The Jarl announced a break before the competitions could resume.
As Svea fanned herself with her hand, she slipped away to the Jarl's Great Hall, curiosity pricking at her. She decided to try and steal a look inside. If the circumstances allowed, she could even sneak a bite to eat before the feasting began.
The shadows of the hall swallowed her beneath the eyes of the totems and carved figures that glared down at her. Her boots slid against the smoothed floor, polished so clean that if she hadn't noticed, she would have fallen.
The banners came next. One after another, bright with Jarl Aeneas's honors. . . his raids, his victories, his glory. Svea's lip twitched. It wasn't uncommon for a Jarl to do so. She remembered Jarl Geir had done the same, but she had always been of the mind that walls of a Great Hall should bear the images of their gods, not men. She wondered if the thought ever crossed the mind of these men too before they came into power.
She stepped toward the Jarl's wooden throne but did not climb the stairs. Her hand lifted, then fell before it reached too high. The call of it lingered, heavy, but she pulled herself away. Better not to test what wasn't hers. Passing between the pillars that held the longhouse upright, she decided neither her hand nor her head were worth the risk.
Something shifted. A prickle up her spine told her she was no longer alone. Watched.
Her body stilled, ears straining for the step, the breath. Hunted - that was how it felt. As though she were a doe too far from cover, and something in the shadows had marked her for its own. She let the moment draw close, then turned sharp, knife already in her hand. Steel pressed against warm skin, right at the neck, against a beard kept too neat for a raider's life. Carefully shaped, even as it grew down to where her blade rested. One slip, and she could ruin the pretty symmetry of his face.
He didn't flinch. IF anything, he leaned into the steel, as though he wanted to feel how sharp she truly was.
Even though they had never met, Svea knew him instantly.
Raumr.
It's not a name, it's an insult.
When she had first heard the name, she had wondered if his mother had truly been so cruel as to give him the name at birth. Raumr meant a tall, huge, ugly man. The man in front of her was anything but. His face was too structured for such an insult, let alone for it to become his name. He reminded her of the edge of a glacier she had once seen further north, something from ice and pressure, dangerous, impossible to look away. His brows were thicker than most, darker, drawn in long lines above eyes that saw too much. His hair brushed his shoulders in loose strands, the kind that might slip through a woman's fingers like silk spun from the night itself. His nose was straight, rare as an unbroken spear after battle.
And then his eyes. . . amber, not gold, not brown, but the fierce shade that adorned a lion's stare.
All this beauty was carried by a man named for ugliness. She couldn't make sense of it.
"Are you lost?" Raumr asked, tilting his head with a kind of coyness that didn't belong on him. His amber eyes caught hers in the dim light.
They didn't move from her, not even to flicker down at her knife. He watched her as if he was studying fire, unwilling to look away from the uninvited visitor.
Oh, Svea thought, is that why they call him Raumr? Not for his size but. . . they're referring to his scar?
In the light of the candles, the scar that slashed from brow to cheek, half-hidden in his beard and cutting across his fierce eyes, seemed less ruin than mark. It sprawled over him like rivers born of the same ocean, branching and overlapping without care.
"Are you stupid?" Svea blurted.
She hadn't meant to say it - not something so blunt, so rude, to one of Aeneas's best fighters. She knew she was wrong for slipping into the longhouse, now she would pay the price since she had been caught. If she was going down for it, she would go down swinging, tongue first, until they cut it from her mouth.
Raumr only narrowed his eyes, amused. He shifted a step to the side, letting the candlelight slide off his scar. "No one else was here. I thought something was amiss, that's all."
Doesn't he care? Doesn't he plan to out me to his master?
"You did not announce yourself, Raumr," Svea shot back, her knife still angled at his throat.
His name slipped from her lips before she could stop it. Why had she done that? To prove she knew who he was? To needle him, let him squirm knowing his scar was famous enough to travel ahead of him? Or worse. . a thought that scared her. Did I just want to hear how it would sound coming from my mouth?
"And you didn't climb the stairs," Raumr replied evenly, refusing to take the bait.
Swallowing, she turned her head aside, dropping the knife from his neck. "I could have killed you." "You'd nick me at most."
"I never miss," Svea warned confidently, gritting her teeth. His grin only widened, showing the flash of a canine tooth.
His grin widened, showing the flash of his canines. "Then Odin's spear walks on two legs. I wonder if it strikes as true as it claims." Raumr said, snorting softly to himself.
Svea shook her head, thrusting a hand up between them to stop him from getting any closer. She would not let him see the heat rising in her face, not before she understood why it burned her the way it did. Her hand lingered on his chest. She hated it. . . because it felt less like escape, more like retreat.
"Keep your distance from me," she warned, eyes narrowing as she cast one final look over him.
Raumr didn't move. He only tilted his head, as though committing her threat to memory. When she pulled back, he stayed exactly where he was, letting her retreat break the space first without promising he would heed it.
Then she turned on her heel, striding back toward the festival, more important toward Dragmall. Her hand lingered against her chest as she exhaled, steadying herself, even as voices she knew yet barely recognized drifted in from beyond the hall. All she wanted was for her pulse to calm.