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By Root 1319 0

chamber was his. She supposed Merrik would take his former sleeping chamber, but as yet he’d said nothing about it. Probably it hadn’t even occurred to him, for he was so immersed in shock and in grief. As for her, she was here only because she was his wife and she doubted he would send her away. For what reason? She thought of her parents’ farmstead, not too far to the north of Vestfold, and shuddered. She saw her father, his wide leather belt wrapped around his hand, saw her mother bowed, her back naked, saw the belt come down again and again, saw her mother fall and lie huddled on the ground. She saw her father turn to her, and she saw the smile of rage on his face. She shuddered again. She preferred Erik. Besides, he had his women so he didn’t bother her all that often. Never had he struck her.

She walked slowly to him, stopping in front of him, her head still bowed.

His hand closed over her upper arm. “I have need of you tonight,” he said.

Laren watched the two of them, frowning. Taby said, “Merrik’s father and mother are dead, just like ours. He is very sad, Laren.”

“Aye, he is. He was so excited about seeing them again.” She remembered the strange feelings he’d had and wondered at it.

She set about unfolding the blankets and arranging them on the packed earthen floor. She looked up, but Taby had left her. She saw him ease between the great oak doors of the longhouse. She started to call after him, but saw that many of the Malverne people were wrapped in their blankets on the benches and the floor. She rose instead and followed him.

Taby saw Merrik standing near the palisade wall, utterly silent and unmoving. He was looking upward at the brilliant display of stars overhead. It was very quiet. The huge expanse of water below, the tree-covered mountains on the opposite side of the fjord, all was silent, eerily so.

“I’m sorry they died,” Taby said to the big man who towered over him, the man he trusted more than anyone he’d ever known in his short life, other than his sister.

Merrik turned to look down at the child. Words clogged in his throat. He knew his cheeks were wet but he didn’t care. His grief was deep and his pain at his loss deeper.

“I don’t remember my mother and father,” Taby said after a moment. “I was too young when they died, but Laren tells me about them sometimes. She tells very good stories.”

“I know.”

“Sometimes she cries, just like you’re doing. I ask her why and she says that the memories of them are so very sharp and sweet that crying makes her almost feel them and taste them again. Sometimes I don’t understand what she means.”

Ah, but Merrik did. He leaned down and lifted Taby into his arms. He carried him to an oak tree that was probably as old as the cliffs that the fjord had cut through below and eased down, leaning back against the trunk. He settled the boy against his chest. He began to rub Taby’s back in wide, soothing circles.

He said quietly, his voice deep and low, “I am lucky, for I grew to manhood with my parents. But that makes their passing that much more difficult, for I knew them first as parents, then as a man and a woman I could trust beyond life itself, and as my dearest friends. My father was a very proud man, but he was a man who loved his children, a man who loved his wife dearly, a man who would never act unfairly or hurt another out of anger.”

“He is like you,” Taby said, settling in against Merrik’s shoulder.

Merrik smiled and lightly kissed the top of Taby’s head. “To be like my father would be a great accomplishment,” he said. “You would have loved my mother, Taby. All children flocked to her and she gave them all equal measures of love and attention. She was warm and strong and my father never tried to make her into a submissive female.”

“She sounds like Laren.”

That made him frown. “Hardly. My mother was very different from your sister. She had not your sister’s pride, her vanity, her arrogance.” He remembered telling Laren that his mother was a warrior one minute and gentle as a child the next. He frowned more deeply.

“I don’t understand what you