The Girl the Sea Gave Back

by Adrienne Young

  “How bad?” Asmund shouted over his shoulder.

  “They’re dead.” The words boiled in my gut. “Everyone’s dead.”

  He stiffened. “Espen?”

  “Everyone.”

  He pulled back on the reins, slowing, and the others rounded ahead to meet us, bows still in hand. Their faces held the same look that I imagined was on Asmund’s.

  Bard stopped before us. “Let me see.” He pried my bloody hand from my side. “Sword?” I nodded in answer, wincing as he inspected the wound. “He’s bleeding too fast.”

  Asmund shook his head, watching around us. “It’ll have to wait. We have to go east.”

  “East? I have to get to Hylli,” I grunted.

  “You just killed their chieftain, Halvard.” Asmund turned back to look at me. “By sundown this entire forest will be crawling with Svell looking for you.”

  “I have to—”

  “We’ll head east and then cut north,” Bard interrupted, echoing Asmund’s order.

  He kicked his heel into the horse and we took off, the air turning colder as we pushed deeper into the forest. Our tracks still marked the path we’d taken to Ljós only the day before and I breathed through the burn in my eyes, remembering that moment on the trail with Aghi. A moment I would never get back.

  We climbed the rise of the earth in a horizontal line until we reached the river and took the horses into the water, pushing against the current to hide our tracks. With any luck, the Svell would have lost our trail by the time they got to their horses. But luck hadn’t been on our side in the glade, and I had no reason to think it would be now.

  The sun was hanging above us in the sky when we finally came around the bend in the river where the raiders were camped. Bard stood on the bank ahead, Kjeld beside him, watching me as I slid down from the horse into the water. The blood from my wound clouded pink around me as I trudged up out of the cold river. But my legs gave out, my head spinning, and I fell to my knees on the sand.

  “Get him up,” Asmund ordered.

  Kjeld and Bard took my arms, lifting me up and dragging me over the mud until we disappeared into the tall standing rocks that edged the water, where the other raiders were waiting. They stood with their arms crossed, watching silently as I worked at the clasps of my vest with numb hands, swallowing down the urge to vomit as I lifted it over my head. The gash in my side was still bleeding freely.

  “What happened?” Bard looked down at me.

  “Bekan’s brother betrayed him.” I swallowed, trying to steady my words as I got down next to the fire they’d put out that morning. The embers were still glowing beneath the thick white ash. “He killed Espen and they turned on us.”

  I hissed, opening the wound with my fingers and trying to see how deep the cut was, but I could barely see straight. I took my knife from my belt and raked back the cool coals, burying the blade into the ones that were still hot.

  No one spoke, the reality of what had happened slowly sinking in. The Svell chieftain was dead. The Nādhir leaders murdered. If there had ever been a chance of outrunning a war, it was gone now. And from the looks on the faces of the other raiders around us, they were thinking the same.

  “The Nādhir are already gathering on the fjord. They’ll be ready to fight,” I said between tight breaths.

  “When?”

  “Two days. Three. I don’t know.” I turned the knife over in the coals and watched the dried blood sizzle off the blade.

  “We should leave the mainland,” Kjeld said, looking to Asmund. “They’re probably tracking us right now.”

  Bard’s voice dropped low. “We can’t leave.”

  “Why not? This is their war, not ours.”

  Bard glared at him, but he was right. As raiders, they’d left their obligations to their clans behind, but I’d known Bard and Asmund for more than half of my life. They couldn’t stay in Hylli. Not after all that had happened. But they hadn’t really ever left us.

  “We should go. Now,” Kjeld said again, turning his back to Bard. “West, deeper into the forests past Svell territory.”

  Asmund stared at the ground, thinking. “They won’t just be looking for Halvard, Kjeld. They saw us, too.”

  “I can make it to Hylli on my own,” I said, giving him a way out. I had no right to ask for their help. They’d come for me in the glade when they owed me nothing.

  Bard straightened beside him. “And if you don’t?”

  “They’ll be ready, with or without me.”

  “Espen’s dead, Asmund.” Bard squared his shoulders to his brother. “You know what that means. Halvard is chieftain of the Nādhir now.”

  I breathed through the pain winding tighter around me. He was saying aloud what I hadn’t even had a chance to think. Latham, Freydis, and the other leaders would be waiting in Hylli, but Espen wasn’t coming and I was the one chosen to take his place. I was the one who was supposed to lead them.

  Kjeld stood back, watching us. He’d taken down the Svell and saved my life like the rest of them, but if anyone had reason to leave, it was him. He had no heritage or lost home or ancestors among the Nādhir. He was Kyrr. And he’d only found a place with the raiders because it was easier to be picked off when you were alone.

  But I was the one Asmund looked to. He met my eyes over the fire pit, his lip between his teeth. “Utan.”

  It was the next Nādhir village pushing east toward the fjord, and I knew what he was thinking.

  They were next.

  “Get rid of the armor,” he said, pulling the knife from his belt.

  Kjeld sighed, shaking his head, but a smile spread over Bard’s face. He picked up my vest from where it sat in the dirt and Asmund stepped toward me, taking the braid of hair over my shoulder. He cut it clean in one motion and dropped it beside me before he knelt down, taking my knife from the fire.

  He held the glowing blade out between us.

  “I won’t forget this,” I said, looking up to him.

  He met my eyes, his voice even. “I won’t let you.”

  I unbuckled my belt and folded it, biting down on the leather as I propped myself against the rough bark of the tree behind me. I took the knife from Asmund and marked the wound with the tips of my fingers, finding a place in the treetops to fix my eyes. I pulled a rasping breath deep into my chest before I pressed the hot blade into the wound.

  I groaned, biting down hard as the skin seared and the smell of burned flesh filled the air. The sting heated the blood in my veins, the sky brightening overhead as a white light exploded in my vision and then flickered out, swallowing me in darkness.

  Asmund was right.

  There was no going back. Not from this.

  CHAPTER NINE

  TOVA

  I stared into the trees, trying to conjure back what I’d seen—black marks winding around wrists in the spread of a raven’s wing as the man in the trees lifted his bow.

  He was Kyrr. He had to be. But the Kyrr never left the headlands. I’d never seen another of my kind, not once in the years since Jorrund found me on the Svell’s shore. Any pictures of them had been washed away by the storm that brought me across the fjord, only broken bits and pieces left in my memory. The sound of a woman’s voice, the warm glow of firelight. The sting against my skin as someone worked at my marks with a bowl of wood ash ink and a bone needle.

  I turned, looking for Jorrund, but he was watching the glade, his face pale and his mouth puckered like he was going to be sick. The sound of Vigdis’ wailing echoed out around us in the silence. He sat at the edge of the trees with his brother’s body in his arms, hunched over and weeping as the Svell warriors walked through the tall grass, collecting weapons and armor before dragging their own fallen clansmen into the trees to burn.

  The Nādhir warriors lay in the sun, their still bodies beginning to rot. All except one.

  I looked back to the trees where the young Nādhir had disappeared with the Kyrr man, his hand pressed to his side and his skin draining white.
Maybe he’d be lying dead somewhere soon, too.

  The blue sky where the nighthawk had appeared was now empty, not a single cloud hovering over the glade. The All Seer had seen what lay inside the heart of Vigdis and had come in warning. But the Svell didn’t know the language of the future the way I did. They didn’t understand that there was no such thing as a secret. The truth was everywhere. It was in everything. You only had to open your eyes to see it. The Spinners sat beneath the Tree of Urðr, watching. Listening. Weaving away at the web of fate.

  Bekan’s death was a punishment for Vigdis’ treachery. It was a burden for him to carry for the rest of his days. Jorrund, too.

  Beside me, he prayed under his breath, his eyes closed. But it didn’t matter what words were spoken or what requests of their god they made. They could sacrifice a hundred oxen and fill the valley with blood. Still, they had been wrong. They’d betrayed their chieftain for their own hunger for war and there was a price to be paid for it.

  The warriors looked on as Vigdis and another man carried Bekan’s body into the forest with the others. The seat of chieftain now fell to him, which was perhaps what he’d always wanted. But passing the leadership of the Svell to Vigdis meant taking power away from Jorrund. And without power, there would be nothing the Tala could do to protect me. What little safety I had was now gone, and that thought terrified me.

  Siv stood at Vigdis’ side, waiting. She would become his second in command and the other village leaders would follow. They had to. War was coming and for the first time since the Nādhir made peace, the Svell would be forced to unify. But it would be on the battlefield.

  When the Svell they’d sent out after the riders finally appeared in the trees across the clearing, the Nādhir wasn’t with them. They’d lost whatever trail had been left behind and at the sight of them, Vigdis’ furious stare searched the glade. “Where is she?” His voice roared and I flinched, stepping backward as his eyes found me. “Where’s the Truthtongue?”

  “Stay back,” Jorrund whispered, stepping in front of me. “Don’t say a word.”

  I had no choice but to listen. My hand instinctively reached up for my bow, but it wasn’t there.

  Vigdis stormed toward us across the grass, his hands covered in his brother’s blood. His eyes set on me and the pulse beneath my skin raced, my heart coming up into my throat. “You!” he screamed, shoving Jorrund aside and snatching up my arm. He threw me back and I hit the ground hard before he came over me, taking a handful of my hair into his fist. Then I was moving, being dragged over the brittle grass. I screamed, holding onto his wrist as I skidded on the dirt behind him and the dust kicked up into the air, making me choke.

  “Fire-steel! Torch!” he called out over his shoulder, and from the corner of my eye I could see Siv moving to follow the order.

  “Vigdis!” Jorrund shouted behind us, but he wasn’t listening.

  He dropped me back on the ground and I curled into a ball, covering my head as more figures came to stand over me. A Svell man held an unlit torch before him and Vigdis struck the fire-steel. I blinked, the breath leaving my lungs as I realized what he was doing.

  He was going to set me on fire.

  I cried out, pulling my skirt up into my arms and running for the trees. But two hands caught hold of me, throwing me back down. “Don’t!” I screamed as the fire swallowed the torch in a tangle of orange flames. “Please!”

  Vigdis’ fists coiled in my tunic and he pulled me to sit up, his reddened eyes leveling to mine. “You did this,” he sputtered between heaving, ragged breaths. “First, Vera. Now, Bekan.”

  “Vigdis, please,” Jorrund pleaded, his voice shaking in terror.

  “Eydis has punished Bekan for not killing you when Jorrund brought you through the gates of Liera!” He shook me. “I won’t make the same mistake.”

  “We need to gather our warriors and meet with the village leaders.” Jorrund tried to speak calmly, but his hands were trembling before him. He thought better of saying the words, but he was thinking the same thing I was. Vigdis had started the fight in the glade against Bekan’s wishes. It was his own fault his brother was lying dead behind him.

  “Not until I’ve pulled that Nādhir’s lungs from his body.” He glared at Jorrund, insulted.

  “Their chieftain is dead and so is ours. We have to ready for war,” Siv said, beside him. “This is what we wanted, Vigdis.”

  He dropped me, whirling on her. “This is not what I wanted!”

  She stepped back, flinching.

  Vigdis might have disagreed with Bekan, but it was apparent to anyone who knew him that he loved his brother. In his own foolishness, he hadn’t accounted for losing him if he betrayed the Nādhir.

  “Eydis will honor him. He will be welcomed to the afterlife,” Jorrund said gently, but I could still hear the crack beneath his voice. He was scared. Not only for me—for him. He set a hand on Vigdis’ shoulder but he shoved him off.

  Mentioning their god would have brought Bekan pause. But Vigdis wasn’t Bekan. He didn’t fear Eydis the way Jorrund did because she wasn’t his only god. Power and strength were what he wanted.

  “Leading falls to you now, Vigdis,” Jorrund tried again, appealing to his pride.

  He was quiet for a moment, the heaving in his chest slowing as he stared at the ground. His hands unclenched, loosening from their tight fists. “I won’t let the Nādhir go.”

  Jorrund nodded. “It’s a debt that can be paid when we get to Hylli.”

  “It can’t wait until then!”

  “We have to move quickly. Our warriors will be here by sundown.” Siv set a hand onto his arm. “By morning, we can move east. We can be in Hylli in two days and this will be over.”

  I looked between Vigdis and Siv, trying to think as quickly as I could. There was no escape. Nowhere to run. It was only a matter of time before Vigdis found a reason to kill me. I had to use the only power I had.

  “I can find him,” I said.

  “What?” Jorrund’s eyes widened.

  “I can do it.” I looked to Vigdis. He would take the first chance he got to cut my throat. I knew that. Unless he needed me. “I’ll find the Nādhir.” As soon as I said the words, I saw his face in my mind. Blue eyes beneath dark, unraveling hair. A gaze that didn’t pull from mine. It sent the same sting racing across my skin that had been there in the glade.

  “Tova, I don’t think that’s…” Jorrund stammered.

  “How?” Vigdis growled.

  “I know a way.” It would buy me some time, but it wasn’t without risk.

  Vigdis’ red face stared into the ground. “Alright.”

  “But—” Jorrund’s hands lifted before him.

  “You say she can see the future?” he snapped. “Then she can find the Nādhir and bring me his head. If she doesn’t, I’ll do what my brother was too weak to do.”

  Jorrund stared at him wordlessly.

  “I better have his head in my hands before I get to Hylli.” He turned, stalking away with Siv at his side, and I swallowed hard, my stomach turning over. The Nādhir wasn’t the only blood feud Vigdis had. He blamed me for his niece Vera’s death, and now his brother’s. Before this was finished, my head would be in his hands, too.

  Gunther stared at me, his hand on his sword and Jorrund turning to ice beside him. “What are you thinking?”

  “I can find him,” I said again. “You know I can find him.”

  “Vigdis will kill you anyway. We need you, Tova. We need you to cast—”

  “The stones? You don’t listen to the stones!” I flung a hand toward the blood-soaked glade, my voice rising. “You want to believe that you can carve fate into a river that leads where you want to go. It doesn’t work that way, Jorrund!”

  He recoiled, stepping back as if the words stung, but he didn’t argue because he knew I was right. Since I was a child, he’d been trying to control everything. Bekan, me, the Spinners, the gods. It would take a lot more blood before he began to understand anythi
ng about fate.

  “I know what this is about, Tova.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “I saw the Kyrr man in the forest.”

  I stilled, swallowing hard. I didn’t think he’d seen him. “This isn’t about the Kyrr. It’s about keeping Vigdis from killing me.”

  “That man was a raider.”

  “So?”

  “So, he was probably cast out of the headlands. He won’t have any more answers for you than I do.”

  I tried to read the look in his eyes. They betrayed more than he thought they did. He was afraid of more than just Vigdis. At times, he was afraid of me. And the truth was that it wasn’t just the Kyrr man. It was the Nādhir. The one who’d met my gaze and didn’t look away. The one that filled my head with the sound of a thousand waterfalls. The Spinners were saying something. They were speaking, and if I was going to hear it, I needed to find him.

  “I’ll find the Nādhir. I’ll bring his head to Vigdis.”

  “And then?”

  “And then we find a way to keep both of us alive.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  HALVARD

  There were already over a hundred of them.

  We lay flat on our stomachs, watching the Svell army from the ridge high above the charred remains of Ljós. The village was no more than a blackened spot on the earth now, the trees that had once covered the roofs burned clean of their leaves. My brothers had described Hylli the same way after the Herja came, but it was a sight I never imagined I’d see.

  Svell warriors young and old were clad in their leathers below, weapons strapped to their sides and their backs. They gathered around fires that snaked through the sparse trees of the eastern forest in a camp that was growing by the minute. In the distance, another trail of them was arriving from the west.

  It was clear that Vigdis had planned the betrayal in Ljós. The warriors had already been called in from their villages before we ever met Bekan in the glade. It was the only explanation for how their entire army was gathering so quickly. And if they were gathering this many, they were going to push across the valley to the fjord. This wasn’t about border territory or the divided leaders of the Svell. It never had been. Vigdis wanted to crush the Nādhir. And from the look of their army, he had everything he needed to do it.