Lord of Falcon Ridge: Viking Era, cartea 4

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-SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL

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 armpits.
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 linenstuffed
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 affection 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.
‘‘I know, but it doesn’t make me miss him less.’’
‘‘I will tell him his brother-in-law misses him so much
that he failed to thrash a former slave.’’ Cleve thought
about that time five years before. Merrik had been trading
in Kiev. He’d wanted to buy a slave for his mother, but
had seen a small boy in the slave ring and been drawn to
him. He’d bought Taby and then rescued both Cleve and
Laren, Taby’s sister, from the merchant who’d brought her.
Merrik had loved Taby more than any other human being,
save his wife, Laren, even more than his own sons.
Cleve waited until Merrik smiled at that, then continued.
‘‘I think Rollo wants to send me to Ireland to see King
Sitric, at least that’s what his messenger hinted at. Sitric
was once a very old man near to death. Yet when we visited
Rouen last year, Rollo told me that Sitric is again a man
in his prime. Magic was wrought by a foreign magician
called Hormuze, who disappeared after he’d wrought this
change in the king. I can’t believe it, but most do. Odd, all
of it. Do you know anything about this King Sitric, Merrik?’’
‘‘I? Know about Sitric? Nay, Cleve, not a thing. Not a
single thing.’’
Cleve knew Merrik was lying. He also knew he wouldn’t
ever find out why or what precisely he was lying about.
Not unless he could find out from this King Sitric himself
or if he could manage to find more guile than Merrik possessed.
He doubted that would happen.
‘‘Laren and I are pleased that you’ve become Rollo’s
emissary. You have a wily tongue and a quick mind, Cleve.
Rollo is lucky and he knows it.’’
‘‘I could be an utter fool and Rollo would still reward
me since he believes I saved his beloved Laren and Taby.’’
‘‘Rollo is fortunate,’’ Merrik said, and clapped Cleve on
the back. ‘‘Since you aren’t a fool, he can make good use
of you as well as reward you.’’