She let her gaze travel up to his face and a strange flutter settled deep in her belly. Though smooth-cheeked, his jaw was cut in the solid square of a man. Thick, light brown hair was pulled back from his features. His eyes were hard to make out in the low light, but they shone darkly as they took in the sight of her.
“What is your name?” she demanded, still holding the seax before her despite the screaming protest in her hand.
“Tarr Olvirsson, though I doubt that name means anything to you.” The man’s brows drew together for the briefest moment as pain flashed across his face. “I am from the north.”
Tarr Olvirsson. She let the name tumble through her mind. “Nei, I don’t know it,” she said carefully. “What are you doing here?”
“I have come for the festival in Dalgaard,” he said, meeting her eyes steadily. “I wish to compete in the games.” There seemed to be more he was about to say, but he closed his mouth instead.
It was just as well for Eyva, for she likely wouldn’t have comprehended anything else he’d said in that moment. Her mind was too busy roiling over the implications of what he’d just said. He was going to the festival—where she would be handed over to the victor as the bride prize. This man’s presence seemed like a cruel reminder from the gods of her fate. For all she knew, she would be forced to wed the stranger before her.
“I see,” she managed at last when she realized an awkward silence had stretched. “Then why are you here and not in Dalgaard? You are still at least a two hours’ trek away.”
“I…got a later start this morn than I intended,” he replied quietly. Why did she get the sense that there was more to this man than he was telling her? “I thought I could reach the village tonight, but truth be told, I approached when I saw the smoke rising from your hut in hopes of gaining shelter for the night.”
Eyva snorted in disdain before she could stop herself. The man named Tarr raised one eyebrow, slightly darker than his brown hair. A quirk playing around his mouth.
“Have I said something humorous?”
“Nei,” she said quickly, trying to calm the flutters that once again assailed her stomach as amusement transformed his handsome face. “It is just that…you are unlikely to find any hospitality in that hut.”
“And what about from you?”
Despite the coolness of the night, Eyva felt her cheeks heat. There was nothing suggestive in Tarr’s tone, yet she was suddenly acutely aware that she stood alone in the woods with this tall, broad-shouldered man.
“It is not my place to extend hospitality. I am a mere daughter.” The words pained her to say. It was the custom in the Northlands to grant protection and welcome to anyone who sought it. But more than the shame of refusing hospitality, her words reminded her anew of her powerlessness.
“Do you have a name?” His deep voice seemed to reach out across the space separating them and caress her.
As if in a trance, their gazes locked. “Eyva Knutsdottir,” she breathed.
“Eyva,” he said, and his voice encased her name like felt. “Thank you for hearing me out before slaying me.” His dark eyes flicked down to the seax she still gripped, a smile tugging at his lips once more. “I will look for another place to seek shelter for the night.”
She re-sheathed the seax in her boot, suddenly feeling foolish. He turned, breaking their gaze and giving her his wide back. But then he paused and bent to the forest floor for a moment. When he straightened, he turned back to her with a flash of yellow in his hand.
Her eyes darted down to what he held and realized it was the first coltsfoot flower of the season. The arrival of the sunny little flowers was not just a boon to healers, who used them to alleviate coughs and other ailments of the lungs. The sighting of coltsfoot was celebrated all over the Northlands as the first sign of spring’s return and the end to the land’s long winter slumber.
Tarr stepped closer until the white fog of their breaths mingled. He held up the little yellow bloom and silently offered it to her. She raised slightly trembling fingers and accepted the flower.
Ever so slowly, Tarr’s large hand moved toward her face. She felt frozen, held by his eyes, which she realized this close were dark blue like the winter night. His fingertips brushed her cheek and she suddenly remembered that tear tracks still moistened her face.
Tarr drew his thumb across one cheek, swiping away the tears and cradling her face.
“Whatever your sorrows, Eyva Knutsdottir, remember that spring always comes once more,” he said softly. He skimmed his gaze over her features, then down to the coltsfoot bloom she held poised between them.
“Thank you again,” he breathed, dropping his hand from her cheek and turning to leave.
“Wait!”
She should have bitten her tongue, but the word flew out before she could stop herself.
He tilted his head down to her, gilded in silvery moonlight, waiting for her to speak again.
“Mayhap…mayhap you can sleep in the horse’s barn. ’Tis only one stall, but there is a hay loft up above.”
“Truly?” he said, his eyes like depthless pools. “Your family would not mind you overtaxing their…hospitality?”
“They don’t need to know,” she said, and again cursed her bold tongue. She went on quickly. “You won’t be any trouble and I don’t see how I can send you out on such a cold night.”
The truth was, winter was already starting to ebb here on the southwestern tip of the Northlands, as proven by the coltsfoot blossom in her hand. But he didn’t point out her error. Instead, he motioned for her to lead the way.
She hurried back toward her family’s hut, but with his long-legged stride, he had no problem keeping up. He followed her around the corner to the scattered collection of animal pens. The pens were still and quiet except for the occasional shift or snort from within. Set aside from the cow shelters, sheep pens, pig sty, and chicken coop stood the small wooden barn.
As Eyva wrapped a hand around the door’s handle, she inhaled a hissing breath through her teeth. Somehow she had completely forgotten about the welts on her hands in Tarr’s presence.
“What is it?” Tarr asked, concern in his hushed voice. She tried to pull her hands away and tuck them behind her dress, but he caught one of her wrists and tilted her palm toward the moonlight.
Now it was his turn to inhale sharply. “Who did this to you?” he asked, and dark anger flashed over his face. Strange, she thought, that he would care, and even act protective toward her, after only just meeting her. That tingling in her belly flared again.
“’Tis naught,” she said, but she let him look over her palm.
His dark eyes darted behind her to where the hut stood. “Your…your inhospitable family?” The question was almost a growl.
She lowered her head and didn’t speak, but her silence answered for her. Shame washed over her—shame for her parents’ treatment of her, but also for her own lofty dreams, which had led to her current pain.
Tarr seemed to sense her unease, so he pulled the barn door open himself. Dotta, their aged draft horse, started at the intrusion, but a soothing word from Eyva set her at ease once more.
Eyva pointed to the ladder that led up to the loft overhead. “You’ll be safe here for the night. Just be sure to rise before one of my brothers is sent to feed Dotta.”
She turned to go, but Tarr again caught her wrist, more carefully this time.
“Might you…might you come to Dalgaard in the next sennight?” he asked softly. “I’ll be there for the games and mayhap longer.”
“I…I don’t know,” she lied. But why not tell him that she was to depart for the village on the morn? Heat flooded her cheeks, and this time it wasn’t just for the feel of his warm fingers wrapped around her wrist, strong yet gentle on her.
She realized suddenly that she didn’t want this man to know that her family was, in effect, selling her to the victor of the festival games.
He would learn soon enough, for if he was going to compet
e in the games, he would be vying for her hand in marriage as well as the glory that accompanied winning. ’Twas bad enough to live with that knowledge herself. To see the pity, the embarrassment for her, in those dark, depthless blue eyes would be too much.
“I hope you will come,” he said. He turned her wrist over in his hand and she thought for a moment that he was going to examine the welts on her palm once more. But instead, he bent his light brown head over her wrist and brushed the sensitive skin just above an angry red welt with his lips.
His mouth was impossibly soft, no more than a feather’s brush, and yet a shudder went through her entire body. Heat began collecting low in her belly as his lips lingered for a heartbeat, then another.
At last, he lifted his head, his eyes piercing her.
“Thank you again,” he whispered.
His fingers released her wrist and it fell limply to her side. She felt entranced as her gaze sought the lips that had just touched her skin.
Tarr’s eyes held her captive for another long, breathless moment, until finally he turned reluctantly toward the ladder and began ascending. Eyva jerked herself out of the trance and stepped away from the barn’s doorway. She nudged the door closed carefully with her elbow, since one hand still held the coltsfoot bloom and the other burned with sensation—not from the leather strap, but from Tarr’s lips.
Willing her feet to move, she strode to the front side of the hut and eased open the door.
Her mother was doling out a stew to one of her brothers.
“Where were you?” she bit out.
“I just…needed a moment to myself,” Eyva said wearily. There was no use fighting against her mother, but she certainly wasn’t going to tell her that she’d been talking with a strange man who now rested in their hay loft. Eyva quickly tucked the coltsfoot flower behind her, wanting to keep the sunny bloom and its promise of a brighter, warmer spring to herself.
The evening stretched in mostly unbroken silence as her family ate and then prepared for sleep. They would all be expected to rise before the late winter sun to begin their work the next day. But Eyva wouldn’t be milking the cows and mucking out the animals’ stalls with her brothers and father. Nei, she would be going to Dalgaard to be put up as a bride prize to some stranger.
Or perhaps to the man who now sleeps in the barn.
She pushed the thought aside, for it was absurd. There would be hundreds of people gathered for the festival honoring the birth of a son for Dalgaard’s Jarl, and likely dozens of them would be hearty men seeking to compete in the games. Tarr Olvirsson would be a vaguely familiar face in a sea of strangers.
Eyva tossed restlessly on her straw pallet. At last, she gave up and slid silently to the wooden chest that held her few belongings. A few shifts and dresses, a wooden comb, and the coltsfoot flower would be all she’d take with her to her aunt’s home in Dalgaard.
She was the first to rise and so she slipped from the hut without even saying goodbye to her parents or brothers. She made her way toward the barn in the blue light of pre-dawn. Would she explain to Tarr that she, too, was traveling to Dalgaard? Would she tell him that she was to be married to a stranger in a sennight? That she was to stay on this cursed farm, working the rocky soil under her parents for the rest of her life?
As she eased the door open and looked up into the dark recesses of the loft, her heart sank.
Tarr must have risen even earlier than she, for he was already gone.
Chapter Four
Tarr raised the ale-filled horn to his lips, but only took a small sip. Though the men around him seemed bent on drinking a fjord’s worth of ale, he wanted to keep his wits this night. The games started at first light tomorrow—he wouldn’t ruin his chances by starting with a blinding headache and roiling gut.
A man Tarr had learned was called Olaf Skull Splitter leaned across the wooden table.
“I suppose you’ve heard the rumors, too, lad,” Olaf said, the enormous red beard that nigh covered his mouth twitching in amusement.
Apparently, Tarr wasn’t the only man who’d heard the tales of an impending voyage to the west and hoped to make a name for himself at this festival.
Tarr tilted his ale horn in response.
“How many men do you suppose they’ll take?” asked Vestar, a lad whose bright blue eyes always seemed to shine with enthusiasm. Though Vestar clearly hadn’t shaved his face in preparation for the festival, only a few blond whiskers poked above his lip.
The man sitting to Tarr’s right, named Geirr, took a deep swig of ale and then cast a broad smile around their table. “You men worry too much,” Geirr said, lifting his horn. “This is a festival—have some fun!”
The four men raised their drinking horns and Tarr couldn’t help but smile. There were more than twenty men sitting at wooden tables in Dalgaard’s longhouse, plus at least four times that number of villagers ringing the tables and leaning against the walls, waiting for the Jarl to present his son. Though all the seated men would be competing against each other fiercely come sunrise, tonight, a net of camaraderie lay over the group as the ale flowed.
A flicker of movement at the back of the longhouse drew Tarr’s attention. A door opened and out stepped a golden-haired warrior a small handful of years older than Tarr. The longhouse instantly fell silent and Tarr realized he must be looking at Dalgaard’s Jarl.
As the Jarl moved out of the doorway, a much smaller, dark-headed woman holding a babe stepped through.
Tarr’s mind instantly flew back to Eyva Knutsdottir. It had been difficult to make out her coloring in the moonlight last night, but she’d had a similarly dark veil of hair and a smaller build than most Northwomen. Though blonde hair and long limbs were prized highly by many in the Northlands, something about Eyva’s small but fierce frame and dark hair stirred him. They set her apart in his eyes.
He’d been torturing himself with memories of Eyva all day. His lips tingled at the mere memory of her soft skin. How he wished he could have made out the color of her wide eyes as they’d pinned him, stirring his blood.
Should he have lingered on her family’s farmstead with the hopes of seeing her one last time? Nei, for she had been clear that her family would not be happy, and the last thing he wanted was to bring their wrath down upon her. Tarr’s fist reflexively clenched around his drinking horn as he remembered the vicious welts on the girl’s hands.
He forced his attention back to the longhouse and the Jarl, who was guiding his wife up the steps to the raised dais at one end of the hall. Then the Jarl stepped forward and scanned those gathered.
“I am Eirik, son of Arud, Jarl of Dalgaard. You have all been invited to celebrate the birth of my son. May I present Thorin Eiriksson!”
The Jarl turned to the dark-haired woman and lifted the babe from the blankets in her arms. He held the babe, naked and screaming his discontent, over his head for all in the longhouse to see.
The crowd erupted in shouts and stamping feet at the sight of their Jarl’s healthy baby boy. Tarr raised his drinking horn and added his voice to the cacophony.
At last, the Jarl lowered the babe and delivered him carefully to the woman’s arms.
“I also wish to honor my wife, Laurel, for her valiant work in bringing our son to bear,” Jarl Eirik went on, his eyes settling on the woman even as he spoke to the crowd.
He withdrew a flashing gold bracelet from a pouch attached to his belt and those gathered audibly inhaled as one. The gold band was nigh a palm’s span wide, and even from halfway down the longhouse, Tarr could see etchings and inlays of silver and precious stones on the thick metal.
The Jarl’s wife, Laurel, stilled as the Jarl slid the gold band around her wrist. Her dark eyes were wide and locked on her husband, pure love shining from them.
“And now, we shall begin the celebration in earnest,” Jarl Eirik said, returning his attention to those gathered. This was followed by more cheers and feet stomping until Eirik held up a hand.
“There will be fe
asting every night for a sennight, as well as the games—swimming, stone toss, rope pull, wresting, and all the other favorites—and a skaldic competition, of course.”
The last drew chuckles and murmurs from the crowd. Tarr had only ever witnessed a skaldic competition once before—he’d been too young to participate in the drinking and composing of increasingly rowdy poetic verse, but he knew it was a much anticipated event at all festivals.
“You men competing in the games,” Jarl Eirik went on, his gaze settling on those seated at the long wooden tables filling the center of the longhouse. “Present yourselves to my wife to receive your necklace.”
As a whole, the competitors stood and began forming a line in front of the dais. Tarr felt the eyes of the villagers and those not competing fall on him and the others. Older men offered commentary on the anticipated shortcomings of the competitors. Young women talked behind their hands to each other and pointed, blushing, at their favorites. Some of the competitors puffed their chests under the scrutiny, but Tarr tried to pay all the attention little heed. These were his first games, but so much more than bragging rights lay in the balance for him.
As Tarr drew closer to the front of the line, he watched as other men received their necklace from Laurel, the Jarl’s wife. The necklace was really just a thin strip of leather with a flat piece of wood a little smaller than Tarr’s palm looped through it. As each man competed, small carvings would be made into the wood to show how well he did at different events. If a man was injured or dropped out of the games, he would have to throw his slab of wood into the fire. And the man with the most victories by the end of the games would be celebrated like a hero from the sagas.
Olaf stepped onto the dais and knelt before Laurel, his red head bowed. Laurel, who had handed her baby to a nursemaid nearby, lifted a leather and wood necklace from a pile and placed it over Olaf’s head. He looked up at her reverently as she placed a light kiss on first one of his bearded cheeks and then the other.
“May the gods be with you,” Laurel said, her words spoken in a strange accent. Tarr had learned upon arrival in Dalgaard that morning that the Jarl’s wife hailed from the lands to the west, the very lands he hoped to see this summer.
Sirens of the Northern Seas: A Viking Romance Collection Page 28