“After we dine, sometime in the next few nights. Probably not this night or the next, though. They’ll be exhausted after today, and tomorrow they revisitknattleikr, so not then, either. I haven’t decided, but it matters not.” He smiled, clearly pleased with himself. “Come now, let’s see how this one turns out.” Herubbed his palms together excitedly, turning his attention back to the match.
Seeing little choice in the matter, and refusing to watch Cormac make a fool of himself, Astrid procured copious amounts of ale and snuck them into Cormac’s room, just as she had that first night when they’d playedhnefatafl. He would need coaching for theflyting. A man of few words, he could not be trusted to win a drunken poetry contest without some help.
This time, when he returned from the feast, he looked far less surprised to find her waiting for him.
Her heart swelled in her chest as he entered the room. In that moment, Astrid realized how much she’d been looking forward to speaking with him alone again. Something about him felt so familiar. It called to her. It grounded her. She didn’t know why, but she took great comfort in his presence, and the more time she spent there, the deeper she fell into it.
“That’s an awful lot of ale.” He eyed the two pitchers and pair of cups taking up the entirety of his bedside table. “I’ve already had some with dinner.”
“Sitric has just informed me that he intends to spring upon you a drinking contest.”
A small smile cracked at the corner of his full lips. “And you believe I need to practice drinking?” It widened to a mischievous grin, bringing to life a flutter in her stomach.
“It’s not just drinking.”
He walked over to join her on the bed, sitting much closer this time than he had when she was last in his room. A spark shot through her from the place where their legs touched on the edge of the bed.
“And what else might it entail?”
“You must insult your opponent in verse,” she explained.
“Like a bard?” Cormac looked skeptical.
“Aye, but there are ways to do it that will best appease my brother and the other Ostmen.”
“I see.”
It did not sound as though he saw at all. Astrid thought he should be quite a bit more alarmed than he appeared.
“It’s much more difficult than it sounds,” she insisted, as though he’d made some sort of argument.
His blue eyes smoldered at her playfully. “It sounds plenty hard.”
He was throwing her own words back at her, when she’d been skeptical of his Fianna challenges. “There are ways to insult and ways to get into a duel.”
“Ah. Well, I’d prefer not to kill a man at a drinking contest, so what should I not do?”
“If you call a man a coward, he’s within rights to attack you and to challenge you to a duel. It’s not an insult to be tossed lightly, but it is permitted. Just be aware that should he take exception, he can challenge you at your accusation. The same is true of telling a man he’s a fool or accusing him of treachery.”
“I can’t call a man a fool, but I must insult him? That I don’t understand,” he poured them each a cup of ale, handing one to Astrid. “Fool does not seem so deep an insult as a coward or a traitor.”
“All the same, those are the three words I would stay away from the most.”
Cormac nodded his understanding, but his brows furrowed as he considered her words.
“You must be poetic,” she tried again. “Use beautiful but hurtful words.”
Cormac sighed, taking a long drink. “I’ve heard the bards do something similar, but I’m not a bard, for all my training.”
“Bard or not, you’ll be asked to do it. Practice will help,” she raised her glass, “as will the ale.”
“Fine.” He took a long, loud gulp of ale. “Show me.”
“’Tis lucky for me that you’re competing,
It gives me someone easy for beating.”
Cormac burst into laughter at her rhyme. “Clever and brutal.”
