“I have not decided yet, Ree-tah. And my name is Steven. Master Steven to you.”
Yeah, right. “Okay, your lord and master Steven, where am I?”
“The Norselands.”
“And you two are Vikings, I suppose.”
“We are.”
“Steven . . . that’s not a Viking name, is it?”
“My mother was half-Christian through her mother, a Saxon lady.”
She looked at the well-muscled men and herself in a prison of sorts, and an uncomfortable idea came to her. “You’re not planning on making me a sex slave or something, are you? Because I’ve gotta tell you, it’s not gonna happen.”
“We are not so randy or perverted that we would tup an ugly creature like you,” Steven scoffed.
“Ugly, am I? I’ll have you know, I have no trouble attracting men. Oh, good Lord! I can’t believe I’m defending myself to you two dunces. In a dream, no less. By the way, you’re not nearly as good-looking as George Clooney up close.” Which was a lie. He was better looking by far.
“George who?” Steven asked. “The only George I know is a Saxon lord who resembles a toad.”
“There you go!”
“Are you calling me a toad?”
“If the shoe fits ...”
“What shoe?”
“Aaarrgh!”
Meanwhile, Oslac was tuned into his own agenda. “You have no nether cleft, far as I can see.” He craned his head to the side to see better.
“I swear, I must have landed in some loony bin, and you two are candidates for Dumb Men of the Year . . . heck, Dumb Men of the Ages. By the way, have you heard why doctors smack babies’ butts right after they’re born?” When neither of them answered, she said, “To knock the penises off the smart ones.”
Steven turned to Oslac, and, instead of laughing, said, “Did you put her up to this? Even a stranger now tells jokes to make me smile.”
Oslac put up both hands. “Not me.”
Dumb, dumb, dumb. “Am I a prisoner of war, or something? If so, there are military codes of conduct, you know.”
“You mention military ...” Steven narrowed his eyes at her. “Why did you come to our land? Are there others waiting to attack? Are they all sea people like you? Or do only some take human form? Why do you not have scales like a mermaid? Why are you not dying here out of the water, like a fish?”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa! So many questions. But first, I have to pee. Unlock this cage and point me to a bathroom.”
“Pee?” The two lunkheads stared at Rita in question, then at each other.
She crossed her legs to emphasize what she meant.
“Dost mean piss?” Steven asked.
“Yes!”
“And you mean to piss in my bathing pool?”
“No, you idiot!”
“How do you piss?” the blond idiot asked in a confrontational manner, as if he’d caught her in some trap.
“The same way you do, buddy. In a toilet.”
“The same as . . . you have a cock?” Steven asked, staring at her even harder, especially her lower region.
“This is a ridiculous conversation, and it’s hotter than hell in here. Can’t you open a window or something?”
“We are in a weaponry room. There are no windows,” Oslac pointed out, again as if he had been testing her, and she had failed.
She glanced around, and, sure enough, it was some kind of weapon storeroom. Ancient weapons. Swords, shields, maces, battle axes, bows and arrows, lances, chain mail, leather and metal helmets with nose and eye guards.
“Okay, no windows then.” As she began to peel off her Nomex hood, she felt a lump the size of a goose egg on the back of her head. “Ouch!”
Both men gasped. “She is pulling off her scalp,” Oslac said to Steven.
“What alien world do you two bozos come from?” She tugged off the tight cap, then fluffed out her blonde hair, which was damp with sweat.
“You have hair,” Oslac remarked with wonder.
“No kidding, Sherlock. Jeesh!”
“And it is short, like a boyling,” Steven added.
“Hey, it’s just like Pink’s, and no one says she looks like a boy. Besides, it’s more convenient for doing stunts and military maneuvers.”
They didn’t pay a bit of attention to what she’d said, too engrossed in their own conversation.
“Mayhap she is a mermaid, after all,” Oslac said to Steven.
“Or a merman,” Steven opined.
They watched as she toed off her flippers, then wriggled her feet to ease the kinks. Swimming with fins was hard on the tendons.
“You have feet,” Steven observed.
“Yeah, and I have hands, too. Big whoop!”
“Your sarcasm ill suits, sea wench.” Steven stood, folding his arms across his chest in an intimidating manner. “Mayhap we will make a tasty fish stew of you. What think you of that, Ree-tah?”
She was exhausted from the SEAL evolution from hell. She was depressed over having probably failed the exercise. She was standing in a cage in some kind of medieval fortress in a dream-nightmare so vivid she could even smell the straw on the floor. And two dingbats were grilling her like she was the crazy one. But she was not intimidated. In fact, she was about to tell them exactly what she thought of them when she noticed something about Steven. “You look like someone I know. Similar facial features. Same height. Same silvery eyes. Same male chauvinist pig attitude. You’re even wearing an identical ring. Yep, you could be a doppelgänger for Thorfinn. And he was a Viking, too. Small world, huh?”
Steven stiffened with some kind of outrage, and before she realized what he was about, he opened the cage door and yanked her out. Lifting her by the upper arms with her feet dangling above the floor, he shook her, the whole time asking her questions. “Thorfinn? Praise the gods! You have seen my brother Finn? Where? He is alive? Thank heavens! When did you see him last?”
“If you’d stop rattling my teeth and put me down, maybe I could answer you,” she complained once he paused to draw a breath.
“There is just one question I have for you,” Steven said as he lowered her to the floor but still held onto her arms with a viselike grip. “Is he a prisoner in your sea world?”
“Give me a break! The sea jokes are getting old.”
“I am not the one telling jokes around here.”
Enough of this nonsense! Dream or no dream . . . coma or no coma . . . Rita was tired of this game. And she had to pee.
With a quick jerk of her elbows to either side, she surprised the brute into loosening his hold on her upper arms. Taking that advantage, she head butted his solar plexus, causing him to let out a whoosh of air. Then, while he was still off balance, she turned quickly, putting her back to his front and, although he had a good seventy pounds on her, she was able to flip him over her shoulder and onto the floor.
He just lay there, flat on his back in the straw, staring up at her and her bare foot pressed onto his chest.
“M’lady Fish, you are in such big trouble,” he said, not at all amused. Most men weren’t when they’d been bested by a woman.
“Oh, yeah?” She pressed her foot closer to his throat.
“Oh, yea!”
She heard a rustling sound and belatedly noticed at least a dozen men, including Oslac, surrounding them. Uh-oh! They all carried deadly swords. They all looked like they knew how to use them.
She turned her attention back to the jerk on the floor.
He brushed her leg aside and stood in one fluid motion, remarkable for a man his size. Then he told her in no uncertain terms, “I have a sword with your name on it. Dost prefer a stab through the heart or a head lopping?”
Before she had a chance to respond, a bearded man wearing a vast amount of furs, resembling a bear himself, and smelling like one, too, raised his sword and, thank you, God, did not separate any body parts. Instead, he whacked her on the back of the head with its flat side. Just before she fell into another pit of blackness, she thou
ght with hysterical irrelevance, Another goose egg. I am going to have the mother of all headaches.
Chapter 4
Peg legs, cutlasses, wenches, and booty, oh, my! . . .
After months of mind-numbing peace, trouble was flaring all around Norstead, and only a small part of it due to the odd sea creature who’d knocked him to his arse. An embarrassing happenstance she would pay for, in good time.
She . . . it . . . was now dead to the world, in Thorfinn’s old bedchamber, sleeping off Bjarni’s sword blow to her head. A tap, really. If Bjarni had actually hit her with any force, she would be well and truly dead.
He had just sat down at the high table, awaiting dinner, and was about to raise a horn of ale to his mouth when his steward, Arnstein, walked up and shifted uneasily from hip to hip.
“What is it, Arnstein? Some problem with the household?”
Arnstein’s old face flushed. “I lost the wager, m’lord.”
“Which wager would that be?”
“The one to tell you a funny rhyme.”
“Oh, good gods, more attempts to make me smile,” he commented in an undertone to Oslac. “Am I really that bad?”
“Worse,” Oslac answered with a grin.
“Go ahead, Arnstein,” he said on a sigh. “Tell me your rhyme.”
“There once was a Saxon from Kent
Whose manroot was so long it was bent.
He got into trouble
When he folded it double.
So, instead of coming, he went.”
Oslac was bent over double . . . with mirth. Steven’s men closest to the dais laughed uproariously as Arnstein ducked his head and scooted away. Steven could only stare, agape, at the lengths his people would go to in order to cheer him up. Was he really that pitiful?
He was saved from further consideration of that distasteful subject because just then, he heard a ruckus outside, getting closer. He and Oslac both stood.
Housecarls half carried a man into the great hall. When the man, whose sodden garments dripped into a pool beneath his feet, was able to speak, he identified himself as Skeggi, oar master on a longship sent by his mother from Norsemandy. News to him, by the by, that his mother’s ship had been on the way here.
Steven clapped a hand over his heart. “Please tell me that my mother was not on your ship.”
“She was not.”
Steven released a sigh of relief. “Did your ship wreck?”
“Not precisely.” Skeggi ducked his head sheepishly. “Pirates.”
Steven and Oslac looked at each other.
“Brodir the Bold?” Steven inquired, his voice dripping ice.
Skeggi nodded. “Our longship got separated from its sister ship in a storm outside Hedeby. I know not where it is now. But on our longship ...” Skeggi gulped. “. . . all but six of us gone. Five they took captive, but they sent me on. We were . . . um, ill-prepared, m’lord.”
Steven was not a lord; he was a jarl, comparable to an English earl, but this was no time to correct the man. So, Brodir wanted him to know of his perfidy. “I still don’t understand. Why would my mother send a longship here?”
Skeggi’s eyes darted left and right before he mumbled something.
“What did you say?”
“Your sister,” he said, then recoiled as if he expected to be struck.
The hairs stood out on the back of his neck. “My sister was on that ship? What sister?”
“Disa.”
“What?” he hollered.
“Disa and her maid Sigvid.”
He barely stifled a groan. Disa was the youngest of his four sisters, a year younger than himself. His favorite, truth to tell. Childless, she’d been widowed two years past when her husband had gone off to fight in Frankland. “Why was my sister coming here? Never mind. The why is not important. We must make haste to rescue her.
“Ten longships,” he ordered Oslac to prepare from both Norstead and Amberstead. “Three hundred fighting men, fully armed. Food, drink to last a sennight or more, although I am hoping it will not come to that. Twenty horses with feed in case we must fight on land.”
For the past two years, Brodir had been pricking at him, like a needle here and there. Naught to overly concern Steven. But when one of his family . . . and his mother’s seamen . . . were attacked, action was essential.
With Mjöllnir, Thor’s mighty hammer, at his back, he vowed to personally put a blood eagle to the pirate’s treacherous back whilst he still lived. A fitting death for a nithing who attacked women.
But first, he had another task to complete.
“I will be right back,” he told Oslac. “I must needs check on our Sea Siren to see if she still lives. If she is dead, and we leave the body untended until we return, we will ne’er get the fish stench out of the bedchamber.”
“And if she does still live, will you drop her back into the sea?” Oslac’s question made sense, since entertainment from a caged sea creature was of no importance now . . . or in the near future.
Steven shrugged. “Mayhap.”
He wanted to see her tail . . .
Rita awakened in a strange room.
Without moving, she let her eyes rove the perimeter, sensing she was in some kind of hostile environment. She had no clue how that could be when her last base of operation had been the beach in Coronado, California, but she was going to find out. Soon.
She was lying on a crude bed, raised a couple feet off the floor. The walls were wood, like the interior of a cabin . . . but not exactly. More like horizontal planks. There was straw on the floor as there had been in the weapons room. Rushes, she thought they were called in some societies. The only light came from an arrow slit window up high. Easing herself carefully off the bed, she checked the door, not surprised to find it locked from the outside.
Then she did what she’d been dying to do for what seemed like ages. Going behind a screen, she found a chamber pot and relieved her bladder with a long sigh.
Noticing a table with a pitcher and bowl and a pottery jar of soft soap, she decided to wash the camouflage off her face, soon turning the water grimy. She needed to get out of her wet suit, which was starting to itch. If only she had clean clothing to wear! Ah! Spotting a chest at the foot of the bed, she opened it to find male garments. Tunics. Slim pants, resembling tights. Belts. All of such fine cloth, they must belong to someone wealthy. Or a theatrical company. Working in the industry, she knew how authentic some period costumes could be. Holding up one of the tunics and noting its considerable size, she decided it must belong to the Viking Jerk of the Month, Steven.
Without hesitation, she peeled off her wet suit and was about to raise the tunic over her head when the door swung open. The man who stood there . . . Steven, of course . . . froze in place, stunned, and gawked at her like she was the third wonder of the world. Or an alien from outer space. Hard to tell if he was good stunned or bad stunned.
“Oh, my gods!” He stepped over the threshold and slammed the door behind him.
For a blip of a second, Rita had forgotten she was naked, although luckily he only got a side view, no frontal full monty.
Yikes! Quickly, she put the tunic and pants on. Her fingertips came to the inside elbows on the sleeves, and the bottom hung down to her calves. The neckline exposed one shoulder. “Hope you don’t mind. I had to borrow your clothing.”
He shrugged. “’Tis Thorfinn’s.”
“Ooookaaaay!”
“You are a woman,” he declared, stepping forward as he recovered from his shock.
She backed up. “No kidding. What did you think I was?”
“A sea creature.”
Now it was her turn to gawk. “Like an icky giant squid? Be careful, I might squirt some ink at you.”
He ignored her attempt at humor. “Do you often knock men to their arses?”
“Often enough.”
He arched his brows in question.
“When they need to be put in their place.”
“And t
hat place would be?”
She grinned. “Under a woman’s foot.”
“Surely you jest.”
She shrugged. “Women need to be able to defend themselves.”
“From what?”
“Terrorists, tangos, bad guys.”
“You consider me a bad guy?”
“Putting a woman in a cage . . . that definitely qualifies as bad in my book.”
“What book would that be?”
“Picky, picky, picky! It’s just a saying. I meant that putting a woman in a cage is barbaric.”
“Even when the woman is not really a woman? How do I know your sea comrades do not plan an attack on Norstead and that you were sent ahead as a trick to lull our senses?”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“How did you shed your black skin?” he asked, changing the subject abruptly as he stared at her crumpled wet suit on the rush-covered floor. “I thought snakes were the only ones who shed skin.”
“Uh, I took it off.” For every step forward he took with seeming casualness, she took one back. Meanwhile, she searched for a weapon. Could she reach that poker by the small fireplace?
“Magic, that must be it. Are you a sorceress?”
“Not last time I checked.”
“Have you forgotten that I do not like your sarcasm? And do not even think of picking up that poker lest you want to taste the flavor of my wrath. A cage will be the least of your complaints then, believe you me.”
She nudged the wet suit with a toe. “Look, this is just a wet suit. A garment worn in deep sea diving and other underwater work. Anyone could put it on.”
“Anyone? Me?”
“Well, you’re a bit too big for this one.”
And, boy, was that the truth! This Viking was one tall drink of water. At least six foot three. And, okay, she’d seen her share of hunks, both in the movies and SEALs, but this guy was a match for any of them. Etched silver armbands emphasized muscled biceps. Wide shoulders, narrow waist and hips, long legs, all pointed to one fine, physically fit specimen of masculinity, all encased in attire that befitted a Norse nobleman.
A Norse nobleman about to go to war.
Okay, this was something new.