Lord of Falcon Ridge (Viking Era 4)

1

Malverne farmstead

Vestfold, Norway

A.D. 922

CLEVE DREAMED THE dream the first time on the night of his daughter’s third natal day. It was in the middle of the night in the deepest summer, and thus it never darkened to black until it was nearly dawn again. He was sleeping deeply in that soft gray dark of the midnight summer when the dream came. He stood on a high, narrow cliff listening, sniffing the warm, wet air. Below him was a raging waterfall roiling through slick boulders only to narrow with the tightening of the banks before it shot out over a lower cliff, crashing far below beyond where he could see. A light mist fell about him. It was suddenly so cold that he shivered. He pulled his warm woolen cloak closer.

All around him were thick stands of trees and bright purple and yellow flowering plants that seemed to grow out of the rocks themselves. Boulders and large stones were scattered among the low, scrubby brush. He followed the snaking path, making his way down through the narrow cut in the foliage. A pony awaited him at the bottom: black as night with a white star on its forehead. It was blowing gently. Cleve knew the pony. Although it was small, it seemed right to him. He realized that just as he knew the pony, he knew this land of crags and misting rain and air so soft and sweet it made him want to weep.

There was a single wolfskin on his pony’s back which he knocked askew when he jumped onto its back. A moment later, he was racing across a meadow that was filled with bright flowers, their sweet scent filling the air. The misting rain stopped and the sun came out. It was high overhead, hot and bright. Soon he felt sweat bead on his forehead. The pony turned at the end of the meadow toward another trail that led eastward. He pulled the pony to a stop, turning it away to the opposite direction. He felt sweat stinging his eyes, wet his armpits. No, he didn’t want to go that way, just thinking of it made his belly cramp with fear. No, he wanted to ride away, far away, never to have to see . . . see what? He sat atop the pony’s back shaking his head back and forth. No, never would he go back. But then he knew he would, knew he had no choice, and suddenly, he was there, staring blankly at the huge wooden house with its sod and shingled roof. This was no simple home really, but a fortress. He realized then that he heard nothing, absolutely nothing. There was so much silence, yet men and women were working in the fields, carrying firewood, directing children. A man with huge arms was lifting a sword above his head, testing its weight and balance. There was no laughter, no arguments, just a deathly silence that filled the air itself and he knew that was the way it always was. Then he heard low voices coming from within the huge fortress. He didn’t want to go in there. The voices became louder as the immense wooden door opened. Through air that was thick with smoke from the fire pit he could see men sharpening their axes, polishing their helmets. He could see women weaving, sewing, and cooking. It all looked so normal, yet he wanted to run from this place, but he couldn’t. Then he saw her standing there, her golden head bowed, so small she was, so defenseless, and he backed away, shaking his head, feeling a keening wail build up inside him. She’d spun, dyed, and woven his woolen cloak for him and he clutched it to him as if by doing so he could clutch her and save her. A part of him seemed to know the danger she was in; he also knew he was helpless to prevent what would happen. He was outside the fortress now, but he could still hear the calm, low voice that was speaking from somewhere within. It was deadly, that voice, just as deadly as the man who possessed it. Soon he would be silent. Soon, all would be silent, except for her. The low, deep voice murmured on until it was pierced by the woman’s scream. That was all it took; Cleve knew what had happened.

He ran as fast as he could, looking frantically for the pony, but the pony was no longer there. He heard a cry of pain, then another and another. The cries grew louder and louder, filling him with such unutterable emptiness that he saw nothing, became nothing.

He gasped, jerking upright in his box bed.

“Papa.”

He heard her soft voice before he could react, before he could pull himself away from the terror he couldn’t see, a terror that gnawed at him just the same. He knew, he knew . . .

“Papa. I heard you cry out. Are you all right?”

“Aye,” he said finally, focusing on his daughter. Her hair, as golden as his own, fell in tangles around her small face. “’Twas a vicious dream, naught more, just a dream. Come here, sweeting, and let me hug you.”

He tried to believe it was just a dream, nothing more than a simple dream concocted out of the barley soup he’d eaten for the evening meal.

He lifted his daughter onto the box bed and pulled her into his arms. He held her close to his heart, this small perfect being whom he’d magically created. He tried not to think of her mother, Sarla, the woman he’d loved who had tried to kill him, particularly not so soon after that dream that still made his heart thud against his chest and made the sweat itch in his armp

its.

Kiri kissed his chin, curling her thin arms around his neck. She squeezed hard, then giggled, and that brought him fully back into himself. It had been nothing but a strange dream, nothing more.

She said, “I kicked Harald today. He said I couldn’t use his sword. He said I was a girl and had enough to do without learning to kill men. I told him he wasn’t a man, he was just a little boy. He got all red in the face and called me a name I know is bad, so I kicked him hard.”

“Do you remember what Harald called you?”

She shook her head against his chest. He smiled down at her though he felt more heartache than he wished to let on. He couldn’t protect her forever from the truth. Children heard the adults talking. Sometimes they spoke of that time so long ago and spoke of Sarla, then looked sideways at Kiri, who looked nothing like her mother. No, Kiri was the image of him. Were they trying to see Sarla in her? Aye, of course they were.

He hugged Kiri to him. He loved her so much he ached with it. This tiny scrap of his, so perfectly formed, a face so beautiful he knew someday men would lose their heads at the mere sight of her. Yet from her earliest months Kiri had clutched at her father’s knife, not at the soft linen-stuffed doll her Aunt Laren had made for her. It was he who arranged the stuffed doll where Kiri slept so Laren’s feelings wouldn’t be hurt.

To his now sleeping daughter he whispered, “I dreamed of a place that seems not so different from Norway, but deep down I know it is. There was mist so soft you could believe it woven into cloth, all gray and light, and yellow and purple flowers that were everywhere and I knew they were everywhere, not just that place in my dream. It was very different from any place I have ever been in my life. It was familiar to me. I recognized it. I knew more fear than I have in my life.”

He stopped. He didn’t want to speak aloud of it. It scared him, he freely admitted it to himself. He hadn’t been himself in that dream, but he had, and that, he couldn’t explain. He kissed his daughter’s hair, then settled her against him. He fell asleep near dawn, the lush scent of those strange flowers hovering nearby, teasing the air in his small chamber.

Malverne farmstead

Vestfold, Norway

Nearly two years later

“Damnation, Cleve, I could have killed you. You’re just standing there like a goat without a single thought in his head, ready to take an arrow through his heart and be the evening meal. What is wrong with you? Where the hell is your knife? It should be aimed at my chest, you damned madman.”

Cleve shook his head at Merrik Haraldsson, the man who had rescued him along with Laren and her small brother, Taby, five years before in Kiev. Merrik was his best friend, the man who’d taught him to fight, to be a Viking warrior, the man who was now striding toward him, his bow at his side, anger radiating from him because he feared Cleve had not learned his lessons well enough. It was an uncertain world. Danger could appear at any moment, even here at Malverne, Merrik’s farmstead, a magnificent home surrounded with mighty mountains and a fjord below that was so blue it hurt the eyes when the sun shone directly upon it.

Cleve waited. When Merrik was just an arm’s length from him, Cleve turned smoothly to his side, gracefully kicked out his foot, connecting with Merrik’s belly, no lower, for he didn’t want to send his friend into agony, then he leapt at him, his knee in his chest, knocking him backward. He landed on top of Merrik, straddling him, his knife poised at his throat.

Merrik looked surprised. He said nothing. He brought his knees against Cleve’s back, hard, knocking the breath from him, even as he jerked sideways, hitting upward with his mighty arm, trying to throw Cleve to the ground beyond him. Cleve dug his knees into Merrik’s lean sides, closed his eyes against the pain in his back, and held on. Were Merrik an enemy, he would be dead, the knife sliding clean and quickly through his neck, but this was naught but sport and there was more pain to be borne, more grunts and curses to turn the air a richer blue than it now was in late spring, more breaths to explode into the warm afternoon light, before Merrik would allow him to declare victory, if that would indeed be the outcome. Merrik was a cunning bastard and Cleve still hadn’t learned all his tricks, even after five long years.

Oleg shouted from behind them, “Enough, both of you. You’ll kill each other and then what will Laren do? I’ll tell you what. She’d take Merrik’s big sword and hit both your butts with the broad side. Then she’d kiss Merrik until he wanted to rut more than he wanted to fight.” He was laughing, standing over them now, hands on his hips. Oleg was a big man, golden as most of the Vikings were, his eyes as blue as the summer sky.

Finally, when Cleve lightened the pressure from Merrik’s throat, Merrik splayed his hands upward in the dirt. “I am defeated. Actually, I’m dead, truth be told. You and that bloody knife, Cleve. You’ve gotten much too adroit with it. Then you’ve got the gall to toss it away and use your elbows on me, a trick I taught you.”

“You were angry, Merrik. You’ve told me often enough that a man is a fool if he allows himself to be angered during a fight.” Cleve grinned down at him. “Actually, I don’t think you had a chance, angry or not.”

Merrik cursed him, loud and long, until all three of them were laughing and others had come to them and were telling some of their own tales of cunning and guile.

Cleve climbed off Merrik, then offered his hand to his friend. Merrik could have broken Cleve’s arm, could have thrown him six feet with a simple twist of his body, could have brought him eye to eye and crushed the life from him, but he’d claimed defeat, and thus the sport was done, at least for now. There was always another day to test each other’s strength.

Suddenly, Merrik was as serious as he’d been when fever had come to Malverne the past spring and killed ten of their people. “Listen to me, Cleve. You can never relax vigilance, you know that. There is always trouble somewhere, and if you blink, the trouble can be right in front of you. Remember just weeks ago my cousin Lotti nearly died when a wild boar came into the barley fields? She was lucky that Egill was nearby. You can never nap, my friend, never.”

Cleve remembered well enough and the memory still made his blood run cold. Cleve adored Lotti, a woman who couldn’t speak but who could communicate just as clearly as those who did by moving her fingers. It was a language of her own creation but all the Malek people, her children, and her husband, Egill, understood, and spoke thus to her as well. Cleve himself had learned some words over the past five years but he doubted his fingers could ever be so adroit as Lotti’s or Egill’s.

“I was thinking of a dream I had,” Cleve said. No sooner had he said this than he wished he’d kept his mouth shut. Dreams were always important to Vikings, each one remembered was spoken about, argued over endlessly, until all were satisfied that it posed no danger to any of them.

“What dream?” Oleg said, handing each man a cup of pure fjord water, so cold in late spring that it constricted the throat.

“A dream that has come to me five times now.”

“Five nights in a row?”

“Nay, Oleg, five times over the past two years, it has come unexpected. It has become fuller, richer, I suppose, like one of Ileria’s tapestries, yet I still can’t grasp what it means. But it means something, I know that it does. It’s very frustrating.”

“Tell us,” Merrik said. “A dream that returns in fuller detail could mean something very important, Cleve. It could portend things to come, mayhap dangers of which we know naught as of yet.”

“I cannot, Merrik. Not yet. Please, my friend, not yet. It’s not about here or about you. It’s about the past, the very distant past.”

Merrik let it go. Cleve was as stubborn as Laren, Merrik’s red-haired wife, particularly once he’d made up his mind. As they walked down to the fjord to swim with a half dozen of the men and boys, he changed the subject. “You leave tomorrow for Normandy and Rollo’s court. You will tell Duke Rollo we will come to Rouen to visit after harvest.” He paused a moment, his face lighting with such affect

ion that Cleve was glad Merrik’s sons weren’t there to see it. “Tell Taby I will teach him a new wrestling trick. By all the gods, I miss him. He’s ten years old now, a handsome lad, honest and loyal.”

“You couldn’t have kept him with you, Merrik. As Rollo’s nephew, he belongs in Normandy.” Aye, he thought, Rollo had subjugated northern France so that the French king had been forced to grant him the title of the first duke of Normandy and cede him all the land he already held. It was important that Rollo’s hold never be weakened else the country would again be ravaged by marauding Viking raiders.