I thought him mistaken at first, seeing only shadows that were really just brush and branches, but though I saw no movement like the rustling we had heard, the silhouette of a stag eventually took shape, holding still in the hopes that we wouldn’t spot it.
“Would you like to have a go?”
“What?” I sputtered again, snapping my attention back to Freyr, but naturally, he meant a go at shooting, for he was slowly, silently, reaching for the bows and quivers we had affixed to the saddle with our supplies. He handed one set to me, and my hands shook while accepting it.
“No need to be nervous.” Freyr winked at me.
That hardly helped! Before Ragnarök, Freyr would occasionally take several companions with him on hunts, so Ihad accompanied him before, on horseback or on foot. This felt different. This changed so many of the rules of our relationship that all my words and actions kept coming out stilted, as though I’d forgotten how we once conversed or comfortably wiled away hours in each other’s company.
“I am afraid I doubt my skills when placed against yours,” I said.
“Then let me demonstrate.” Freyr nocked an arrow and readied his bow, every taut muscle steady and eyes sharp upon the hiding stag.
“No beast could best your prowess, my king,” I whispered, and as I placed my palm on the ground to push up taller onto my knees, I felt a different sort of give beneath my palm and realized I had braced upon Freyr’s thigh.
His arrow loosed and lodged itself into one of the trees, spooking the stag into fleeing.
“Damn,” he grumbled. Was that color in my lord’s cheeks?
I had distracted him. He missed.
He was nervous too.
I felt my confidence return almost instantly and squeezed where my hand gripped his thigh. “Perhaps I need not doubt my skills at all,” I teased.
“You doubt your lord’s after a single miss?” His cheeks were still a touch pink as he frowned at me.
“Only at the moment.”
He opened his mouth as if to protest, only to fall into a laugh with a more relaxed smile, just as I had hoped he would. Relaxation was key, I realized, to not think the introduction of intimacy meant the friendship at our foundation needed to change.
“Shall we make a wager out of our excursion?” I asked, standing to offer a hand to my lord, given our quarry was gone.
“Such as?” Freyr accepted my assistance and secured the quiver on his back, bow still in hand.
“First to slay a worthy beast gets to decide what we do on our next outing.”
That Freyr seemed pleased to know there would be a next outing boosted my confidence further. All was not lost from a few missteps. “I accept!” He grinned, wide and mischievous. “And I already know my request.”
Freyr sprinted away like another arrow loosed and was halfway across the clearing before I recognized his ploy. He meant to catch up to the stag!
I bolted after him but veered slightly right as I entered the tree line. I could not settle for a rabbit or other small creature. I’d said “worthy” and a nesting sparrow wouldn’t count. Knowing Freyr was a vastly superior hunter, my only chance was to shadow him and snag his prey out from under him through further distraction.
He was like a stag himself with how he leapt and ran and maneuvered through trees. Perhaps it was only pity that slowed him enough that I didn’t lag far—or because he had spotted the stag, who was not lost to us but had slowed just ahead.
Freyr dropped down, and I did as well, continuing forward until I was parallel to him. I was just as in line with the stag, perhaps more so, as I crept another step or two closer. The wind was strong this morning, causing much ambient noise in the treetops, with birds chittering, and the sounds of the nearby waterfall drifting to us too. The measly crunch of a few sticks underfoot or even faint murmurs would not be easy for the stag to overhear.
“My lord would not use his magic to veil a stag as a tree or vice versa?” I whispered across the expanse.
The stag’s head twitched, but not in my direction. It was listening for us but uncertain of where we were.
Freyr readied his bow again, so again, I mimicked him, each of us eyeing the other in our periphery.
“Now, Ravnur, I would never do that.”
Thunder cracked the sky with a boom, and I nearly fired an unaimed arrow, immediately drenched by a downpour where the sun should have been brightening the dawn.
Thatcheat!
