Free Lord of Falcon Ridge by Catherine Coulter Page B

ghostly, as unearthly and terrifying as it must to the natives when they saw a Viking warship coming out of the fog, a demon come to take them to hell. But now it was different.
    They waited, unwilling to move, silent as the still water around them that would become their tomb.
    She stood in the opening of the covered cargo space looking out at the men who sat on their sea chests, bent motionless over their oars. Even they had stopped rowing, becoming as still as everything around them. They were silently praying to Thor, to Odin.
    Ragnor’s ship lay off the coast of East Anglia. Kerek had told her that Ragnor was drunk. He was sprawledbeside the rudder, too frightened to do anything but drink the last of the warm mead. Kerek told her in a low voice that the captain, Torric, wondered if they would see morning. Torric had seen the beginning of a storm like this only one other time in his life, off the western coast of Norway, but that time the air wasn’t warm and dead the way it was now. It had been frigid, so cold that the men accepted death when the storm blew in on them because if they were hurled into the sea, they would be frozen in an instant.
    Torric was then a lad of ten years old when he and one other warrior had managed to ride the storm out, landing on the rugged rocky shores near Bergen.
    Now Torric walked to where Kerek and Chessa stood. “It will be here very soon now,” he said, his voice a whisper.
    She said nothing. What was there to say?
    Then Kerek was pointing, nearly panting in his excitement. “Look, yon, ’tis an island. See how the blackness has parted over there? It is an island, I’m sure of it. Surely Torric, if the men row with all their might we can reach it. There must be a safe harbor there.”
    â€œAye,” Torric said, hope in his voice. “Aye, I see it. The gods have shown it to you. It wasn’t there before, I would swear to it.”
    She waited silently, listening to Torric yell at the men, urging them to row with all their might, telling them they would survive if they made it to that island.
    â€œIt’s the storm that makes for the strange lighting,” Kerek said. “I think it’s raining hard over the island. The splurges of lightning make it visible. Go inside now, Princess.”
    â€œOh, no, Kerek, I will watch. Isn’t there anything I can do to help?”
    â€œYou can stay alive,” he said, and left her.
    It seemed but moments later that a sheet of rain cascaded down upon them. She watched one man plucked up by a mountainous wave and tossed into the sea. No one coulddo anything. Torric yelled louder for them to row, row, harder and harder still.
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    Hawkfell Island
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    â€œMy lord, all the boats are pulled ashore, lashed down, and covered. We’re ready for the storm.”
    Rorik Haraldsson, Lord of Hawkfell Island, nodded, raising his face as rain swept in. He sucked in his breath at the force of it. It had been years since he’d felt anything this violent. Everything had been done that could be done. Now they would simply wait.
    He turned back into the longhouse. The long rectangular structure was already filled with a faint blue tint from the smoke held inside the huge closed house. He walked to his wife, Mirana, who was sewing calmly, probably a blue shirt for him, since she’d long ago declared that it made him look even more magnificent than he actually was.
    He rather liked the way she always complimented him and smacked him at the same time. There wasn’t a sweetly compliant bone in her entire body and he loved her dearly. He knew she would kill anyone who tried to harm him, kill anyone who threatened their island, their people, their children. He trusted her implicitly, something he didn’t believe many men could say about their wives or their friends. She looked up as he approached, but she didn’t smile. Her face was pale, and he noticed with a frown that her