The Runaway They Mocked Is The Protector Of Midgard

6

The arena was packed to the sky.

Thousands had come to watch ten years of power change hands in one night. Lords in furs. Children on their fathers’ shoulders.

And in the maids’ row, one woman whose cheek still burned, praying to any god still listening that one of the other five men would win.

Because Liv knew what happened to her if Rothgar took that title tonight. The law of the new lord was absolute. His law—and his wish. And she knew exactly what his wish was.

A horn blasted.

Six men walked onto the sand. Five wore battle faces. Rothgar wore the grin of a man reading a story he had already finished.

Then the iron gates ground open, and the first trial came out screaming.

A war-bird the size of a house dropped into the square, wings blotting the torchlight, and its throat convulsed—

“DOWN!” someone screamed.

A sleet of black quills sprayed across the sand. Two of the six dove for the barriers. A third was too slow and went down with a quill through his thigh, howling.

Liv’s whole body jerked as if the quill had found her instead.

Rothgar did not dive.

He walked into it.

Quills shattered off the crimson runes flaring across his skin. Then his jaw dropped open wider than any man’s should, and fire came out of him like a river bursting a dam.

The bird had time for one shriek.

Then it was a falling shape of flame, then ash, drifting down over the arena like grey snow.

The heat rolled up to the maids’ row and washed over Liv’s face like an open forge. Her mouth went dry as the sand below.

The crowd detonated. “ROTH-GAR! ROTH-GAR!”

Liv’s hands twisted into her apron until the knuckles went white. Two seconds. The man she had been praying against had burned a monster to ash in two seconds, and under her ribs her heart threw itself against the bone like it wanted out.

Something else hit the sand—low, fast, plated like a beetle, venom hissing off its fangs. It lunged for Rothgar’s back.

He moved at the last blink. Not away. Sideways—

—and the spray of venom meant for him took the competitor beside him full in the face.

The man’s scream didn’t sound human.

Liv shoved her fist against her mouth and bit down to keep her scream inside. On the sand, the man clawed at his face, and clawed, and then stopped moving.

It was not an accident. Everyone in the arena saw it was not an accident. The crowd cheered anyway, and Liv’s stomach heaved. She swallowed the bile back down and it burned the whole way. This was the man the law wanted to hand her to.

Rothgar split the beetle-thing open with one rune-wrapped fist, flicked the ichor from his knuckles, and looked up into the stands.

He found the maids’ row. He found her.

And he smiled.

The colour drained from Liv’s face so fast the world tilted. She gripped the bench and held on, breathing through her teeth, while the man on the sand smiled up at her like the night was already his engagement feast.

The horn sounded again. Beast trial over. Now the men.

It was not a fight. It was a harvest.

The axe-man charged first—“AAARGH—”—and the roar cut off mid-breath as Rothgar’s elbow met his jaw. He was unconscious before his axe finished falling.

Liv shut her eyes.

It didn’t help. She heard the hammer-lord’s shield cave in like wet bark. She heard the spearman caught by the throat, lifted, and put through the barrier wall with a sound like the world cracking.

She forced her eyes back open. Not watching felt like lying to herself about what was coming for her.

“ARGH!” “Lord, mercy—!” “ROTH-GAR! ROTH-GAR!”

Screams from the sand. Chants from the stands. Liv could no longer tell which was louder—or if the loudest thing in the arena was her own blood in her ears.

The last challenger looked at what was left of the other four. Then he laid his sword on the sand and knelt.

And it was over.

Black spots crowded the edges of Liv’s vision. She realized she had not been breathing and dragged air in like a woman surfacing from deep water.

Rothgar stood alone in the wreckage, painted in blood and ash, arms spread wide, turning slowly so the whole arena could drink him in. He was not even breathing hard. He looked like a man who had done this many times and stayed hungry every time.

“WHO ELSE?!” he bellowed, laughing.

The crowd screamed his name.

Every time a man had hit that sand, Liv felt it land in her own chest. That one could have won. That one too, maybe, if the gods were kind. One by one they were carried away, and one by one the same thought grew louder in her skull: no one was going to stop this man.

No one was coming.

Then the arena changed.

A man walked out onto the sand, and the roar died around him like a fire running out of air.

He was young for the weight he carried—early thirties at most—with a face no living soul had ever seen smile. Vargr, the Lawspeaker. Keeper of the old law, crowner of lords. The man said to know the secrets of every soul in Askheim.

Even Rothgar’s grin lost some of its teeth.

Vargr did not raise his voice, and the whole arena heard every word.

“Rothgar Ashbane has defeated every man of rank who dared enter this sand. Your eyes have seen his strength. By the old law, one thing remains.” His gaze swept the stands. “If any soul in this arena believes themselves stronger, let them stand now and challenge him. Or be silent—and pay obedience to the new Lord of Askheim for ten years. His law. And his wish.”

His law. And his wish.

Silence fell over thousands of people at once. Who would stand? They had all just watched what standing meant.

Rothgar closed his eyes and breathed in the silence, the lordship already on his tongue—

Then, from the back rows, gasps.

Somewhere a cup shattered on stone.

A woman was standing in the maids’ row.

Her legs did not feel like her own. Her heart slammed hard enough that she felt it in her bitten knuckles. Anyone close could see her shaking. But she had done her arithmetic, the same arithmetic that had kept her alive six years: silence tonight was not survival. Silence was ten years of his law and his wish, and there was nothing left of her that could pay it.

Better her daughter’s mother die on this sand than live as this man’s toy.

And if Kaedric was watching from wherever the dead watched—let him see that she had kept her word to the very end.

Liv raised her chin, and her voice carried to every corner of the arena.

“I, Liv—daughter of no house, and mother of one child—challenge Rothgar Ashbane for the lordship of Askheim.”

The whole arena forgot how to breathe.