Prologue

Kopi SmykkerArhus, Denmark

908

The forest was silent save the vicious clashing of steel against steel and the heavy breathing of the two remaining warriors.

Death lay strewn about the dry pine needles of the deeply shadowed forest floor in the form of gruesomely dismembered bodies, hacked into submission. The birds had long since flown their coups. The creatures of this harsh, dim, expanse they call home had sought shelter elsewhere from the humans who were bent on death and destruction.

The warriors circled one another, each knowing that one distraction, one moment of allowing their minds to wander or their feet to stumble even the slightest bit, could result in their swift death.

Both warriors wore vests of mail-chain and iron helmets, each had two thick war braids hanging along sweat drenched faces. And both had opted to forsake the taunting and insults common during this familiar dance.

Precision. Singleness of mind. Complete concentration. And, lastly, lethal skill dealt out in heartless calculation had kept them both alive for more years than either wished to count.

Ofeig Nabboddrson stepped over the decaying tree trunk as he lunged at his opponent. Her shield had long since been forced from her hand and lay useless upon the blood soaked earth out of her reach. The force of his strike caused sparks to rain from her swiftly raised blade and had her arm reverberating with the impact.

She had to be tired. His breath burned within his lungs. They had been at this deadly duet for almost an hour. His muscles sang with fatigue and his ego stung with appalled amazement that a woman had dared to cross his blade and was still alive to oppose him.

She skirted the tree trunk, jabbing her sword towards his middle. He countered, his jaw set.

It wasn't as if she were an ordinary woman, he consoled himself, even as he went into an almost Berserk mode, his blade swinging with a life of its own. Nay, this was a magnificent Valkyrie.

"The Protector" they called her, a legend in her own time.

And, he sensed, she was also a stunning woman, despite the battle grime, a mixture of dirt and blood, covering the parts of her face he could see, and the cold, flat stare of her blue-gray eyes. Eyes she kept locked with his own even as she defended herself against his attack.

He'd heard most of her saga and had wondered which pieces of her exploits had been truth and which had been embellishments.

He kicked her away from her advancement with a well-placed foot to her chest. The action sent her stumbling over a fallen trunk. Her breath came out of her lungs in a whoosh as she hit the ground before executing a move that his brother-in-law, Singlee, would have been proud of. A graceful backward arc of her lean body had her standing again and laying into him with renewed vigor.

One thing had not been an embellishment, he acknowledged as air hissed through his teeth, was the almost inhuman way she used her weapons. Whether she hefted a battleaxe, welded one of the many knives strapped to her person, or swung her broad sword, each weapon was an extension of her body, a body moving with cat like grace and purpose.

Heat tore across the muscle of his left forearm and he almost paused to gape at the blood oozing out of the wound she had dealt him.

As fast as lightning his blade returned the favor, ripping though the leather sleeve of her sword arm to sear the skin and muscle beneath.

If not for her quick side step to the right, she would have lost her arm at the shoulder.

Even, white teeth flashed as she smiled. The bizarre gesture filled him with a surge of admiration and unexpected lust.

His next thought blindsided him and caused his heart to slam against his chest. A thought so unexpected, yet so completely right, that he smiled in return.

"I shall not slay you," he panted, advancing upon her step by menacing step. "Nay, lady warrior, I shall claim you."

Her eyes widened, yet her sword never ceased its defense.

"No man," she hissed, "shall ever claim me. Not in this lifetime!"

No sooner had the words left her mouth than the pendent Ofeig had looped around his neck just that morn began to heat against his skin. Although he was already drenched with sweat, pinpricks of cold perspiration broke out along his body.

Dread consumed him and he cursed himself every kind of fool for "borrowing" his brother's portal opining disk. A disk known to toss unsuspecting men, and women, though the very gates of Time itself.

What had made him think that he could wear the necklace and not, at some point, be sucked out of the familiar and into the unknown?

She backed away from him, her broad sword held in defense and her eyes riveted on the green glow shining from beneath his shirt.

She gasped and dropped her gaze, shaking her leather shod foot as if it had been burnt. To Ofeig's shock his pendant's mate rested just atop the pine needles, glowing at her feet.

How had it gotten there?

Blended metal was cut into a perfect circle with five sharp points stationed at the edge of the circle at even intervals. A rune letter, Lagu, which meant water or sea, was placed in the center of the disk, which symbolized life sustaining water or oath-associated beer. Encircling the rune letter was a complicated series of circles and knots, all intertwined, with no obvious beginning or ending to their journey.

Those circles and knots now glowing brightly were sunken upon the unusual metal, representing the past. While his disk's markings were raised, indicating the stretching forward of time. The future.

"What kind of witchery is this?" she demanded, her eyes wild.

Before he could answer he watched in unblinking shock as the woman, clutching her freely bleeding arm, the pendent still at her foot, disappeared into thin air. It was then his weight shifted, became heaver, then weightless, as if he were but air.

Moments before the world turned black he went tumbling with dizzying speed within a dark vortex, Ofeig caught sight of a gaping Singlee, standing at the edge of the clearing amidst the tall pines, holding the reins of Ofeig's own horse.

He managed to scowl at Singlee before his brother-in-law, the forest, and the world he knew, disappeared from his sight.

Where he and the woman whom he had claimed as his own would end up he couldn't say, but he hoped, for her sake, that she would be able to accept the impossible journey into the future he assumed they were both propelling.

Heaven help the future world if she could not.