their work to watch me follow Fiske like a dog through their village. I didn’t meet their eyes as we passed them. I was disgraced. Weak. And every one of them knew it.
The house stood on a hillside near the tree line. It was bigger than some of the others, with long thin logs stacked together to form the walls and a thatched roof. Fiske didn’t wait for me to enter. He opened the door and disappeared through it, leaving me outside.
There was nothing keeping me from walking straight into the snow-piled trees. And there was nothing keeping a Riki from burying their knife into me. I’d probably killed several people from this village. And more likely than not, I’d have to kill more before I left this place.
I stepped through the door slowly, my hand instinctively reaching for the knife that hadn’t been there in days. Iri sat, bent over a wooden table with a hammer and a stack of animal furs. He glanced at me from the corner of his eye before returning to his work, but I could see the tension in him, winding his muscles tight beneath his tunic. I wanted to pick up one of the burning logs in the fire and throw it at him.
“Ah.” An older woman stood at the table in the middle of the main room with her hands pressed into a ball of dough on a kneading board. She wiped the flour on the sooty apron that wrapped over her red wool skirt, looking at me. Her dark hair was grayed near her hairline, braided into one long strand that wrapped up over her head, but her eyes were a sparkling blue like Fiske’s. “You’re the Aska, then?” Her gaze dropped down, inspecting the arm still wrapped to my chest. Her lips pressed together. “What happened there?”
My eyes moved to Fiske, who leaned against the wall, eating.
“I shot her.” He didn’t look up from his bowl.
The woman’s eyes widened. “And then you bought her?”
He tipped his chin in an answer, still not bothering to look over at us.
A creak sounded above me and two big eyes peered over the edge of a loft, watching me beneath a muss of dark hair.
“I’m Inge.” The woman tilted her head to the side, thinking. “I should take a look at your arm. Are you hungry?”
I shook my head in answer, looking away from her.
She pulled the wooden spoon from the pot and tapped it on the rim, smirking. “Halvard, come down here.”
Footsteps tapped above us and a small boy leapt down from a wooden ladder that reached up to a sleeping loft. His eyes didn’t leave the collar on my neck as he moved across the room.
Inge patted his back, handing him the spoon. “Come stir while I take a look at the Aska’s arm.”
I took a step back toward the door.
Fiske finished, setting his bowl down, and Iri stood to follow him. They went outside, leaving the door open. Through the doorway, I watched Fiske reach down into a pail and set a big silver fish onto a wooden table. He kept his attention on me as he pulled his knife out and cut down its belly. On the other side of the table, Iri did the same.
Inge set a bowl down on the table and prepared a bundle of herbs, soaking them the way Runa had. When she came toward me, I pressed my back into the wall.
She stopped, dropping her hands. “I only want to clean it for you.”
Of course she did. I wasn’t of use with my arm like this.
I moved toward the table, eyeing the room. The house looked lived in, probably at least a couple of generations old. Some of the wall slats were newer wood, recently replaced, but almost all were grayed with many winters and rains. A long counter ran along the right wall with food stored in barrels beneath it and vegetables strung up on hooks. Beyond the fire, three large trunks sat closed, probably where the weapons were kept.
Inge unwrapped my arm as I sat down slowly, holding it firmly in place until it was free. I dug my fingers into the edge of the bench as she gradually lowered it and set my hand in my lap. The skin covering my shoulder was a dark purple, still swollen but not as red as it had been two days ago. I tried to slow my breaths and blinked back the prick behind my eyes. I could tell by the way she handled me that she was a healer. Maybe the one Runa was apprenticing with. She was focused, gently cleaning the skin before filling the wound with something that looked like beeswax. I lowered my face to smell it.
“It’s what’s in the
pot.” She nodded to the fire.
The boy was standing over the flames, stirring slowly and watching.
“This is Halvard.” She leaned in closer to my arm and I shifted back. Her nearness made me uncomfortable.
When my arm was out of the tunic, her fingers followed the skin up my neck to where I could feel the burn radiating. She walked to the door and stepped one foot outside so she could crouch down and gather a handful of snow into a cloth. I watched her fold it in on itself.
“Here.” She pressed it to the burn and lifted my hand to hold it while she moved down to the gash. “Runa didn’t tell me she tended to you.” She looked at the stitches. “It looks good. We’ll cut those out next week. By then, your face will look better.” She took my hand into hers, turning it over and eyeing my skin where it was blistered from being tied to the cart. “And these. But the shoulder will take longer.”
When I said nothing, she leaned down to meet my eyes. I wanted to reach up and take a handful of her hair into my fist. I wanted to slam her face into the table.
She slid my arm back into my tunic and repositioned it against me before she wrapped it again. “You’ll stay here with us; I’ll make you a cot up in the loft. I’d stay clear of anyone outside the house if I were you.” She stood, making her way to a large iron pot on the other end of the table, and spooned something into a wooden bowl. She looked up at me, biting the inside of her lip before she glanced over her shoulder to Fiske, who was still watching us from outside as he cleaned fish. When she spoke again, her voice lowered. “I don’t know why Fiske took you on, but from the looks of it, you’ll be traded soon enough. Until then, you’ll help me around here. You don’t have to talk. But if I’m feeding you, you do have to work.”
She put the bowl down in front of me, setting her hands on the curved hips below her small waist. She waited for me to look at her. “And if you bring trouble into this house, Aska, you won’t make it off this mountain.”
Sky in the Deep Page 5
