Come Back to Me (44 page)

"Did she bring anything for you?" Rycca asked as she sat up in the bed. To her astonishment, she was suddenly hungry. Watching two men battle to the death apparently stirred her appetite. Mayhap it had to do with who had won.

Dragon sighed. "It doesn't appear so." Nobly, he added, "But that's fine, I'm not hungry, and I have to write to Hawk without further delay."

"You could have some of the chicken," she said generously.

He saw her eyeing it and laughed. "No, sweetling, you go ahead."

She shrugged, which had the effect of causing the covers to fall away from her, and reached for the soup. Dragon went to the table by the window, moved the chair so that he had his back to his wife, and sat down to write his letter.

It was full dawn by the time they both were done. "I cannot sleep more," Rycca admitted though her eyes were shadowed with fatigue.

"I don't believe I can either." Dragon returned the trunk to its appointed place, tossed the remnants of the table outside the lodge, and sat down beside her on the bed. He touched the side of her face gently. "But you should try."

She shook her head. "Then I will dream and I don't want to, not yet."

Blessedly, he understood, but then he always seemed to do so. He stood up again and reached for her hand. "Let's ride."

They did, wild and free, over the long, stubble-scented fields nestled between the rising hills and the rolling sea.

They spoke of nothing that had happened but only of the gift of the moment, a bird in flight, light on sea foam, the scent of the wind. At midmorning, they stopped and ate the repast Magda had insisted on sending along with them. Sleepy in the aftermath, Rycca dozed. She woke from dreamless rest to find her lap filled with wildflowers—blue and gold violets, white starworts with bright yellow centers, wild geraniums, purple heather, pale lavender bellflowers, creamy butterworts… a treasure trove of nature's jewels.

"Where did these come from?" she asked her warrior husband.

He leaned back on his elbows and studied the sea. "Some trolls came by and left them."

"Trolls picking flowers?"

"More believable, surely, than me doing it?"

She laughed and surprised him by competently weaving the summer's late blossoms into a garland for her hair.

"How is it you know how to do that," he asked, "when you are so thoroughly undomestic?"

She threw a purple aster at him and laughed again. "I thought I was managing to conceal that."

"Oh, certainly. You learn fast, that's for sure, and Magda thinks the world of you, which she would not if she didn't think you had real ability. But tell me of the flower weaving."

She sighed with great exaggeration and obliged him. "One day at a fair I saw a girl wearing a flower garland. Never in my life had I wanted anything so much. There were others for sale but I knew better than to ask for one. It was quite astonishing enough that I'd been brought along. At any rate, I resolved then and there to learn how to weave them myself. I absolutely will not tell you how long it took me but eventually I mastered the art."

To prove her point, she set the completed garland on her head, where, he quickly assured her, it looked lovely. But he made a mental note that Rycca's barren childhood was one more crime for which Wolscroft would pay.

They rode back in the golden glow of afternoon. Scarcely had they topped the rise above the town than Dragon drew rein. Beneath him, bobbing on the ink-blue water, was a drakar, its wolf-emblazoned sail only just being furled.

"He couldn't possibly have received your letter," Rycca said as they rode swiftly to the stronghold. "And I know Cymbra has a rare gift but surely she cannot sense your thoughts."

"Something else must have happened," Dragon said and urged Sleipnir on.

Cymbra was already in the kitchens with Magda and the other women. Rycca hurried to join her while Dragon went down to the beach to welcome his brother. Wolf stood there on the strand, impassive as always, and watched the fire that had almost burned itself out.

"Magnus?" he asked, pointing to the pile of smoldering ash that had been a funeral pyre.

Dragon nodded, unsurprised that his brother had already heard. Such news must have
greeted
him the moment he stepped on shore. "I thought of burying him but decided he should have none of my land, not even that much."

"Rycca is all right?"

"She seems fine. I took her away from here while this was going on." He gestured to the pyre.

"I've had a letter from Hawk," Wolf said.

"And missed one from me. Come, let's crack a barrel of mead and talk."

Hawk had written to say that Alfred had heard rumblings of opposition to the alliance of Norse and Saxon coming from within his own kingdom. He suspected
Wolscroft but was unsure. As Dragon was now yoked by marriage to that unworthy, he thought it best if Wolf broke the news to him.

"No news," Dragon said as they sat in the great hall, flagons of mead before them. "Magnus confessed before he died."

He told his brother what the traitor had said. Wolf heard him out grimly. "We underestimated Wolscroft," he said. "I thought him a bully and drunkard, nothing more."

"As did I. Bringing him down will not be easy."

Wolf nodded. "He holds much of Saxon Mercia since Hawk killed Udell last year. If he were to go over to the Danes—" There was no need to say more. Alfred of Wessex had united much of England to stand against the invaders but the peace he had wrought was precarious. It might easily be undone.

"He won't," Dragon said. "Wolscroft hates the Danes."

His brother looked surprised. "How do you know this?"

Briefly, Dragon related the story Rycca had told him of the Danes' raid when she was a child, of Wolscroft's cowardice and his determination to keep it secret. "Can you see him making alliance with the very men who caused him to so shame himself?"

"Unlikely," Wolf agreed. The brothers looked at each other as certainty dawned.

"Then," Dragon said, "his target must be Alfred… and Alfred's alliance with us."

"That false priest Elbert said the bitch Daria was allied with the Danes."

"He may have lied."

There was time after that to eat the very fine meal Cymbra and Magda prepared with Rycca's able assistance, to linger over the table as Dragon spun stories, and for lovers to dream the night away in each other's arms.

But on the morning tide, while yet a ghostly mist lingered over the water, shouts rang out on the quays, oars slipped into their locks, and sails billowed as a dozen war-armed dragon ships sailed for England.

THE HAWK OF ESSEX LOOKED OUT TOWARD the sea and thought for a moment that he had stepped back in time. As it had more than two years before, a Viking war fleet was bearing down on his shore.

He called to his wife, who was, after all, Norse and whom he knew had a good grasp of things. "Would you agree that Wolf and Dragon are reasonable men?"

Krysta lifted their son from the basin in which she had been bathing him, grinned at the baby's eager kicks, and wrapped him snugly in a blanket before joining Hawk at the window. "Eminently reasonable."

He looked again over the sea. "Something has stirred them." Buckling on his sword, he went to find out what it was.

Krysta hurried down to find Rycca and Cymbra in the great hall. The women hugged one another, cooed over Lion and Falcon, and exchanged the usual comments about the voyage, which thankfully had been uneventful. Krysta was not fooled. She saw the strain in the eyes of the two women she was happy to regard as sisters, and she was determined to ease it as much as possible.

Summoning servants, she sent the children off to be spoiled and adored, and declared, "Let's take the sauna before the men do."

Cymbra and Rycca helped gather towels and scented soaps and oils. While yet their husbands were conversing on the quay, they hurried off to the chamber set in the side of the hill. When the women had disrobed, Krysta added wood to the firebox and threw water on the heated stones. A sizzling cloud of steam scented with pine rose to fill the dimly lit interior.

Rycca sighed with relief and stretched out on one of the low wooden benches. The others did the same. They spoke idly for a few minutes until Krysta said, "Tell me what has happened, all of it. I know Hawk wrote to Wolf about Alfred's concerns, but why have you come in such force?"

"Because Alfred may need help," Rycca replied. She told Krysta of the events at Wolscroft, adding, "It shames me deeply to admit this but I think my father sought to kill me, slay Dragon, and make it appear as though I had died at his hand while defending myself. Had he succeeded, the alliance could have been destroyed and even Alfred's hold on the throne weakened."

"No shame attaches to you," Cymbra said gently. "Clearly, you are not your father's daughter in any way that matters."

"Absolutely not," Krysta agreed promptly. "You bear no responsibility for his actions. Look you, I have a halfwit brother who tried to brand me a witch and deny Hawk my dowry. I share no blame for his idiocy."

Cymbra wound the gleaming mass of her hair high on her head, secured it with a ribbon, and nodded. "Nor do I count myself responsible for the actions of Daria, who is, after all, my half-sister. The bonds of family can be wonderful but there is a time to know when to stand apart." She held out a hand to Rycca on the nearby bench. "Besides, we are your family now, all of us, and we know your worth."

Deeply touched, Rycca had to blink several times before she could respond. She knew both women spoke pure truth and loved them for it. After a lifetime of emotional solitude unbroken but for Thurlow, it was still difficult for her to comprehend that she was no longer alone. Yet was she beginning to understand it.

Softly, she said, "I worry over Dragon. He refuses to talk of my father or of what will happen now that we are here, but I fear he is planning to take matters into his own hands."

Cymbra and Krysta exchanged a glance. Quietly, Cymbra said, "Your instinct is not wrong. Dragon simmers with rage at the harm attempted to you. In Landsende I caught a mere glimpse of it, and it was like peering into one of those mountains that belch fire."