↳ promises

404 10 0
                                    

with a nudge from his brother, eivor tells you how he feels before departing on a raid to england.

EIVOR WOLFSMAL APPRAISES his battle and throwing axes splayed over the low wooden table, heaving a long sigh. Each of the blades are honed and prepared for the journey west. Though before the journey begins, the village is hosting a feast before sending off the traveling party —asking for both blessing and protection from the gods. Placing a bow and quiver next to the axes, Eivor steps back, glancing at the intricate blade strapped to his vambrace. Turning his hand into a fist, the slim blade extends then retracts. With Kjotve's death, he has no need to bear arms for the celebration, but the thought of his parents stays his hand from loosening the clasps on the wrist blade.

Outside, the fresh snow crunches underfoot though he pays no mind to it until a sweet voice cries his name. "Eivor!" A smile twists his lips upward before he even turns to see you standing in the doorway of his small home. You step forward and reach for Eivor, taking one of his hands as you rise to kiss his scarred cheek in greeting before stepping back —observing what he'd been working on. "Need any help?" You ask, having already aided your brother in gathering his belongings for the voyage.

"I can manage," Eivor replies, his lips twitching into another smile tinged with longing as he meets your eyes, "but I wouldn't mind the company." You slide two smaller axes across the table, making a place to sit as he reaches for a pouch of milled arrowheads and stack of stripped, supple branches already fletched with the dark feathers of a puffin. While watching him secure one of the points on the arrow shaft with beeswax, you can't help but notice the cloud hanging over him —as though something is haunting him.

Eivor is one of your oldest friends and the one you consider dearest to your heart. "What's wrong?" He shakes his head, attempting to play off the weights residing on his shoulders. "You've got a look about you that could quiet thunder," you note, handing him another arrowhead. You piece together his downtrodden mood and absence from the feast a few days prior. "You went to Valka," you surmise —few things could make a man look so troubled as the Seer's foretelling.  

"Her words did not sit well with me," he answers, thinking of Valka's words about his and Sigurd's relationship and the forthcoming loss of someone dear to him. Valka would not say who, but Eivor could only assume she spoke of you —the woman he'd grown to love and now loved in silence. A sigh escapes his parted lips as he places the finished arrow in the quiver and turns from the table. He gathers two wooden mugs and dipping them into a bucket of Tekla's latest batch of mead

"They rarely sit well with anyone," you say, trying to ease his look of worry and despair. You move from the tabletop to one of the short benches and Eivor slides onto the one across from you, staring down into the amber liquid filling his cup. He takes a drink and looks up.

"I dreamt about you," Eivor remarks, his voice wistful for a time long past. Since Sigurd announced the plans to sail, you frequented his dreams more often —his mind's way of goading him into voicing the feelings he harbored for too many winters. You raise a brow, setting down the cup of mead, a silent urging for him to continue. "About when we were young and reckless," he muses.

"Reckless?" You laugh. "Eivor, you still are." Few would dare say otherwise. He laughs too, knowing it to be the truth.

"Do you remember the night we ran off and almost froze to death before the next sunrise?" Eivor asks —that had been the memory to visit him in a dream last night. You'd both been upset with your brothers over something trivial and made off in the woods together at dusk with only a loaf of brown bread and two throwing aces between the two of you. After the snow filled in the tracks leading back to the settlement, you and Eivor were lost in the woods and spent the frigid night in an alcove of rock until the next morning when found by a search party. 

Assassin's Creed DrabblesWhere stories live. Discover now