Chapter 25
Elva
Njall sank quickly, and I struggled to get to him while I was still in my human form.
But by the time I’d made it to the bottom, I'd morphed, and my control was better. He'd come to rest on a pile of ale barrels. I grabbed under his arms and held onto him while I used my feet fins to propel us. With the commotion we’d set off, I couldn’t risk going to the surface for a long while yet.
Small bubbles escaped Njall’s mouth and nose, and when they finally stopped, I watched closely.
He was still, and in the darkness I couldn't tell if he was blue or not.
Suddenly, his chest heaved as he took a breath of water, and then another.
Relieved he’d been smart enough to take the tonic, I pulled him along the seafloor, looking for the natural waypoints I remembered when I first entered the water down the beach.
When I found the round mound that reminded me of the ones in Konvern, I knew I’d made it far enough down the shoreline.
Clutching Njall tightly, I swam to the surface and popped my head out of the water.
My brothers’ fire was just up the beach.
I pulled Njall to the surface of the water, and he coughed and sputtered before he breathed air again.
As I swam toward the shore, I called for Leifur and Sindri.
My brother-in-law ran out to me and slid his arm around Njall’s back, taking his weight from me.
Once all of us were back on the shore, we placed Njall on his side near the fire.
“We knew you’d found him when everything suddenly lit up,” Sindri said, gesturing toward the castle.
“It appears they lit every torch and fire in the castle, and then the shouting got so loud we could hear it down here,” Leifur added.
“How many did you have to kill?” My twin asked me, eyeing my ripped and bloodied shirt.
“Only four.”
“Not bad. I expected at least eight,” Leifur said.
“I came across more than a dozen in there, but they didn’t bother to light the servants' passages, so staying in the shadows was easy.”
“When do we leave?” Sindri asked.
“As soon as we can,” I replied. “Pack up the fish and get His Highness to wake up. Then once we’re all changed, we’ll move deeper into the forest. We'll skip the fire this evening to avoid being seen.”
“We should travel as far as possible tonight and hide out during the day,” Leifur suggested. I nodded without looking away from the castle. “I’ll go start packing up.”
Sindri waited for his husband to be out of earshot before leaning toward me. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I snapped.
He seemed like he wanted to question me further, but he let it go. Sindri knew my tells and when not to push me. He just patted my shoulder and headed toward our camp, leaving me to my thoughts.
Something felt off, and I couldn’t place it. It wasn’t fear or anxiety or even excitement at achieving what we’d traveled so far to do.
A shout from Sindri made me turn toward the fire. My brothers were fighting with a disoriented Njall, and I rushed across the sand toward them.
“We won’t hurt you,” Leifur said, holding out his hands to calm the prince.
Njall was waving the dagger I’d given him, along with one of the large pronged iron forks we’d been using to cook the fish.
“They won’t, but I will if you don’t stop threatening my brother,” I said.
“You!” Njall turned the fork toward me. “You knocked me unconscious in the castle.”
“I did,” I admitted, before I leaped at him and ripped the fork from his grasp.
I grabbed his wrist to stop him from trying to stab me.
Disarming him had been too easy, so he was still out of sorts.
“I needed you to listen and not argue, a skill you are clearly lacking. It seemed like the best plan.”
“You could have just asked.”
“Yes,” I said, smiling sweetly at him. “But that would have taken time, which we didn’t have. We’re lucky the guard didn’t question us when we were in the hallway. I didn't want to press our luck.”
“Why wouldn't the guards question you?” Leifur asked.
Sindri looked at me suspiciously, and before I could stop myself, my cheeks flushed, and my twin snickered. “Because Elva’s exceptional at causing distractions,” he said.
I rolled my eyes and ignored him. “The other reason is that humans struggle when we bring you to the sea depths. I didn’t have the time to deal with that either. Just be thankful we got you out.”
“I’m thrilled, now you can let me go.”
Sindri laughed. “Sorry, Your Highness. You’re our meal ticket. You’re not going anywhere.”
Njall made a move as if he intended to go for my brother, but my knock on the head had taken more out of him than he realized, and he stumbled for a moment. Leifur grabbed his shoulder to steady him and helped him down to the ground.
I crossed the camp and grabbed my skin of fresh water. “Here, have a drink and eat something. If we want to evade the Huestur army tonight, we need you to have enough strength to stay on your horse.”
Sindri grabbed the other forks with fish on them. “No funny business. My sister is lethal when necessary. Especially if she can’t sing her way out of a predicament.”
Njall took the skin and had a small sip, swishing the water in his mouth to test it.
“Oh, for goodness' sake.” I grabbed my skin and took a large swig. “It’s fine.” When I dropped this skin in Njall's lap, he immediately took a long drink from it.
“I’ll ready the horses,” I whispered to Leifur. “Make sure he eats and drinks. They weren’t feeding him in there, and we’ll run into problems if he can’t stay on his horse.”
“Understood.” He pulled a small loaf of bread out of the supply bag.
I fed the horses, and then dug dry clothes out for Leifur and myself from our supplies, and found where we’d hidden Njall’s clothes.
I knew if Sindri had seen them, we’d never get them back from him, so Leifur had buried them below my underclothes.
It was the one place Sindri would never check.
I suspected our guest wouldn’t want to ride our mule, so I moved my bag to her, allowing him to take the horse his brother had provided us.
Once I’d secured the loads evenly across our horses, I set about changing out of my ripped clothes.
My pants were rung out and tied to my satchel, but the shirt was not worth keeping, so I grabbed the bottom to pull it off.
As I did, a hot pain shot through my left side.
I tossed the shirt into the woods and looked down to see a deep cut on my side, from when I got caught on the rusty door earlier.
I groaned at myself for getting injured and exchanged the shirt I'd chosen for a darker one.
The last thing I needed was one of my brothers seeing blood on my shirt and getting themselves worked up.
By the time I returned to the fire, all the food had been eaten. I tossed Leifur the clothes for Njall and made my brother leave him so he could get dressed in peace.
“Why do I have to go help with the horses?” Sindri whined as we packed up the last of the cooking supplies.
I just ignored my brother’s pouts and made sure everything on the horses was secure, as Leifur and Njall made their way to us.
“Feeling better?” Sindri asked when Leifur came with Njall in tow.
Njall nodded. “My head still hurts, but having a full belly is a pleasant change.” He looked up in surprise. “These are my horses.”
“Baldr gave them to us,” I explained. “He wanted to make sure we'd make it out here. I assumed you’d want Acorn, so I moved my things to our mule.”
Njall didn’t even acknowledge me, but went to each of his horses, stroking them and addressing them by name.
“We’ve taken good care of them,” I assured him, as we each grabbed a rein and made our way into the forest, leaving behind the beach.
“So what’s the plan?” Njall asked as he climbed into Acorn’s saddle. “I assume we aren’t just going to wander in the forest until we get caught.”
“You didn’t see the woods when you arrived because you were taken by boat—”
“How did you know I was taken by boat?”
“We saw them take you,” Sindri replied. “We’re the ones who informed them of your and your lovely sister’s abductions.”
“You didn’t bother to help?”
“There were only three of us, and a lot more Huestur and Anginfill men,” I explained. “But we saw which kingdom took you, and we went back to the castle to make sure the right people knew.”
“Baldr?”
My brothers nodded, and I expected Njall to ask more, such as who was sent after his sister, but he didn’t. He simply looked ahead and waited for Leifur to head in a direction. It was just as well. If the Huestur army was out in the woods now, the quieter we were, the better for all of us.
The dense undergrowth muffled our footsteps, but with the thick canopy overhead, it was impossible to see where we were going. At least anyone who tried to pursue us through the forest would face the same issues.
“We should go north,” Njall said.
“Why would we go north?” Sindri asked. “Your kingdom is to the south.”
“That's exactly why we should go north,” Njall replied. “They won’t expect it. We won’t go far—just enough to bypass their men and get to the Bloot River. Then we can cross and travel along the other side until we get to the mountains.”
“It would add days to our journey,” Leifur said.
“I’m not in any hurry to get home. It isn’t as if anyone would miss me.”
I weighed his words carefully. The Zverm Forest on the other side of the river was outside of Huestur territory. The men likely wouldn’t expect us to go so far out of our way, and it would put some distance between us.
“The only question is,” I mused aloud, “do we head north now, or go deeper into the forest first and then turn?”
“We go now,” Njall said firmly. “Their scouts are probably already out. If we move now, we might slip right past them without them even knowing.”
“Back to the Bloot River, it is,” Sindri said.