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Chapter One

Tove

7 September 1264

Moskenesøya Isle, Norway

“Wake up, Tove!” Knud roared. “Odin above, wake up now!”

Snapping awake, I bolted upright, soaked in sweat and trembling all over. Breathing harshly, I blinked into the darkness, trying to make sense of my surroundings, only to realize I was in bed in my cottage and Knud was nowhere to be found. Rain pounded on the turf roof, lightning flashed, and thunder cracked in the distance.

Inhaling deeply, I did my best to shake off the night I had met my second-in-command, Knud Thorgard “The Beast,” when we were children. A moment that had changed both our lives in ways he didn’t understand to this day. Ways that he might very well not believe if I ever told him, which I had no intention of doing.

Why would I, when that moment had made him the beast he was today?

At least a beast to most. Not to me. Taking another deep, calming breath, I ignored my slamming heart, climbed out of bed, and poured myself an ale.

Swigging down half of it, I tossed another log on the dwindling fire and gazed out as lightning flashed over the angry, blue-black sea. White-tipped swells crashed ashore, and howling wind tossed our docked ships about.

“Where are you, Knud?” I whispered, troubled that he hadn’t returned from the north yet. He had been seeing to business on behalf of our tribe and should have been back by now. Had he run into trouble? He might be one of the fiercest warriors I knew, but even the mightiest could fall in battle. “Was that you in my dreams, calling for help?”

Though some might think that a mad notion, I knew better, being born of a long lineage of shield-maiden seers touched by the Valkyries. More so, I knew that fateful, near-lethal night Knud and I had shared years ago tied us together in ways most could never understand, including Knud.

Gripping my mug more tightly, I tried not to see that night all over again, but like always, the great polar bear rearing up over me flashed in my mind’s eye. Its lethal claws. Wide girth. Mighty roar. Sharp teeth.

More than anything, though, the furious look in its eyes.

I could still feel the icy snow pelting my face as I stared up at it. Still feel the heat of its massive body so close. Smell its earthy, animalistic wrath wrapping around me. Scents and sights I had never seen before that night in the beast that had long watched over my Helvig tribe.

Rather, I had only ever seen a friend.

An enormous monster of a bear that came to me in my dreams and gave me strength. Swelled my spirit into something nearly as formidable as it was. Nearly as impressive and deadly.

“Not that night, though,” I ground out, swigging back the rest of my ale. Scanning the moody horizon, I wished I saw Knud’s ship making its way ashore despite the stormy weather. “That night the bear came for us both and never let us go.”

I had thought it a dream, but it hadn’t been when I drifted into the woodland and communed with the bear. Usually, it merely stared at me through the driving snow, and we spoke words I never remembered upon waking.

But not that night.

That night, when I woke near the Russian border where our tribe had first settled, I realized I’d been sleepwalking. Worse yet, I faced off with a living, breathing, and very sizeable, angry polar bear that would have been my end, had it not been for Knud.

“Yet you were there, and none were fiercer,” I whispered, scanning the horizon again, willing him back to my side. “So be fierce this eve if you weather these seas, my friend.” Closing my eyes, I mouthed, “my love,” not daring to voice my true feelings aloud even to myself, only for the fire on my hearth to snap and pop loudly behind me, drawing my attention that way.

I swore I saw Knud’s ship cresting the flames as though they were waves. Yet, a blink later, it was gone. Even so, I drifted closer and crouched in front of the fire, feeling the pull of my sister Astrid from the distant shores of Scotland.

Looking past the bright crimson to the burnt oranges, I focused on the simmering blue deep within until I saw her pale blue eyes staring back and heard her words crackling on the flames.

“War is coming, sister,” she whispered, her words pained and with good reason. “War betwixt you and me. Betwixt who I was and who I became, so take great care because…”

Before she could finish her sentence, her voice burst into garbled sparks, and Knud’s ship crashed through her visage, severing our seer connection across the dark sea separating us. Almost as if someone had tossed those turbulent, salty waters on the flames, the fire hissed, spat, and sizzled down to smoke, making me leap to my feet because I knew what it meant.

Knud was close.

Dangerously close, given what he faced this night.

Having fallen asleep in my clothes with my boots still on, I swung my polar bear fur cloak around my shoulders and raced outside. Pounding on my friend Helga’s cottage door in passing, I roused those who could best save Knud’s crew if his ship had trouble making it past the breakers and headed for the shore. Ignoring the driving wind and rain whiplashing me, I strode down one of several docks, keeping an eye on the black horizon lit only by lightning flashes.

“Where are you, Knud?” I murmured, certain his ship would soon appear.