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boulders older than the hills themselves. You would enjoy yourself there.
    â€œMerrik, 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.”
    â€œThe 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?”
    â€œYes,” Laren said, touching her fingertips to his linen sleeve. “How came you to be a slave if your father was so powerful?”
    â€œMy 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 mypony. 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.”
    â€œI 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 the thing in 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.