Every time he saw her, beautiful silken waves the color of willow bark fell across her back to her tempting hips. She walked circles about them in the field, picking flowers and casting him sidelong glances. The first day she’d been out he even caught her staring at him. Hopefully her brother hadn’t noticed as well.
She came out each morn for three days to torment him, making him work twice as hard to ignore the beautiful temptress while he trained. Today she hadn’t come.
Normally, he would have thought as he told Dallan, that some other task required her attentions. Except he had also noticed a change come over her at dinner each night.
Instead of glaring at him, she looked absently over the room. She smiled less each day. And last night, she hadn’t eaten any of her meal, putting Finn in mind of the first time he’d noticed her lack of appetite. Aye, Finn feared that Dallan’s observation was correct: Something was wrong with Eva.
Dallan sighed, his thoughts clearly still on his sister. “Would you meet with her again? For me?” he whispered, handing a shield to Finn to stack with the others. “I know you said she wanted to take a break from her lessons, but she seemed so much happier then. Could you just check on her? Maybe you can convince her to take up playing again.”
Finn’s conscience warred within him. He wanted to help his friend. He wanted to help Eva. Yet he still didn’t trust himself to see her alone. When he was with her, all logic fled in the face of his need to hold her. Neither the knowledge that one of them would be leaving, or that he was sneaking around behind Dallan’s back, could break the enchantment she had on him. Even now, he struggled to keep his thoughts off her; ’twas only a matter of time before he struggled to keep his hands off her as well.
“Please, Finn,” Dallan pleaded. “At least meet with her and ask her.”
“I’ll go speak with her this afternoon,” Finn agreed reluctantly. “But I don’t know about the lessons.”
“Ostman!”
Finn and Dallan both turned to see Diarmid approaching with two shields. He tossed another one to Finn to stack up. Diarmid, along with his brother Conan, had been placed in charge of training the men for their defense trial. Over the past sennight, Finn had come to know both men well.
Conan and Diarmid were the younger brothers of Cormac, and therefore distant kin of Brian and the princes of Connachta. Distant enough, Dallan had explained, for their sister, Dunla, to have married the aged king. All three brothers shared dark hair and strong, pleasing features, but the similarities ended there. Cormac, from what Finn could gather, was quiet and contemplative. He seemed to bear the heavy weight of familial responsibility almost entirely on his own.
Diarmid, the youngest, had an infectious thirst for life and could charm the skirts off an abbess. Conan had the heart of a warrior and the bravery to go with it. He was kind and funny and could best most anyone in a drinking contest, but he was not so wild as Diarmid.
“Are you ready for the trial?” Diarmid asked, stacking the other shield himself. “Only a few more days of training.”
“I was ready a fortnight ago,” Dallan boasted, walking to fetch a stray spear.
Diarmid chuckled and folded his arms across his chest. “Oh, aye? So that’s why you were falling over your own feet a sennight ago?”
Dallan’s face reddened. “Once! I tripped once!”
“Once that we saw,” Finn added, nodding conspiratorially to Diarmid.
“Traitor,” Dallan grumbled.
“What about you, Ostman?” Diarmid asked Finn as they all turned together to walk to the hall. “Will you pass the trial?”
Finn grinned at him. “If I don’t, I’d better be in Valhalla,” he replied. When Diarmid had first called him Ostman, he’d been furious. But it had since become something of an endearment and a joke.
“If they’ll take you,” Dallan teased. “You go to church an awful lot for a pagan. I could see where there might be confusion.”
“Tell me you lot aren’tjokingabout the defense trial.” Conan, the middle O’Conor brother, frowned at them like an angry nursemaid. “You do realize men are going to die, don’t you?”
“In my experience, the best time to indulge a sense of humor is right before the possibility of death.” Diarmid delivered this wisdom with his widest, toothiest grin.
Conan shook his head at his younger brother, instead turning to Finn and Dallan. “I think the pair of you will live,” he told them. “Whether you pass or not is another matter.”
Dallan immediately took exception to that. Finn, however much he believed in his own abilities, acknowledged the truth in Conan’s statement. To pass the test of defense, one did not simply need to survive. One needed to survive uninjured. A single, glancing scrape from a spear and all chance at success was lost.
Eleven men had failed the test of intelligence, incapable of adequately performing the twelve books of poetry. Forty-two warriors would compete in the next trial, and Finn feared that Conan was right: some would likely die. Apart from the test of bravery, defense was the most dangerous trial.
When they reached the great hall, Finn, Dallan, Conan, and Diarmid sat together at a table near the great open hearth in the center of the room. As a matter of habit, Finn glanced at the spot where Eva normally took her meals. She wasn’t there.
Unease coursed through him as he recalled the last time she’d missed a meal, going down to the water alone in spite of her promise. Finn knew she didn’t take his concerns seriously, but he had seen men who knew how to swim drown. He had no doubt she’d be in real danger if she fell into the lake she loved so much.
Panic descended as he searched the tables in earnest, hoping she’d simply chosen to sit elsewhere. Finally, just as he was about to excuse himself and go search for the daft woman, he found her.
Along the edge of the room, sets of chairs and benches had been positioned to create areas suitable for private conversation. Of course, in a room so frequented as the hall, truly private conversations did not exist. A handful of alcoves offered the most privacy, though they still sat in plain view of anyone in the room paying attention.
