Miranda's Viking Read online

  MIRANDA'S VIKING

  Maggie Shayne

  When Professor Miranda O’Shea uncovers the perfectly preserved body of the legendary warrior known as The Plague of the North, it’s the find of her career.

  But someone else wants it, and a break-in at the lab sends the climate controls haywire, and nearly kills her aging father. Miranda returns from the hospital to find her specimen thawed, and as she scrambles to preserve his body, he draws an anguished breath. His first breath in more than 900 years.

  Rolf Magnusson awakens to a strange new world and a woman who bears a striking resemblance to the one who betrayed him into exile and death. Scientists long to cut into his flesh to see how he survived, and treasure hunters seek his legendary plunder. Who among them can he trust?

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  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  To Maria Greene, who helped Rolf think like a true Norseman,

  and to Anita Gordon, who helped him speak like one.

  And to Gayle Callen and Angela Bartelotte,

  who helped him hoist the sails for his ultimate voyage.

  Prologue

  The sting of icy spray seemed determined to peel the skin from his face, despite the heavy beard he'd grown to protect it. The long, sleek drakkar pitched and rolled helplessly, a toy held in the unpredictable hands of an angry sea. Frigid waves reached even to the prow, battering the fierce-looking dragon's head carved there. Men struggled to capture the tattered square sail they'd attempted to furl, but the wind proved too powerful even for their muscled arms. With one vicious gust the mass of green-and-white-striped fabric was carried away and dumped into the raging waters. A sharp crack, a slow groan and the mast came down like felled timber. Rolf lurched forward, abandoning the rudder to the fury of the sea. His arms outstretched, he launched himself from the deck toward the three men. He caught one, sending him backward to land with a jarring thud. The other man had instinctively ducked his leader's attack. Rolf had lost sight of the third.

  Rolf struggled to his feet against the frantic rocking of the ship. Shielding his eyes from the slashing, sleet-filled wind he saw Svein, the man who'd avoided his running leap, lying facedown with the heavy mast across his back. He ran forward, shouting uselessly into the roaring wind for assistance. He bent to the mast and bared his teeth with the effort to raise it. But the wood was smooth and wet. Less effort to cling to a slippery eel. He chanced one downward glimpse as he steeled himself for a second assault on the burden, and saw that his efforts were all for naught. Svein's agonies had already ceased.

  Rolf tilted his head back and roared his anger, his fury, his frustration. All this carnage! All due to the faithless heart of one king and the treachery of another. A curse on Knut's soul, wherever it might now reside! And a curse upon Magnus, as well! Ah, but how well he knew that the true credit for this mayhem rested in one devious woman.

  Rolf lurched sideways as the ship was tossed again, and he struggled to his feet, leaning into the wind to make his way back to the rudder. When the wind threatened to down him, when the bite of the ice on his face almost forced him to turn back, he needed only think of her to regain his strength, his determination. He would not surrender easily.

  Adrianna. How he'd adored her. How he'd longed to have her. Fool! He'd only been following the lustful path of every red-blooded Norseman ever to lay eyes upon her stunning beauty. How gullible he'd been not to see that her beauty was but an illusion. Her flame-colored hair and wide-set, deep gray eyes were but gifts of heredity, or fate. Her slender frame and endlessly long limbs convinced a man of her fragile nature. Her graceful and rare height only added to her allure. Truly, though, her heart was as ugly as death itself.

  By the gods, he'd been taken in!

  As had Knut.

  A frigid wave smashed into the side of the sleek dragon ship and she rocked dangerously, righted herself only to be pummeled by another. Rolf reached out, nearly blinded by the sleet and his own bitter anger, and he gripped the ice-coated rudder. He watched in mounting fury as the chests filled with the plunder of this journey slid over the side and sank beneath the waves. The booty was the result of his rage against Adrianna and against the fates themselves. For months he'd vented that rage as a scourge on the shores of every land he'd passed. Again and again his drakkar had swept down upon the rich coastal villages of England, of Francia, of Normandy, of Ireland, with vengeance billowing in her sails. So great had been his plunder he'd had to hide the first of it well, before returning again for more. This latest trip had netted greater riches than the first.

  All of it gone now at the whim of an angry wind.

  The hurricane raged around him, rain and sleet slanting so heavily he could no longer see an arm's length ahead of him. He clung to the side as his glorious ship lurched and rolled over, but to no avail. Icy water reached for him, caught him in relentless, greedy hands, and dragged him away. He felt himself enfolded in raging, biting cold. He struggled to keep his head above the waves. He would not surrender! He was a warrior! He would die at the point of a sword, not at the hand of a storm.

  He refused to allow his exile to become a death sentence. He was úrhrak, outcast, but he would not die as one. He went under, fought his way to the surface and was pulled beneath the waves again. His body burned with cold. His muscles tightened to such a degree they began to tear themselves from the bone. His lungs screamed for air. His head pounded as if it would crack and his heart seemed about to explode.

  Once more the angry waves tossed his body higher. He was allowed only one glimpse, just enough to fill him with the bitterness of irony. The barren shores of Helluland, black water and white ice, seemed to mock him. So close, he might've been able to swim it, had not the seas been so angry, so determined to take him into their final, glacial embrace.

  Nei! He would not die! He was not yet ready to ride off with the beautiful Valkyrie upon the backs of their magnificent horses. Not ready to let them carry him onward to Valhalla where he'd feast and fight with the fallen, perhaps with Odin himself. Nei! He forced his arms to stroke against the frigid waves, forced his legs to propel him toward the shore.

  Even as his body was tossed and battered, Rolf silently vowed he would not die. When he could no longer raise an arm for even a single stroke, he closed a fist around the gilded hilt of his sword, Hefnd, still secure in its bronze-trimmed leather scabbard, still held fast to his nearly lifeless body. "We have not yet finished," he whispered, though the words were drowning as they left his lips.

  The last thing Rolf glimpsed before the waters swallowed him up were the barely visible shapes of the fur-ensconced Skraelingar of the north looking on from the shore. He imagined their eyes were filled with awe, and with wonder.

  Chapter 1

  The wind had knives in it. Razorlike shards bit into her face and stung her nose as Miranda lifted the pickax high above her head and brought it down. Its tip cracked
into the solid ice, spraying her cheeks with more shrapnel. She brushed at her face with a gloved hand and paused, glancing to the right, where her father worked furiously on the glacier. The cave was here, its mouth sealed by an icy hand. The sonar equipment had confirmed it. The cave and the secrets it had concealed for centuries lay just beyond this wall of ice—a wall left slightly less than impenetrable by the recent trend of global warming. The cave was only a few inches away. Or perhaps, Miranda's analytical mind reasoned, not the cave, but a cave.

  No. The cave. She could feel it.

  She warned herself against childish optimism. It would likely put a fissure in Russell O'Shea's stone heart if this expedition turned out to be yet another wild-goose chase. She hoped to God it wasn't. Because she knew, all too well, it would probably be his last.

  Now, however, even the cool, sensible Miranda that ruled her most of the time couldn't contain the thrill of anticipation. This time, even she was convinced. The legend had been handed down in various forms and was still told in the remote Inuit villages of Baffin Island. The variations were wild, but the similarities were strong—strong enough for Miranda to concur with her father that a kernel of truth must be concealed in the tall tales. He believed that "kernel" to be the man buried in the hidden cave, sealed by ice.

  That he was a god, who had ridden the seas upon a dragon only to be attacked by demon spirits before he could reach the shore, was, naturally, nonsense.

  An unusual man, a man unlike any encountered by the early Inuit, had been pulled from the sea and buried with great honor in a cave. The gods, it was said, then sealed the cave, thus preserving their comrade for some divine future mission. Highly unlikely, of course. That his body might have been preserved by an act of nature, however, was entirely possible. It was that man they sought.

  Tracking the exact location of the Ice Man had been her father's life's work and, in turn, hers. Because of that renowned devotion to this project and the sterling credentials of the Drs. O'Shea, the government of Canada had agreed to a joint expedition. They accepted the funding of the illustrious Beaumont University and the leadership of its most respected professor. Her father.

  The expedition would be the culmination of his life's work. The one thing he cared about, the one thing he felt any real passion for. And it would come just in time.

  She wriggled the pick free of the stubborn ice that held it, lifted it once more, and brought it down hard. And again, and again, so absorbed in the work she was barely aware of the others working similarly in other areas around her. She paused periodically to glance toward her father. Tall and far too thin, he worked a short distance from her, his long arms wielding a pickax of his own. She didn't like the slight grayness to his stern face, or the short, shallow way he breathed. She didn't like the stiff way he tended to hold his left arm and shoulder. She was certain he'd sit down and clutch his chest if he were alone. In front of her and the others, though, he'd never concede to a weakness.

  She pulled her gaze from him and resumed working. With the next impact, a huge chunk of ice broke away to drop backward into a vast blackness. Miranda stiffened as a low sound, like the deep-throated howl of a wolf, filled the air. Before her eyes the hole made itself bigger. The edges crumbled and fell inward. The moaning sound grew louder as the hole grew larger, and it took a full minute for her to realize what caused it. She dropped the pickax. "Russell, I'm through!"

  Her father froze in place for an instant before he rushed toward her. He paused at her side, one hand gripping her upper arm to pull her back a few steps. In moments they were surrounded by the others, all craning their necks to see and murmuring excitedly.

  "It's a vacuum, Miranda." He released her arm almost at once.

  She nodded, understanding as her father did, that no air had been inside the cave. A vacuum seal had been created by nature and now the fresh air was rushing in, filling the far recesses of the cave with life-giving oxygen. She stood back and watched in fascination as larger and larger chunks of ice snapped away from the hole she'd made, and the opening grew. The moan became a roar, then slowly began to fade. The rush of air eased little by little… and then it died. Swallowing hard, Miranda looked at her father.

  His hard gray eyes very nearly twinkled, and the pallor of his sculpted cheeks gave way to glowing color. She wondered if he'd ever felt for another human the way he felt for his work.

  "This is it, Miranda. You know it, don't you? You feel it, just as I do."

  She couldn't help but smile despite the part of her that ached over his inability to show his feelings for her this way. His excitement, so rare, was contagious. "You usually call relying on feelings unscientific and foolish."

  "Not when there's hard evidence to back them up." He turned from her and shouted, "Bring the lights, some rope! We're going in."

  A lean, rather awkward student raced down toward one of the crop of dome tents, which seemed to have sprouted up like vegetation far below on the tundra in the glacier's shadow. It was warmer there, nearly fifty degrees unless one factored in the biting Arctic winds. This was summer on Baffin Island. Presently he returned with two huge spotlights, a length of rope looped over his shoulder and Russell's ever-present journal held to his chest. "You'll need this, Dr. O'Shea."

  Russell took it and slapped the youth on the shoulder, his way of showing what little affection he was capable of feeling. "That I will, Darryl. Go on and get the cameras and other equipment. Choose five others and wait here. I'll call you when I need you." Darryl's face beamed. He shoved his round wire rims up higher on his nose, tugged his knit ski hat down over his ears, and raced away once more.

  Miranda took one of the lights, flicked it on and shone the beam through the opening, now large enough to crawl through. She bit her lip and prayed silently the cave would be large and open, not cramped and suffocating. She wasn't certain she could go a step farther if it were the latter. Already her heart began to pound, her hands to shake. She chanced a quick glimpse toward her father, dreading to see that he'd noticed her hesitation. He detested weakness, and that's what her mild claustrophobia was. A weakness, but a manageable one.

  The darkness within was unrelieved. The beam of her light danced over black stone walls and an equally dark floor. No dank, musty air rushed up to greet her. The place had been filled with the fresh air from outside. She smelled no hint of dampness or mildew. Best of all, the cave was huge, at least, this first section of it. Maybe she'd be all right.

  "The floor's about ten feet down." She picked up a chunk of ice and dropped it, nodding when she heard it thud. "Sounds solid enough." Drawing a fortifying breath, she handed her light to her father, then scooped up one of the helmets lying nearby and flicked its light on, instead. She fastened the chin strap with care. "I'm going in." She attached the belt around her waist, giving the carabiner links an experimental tug.

  Her father handed her a rope, with another carabiner attached. She snapped it to her belt and slipped over the edge. She waited until those anchoring the rope had drawn it taut before beginning to rappel down.

  "I'm right behind you," Russell called out. The hiss of rope through the links was punctuated by the tap of her boots against the sheer inner wall. The distance was not great. At the bottom she disconnected, and the rope disappeared above her.

  Her father dangled a flashlight a short distance above her head. She caught it, her five feet seven inches of unseemly height making it easier. His own light followed, and then he lowered himself to the floor beside her.

  Miranda tucked the spare lights into a pocket, and used the one on her helmet to examine their surroundings. The light showed her a narrow, stone-lined area, like a tunnel. The ceiling arched high above it, making it a bit less likely that she'd be rendered immobile with panic as she moved through. There was only one way to go and she turned in that direction, her father right beside her.

  As they moved, their steps echoed. They placed each foot carefully, testing each bit of stone beneath for safety befor
e putting any weight on it. Miranda fought her mind's rebellion at being in the place. She tried to think of herself as the fearless heroine in a gothic novel, traversing the hollow, chilly halls of a castle. Much more romantic than being a shivering scientist moving through a dark cave in search of a well-preserved body. She moved her head and her light… if she were that heroine, her light would come glimmering from a candelabra… scanning the black walls for writings or drawings indicating they were about to find what they'd hoped for. Surely if the Inuit had believed the man to be a god, there would be something, a shrine of some sort.

  There was nothing. Perhaps the Inuit thought to protect their newfound god by secreting him here.

  They rounded a curve in the passage and stepped into a large open area, its ceiling a massive stone dome. She nearly gasped with relief when the stone walls expanded so suddenly. The romantic within her fancied this would be the great hall of that castle she'd been imagining. And her fur-collared parka would be instead a white muslin nightdress.

  She almost laughed at her ridiculous ponderings. Next she'd be casting a pile of bones in the role of the brooding hero, who would sweep her away on a tide of passion! She chided herself. It was okay to use foolishness to distract her from her fear of small spaces. She knew such fantasies did not occur in real life, nor would she wish them to.

  This was real life. Biting cold, hard work, and piles of bones from which secrets could be learned.

  Miranda turned around slowly as she stood near the center of the chamberlike area, shining her beam on the walls and rock formations around her, wondering how long it had been since a human had stood in this place, seen these things. The air was frigid, fresh, and utterly still. The silence within the cave was like a living thing, a heavy leaden force that could smother them should the idea appeal to it. She shivered, took a calming breath, and continued studying the hollowed-out room, putting aside her imaginary world in favor of the real one.