He was silent for a very long time, his long fingers lightly stroking down his daughter’s back. She wiggled and he scratched her left shoulder. “Everything went as Duke Rollo wished,” he said finally. “Now, go to bed, Kiri. I’ll tell you all about Taby on the morrow. Your uncle Merrik is right. Taby is a golden child, strong and kind. Ah, here is Irek, come to sleep with you.” Irek was fat now, nearly full grown, black and white save for a gray spot on his nose. What sort of dog he was, no one could begin to guess. He was ferociously protective of Kiri, barking wildly if he believed anyone wanted to harm her. Harald, Merrik’s eldest son, kept his distance when Irek began to growl.
In the full darkness of the night, he dreamed again the vivid dream that hadn’t come to him in nearly three months. He was tossed into the dream just as a man could be tossed overboard into a storm-maddened sea, with no warning, no portent. It was real and he was there and the scent of those purple and yellow flowers filled him, just as he seemed to feel the lightly falling mist against his face. This time he didn’t begin on the cliff edge looking down into that ravine that was filled with boulders and crashing cold water. No, this time, he was there, at the door of that house with its sod and shingle roof, with the thin trail of smoke that came from the single hole in the roof. He was shaking. He didn’t want to go into that fortress. He heard that deep, compelling voice. He knew she would scream soon. He tried to run. Where was the pony? He reached out his hand and lifted the single iron latch. The huge wooden door swung open. Suddenly the voice was quiet. She wasn’t screaming. There was dead silence. The room was long and wide, and at the end of it there was a high dais, behind it huge square-cut shutters. The floor was hard-packed earth. One end of the huge hall was curtained off. He knew there were small sleeping chambers behind that curtain, four of them. There were benches all along the walls. Hanging from thick chains over the fire pit was a huge iron pot, steam rising out of it, thickening the air with white mist. Silence still reigned even though the hall held many men, women, and children. Even the three dogs sitting there on their haunches were as silent as the people. He hated it. He feared it. He took another step into the hall. He saw a woman standing over the fire pit stirring something in a huge iron pot. There was a man drinking from an ornately carved wooden cup. He sat in the only chair in the room, its back high, its arms exquisitely carved to display a scene showing Thor defeating his enemies, his sword raised, the look of triumph ferocious on his thick wooden face. The chair looked to be very old, but the man was young, his hair black and thick, his face lean, his hands long and white and narrow. He was garbed all in black. His sleeves were so loose they would billow out in a wind. Other men were sitting along the bench where several women served them wooden plates of food.
The man in the chair looked to be brooding, his chin resting on his white slender hand. But he wasn’t really brooding, Cleve somehow knew. He was watching a young girl who was working at a loom in the corner. Then he glanced at the woman attending the iron pot over the fire pit. The woman looked from the girl toward the man. There was both rage and fear in her eyes. She said something, but the man ignored her. He kept his eyes on the girl. Softly, he told her to come to him. Cleve shrieked at her not to do it, not to go to him, and for the first time in the dreams, she actually seemed to hear him. She turned, as if searching out where he was. Then, as if she saw him, she spoke to him, but he couldn’t hear her words, couldn’t understand what she wanted to tell him. He watched her walk slowly toward the man, and he was afraid and he was angry, as angry as the woman who still stood at the fire pit, her eyes never wavering from the elegant man who sat in that royal chair.
He knew he was dreaming, but again he couldn’t make himself awaken. He could feel the man looking at him now, and he saw the man frown. Then the man rose and waved the girl away from him. He was walking toward Cleve. He would kill him, Cleve knew it, yet he couldn’t seem to make his feet move, he couldn’t speak. The man came down on his haunches in front of him. Oddly, he merely stretched out his hand and smoothed the golden hair back from his brow. He said, “You look as shaggy as your sheep dog.” He drew a slender knife from its scabbard at his waist. Cleve was so afraid he thought he’d vomit, but the man merely sliced off the long shank of hair that fell over his forehead. Then he patted Cleve’s cheek and rose. He said, “This is a man’s business. Go outside and play with your pony.” But Cleve looked toward the woman at the fire pit. She avoided his eyes. He looked toward the girl and she nodded, saying nothing, just nodded at him until he turned and nearly ran from that huge hall.
It was then he heard a scream. He didn’t turn. He couldn’t bear to turn, he just ran and ran and ran. . . .
He jerked awake, his breath hitched in his throat, and he knew then that his mind was stitching together long-forgotten memories and making him relive them, making him face who he was and what he’d been a long time ago. He slept again as the dawn came and the air was still and deep as his sleep was now.
And once he was wide awake, he remembered.
Laren and Merrik, the lord and lady of Malverne farmstead, walked with him up to Raven’s Peak. They were silent, waiting, for they knew that something important had happened to him and they were content to be patient, to let him tell them in his own good time.
Cleve said nothing until they reached the top of the peak. He stared out over the fjord and the barren cliffs opposite before turning to his good friends with a smile. “My name isn’t Cleve. It’s Ronin. My mother’s ancestors are Scottish Dalriada and were originally from northern Ireland, many generations ago. They journeyed to the west, first to the outer islands, then to the mainland both north and south of the Romans’ two walls, where they fought the Picts, the Britons, and the Vikings. They finally gained their own land and settled. They’re now called the Scots. They were united with the Picts by Kenneth in the middle of the last century.”
“By Thor’s might,” Merrik said. “You’re a Scot, truly? From where does your family hail?”
“In the northwest, on the western shore of a river called Loch Ness. It’s a savage land, Merrik, more untamed than Norway, but it doesn’t have the months of frigid cold. There are outlaws aplenty. There is much trading. There is beautiful land that goes on and on, and it changes from flatland to deep valleys to mountains that are so vicious, so barren and rugged, that you pray to survive them. There are glens and small secluded places where waterfalls crash downward onto boulders older than the hills themselves. You would enjoy yourself there.
“Merrik, you remember the dream I told you about? Well, I’ve had it on and off now for over two years. It’s grown bolder, fuller in the past two years. Last night I dreamed it again and this time when I awoke in the morning, I knew. I remembered.” He paused a moment, pain filling his eyes. “I am half Viking. My father was Olrik the Ram, and he was a powerful Viking chieftain, as was his father and his father’s father before him. He was known as the lord of Falcon Ridge, his fortress was called Kinloch. I look like him, with my golden hair. As for my strange eyes, I have no idea if they are from him or from my mother. I was too young to know when I was taken. I wasn’t born a slave, but like Laren, I was made into one. As I said, my mother was Dalriadan, small and fair skinned, hair as red as an angry sky before sunset. She was very beautiful. My father captured her on a raid and married her. They settled northward near the coast. I have a brother and two sisters, all older than I. My brother was Ethar, my two sisters, Argana and Cayman.”
“The lord of Falcon Ridge,” Merrik repeated slowly. “I have heard of him. Perhaps it was from my father. What happened? Why were you sold into slavery?”
“Yes,” Laren said, touching her fingertips to his linen sleeve. “How came you to be a slave if your father was so powerful?”
“My father died when I was very young. My mother married another Viking warrior who was powerful in a neighboring area. I remember he was cold and hard and he wore only black. He brought silence to Kinloch, and fear. Aye, I remember even as small as I was that he terrified everyone. I remember that I was out one day riding my pony. I stopped when I saw someone I knew, and whilst I was talking to him I was struck on the head and left for dead. I didn’t die, but I was very ill. A man found me, brought me back to health and sold me in Hedeby to a man who liked . . . well, it’s not important. My stepfather—I can’t remember his name—he was a bully, but he was so cold, how well I remember that, the unnatural coldness of him and everything he touched. He took my father’s place and everything changed. Surely it was he who wanted me killed, but I didn’t die, though the result was surely the same since I was a slave for fifteen years. It was never his plan to raise me to take my rightful place, though I wonder why he killed me before he killed my older brother, who was the rightful heir. That’s a mystery. Doubtless after I was gone, he spawned more children off my mother. As to what became of my brother and sisters, I don’t know. I remembered in this last dream that he wanted my sister, Argana. She was only a girl, no more than twelve. But I knew he wanted her and my mother knew it as well. He beat my mother, I remember that. I remember hearing her screams, his low, deep voice, so calm, so very black, and her screams.”
Cleve looked from Merrik to Laren. There was regret and deep, deep anger in his eyes. “I want to go home,” he said. “I pray my mother and my brother and sisters are still alive. It has been nearly twenty years. I want to know if what I suspect is true: if this man, my stepfather, tried to kill me, if he killed my brother, so he could take what is ours. I want vengeance.”
“I will go with you,” Merrik said, and rubbed his hands together. “I grow bored with all this damned peace, not a single squabble in over six months now. At the last meeting of thethingin Kaupang, there were only silly complaints—a man who’d stolen a pig from his neighbor—matters that didn’t deserve the time it took us to travel there. Even the raid into the Rhineland whilst you were away being a diplomat wasn’t much of a challenge. I will go gray before I test my sword again. You say your land is savage? You swear my sword won’t hang lifeless by my side?”
“More savage than you can imagine. But don’t forget, I was but five years old.”
“I will go with you as well,” Laren said. “Merrik is right. It’s time for an adventure.”
Merrik opened his mouth, then wisely closed it.
Cleve said slowly, “I was born Ronin but I’ve been Cleve for twenty years. Cleve I will remain.”
4
Rouen, Normandy
Palace of Duke Rollo
MidsummerA.D.924
DUKEROLLO OFNormandy, a man of many more years than were allotted to most men, sharp of eye and strong of will, and ready for any adventure, leaned forward, and said, “Cleve, Laren has told me of your beginnings. I, too, wish to see that you regain what is yours, that you find your family, though it has been nearly twenty years, a long time. People die. Few are like me and my brother, Hallad. Ha, that Hallad. I am convinced that he will sire another child even as he is being laid out for burial.”
“This is true, sire,” Cleve said. Laren’s father, Hallad, had sired another three sons off his young wife he’d wedded five years before. He was still as hail and hardy as Rollo. It sometimes terrified Cleve. It reminded him of King Sitric of Ireland, a young man who was older than death, if judged by years. Had Rollo and Hallad been touched by the same magic?
“But surely you would rather speak of the marriage between William and Chessa, daughter of King Sitric.”
“Oh, aye. It is time and William knows it. He doesn’t really want this marriage, but he will do it. He misses his wife, you know.”
“He must breed more sons,” Cleve said.
