Helvig shouted orders to his armies, launching them all into action. Soon, the two armies were clashing on all fronts— cries of battle and screams of death surrounded them even as the Lamenting Woods tried to dampen the cadence of war that had broken in Ahland.
51
Liv twisted her fingers together as she leaned against the railing of the longship a few times before pushing off it and pacing up and down the deck again. The early rays of dawn were peeking out over the water, painting the world in pastel colors that were way more optimistic than Liv was feeling at the moment.
"We're going too slow," she called to Gunnar and Aeric as they navigated the helm of the ship.
"The storm delayed us," Aeric replied calmly. "We're almost there. I suspect by mid-day."
She swore a few choice words at the gods and how they threw that storm in their path. They would have been in Veter by now if it had missed them. Something was swirling deep in her gut, something that felt wrong. Though she tried not to associate that with Bryn, Liv begged and prayed to the Allfather that she was safe.
But something had gone wrong. She'd felt the world shift under her feet, like it grew colder somehow.
Sigurd and Astrid had opted to sail with them, along with the burly man who worked as a blacksmith named Finn, when Liv offered them the choice. They'd had kissed their children goodbye and left them in the hands of Thora. Liv was glad their children would remain safe; they had lived through enough horror.
To describe Finn as having a strong personality would be understating it. He had gotten along easily with the other Elven they sailed with, launching himself into the hard work it took to sail a longship as soon as his boots hit the deck. Aeric and Gunnar had taken an immediate liking to the blacksmith. Sigurd had shown upwith scores of people and Finn was acting as a sort of right hand man to the pit keeper. She worried about how he would react to Bryn and Maude's involvement in the resistance.
Liv wasn't about to take away someones chance at a fight though when Finn had mentioned that he and a few othervitkiwere interested in taking a bigger part in the fighting. But as for the pit keeper and his wife, Liv tried to be more understanding. They had just found each other again; how could they risk all they had gained to jump right back into the fight?
When Liv asked as much, Astrid had been the one to respond.
Her hair had been braided into two thick ropes that ran over her head until they hung over her shoulders, her soft, wool gowns traded for fighting leathers the Elven favored. The healers in the palace had been working to help bring her back to her full strength before the imprisonment, and whatever tonic they had sent with her was working. Already, her hair was thicker, her muscles were stronger, and she had filled back out to the powerful woman who had already proven to be more than an even match for Sigurd.
"For years, we lived and lost under the thumb of a tyrant. We kept our heads down because it seemed like the smart thing to do. Wait him out and pray for better days. But once we had been separated, the only thing that kept us both going was knowing we could make it better for others if we kept fighting," she said softly, her arm wrapping around Sigurd's waist.
He looked down at his wife, his face beaming and brighter than the sun itself. Liv's throat tightened as she watched the unfiltered love and joy pour out of her friend.
"I do what I can now because when it mattered, I didn't do enough," he murmured, never tearing his eyes away from Astrid. "Those words brought me back to you,elskan minn."
When Sigurd finally tore his gaze away from his wife, the ice blue of his iris was clearer than she had ever seen.
"Just because I got my family back doesn't mean the job is finished," he said to Liv. "So we'll keep fighting. But now, we do it together."
She nodded, reaching out to grasp Sigurd's forearm. "Let's finish the job. I'm sure Herrick and the rest could use our help right about now."
As soon as the words left her mouth, a strong wind battered them and their sails. On the breeze, floating in front of her, was a folded paper in the shape of the sun— a small burst of fire harmless to the dry paper shot out in spires from the center where the note was hidden. Dahlia used to send Liv notes like this when they were children in Nida, except the scent that was attached to the flames was that of desert lavender.
She snatched the paper up and unfolded it, scanning the contents of the letter.
Without wasting another moment, Liv tucked the note into her back pocket and used all of her strength to redirect the winds until they were pushing the longship faster than the rest of the fleet they led. They were out of time.
Bryn stared at the space where Maude had disappeared. She'd just… vanished in a cloud of shadow.
She'd blinked, and her sister was gone.
Herrick was breathing heavily at her side, his eyes wide as he tried to search every open inch of the space. He wouldn't find her anywhere near them; Hela had taken Maude's body and gone. Only the goddess knew where.
A horn sounded from outside the tent. Soldiers outside scrambled to their posts as drums beat and hastened them along. She could hear Hakon giving orders, his voice growing louder the closer he got to Herrick's tent. All around them, sound exploded in messy tempo while they sat in shocked silence.
Maude was gone, and now Helvig was at their door, banging on the drums of war so that they'd meet them on the killing field.
And Liv, Gunnar, and Aeric weren't going to make it there in time to help them.
The catastrophe that was their fate unraveling before her very eyes only further paralyzed Bryn. How were they supposed to manage this? How were they supposedto help Ahland when everything kept going from bad to worse with every step they took in the fight against her father?
Suddenly, the fight ahead of them felt as futile as the fight against her father for the fate of Ahland. For how long would they have to rage against those who would see the world burn? When would it end? With their deaths in the name of martyrdom? With Helvig's head on a spike as their continent devolved into chaos?
How was she supposed to face her father without Maude at her side? Without her kind and gentle-hearted sister who had buried that part of herself and hardened her heart to the world in the name of self-preservation because she had seen something in their society that everyone else had missed?
