Dream of Me/Believe in Me

most fortunate to receive in the person of the Lord Hawk himself.”
    Having worked her way through this thicket of words and concluded that the steward was trying to assure that she should feel no slight at being escorted by him rather than by Hawk, Krysta made swift to reassure him that she had no objection to his company. Inwardly, she admitted that she was just a little relieved not to have to face her formidable betrothed right then.
    Edward said not a word of Daria, nor was that specter in evidence anywhere they went at Hawkforte. From the cool stone interior of the dairy half-buried in the ground through the dozens of dependencies—where wool was spun, woven, and dyed; food smoked, pickled, or stored; iron heated and bent; wood sawed, soaked, and shaped; grain ground; leather tanned, and on and on ending finally with the pigeon coops perched high above on the towers—Hawkforte's residents greeted her with cautious curiosity. Edvard maintained a stern demeanor that served to remind people of who and what she was, as though any needed reminding considering the banquet of gossip with which she had provided them. Yet did she find herself looking over her shoulder from time to time, just in case the Hawk should appear. No sign of him was to be had, and as the hours passed in diligent perusal of her new home she found herself impatient for some sight of him. Surely he was not … avoiding her?
    “Is the Lord Hawk often so long occupied on the training field?” she asked as pigeons fluttered in their coops and the small boy who tended them peered at her through the tangle of his bangs.
    The question startled Edvard. He gave off elaborating on the merits of the locally grown grapes still cultivatedin the ancient Roman vineyards versus those native to the sunnier climes of the Mediterranean and looked at her cautiously.
    “Training is very important. Lord Hawk maintains a sizable garrison and it would not do for the men to have too much idle time.”
    “I suppose not….”
    She turned away, looking out over the walls. Between her high perch and the sea whence she had come lay golden fields, plump orchards, orderly vineyards, and timber-rich forests. To eyes bred for harsher climes, such blatant plenty seemed a skald-spun dream.
    Edvard spoke at her shoulder. “It was not always as you see it now. There was a time when those fields were trampled and lifeless, the town a tiny burnt shell, and those huddled within this fortress clinging to only the faintest hope that the Danes could be driven from the land.”
    “All this before King Alfred rallied the fyrd and gave battle to the Danes?”
    “Yes, before men such as the Hawk rode with him, fighting at his side through more battles than anyone could count, living days in the saddle with scarcely any food or rest until it must have seemed to them that there was nothing left in the world save blood and death.” The wind whispered in a moment's silence. It died away as Edvard went on. “He never speaks of it, not a word. Others will brag of their exploits in battle, but the Hawk says nothing. He was only a boy yet he fought with the strength of a grown man and he saw things no boy should ever see. Alfred himself hailed him as the greatest warrior of our age. He offered him any prize short of the throne itself. Do you know what Lord Hawk said he wanted?”
    Krysta shook her head.
    “To go home, to heal the land, and hopefully to have the land heal him.”
    “You were with him?” Her voice was tight with emotion.
    “No, I was little more than a mewling babe hidden with my parents in the forest, my mother boiling bark and roots to try to keep her milk coming so that I might live. The Lord Hawk brought peace to this land and its people but that same peace eludes him. He knows full well it is the fierceness of his reputation that keeps the Danes at bay. So does he drive himself on the training field, at the hunt, in all ways that the spies of the Danes can see and report.”
    “Spies?”
    “Of course there are spies here, did you think not? The Danes are not reconciled to their loss of these lands. They paw the ground like tethered bulls, awaiting the first sign of weakness to gore us yet again.”
    “I had not thought of that,” Krysta admitted and felt foolish for so obvious a lapse. The land might look prosperous and at peace to her, but to other eyes it would appear all that
and
a prize to be coveted.
    “Then think on it now, my lady,” Edvard said. “It