She seemed as if she paid no mind at all to the squabble behind her, which ended just as swift as it began with a few heavy blows, yet it wasn't easy to ignore a typical bar-room tussle as this.  When at first the drunken braggart did swagger and sway about the lowly tavern, Tarja was already anticipating a fight to commence, one hand casually rested upon the table clutched around her tankard of spiced ale while the other was discreetly yet vigilantly held over her steel dagger, should she have to draw it and give it a quick plunge into the bastard Nord's neck.  Luckily, no violence had to follow from the Forsworn woman, because if it were her having to join the fray, that drunken buffoon would be bleeding from more than a busted nose and mouth.  With a gruff sigh, she merely scowled to herself thinking of what a fool the Nord made of his self in front of everyone, yet a smirk at how the other dealt with him, so brash, so brutal and unrestrained...well slightly restrained actually.  A common attitude of someone carrying...wolfblood in their veins.  Tarja sighed again and downed the last of her ale, clattering her tankard against the stout, pinewood table, which garnered the attention of the barmaid Mildred.

[i]"Can I get you anything else, lass?"[/i], with a sweet chime she asked the Forsworn.  Tarja only glanced at her with a pair of hardened eyes, empty eyes practically void of any emotion at all, and shook her head quietly before Mildred gathered her tankard and whisked herself away feeling a tad nervous of the slightly taller woman.  She stood from her table giving a stretch and cracking a few bones in her neck before turning around, inadvertently facing the victor of the brawl.  Vaynce was his name, as given roughly by his own voice to the drunk left bleeding and out cold on the wooden floors of the tavern, small plits of red here and there from where his teeth were caved in on the spruce planks.  Tarja looked at him for a moment, shaping him up it seemed.  He was a burly lad for sure, a physique worthy of Ysmir himself, yet Tarja could sense, even feel from a few paces away the ferocity oozing from his pores in such a foreboding aura, well...foreboding to some.

Then, just for once did the woman's lips part, and soon she spoke, low, almost inaudible, and with a heaviness to her voice, [b]"You fight with the strength of Ysgramor, Companion."[/b]  He outed himself to the woman, easy to tell he was of the Companions.  Tarja only knew of them from her travels of Skyrim, having stopped in Whiterun for a night of rest and hearing from Hulda of the Bannered Mare of the mighty Companions and their Harbinger, a powerful and noble warrior.  Jorrvaskr where they made their home, the mead hall atop the hill of stone leading to the Skyforge, where the fires blazed hotter than the steam billows of the Rift.  Yet, what she also heard was talk of how the Silver Hand once led an attack on Jorrvaskr, claiming the life of the former Harbinger, a Kodlak Whitemane.  From there, Tarja just put two and two together.  Only a particular reason they'd gain the ire of those worthless buffoons with their fancy swords.

Tarja sat beside Vaynce at the bar, her eyes forward with a distant gaze elsewhere while she spoke, [b]"Wasn't expecting to run into the finest warriors of Whiterun here in Winterhold.  Long way from home, aren't you?"[/b]