The Viking's Woman (2 page)

Mergwin touched the boy’s face. The baby grabbed the Druid’s finger and squeezed hard.

“Leith is Irish, like his mother. Through and through. One day, Lord of the Wolves, he will follow his sire and make a fine king of Dubhlain. But this one, this Eric—you have given him a Viking name, my lord.”

Olaf frowned. He sensed some warning from the Druid, and he held his son more tightly against the expanse of his body, as if he could protect the boy from the future.

“Speak up, you old fraud!”

“The Wolf knows better than to growl at me!” Mergwin said calmly. He paused, taking in a long, slow breath. “This child, Lord Wolf, is yours. A Viking. And like his sire, he will ride the seas of the world. He will often know battle, and his sword will learn well to parry any assault of steel. Yet with the power of his skill of his mind and that of his sword arm, he will rule many. He—”

“He what?” Olaf’s voice was tight, for though he already loved the child in his arms, Eric was a second son. For him to rule Dubhlain meant danger to his brother, Leith.

Mergwin, sensing Olaf’s anxiety, shook his head.
“His destiny lies in other lands. He will face very grave dangers.”

“But he will overcome those dangers!” Olaf insisted.

Mergwin stared at Olaf. They did not lie to each other.

“He is ruled by Odin. He will ride the sea to great thunder and storms, and so will the tempest enter into his heart and into the world where he will seek his destiny. When he is grown, there will be darkness … but—”

“Speak out!”

“There will be light too.” Mergwin’s face was grave, and Olaf, Lord of the Wolves, did not know whether to pray for his son to the Christian God he had adopted for his wife’s sake, or to Loki and Odin and Thor, the gods of his past.

He would pray to them all. His jaw tightened and he flexed his muscles. Mergwin feared that the great warrior would crush his son.

Mergwin rescued the boy from Olaf. The babe’s heat seeped into him and he closed his eyes. “Aye, he will be much like his sire. Danger will follow him, for the passion of his nature, but …”

“But what!” Olaf roared.

Mergwin grinned at last, though his eyes remained solemn. “Train him well, Lord Wolf. Train him to battle, train him to cunning. Make his sword arm strong and his hearing keen. He will go a-Viking, and he will meet a terrible, treacherous foe.”

Mergwin paused. The baby was looking at him with his sire’s ice-and-fire eyes. Watching him, as if he understood
the fortune the Druid cast for him. Mergwin’s smile deepened.

“He has been born with courage. With pride. With the indomitable spirit of his mother and the power and will of his father. Give him wisdom, Olaf. Then set him free, for he must, like his father, find his own heart.”

Olaf was frowning. “No riddles, Druid.”

“I don’t speak in riddles, I give you what I can. Set him free and he will fight his dragons, his demons. And then …”

“Then?”

“Well, then, my lord, he may prevail. For like his father he, too, will meet a woman with Odin’s power. Storm power, the power of lightning, the power of thunder. Her will shall challenge his at every turn. She will bring danger, and yet she will also bring salvation. She will be a tempestuous vixen. Her beauty will be unforgettable but her hatred deeper than the sea that separates their homelands. Triumph will fall well within their grasp. Aye, Lord Olaf, triumph will be theirs, if the wolf can tame the vixen.”

“Or,” Mergwin added pensively, with a subtle grin that he hid from his Viking lord, “if the vixen can tame the wolf!”

The first dragon’s prow appeared upon the horizon at the same time that the first stroke of lightning sizzled across the sky and the first mighty crack of thunder drummed throughout the heavens.

And then there was a sea of dragon prows, striking new terror into weary hearts. Tall and savage upon the water, like mythical beasts, they sailed in, raining devastation and slaughter.

The fury of the Norseman was well-known along the Saxon coastlines of England. The Danes had wreaked havoc upon the land for years, and all Christendom had learned to stand and tremble at the sight of the swift dragon ships, the scourge of land and sea.

The ships came from the east that day, but no man or woman viewing the host of Viking ships that caught a wind that threatened sails, dared pause to ponder that fact. They saw the endless shields that lined the ships, prow and aft, and they saw that the wind, not the oarsmen, advanced the ships like the wrath of God.

Lightning sizzled and snapped and lit up the gray, swirling sky. The wind whistled and roared, and then screamed, as if to portend the blood and violence to come. Red and white, the Viking sails slashed across
the dark and deadly gunmetal sky, defying the vicious wind.

Rhiannon was in her chapel when the first alarm was shouted. She prayed for the men who would do battle against the Danes at Rochester. She prayed for Alfred, her cousin and her king, and she prayed for Rowan, whom she loved.

She had not expected danger to darken her coast. Most of her men were gone to serve with the king as the Danes were amassing to the south. She was without help.

“My lady!” Egmund, her most loyal, aging warrior, long of service to her family, found her in the chapel upon her knees. “My lady! Dragon prows!”

For a moment she thought he had lost his mind. “Dragon prows?” she repeated.

“On the horizon. Coming for us!”

“From the east?”

“Aye, from the east!”

Rhiannon leapt to her feet and raced from the chapel, finding the stairs to the wooden walls that surrounded her manor house. She hurried along the parapets, staring out to sea.

They were coming. Just as Egmund had warned her.

She felt sick to her stomach. She almost screamed in fear and agony. All of her life she had been fighting. The Danes had descended upon England like a swarm of locusts, and they had brought with them bloodshed and terror. They had killed her father. She would never forget holding him and willing him to breathe again. Alfred fought the Danes and defeated them often.

Now they were descending upon her home, and she had no one left to defend it because her people had gone to Alfred. “My God,” she breathed aloud.

“Lady, run!” Egmund said. “Take a mount and ride hard to the king. You can reach him by tomorrow if you ride hard. Take your arrows and an escort, and I will surrender this fortress.”

She stared at him and then smiled slowly. “Egmund, I cannot run. You know that.”

“You cannot stay!”

“We will not surrender. Surrender means nothing to them—they perform the same atrocities whether men give battle or not. I will stay and fight from here.”

“My lady—”

“I may kill or wound many of them, Egmund. You know that.”

He did; she could see it in his eyes. She was an amazing markswoman. But she knew, too, as he looked at her, that he was still seeing her as the little girl he had protected for years.

Old Egmund wasn’t seeing her as a child at all but as a woman, and he was afraid for her. Rhiannon was beautiful and striking, with a siren’s silver-blue eyes and golden-sunset hair. She was Alfred’s cousin as well as his godchild, and at his command she had been well educated. She could be softspoken and as gentle as a kitten, and she could trade quips and laugh with the men and manage the vast estates she had inherited with a charming ease. She would be a worthy prize for some Viking, and Egmund could not bear the thought that she might fall prey to such a man.

“Rhiannon, I beg of you! As I served your father—”

Two steps brought her to him, and she flashed him a warm, beautiful smile, taking both of his gnarled hands into her own. “Dearest Egmund! For the love of God, I cannot fathom this attack from the east. I cannot! But I will not surrender, and I will not leave you here to die for me! I will flee when there is nothing more that can be done. But now, you must know that as my father’s daughter I cannot leave until we have sent some of those heathens straight to hell! Call Thomas and order out what guard we have left, Egmund. Warn the serfs and the tenants. Hurry!”

“Rhiannon, you must stay safe!”

“Have my bow and a quiver of arrows sent to me. I shall not leave the parapet, I swear it!” she promised him.

Knowing further words would be useless, Egmund hurried down the wooden steps, shouting out orders. The huge gates were ordered shut, the few remaining warriors mounted their horses, and the simple farmers rushed about to find pitchforks and staffs. All looked terrified.

The brutality of the Vikings was well known.

A boy brought Rhiannon her quiver and arrows. She stared across the sea. The sky had grown gray and the wind was whipping fiercely, as if the elements were forecasting the horror soon to come. She saw the ships and trembled. Closing her eyes, she tried very hard not to remember the Viking raids of the past. She had lost so much to the Danes, as had England. She, too, was terrified, and yet she had to fight. To be taken or slain without fighting was not conceivable to her.

The attack made no sense at all. Alfred should have known something of the Danish movements. She should have been warned.

The ships moved closer and closer. The sky and sea seemed not to have the power to stop them.

Rhiannon nearly sank to her knees in fear. The ships were almost at the shore. The prows alone, with their hideously carved dragon faces, were enough to strike terror into most hearts. And still the sailors had not taken aim. Rhiannon prayed that her soldiers would let fly the first volley of arrows. Perhaps they could kill some of the invaders before the Vikings reached them. She closed her eyes in a brief prayer.
Dear God, I am scared, please be with me
.

She opened her eyes. She could see a man riding the lead ship. He was tall and blond and rode the tempest of the waves without losing his balance, his arms crossed over his chest. Certainly he was one of the commanders, towering in height, broad in the shoulders, lean in the hips, a strongly muscled warrior of Valhalla. She shivered anew and pulled out an arrow. Resolutely she stretched out her bow.

Her fingers trembled. She had never tried to kill a man before. Now she had to. She knew what Vikings did to men and women when they raided.

Her fingers slipped and a new trembling assailed her. Her mouth went dry and a frightening warmth overcame her. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, and when she opened them again, she didn’t understand what had seized her. The wind seemed to be whispering to her that the golden-blond Viking was going to be part of her fate.

Impatiently she shook off the feeling and swore she
would not tremble again. If it was difficult to aim at a man in order to kill him, she need only remember her father’s death.

She tested her bow again, and her fingers were remarkably steady. Kill the leader, her father and Alfred had said often enough, and the men beneath him will scatter. This blond giant was one of their leaders. She had to kill him. And that was what the whisper of fate had been. She had to kill him, even if he seemed to defy the wind, the sea, and the gods, both Norse and Christian.

Eric of Dubhlain had no idea at that moment that his life might be in danger from anyone. He had not come to make war but at the invitation of Alfred of Wessex.

The sea was fierce, but he knew the sea and did not fear it.

The sky went black, and then the lightning came again, a startling streak of gold, as if God Himself had cast down a bolt of fire to light up the doom that approached. God or Odin, the Lord of the Viking horde, of his father’s people, was at work. Odin was casting lightning bolts as he raced his black stallion, Sephyr, and his chariot across the heavens. Odin, god of the pagans, was creating the storm, turning the sky to pitch, lighting it up again with blazes of sheer fire.

Eric stood tall and towering and powerful, like a golden god against the wind, a booted foot braced hard against the prow. The wind played against his hair, and it was as golden as the lightning, his eyes a blazing cobalt blue. His features were strongly chiseled, ruggedly, implacably handsome. His cheekbones
were high and wide, his eyebrows set well upon his brow and cleanly arched, his jaw firm. His mouth, wide and sensual, was set in a straight line as he watched the shore. His beard and mustache were clipped and clean, redder than the hair upon his head, and his flesh was handsomely bronzed. He wore a crimson mantle, drawn closed with a sapphire brooch. He needed no fine garments to display his nobility, for his stature and the confidence of his stance made men tremble. The very air about him seemed charged, revealing his vitality. To maids of any race or creed he created a startling, arresting appearance. He was graced with extraordinary power in his muscles, in the breadth of his shoulders, in the width of his chest, and in the strength of his thighs. His belly was whipcord lean. His legs, hugging the tempest-tossed ship with ease, were as strong as steel from years upon the sea and years riding, running, fighting, and coming a-Viking.