Tara Runeweaver's Arc

Chapter 7 of 19

They crested the ridge and saw Erik's ground laid out below. A tall pole stood at its center, his name carved deep into ice-bound wood. Beside it, a pyre still smoked under fresh snow, the shapes inside blackened past knowing. At the far edge, a black bear thrashed in a metal cage, throwing itself at the bars. Bjorn's men slowed without being told. Tara watched their faces tighten. She nudged her painted horse forward until she was level with Bjorn. He did not look at her. He was already counting Erik's men, already measuring the ground. She knew that stillness. She had studied it for months. "Let me mark the circle," Tara said. Bjorn's jaw moved. "No runes." "Not for him," she said. "For you. So your feet know where the ground holds." He looked at her then, and she saw the cost of the answer before he gave it. He shook his head once. "If I win with your magic, I have not won." She felt the old fear rise — the question she had carried for weeks about whether to set the runes down for him. He had answered it for her, and not the way she wanted. She closed her hand around the silver wolf on her thumb and made herself nod. "Then win without it." Bjorn dismounted. He walked past the pyre, past the caged bear, past the carved pole, and into the trampled snow where Erik waited. Tara stayed on her horse because he had not asked her to come down. The duel was short and it was ugly. Steel rang four times. On the fourth, Bjorn drove his blade through Erik's shoulder and down, and Erik did not get up. The bear screamed in its cage. Bjorn stood over the body and breathed. He came back to her bloodied and whole. He set his hand on her knee, not on her hand, not on her face — on her knee, where his men could see. "Cut the bear loose," he said, quiet, only for her. "Use the runes. Let them watch you do it." Tara's throat closed. He had refused her magic for himself and asked for it in the same breath for something that could not fight back. She slid down from the saddle. The fear she had carried about giving up her craft died there in the red snow. He would not ask her to be less. He would only ask her to choose when.