Maidensong (17 page)

 
“
But
it might, and I think you’re being selfish.”

 
He looked up at her sharply. “How is that?”

 
“T
he dreams interrupt my sleep, as well as yours,” she said.

 
He shifted uncomfortably in his chair. The dream terrified him, true enough, but lately he’d been even more afraid of seeming a coward in her eyes. Last
night, he thought he might have even rebuffed her an
grily in the throes of the nightmare, but when he fully
came to himself, she seemed to be asleep.

 
Part of him was tempted to share this pri
vate terror with her, but he was already a cripple just
now. How could a man admit weakness and yet remain a man?

 
“Please, won’t you tell me?”

 
When he met her direct gaze, the warmth in her green eyes made him want to trust her.

 
“All right, girl, all right. If only to put a stop to your
nagging. You’re worse than a leaky roof.” He pushed back from the chessboard and dragged a hand over his
face. “It’s always the same dream.” If he related the
facts baldly, perhaps none of the panic the dream gave
him by night would creep into his mind by day. “I’m
underwater and I can’t get back to the surface.”

 
“
Why?” She made her opening move, sliding her king’s pawn forward two spaces.

 
“Sometimes ice blocks my way and sometimes it’s as
though there’s a hand that comes down into the water
and holds me there.” He mirrored her chess move with one of his own. “I run out of air and start to sink.” Bjorn’s voice trailed away.

 
“Go on.”

 
“
Jormungand,”
he whispered, not able to meet her eyes. “I see the Great Serpent.”

 
Rika covered her mouth with her hand. “An evil
dream, indeed.”

 
“
Then I wake, making a fool of myself.” He exhaled noisily in disgust.

 
“
But no wonder you cry out. The World Serpent is
terror enough when we’re awake.” Rika reached
across the small table to touch his forearm. “It’s not
foolish to feel fear, Bjorn. It’s human.”

 
“A brave man feels no fear.”

 
“Nonsense. I don’t care how daunting the act, unless
you fear, you’ve done nothing brave.” Rika paraded her bishop to a new position. “It takes no courage at
all to face something you’re not afraid of. Fear is a re
quirement for true bravery.”

 
Bjorn rolled that idea around in his mind, grateful
for the fresh insight. Perhaps he wasn’t the coward he feared.
He nodded slightly. “You
may be right about that.”

 
“Of course I am. Now we just have to discover why
you dream of drowning and seeing the serpent,” she
said as she studied the positions of the chess pieces
with obvious satisfaction. “It’s your move.”

 
“The first part is easy enough.” He inched another
pawn forward. “I nearly drowned as a boy. I couldn’t
have been more than five or six winters. It’s one of my
earliest memories.”

 
“That’s awful.” She captured his pawn with her bishop. “How did it happen?”

 
“Gunnar and I were out in a little coracle.” He leaned back, threading through his memories to that young time. “We’d been climbing the cliffs for gulls’
eggs all day and were headed back home. I remember
we got into an argument about who found the most
eggs. He’s about five years older than me, and in my
childish eyes, he was practically an adult. So I had to lord it over him that I’d managed to scale more cliffs
and find the most eggs. We are brothers, after all, and
brothers fight. Sharp words turned to yelling and
then”—Bjorn grimaced both at the gap in his memory and his lost pawn—“I don’t recall exactly how it hap
pened, but suddenly I was in the fjord and sinking. I
couldn’t swim.”

 
“That would certainly explain part of your dream,” Rika said. “Then what happened?”

 
“Gunnar pulled me out. Again,
the how of it is fuzzy in my mind, but my next clear
memory is of my hand clasped on his arm, then me
clambering over the side, and collapsing in the coracle.
My brother saved my life. And even child that I was, I
knew I owed him. I swore an oath of fealty to him
right there in the boat and then repeated it later in our
father’s hall. We have our differences, Gunnar and I,
but
I’m
still
his man.” He grinned at her sheepishly. “
And to this day, I still can’t swim a stroke.”

 
“
Then you
are
a brave man, Bjorn,” she said. “If I
couldn’t swim, I wouldn’t set foot in a boat.”

 
He smiled at her and then took her bishop. She
hadn’t seen the danger. Perhaps the key to besting her
lay in distraction.

 
“How strange . . .” Rika’s voice trailed off to a whisper.

 
“My taking one of your pieces isn’t all that unusual,” he said defensively.

 
“No, I mean your near drowning.” She
paused and gnawed her lip. “Someone meant me for
the water, though I don’t have any memory of it.”

 
Bjorn cocked his head at her.

 
“
I’m not Magnus’s natural daughter,” she confided,
with an odd catch in her voice. “He and Ketil found me
on an ice floe. ‘My Pictish princess,’ he used to call me,
because I was so blue when they first fished me out.”

 
Bjorn shook his head. “Whoever abandoned you was a fool.”

 
She gave him a sad little smile and raked her fingers
over her cropped hair. “I like to think of it as a gift.
Otherwise I wouldn’t have had Magnus.” Her chin wobbled a bit and she didn’t meet his eyes.

 
Bjorn sensed how much it cost her to tell him those
things. He knew she still blamed him for Magnus’s
death. So why did she look so . . . guilty?
Ja,
that’s
what he saw on her. When she looked back up at him,
her face was pale and drawn. Guilt. He suddenly felt
it, too.

 
“Rika, I wish . . .” Only weaklings wished for the
impossible, yet he knew he’d be willing to give up even
his hope of having his own land if he could somehow
give Magnus back to her. Still, her expression puzzled him. Why would she feel guilty unless she was starting
to feel something for him?
Ja,
that was it. It had to be.

 
She sighed deeply and moved another pawn. “Any
way, back to your dream. Your near drowning hap
pened a long time ago. Have you always been plagued with this dream?”

 
Bjorn frowned. “No. Now that I think on it, I really
hadn’t thought about the mishap for years.”

 
“When did the dream start then?”

 
He tented his hands before him. “Last year. After my father died.”

 
When she raised a quizzical eyebrow at him, he con
tinued. “My father was still an active man, even
though he’d seen nearly fifty winters. He always liked
to hunt alone, said it steadied him to have just his own company now and then. He’d get away into the moun
tains to bring down a buck or two. When his horse
came back to the stable alone, we set out to find him.”

 
“
An accident?”

 
“
No,” he said. “Murder. He’d been set upon by someone, but he’d put up a fight. His sword was nicked deeply, but not bloodied.” Bjorn dragged a
hand over his face. “The worst of it was ... the death wound came from behind. A coward’s wound.”

 
Rika bit her lower lip. “And you think your father
tried to run away from the fight. It might not have hap
pened that way. Things are not always what they seem.
But it seems clear that your father’s death called forth
your dream somehow,” she said. “Now, what meaning
can you see in the image of Jormungand?”

 
Bjorn leaned back and laced his fingers behind his
head, studying Gunnar’s symbol on one of the many
shields hanging on the walls. Entwined serpents. He frowned at the image, then shrugged. He’d called his
beloved dragonship the
Sea-Snake.
It seemed both brothers had an affinity for the fearsome creatures and he wondered whether Gunnar was plagued with simi
lar nightmares. He didn’t even want to think about the
clammy, reptilian visions that haunted his sleep. “You’re the skald. You tell me.”

 
“In the sagas, the World Serpent is linked with both
treachery and destruction,” she said, her eyes flitting
up and to the right as she mentally scanned her repertoire, “Jormungand helps destroy the gods at Ragnarok, but the serpent is also killed in the last battle, so that’s an encouraging thought.”

 
Bjorn narrowed his eyes and studied the chessboard.
Treachery? Why would he dream about that? Then
suddenly he saw an opening on the game board. She’d
left her king exposed. He whipped his queen out and
moved her into position.

 
Bjorn leaned back, triumphant. “Check and mate.”

 
“Parry and thrust,” Ornolf bellowed as the blades rang
with the force of their meeting. Bjorn backed across the compound, his body balanced and loose. If the wound in his thigh troubled him, no one could tell from his deft movements.

 
“Now turn and upward thrust,” Ornolf yelled.

 
Bjorn whirled and jabbed his sword point back under his arm toward his uncle. It was fortunate that the
seasoned warrior knew the thrust was coming and
jumped out of the way.

 
“
Ja,
that’s it.” Ornolf swiped the perspiration from his gleaming pate.

 
“Ingenious.” Bjorn turned back around and clamped a hand on his uncle’s shoulder. “First you distract your enemy by showing him your unprotected back and then he meets your sword tip with his gut. The Arabs must be a cunning race.”

 
“
That they are.” Ornolf panted with the exer
tion of showing Bjorn the new sword tricks he’d picked up in the south.

 
Farouk-Azziz, Ornolf’s Arab trading partner, was
also an accomplished fighter, as merchants frequently
had to be in a land where caravans were considered
easy pickings by the desert bandits. The Arab enjoyed
mock sparring with Ornolf, who matched him for age
if not for size. Northmen towered over the populace
where ever they roamed. Still, the dark
little
man was
cunning with his long curved blade and generous
enough of spirit to share his knowledge with his large
Nordic friend.

 
“Always remember you must to turn back quickly to
defend against a last blow,” Uncle Ornolf said. “A dy
ing man can kill you just as easily as a healthy one.”

 
“
Little brother!” Bjorn heard Gunnar calling him from across the yard.

 
“Thank you, Uncle. I’ll remember.” As he and
Ornolf ambled toward Gunnar, Bjorn cast about for a
safe subject of conversation with his brother. Bjorn
had no intention of apologizing for his defense of Rika,
even to the
jarl
, so they’d effectively ignored each
other for weeks. “How is my pretty
little
niece today?”

 
Gunnar’s face screwed into a scowl that suggested
he’d just swallowed bad herring. “Probably puking and soiling every cloth within her range. I suppose she’ll be useful in about thirteen years when I can marry her off, but for now I’m keeping my distance.” He
was still furious that Astryd had presented him
with a girl-child. “And besides, she looks like a gnome.”