But by the time I had finished rekindling the goddess’s fire, watched my blood bubble in the flames and offered my prayers, Yske and Eidr had not left – not that I’d truly expected, or wanted them to. Instead, they had set up a makeshift camp, using Yske’s cloak as a shelter, and as I returned Eidr settled himself on a somewhat dry log beneath it. Lifting one side of his own cloak, he nodded to the open space.
“Sit, wife.”
I smiled. It was a compulsive, sudden thing that hurt more than my bloody fingers. The title was still novel, only a winter old.
Still, I reasserted, “You shouldn’t have come.”
His expression hardened, light from the fire he’d built up turning his face into a mixture of warm ridges and familiar hollows. “I’ll say it one more time. The High Priestess might have cast you out, but we will not abandon you.”
Yet, I added in the quiet of my mind. But it wasn’t a matter of abandonment, however he chose to cast it for himself. I was the one at fault, and I was the one that would have to leave forever.
My breath grew shallow at the thought and my resolve, already fragile, weakened. Eidr and Yske were Eangi too, I reminded myself, and unsullied ones. They belonged at this shrine as much, if not more, than I did. Who was I to make them leave?
Yske lifted the other side of Eidr’s cloak and wedged herself in without invitation. Resting the back of her head against the man’s shoulder, she eyed me. “Who’s to say the goddess didn’t send us to make sure you don’t die of stupidity?”
I raised my brows. “Then she’d hardly send you,” I retorted, though the humor felt stale.
All the same, Yske grinned a nose-wrinkling grin and kicked her heels out towards the fire.
“Sit,” Eidr broke in. “You made your climb; you made your sacrifice – twice – and there’s nothing that forbids you from sheltering at someone else’s fire.”
I looked back at the shrine. It was well-lit now, my offering set to burn into the morning hours. Perhaps they were right. Perhaps I could sit for an hour at my husband’s and cousin’s sides, just until my shivering stopped and my clothing began to dry.
“You need to be back before anyone realizes you’ve left,” I said. Then, more soberly, I repeated, “I’ll not have you suffer for my sins. Please.”
“Fine,” Eidr agreed. “Now sit, my arm hurts.” I rounded the fire and sat down.
* * *
In the half-light of dawn, Eidr’s warm chest left my back and Yske’s soft breath, inches from my forehead, moved away. I couldn’t bear to say goodbye, so I pretended to sleep on, holding still as Eidr wrapped his cloak around my solitary form and kissed my temple.
I sat up only once their footsteps had been replaced by the trills and lilts of birdsong. The rain had stopped, leaving the world dripping, scented with green and earth and damp. Our campfire had died off, but the one in the shrine burned more brightly than ever. Yske or Eidr must have stoked it.
That gesture alone was enough to make my eyes prickle. Why was I doing this? If Eang hadn’t responded by now, did she intend to at all? Yes, the goddess was not everywhere, but she would have heard my prayers. This was her shrine, a place where something of her essence always remained – a place where the fabric between the human, Waking World and the divine High Halls was torn.
Eang knew I was here; there had to be another explanation for her silence. Maybe, I thought, I should go back to town and consult the High Priestess. The idea was a tantalizing one, undergirded with the promise of seeing Eidr and Yske again. Maybe I could still catch up to them.
No. I reined that thought in. The sun was breaking through the canopy, the poppies were unfurling, and my blood was required in the offering bowl.
I crossed to the shrine in the cool of the dawn, pulling my ritual knife and flexing the wounded fingers of my left hand. But as I passed into the shadow of the structure and prepared to slit my thumb for the third time, the sight of dangling feathers and carved owls distracted me. My apprehension turned outward. Upward.
Eang was wildly powerful, ancient and undying, but she was not immortal. Almost no god was – at least, not naturally. What if Eang ignored me because she was in battle? What if she didn’t respond because she couldn’t? It had happened before.
That thought gave me all the determination I needed. Banished or not, I was an Eangi priestess, and I owed it to my deity to be patient.
I reopened the cuts on my left hand and let the blood drip. I prayed. Then I sat down in the meadow and sunlight, dangled my stinging fingers over my knees, and began my vigil once more.
The morning passed. The sun roosted high above the peak of the mountain, my frizzing black hair burned with heat, and I left my post to drink from a stream. The cool water took the edge off my thirst and the aching hunger in my belly, but only just.
When the rain started again, it was almost a relief. I let Eidr’s cloak stay in the shelter of the pine tree while I lay among the poppies and closed my eyes, relishing the droplets of cool water on my face and scalp. Above me, the blue summer sky reverted to the same muted grey as the evening before.
Eidr and Yske would have returned home hours ago. They and the rest of our order would be watching the mountain, waiting for me to join them.
“Eang, Eang,” I murmured, willing my words to be heard across distance, time and the division between worlds. “The Brave, the Vengeful, the Swift and the Watchful…”
The rain pattered down on my cheeks, my lips.
“Eang, please.”
War horns blasted up the mountainside.
TWO
Branches. Rain. Mud. Rock. There was no time for aching muscles or precarious footing; instinct propelled me down the same path that had brought me up the mountain the day before – the same path Eidr and Yske had taken back to town that morning.
The horns came again, long, drawn-out wails that ended in two high blasts. Eangen horns. Another bay followed them, this one lower and culminating in a twisting, deep crack. Algatt raiders.
There were raiders at the foot of the mountain, raiders in my home while I spent hours stumbling down a mountainside. Hours during which my people fought and died.
Eidr. Yske. I let out a frustrated, gasping choke and plunged through the forest.
Raids were relatively common. In the south, along the border with the Arpa Empire, farmers battled unsanctioned taxation from rogue legionaries. In the north, the mountains unleashed Algatt raiders once, sometimes twice yearly, initiating weeks of skulking and skirmishing. My own mother, far away in the village of my birth, had been killed in one such raid five years ago – the kind of loss everyone in my world shared.
Scars from fighting off raiders this spring were still fresh and pink under my clothes. But by now, the Algatt should have retreated to their northern mountains until harvest. That was their way. That was how it always was.
Was this my response from Eang? Was this my punishment for disobedience? The thought crept into the back of my mind, but it was too horrific to hold onto.
Could this raid be my fault?
By the time I sighted the town of Albor, the Eangen horns had long since stopped. I skidded to a halt on an open bluff, staring down into the valley through misty rain and billows of smoke.
My heart dropped. The great timbered Hall smoldered in the center of the town and the circular embankment around the settlement, with its wooden walls and crude towers, was a wreath of flames. The bulk of the fifty homes were still intact, but outlying farmhouses were already ash.