“What did you say to Sidroc?” Ingrith inquired of her husband, who tugged her down to sit on his lap. You’d expect that of a newly wedded couple, but these two had been together for at least a couple of years.
“I was telling the man how fortunate he is to be in the midst of such intelligent Vikings, dearling,” he assured his wife.
“Pfff! I can only guess—” Ingrith’s words were cut off as the oldest sister, Tyra, approached with her husband, Adam the Healer. Another Saxon. What was it with these Viking women? Would a good virile Viking not do?
Tyra was a big woman. In fact, she’d trained to be a warrior at one time. Tyra stared pointedly at Drifa’s blush and at her hand laced with his, resting on his thigh, then glared at him.
“Should I kill him, Father?” the bloodthirsty wench asked.
“Good gods, nay! We may have a husband for Drifa yet,” said King Thorvald.
Drifa tsked her opinion.
Obviously the old goat was more aware of his intentions than he’d let on. In fact he winked at Sidroc, then leaned his massive body back into an armed chair, a horn of ale in hands propped on his lap, his legs extended to the fire. Although he was an old man, he appeared to be in fine physical condition, and although his hair and beard were white, they were finely groomed and adorned with precious jewels. The quality of his tunic and braies and boots attested to his high station.
Sidroc’s best friend, Finn Vidarsson, ofttimes referred to as Finn Finehair, who had traveled here with him, was the only other man of his acquaintance who took grooming so seriously. In fact, Finn was known to trim his chest and man-hairs on occasion, a habit that he claimed women loved. Finn had never wed, claiming he’d never met a woman who matched his beauty. If Sidroc had not witnessed Finn’s prowess in battle, he would question his manliness.
Calling himself back to the present, Sidroc demanded, “I must needs speak to you as soon as possible, King Thorvald. ’Tis urgent that I get home to Vikstead afore—”
“Did I tell you about the time Adam drilled a hole in my head?” King Thorvald asked him.
Only about a dozen times. “Did I tell you—?”
“Saved my life, it did,” King Thorvald said, as if Sidroc hadn’t spoken. “Made my cock get bigger, too, I warrant.”
“Father! Such language!” five women protested, including Vana, who was married to Rafn, the Viking hersir who commanded all the troops at Stoneheim. Vana had a passion for cleaning and was scrubbing at a trestle table behind them while the family meeting was about to commence. Though why he would be included in a family meeting posed both good and bad possibilities in Sidroc’s befuddled brain.
“Mayhap Adam should drill a hole in your head,” the king suggested to him.
Sidroc sputtered. “My co— manpart is plenty big enough.” Holy Thor! He hoped Finn didn’t hear about this. He would no doubt have a dozen holes drilled in his fool head.
“Well, I hope so. I have been trying to get Drifa married for many a year. After all this time, she deserves something . . . big.”
Drifa tsked some more.
Everyone laughed, except him. He was crossing his eyes with frustration.
“Since you apparently already know my intentions, King Thorvald, do you then agree to give your daughter Drifa to me?”
The king rolled his eyes. “I do not give my daughters to any man. They have the right to choose. A promise I made to their mothers long ago.”
“What kind of lackbrained thing was that to do?”
Five women snarled.
“That does not mean like-minded men cannot influence them, however,” the king added.
“Influence her,” Sidroc sputtered. “Drifa has already accepted my suit. Have you not, sweetling?” he asked, picking her up and setting her on his lap. If Lord Hawk could take such liberties with his woman, so could he. Besides, if it was influence the king wanted, he was more than willing to . . . influence.
Drifa tried to escape, but he held on tight.
Everyone, even the women, stared at him, impressed at his finesse, no doubt.
“Let me up, you brute,” she said halfheartedly.
“Stop squirming.”
“Stop poking me with that . . . thing.”
“Your father wants to drill a hole in my head to make it bigger.”
“So I heard.”
“Some folks think bigger is better.”
“Some folks are lackbrained.”
Tyra narrowed her eyes at him. “I thought you were already married.”
He had hoped to avoid the subject, but ’twould appear he was not going to be so fortunate. “I was. My wife died,” he replied, stiff-lipped.
“When—”
“Stop, Tyra. Sidroc does not like to talk of his wife who has gone to the Other World.” She squeezed Sidroc’s hand.
He stared at Drifa with surprise. Drifa is defending me? He had conflicting feelings over that circumstance. A rather odd joy filled him that anyone, least of all a woman, would come to his aid. And he was filled with guilt that she did not know his true reason for being here. Ah, well, he would make it up to her later. He squeezed her hand in return.
He started to say, “It’s not that I—”
“Nay, Sidroc,” Drifa said. “It is for you to discuss if and when you choose.” She silenced Tyra and her other sisters with a glare.
Who is this woman I am about to be betrothed to? Can she possibly be as amazing as I am beginning to believe?
“So, what think you, daughter, of a combined wedding/birthing day celebration ten days hence?”
Sidroc was about to protest the delay, but bit his tongue. That would still allow him another sennight for what should be only a two-day trip back to Vikstead.
Drifa nodded, and he kissed her thoroughly afore she could raise any objections. To his surprise, and pleasure, she sank into his kiss as everyone cheered their good wishes.
The Norns of Fate must be on his side after all.
Or not, he soon found out.
Chapter Two
The best-laid plans of mice and clueless Viking men . . .
Drifa was happier than she’d ever been in all her life. Until, that is, Sidroc’s well-laid plans caused her heart to nigh break.
It all started later that day with Drifa’s ill-timed eavesdropping. Or was that good-timed?
Sidroc was at the lower end of the great hall speaking to his comrade-in-arms Finn Vidarsson as they shared horns of mead. Finn was a strutting peacock of a man, vain to the bone, who had every Stoneheim kitchen, chamber, and serving maid aflutter.
She heard her name mentioned and decided Sidroc must be announcing her father’s consent to their marriage.
“So, you have accomplished your goal, my friend. Well done!”
Goal? What goal?
“And just in time,” Sidroc agreed.
In time for what?
“She is comely enough, though not up to my high standards,” Finn remarked.
As if I would have you!
“No woman is comely enough to match you,” Sidroc scoffed.
“Still, methinks bedding the princess will not be such a hardship for you, Sidroc.”
Sidroc chuckled. “It took nigh tupping to get her to agree.”
Oh nay! Please do not be discussing me so!
“And that would have been a problem?”
“Nay, but I needed to withhold that treat if I wanted her consent to wed.”
Treat? You rat! You bloody, stinking midden rat! “I want you above all others.” That is what you said to me. Liar!
“And now what?”
“I plan to swive her silly tonight. Then we will wed in ten days. After that, I will take her to my father’s estate and leave her there whilst there is still time to join the Jomsvikings. The funds in her dowry should satisfy my father.”
Over my dead unswived body!
“Dost think your father will indulge her zeal for plants?”
“I daresay he will let her d
o as she wills as long as it does not interfere with his drinking and whoring. She will have my baby to while away her time besides bloody roses and manure.”
He expects to plant his seed and have it take immediately. The arrogant ass! But, oh, his words cut to the quick. Apparently his interest in my occupation with growing things is as false as his supposed affection for me.
“By then, you would have rebuilt your fortunes and can build a home wherever you choose. Mayhap even the Orkney Islands where many Vikings have settled.”
“You make a good point, Finn. The Orkneys are out of my father’s range and yet only a day’s longship ride in good weather from the Norselands.”
He has no home of his own? He would move to another country without consulting me?
“The binding ceremony cannot come too soon for me,” Sidroc added, “but the most important thing is that she will wed me now. A betrothal is as binding as the actual wedding vows.”
“Or so you think,” Drifa said, stepping out from the corridor where she had been standing, holding a pottery jug of mead, which she’d brought to replenish their supply. Her heart was nigh breaking, but she must get through these next few moments before letting loose her tears.
“Drifa!” Sidroc said with alarm, staring back at her over his shoulder.
And so you should be alarmed, you lying, lecherous lout.
He stood and approached her.
She backed up and held up one of her hands to halt his progress. “There will be no wedding.”
“I can explain.”
She shook her head. “You thought to wed me and shed me, all in one swoop. What a foolish maid you must think me.”
“I can explain,” he repeated.
“I ne’er expected love from you,” Drifa said, hoping the twitch at the side of her mouth did not betray her foolish dreams, “but you said you wanted me above all others.”
“I do.” But then he dug his own grave, so to speak, when he tried to jest, “The only other candidate at the moment is Brunhilda of Lade.”
Drifa’s heart shriveled. Brunhilda was forty if she was a day and weighed as much as a warhorse. And Sidroc views me in the same way. Even if he is jesting, I am not amused. “Go! Leave Stoneheim and ne’er let me see your devious face again.”
“We would suit, Drifa. You know we would.”
She raised her chin haughtily. “Pigs will fly afore I accept you now.”
“Is this a game you played with all your other suitors? Led them on to believe you will wed. Then cut off your favors at the last moment.”
“Ooooh, do not try to lay the blame for this travesty on me.”
“Travesty, is it?” He almost grinned.
The troll!
“You are a passionate woman, Drifa,” Sidroc said, trying a different tack. “We would both benefit from this union.”
I ne’er was before. Passionate, that is. And I ne’er will be again. Look what it has led me to. “You would swive me for coin?” she jeered. “What kind of man would do that?”
“A man who is desperate.”
Does he imply that only a man who is desperate would want me? And why is he desperate? It mattered not. He was a nithing, withholding a swiving as if that was some grand prize. Implying that she was panting after him like a randy she-goat. “Stay away from me, you mangy dog,” she warned as he drew closer.
He laughed.
Big mistake, that!
Before he could anticipate her next action, she raised the pitcher high with both hands and walloped him over the head. Not only did she knock him over, with mead flying everywhere, but the back of his head struck the edge of the bench on the way down. He landed on the rushes like a fallen oak, eyes closed.
“Oh my gods! I’ve killed the man I love . . . I mean, the man I hate . . . I mean, help!”
It was huge, as far as side effects went . . .
When Sidroc awakened, his skull ached as if it had been cracked open in the back, and his brain was seeping out. Slowly, so as not to jar his head and increase the pain, he stared about the small chamber where he was lying on a pallet.
He felt as weak as boar piss and could swear his stomach was shrunken inward. Yea, a quick scan of his upper body with his fingertips found his ribs protruding. He frowned with confusion. How could he have lost so much weight in such a short—
“You’re alive!” Finn jumped up from the chair where he had been sitting, and Sidroc put up his hands to ward him off. He did not think he could withstand a hug . . . if, indeed, that was what Finn had intended.
With hysterical irrelevance, he noted that Finn did not look his usual elegant self. His tunic and braies were rumpled. His forked beard not so forked. And his hair looked as if it had been combed with a hay rake.
“Of course I am alive. Didst think a thump on the head by a mere female would send me to Asgard?”
Finn seemed confused and then thankful when another man entered the room. It was Adam the Healer, the Saxon husband of one of Drifa’s sisters.
Speaking of Drifa, he hoped she was sorry now. Knocking him out without allowing him to explain! She was probably off somewhere weeping her eyes out with regret. He should probably punish her in some way. After they were wed.
“Sidroc, my good man, you gave us a scare,” Adam said as he gingerly sat on the edge of the mattress and began to examine his eyeballs by lifting one lid, then another.
“I did?” he asked, running his furred tongue over his furred teeth. He blew out and almost knocked himself out again with his foul breath. “How long was I asleep?”
“Asleep?” Finn chortled.
“You were unconscious for six sennights,” Adam informed him.
“What?” he hollered and tried to sit up. Almost immediately, he sank back down and had to fight the blackness that wanted to overtake him again. A sudden memory came to him, unbidden, of being force-fed endless spoonfuls of gruel and water, most of which had run down his chin to his neck and chest. “Where is the witch who put me in this condition?” he demanded.
“Drifa has gone away.” Adam’s gaze shifted, not meeting his direct scrutiny.
“Away where?”
“I am not precisely sure. She went off with her sisters after King Thorvald’s birthday on her personal longship, Wind Maiden. A short pleasure journey, they said. That usually means shopping. Probably to Birka.”
“Wind Maiden? What kind of lackwit name is that for a longship?”
Adam just shrugged as he pulled aside the bed fur and examined the rest of his body, though how tapping Sidroc’s chest with his fingertips could prove anything was beyond Sidroc’s understanding.
“You allowed your wife to go away without you on a ‘pleasure journey’?”
“The Stoneheim princesses do not ask permission.”
Mine will. If we are still to wed, that is. But then another thought occurred to him. “Drifa left me here, unconscious?” he asked with disbelief.
“I assured her that you would recover in time to offend her again.”
“Humph! Can I assume I am no longer betrothed?”
“That would be a good assumption, considering what Drifa overheard you say.”
Really, women made too much of courting and marriage. They expected men to fall over swooning in rapture at the possibility of gaining their favors, when in fact most men just wanted to get the ceremony over with so they could continue on as before.
But then the implications of his situation sunk in. Six sennights? Three sennights past his father’s deadline. “Finn?”
Understanding the unspoken question, Finn shook his head. “I went back two sennights ago, and the babe was gone.”
Rage filled Sidroc then. He sat up and despite the bindings about his head, he pulled at his hair and screamed out his fury. His anger was directed at his father, but also at Drifa for her part in this macabre play. And he wept for the baby he would never see grow into a girling.
His guilt was a heavy weight on his soul. And he did not accep
t failure easily.
But then his hysteria turned to laughter as yet another thought occurred to him. “Did you perchance drill a hole in my head, healer?”
Adam nodded. “It relieved the pressure inside your head and led to your recovery, I believe.”
“I asked him to drill one in my head, too, but the healer would not oblige,” Finn complained.
Sidroc, still laughing, lifted the laces of his braies and peered downward. “Bloody hell, the king was right.”
And then Sidroc sunk into blessed unconsciousness again.
As he was sinking, sinking, sinking into oblivion, he decided, Those damn Norns of Fate are fickle creatures . . . like all women.
Some men just need a good thumping to keep them in place . . .
“What do you mean by ‘He is gone.’ He cannot be gone.”
“Gone like the wind.” Drifa’s father made a whooshing sound, for emphasis. “Disappeared in the night with that foppish friend of his. His longship must have been kept sea-ready all that time. They took off the selfsame night that he regained consciousness. Must have been weak as watered ale. Adam says his seamen no doubt carried him out.”
“Where did he go?”
“No one knows.” Rafn spoke now. “We thought mayhap Jomsborg to join the Jomsvikings, something he had previously planned, according to Finn. But I sent some men there to check, and no one has seen him.”
“He did not even thank me for drilling a hole in his head,” Adam added with a grin.
She did not want to know what that grin implied.
“One of my men overheard his comrade-in-arms Finn mention Iceland,” Rafn informed her. “Or was it that new country beyond Iceland discovered by Erik the Red?”
“Why would he rush off like that?”
“Uh,” her father said.
Rafn and Adam exchanged glances.
“What?” she insisted.
“He might have been in a bit of a furor over your absence,” her father confessed.
“Did you not tell him where I had gone?”
“How could I do that? I did not know where you went. No one ever tells me anything.”