Lord of Falcon Ridge (8 page)

“I want to stay with you and Merrik,” Laren had said, eyes narrowed on his face.

Merrik said easily, “The men would welcome your presence and your skald's tales, but Oleg has begged me to allow you to oversee the second trading vessel. We haven't enough leaders, he told me.”

“You lie with the ease of a dying man who swears he will sin no more.”

“It is why you adore me.”

She laughed, she couldn't help it, swooped down, and swung Kiri up into her arms. “Come, love, you will see your papa tonight.”

Later, as the men rowed into the Channel, Merrik said, “It worries me that Kiri is with us. You should have left her at Malverne with the boys, or even here with Rollo.”

“Nay,” Cleve said. “We are going home, Merrik. I will protect her. Besides, you know that she doesn't like to be apart from me.”

“That's not the half of it and you know it. She doesn't eat, she won't play with the other children. She does the chores Laren gives to her but there is no joy in her. She looks like a pinched little ghost. It scares everyone to see this little girl waste away when her papa isn't there.”

Cleve said, “You see, I am right to bring her with me, despite any risks. Choosing the correct number of days I'll be gone is beyond difficult. I'd rather worry having her with me than worry having her waste away if I didn't return in the time I promised her.”

“I doubt not we will manage to get Chessa back, but there will be problems, Cleve. We will have to take her to Rouen before we can voyage up to Scotland.”

“Aye, I know it, and I dislike the delay, but this girl Chessa is a good sort, as women go. She is bright. She is really quite beautiful. Her eyes are greener than the hills behind Oslo after a heavy rain.”

Merrik eyed his friend thoughtfully. “You like her?”

“Aye, I like her. She was open and friendly.”

“But you didn't trust her.”

“I would have to be an ass to give my trust to another woman.”

“Cleve, you must forget Sarla.”

“It isn't to the point, Merrik. It makes no difference if I believed her a crone or a Christian's angel. She's a princess. She is to wed William. It is good for William that she is open and friendly, or at least pretends to it.”

“If Ragnor of York has raped her, no man of high rank will wed her and you know it.”

Cleve just looked at his friend, his hand unconsciously going to the beautifully worked knife at his belt.

This was interesting, Merrik thought. He made his way to where Eller sat, tapped him on the shoulder, and took over his oar. Soon he was stripped to his loincloth, his back glistening with sweat.

 

 

T
HE SKY WAS
darker than the bottom of a witch's caldron. The storm was close now. There was no wind, no movement of any kind. The huge wadmal square sail was hanging loosely as the flesh on an old man's neck. It was hard to breathe, the air was so thick and still. It seemed that the earth had simply stopped.

The storm was closer now. It had to be because surely they couldn't continue like this, the warship like a ghost, eerie and silent in the water, no sound, no squawking of gulls overhead, no lapping of waves against the overlapping oak plank sides of the ship. Even the sea serpent's head that stretched up above the prow looked strangely ghostly, as unearthly and terrifying as it must to the natives when they saw a Viking warship coming out of the fog, a demon come to take them to hell. But now it was different.

They waited, unwilling to move, silent as the still water around them that would become their tomb.

She stood in the opening of the covered cargo space looking out at the men who sat on their sea chests, bent motionless over their oars. Even they had stopped rowing, becoming as still as everything around them. They were silently praying to Thor, to Odin.

Ragnor's ship lay off the coast of East Anglia. Kerek had told her that Ragnor was drunk. He was sprawled
beside the rudder, too frightened to do anything but drink the last of the warm mead. Kerek told her in a low voice that the captain, Torric, wondered if they would see morning. Torric had seen the beginning of a storm like this only one other time in his life, off the western coast of Norway, but that time the air wasn't warm and dead the way it was now. It had been frigid, so cold that the men accepted death when the storm blew in on them because if they were hurled into the sea, they would be frozen in an instant.

Torric was then a lad of ten years old when he and one other warrior had managed to ride the storm out, landing on the rugged rocky shores near Bergen.

Now Torric walked to where Kerek and Chessa stood. “It will be here very soon now,” he said, his voice a whisper.

She said nothing. What was there to say?

Then Kerek was pointing, nearly panting in his excitement. “Look, yon, 'tis an island. See how the blackness has parted over there? It is an island, I'm sure of it. Surely Torric, if the men row with all their might we can reach it. There must be a safe harbor there.”

“Aye,” Torric said, hope in his voice. “Aye, I see it. The gods have shown it to you. It wasn't there before, I would swear to it.”

She waited silently, listening to Torric yell at the men, urging them to row with all their might, telling them they would survive if they made it to that island.

“It's the storm that makes for the strange lighting,” Kerek said. “I think it's raining hard over the island. The splurges of lightning make it visible. Go inside now, Princess.”

“Oh, no, Kerek, I will watch. Isn't there anything I can do to help?”

“You can stay alive,” he said, and left her.

It seemed but moments later that a sheet of rain cascaded down upon them. She watched one man plucked up by a mountainous wave and tossed into the sea. No one could
do anything. Torric yelled louder for them to row, row, harder and harder still.

 

 

Hawkfell Island

 

 

“My lord, all the boats are pulled ashore, lashed down, and covered. We're ready for the storm.”

Rorik Haraldsson, Lord of Hawkfell Island, nodded, raising his face as rain swept in. He sucked in his breath at the force of it. It had been years since he'd felt anything this violent. Everything had been done that could be done. Now they would simply wait.

He turned back into the longhouse. The long rectangular structure was already filled with a faint blue tint from the smoke held inside the huge closed house. He walked to his wife, Mirana, who was sewing calmly, probably a blue shirt for him, since she'd long ago declared that it made him look even more magnificent than he actually was.

He rather liked the way she always complimented him and smacked him at the same time. There wasn't a sweetly compliant bone in her entire body and he loved her dearly. He knew she would kill anyone who tried to harm him, kill anyone who threatened their island, their people, their children. He trusted her implicitly, something he didn't believe many men could say about their wives or their friends. She looked up as he approached, but she didn't smile. Her face was pale, and he noticed with a frown that her fingers were none too steady with her needle.

He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Is it blue, wife?”

“What? The air? Of course it's blue. The smoke can't escape, you know that, what with the doors closed against the storm and—oh, your shirt. Of course it's blue. It's just the color of your eyes. I must make you many of them before your eyes fade to some dull color and I forget what they were once like. By all the gods, Rorik, it sounds as if Thor has unleashed all his anger on us.”

“Aye, but what do you expect? I told you not to do those
woman things to my body. The gods don't like mere women to seek to dominate their menfolk, they know that men are weak of flesh and always eager to take whatever is offered to them.” He grinned shamelessly at her.

She was out of her chair, the beautiful blue shirt tossed on the chair arm, and at him. She was hitting his chest with her fists, laughing, biting his shoulder.

“Mama, don't hurt Papa. Surely what he did wasn't that bad, was it?”

Mirana turned to look down at her little girl, Aglida, so beautifully golden that it closed her throat to look at the child. “Your papa,” she said, sweeping the little girl into her arms, “is a great jester. He thinks himself amusing when he is only outrageous. He believes he can crush me down with his humor, when in fact he falls short and—”

“Papa is perfect,” Aglida said, reaching for Rorik.

“She will get over this,” Mirana said and handed their daughter to Rorik.

“Nay, she will be just like her mother and worship me forever.”

She gave him a shove, then kissed him. “I will surely make you pay for your humor, my lord.”

“Aye, you will. You always do. It pleases me. Now I see that you tossed my shirt aside like a bone you chewed on. I only have one chest filled with blue shirts. I cannot afford to have you toss one aside.”

“Aye, it's just like a bone Mama's chewed on,” Aglida said. “I'll sew you another shirt, Papa. It will be as beautiful as Mama's, mayhap better.”

“Mama's what, sweeting?”

“Rorik, be quiet. Come, Aglida, 'tis time you slept.”

All had watched the play between the master and mistress. All heard the laughter, saw the smiles. All knew they were doing it apurpose, to ease everyone. It worked. A woman giggled when her husband patted her buttocks. A child yelled at another to throw her the leather ball. Conversation became louder. The children began playing again. Their parents began speaking of sleep.

Rain crashed against the sod and wood-shingled roof, making the big wooden beams creak and moan, sounding, Old Firren said, like a battle between the gods, and it would be men who would lose.

It went on and on, lessening for long periods of time, then beginning again. It was near midnight, all the Hawkfell people still awake, the children at last asleep, waiting and listening.

The door burst open and Hafter ran in. “A ship,” he shouted. “There's a ship in the harbor and it's breaking up against the shore.”

The men were out of the longhouse in moments, running through the wide palisade doors and down the narrow path that led to the beach.

Rorik ran out onto the dock, the rain slashing against his face, so much of it, he felt he would drown if he opened his mouth. Great slashes of lightning rent the sky. The warship was heaving to its side, the great sea serpent's head dipping beneath the huge waves.

He heard men shouting, saw them desperately trying to row the ship to shore, but it sent them spinning. Then it seemed as if the sea, in a furious spurt, shoved the ship onto the shore so hard that several men were flung overboard. Rorik shouted to his men. They were at the ship in moments, pulling the men from the water, watching others gathering their chests before they realized that they were ashore and would remain there. For a moment, several of the men simply stood on the swaying ship, just staring at Rorik and his people, disbelieving that they had survived. Very soon they would fear they'd only survived the storm to be killed here. He strode forward, shouting above the noise of the rain and thunder, “I am Rorik and this is Hawkfell Island. We won't harm you. Come, you're safe now.”

Still the men hung back. They could be easily butchered. They had knives at their belts, swords, helmets, and shields in their sea chests.

“Come,” Rorik said again, knowing well their thoughts,
knowing he would distrust any unknown man who didn't try to kill him on a strange island in the middle of a storm.

The men were looking at each other and he knew they realized they were helpless. Suddenly, a woman jumped from the ship onto the beach. A
woman
! Rorik dashed the rain from his face only to hear her call out, “Lord Rorik, it is you, isn't it? Thank you for your welcome. We believed ourselves lost but the gods brought us to you.”

Then another man jumped after her, shouting, “Don't listen to her, she lies, she's my prisoner. I am marrying her, don't listen to her.”