Rough and Ready (18 page)

Thorfinn glanced at him and then at Hilda, questioning. Torolf had already told the man of her rules, which must have offended him, that she would imply they were rapists, but she could take no chances.

Hilda stood and addressed them all. "Everyone is welcome to stay for the evening meal. Mayhap the SEALs will even entertain you with their music. We have no sleeping quarters for you, being a small keep and a women's sanctuary, but you may take turns using our bathhouse."

"We have been long at sea," Thorfinn said, standing to stretch. He was a fine-looking man, though lacking in good sense, for he blathered on, "We need our clothing washed. And send some women to tend us in the bathhouse with fresh linens."

Hilda bristled.

Britta snorted.

Several of the SEALs snickered, and Cage said, "In the bayou, we call this an uh-oh second."

Thorfinn, the lackwit, looked about him, unaware of his blunder. It was true that many households provided hospitality to their guests, including help with bathing and washing their clothes. But these were uninvited, could hardly be classified as guests, and there were bloody four hundred of them.

"Behave, Hilda," Torolf whispered in her ear.

"Hah!" she whispered back. "On second thought, methinks you men should bathe in the fjord… both your clothing and your bodies. My bathhouse will be in use by my women, who have much other work to do."

A silence descended, broken only by the crackling of the fire in the nearby hearth and by the noises at the other end of the hall, where casks of food and ale and Frankish wine were being carried in.

The men shuffled outside then. Steven stayed behind, much to Torolf's apparent displeasure. "I just wanted to tell you… my brother means no disrespect. He has suffered much at the hands of a woman and is betimes unable to repress his hostilities."

She tilted her head in question.

"His wife left him two years ago, ran away with an outlawed Viking, and took Thorfinn's infant son with her. Pirates attacked their longship, killing everyone on board except his son, whom they carried off to only the gods know where… possibly the Arab lands. It is believed the child is dead, too, since no trace has been found of him, and, believe you me, Thorfinn has tried."

"How terrible!"

Torolf came back in then and yelled from the doorway. "If you're done sucking up, Steven, maybe you could come out here and tell your brother to stop pissing off everyone in sight with his sweet personality."

Steven laughed and went out the door.

Torolf stomped up to her, kissed her hard, and shoved her out the door in front of him with a familiar hand on her bottom.

The lout! she thought, but she was smiling.

I'm not thinkin' about you, baby, except when I walk and talk and eat and sleep and…

Torolf felt like he was in the eye of a tornado, totally at the mercy of forces beyond his control. It didn't help that he was half-blitzed from his cousins'

stash of French wine.

No wonder he was disoriented, though. Time travel. Landing in a sort of nunnery.

Training female soldiers. Now helping to plan a combined mission of know-it-all Vikings, women, and SEALs. It gave new meaning to the term special forces.

And

then there was Hilda. Lordy, Lordy, he was in deep and drowning fast.

He could only imagine what his buddies must think of this bizarre scene surrounding them. Hell, he'd been here before—in the past—and he found it beyond belief.

Pretty Boy was enjoying himself, though. Right now, he had Britta trapped between a bench and a hearth, giving her the full-throttle assault with his accumulated store of seduction techniques. Britta looked a bit shell-shocked.

Thorfinn was in a serious discussion with JAM, something about the similarities between Viking and Christian religions.

Cage had Hilda's good friend Inge sitting on his lap wearing his cowboy hat.

This, despite Hilda having given her women orders not to have men in their bed furs while the Norsemandy Vikings were in the area.

Dagne was playing the lute, and a young man on another lute accompanied her to some soft medieval-style songs. They could hardly be heard over the volume of noise. There were only a dozen or so of the Norsemandy Viking men here, but add to that the five SEALs, about three dozen women, and the Norstead and Amberstead men who had come to The Sanctuary the day before… talking, laughing, playing dice or the board game, hnefatafl, and drinking… lots of drinking.

Hilda flitted in and out of the hall as she supervised the meal and cleanup.

His

eyes followed her everywhere, and he was not happy to see Steven at her side, helping her, making her laugh, touching her arm or shoulder.

He was becoming obsessed with the woman. Why, he had no idea. Ha, ha, ha!

Sure,

there had been the mind-blowing sex. But so what? Sex was sex. Some of it mind-blowing. Some of it so-so. Note to Torolf: you are full of shit. And he was worried about her. If Steinolf ever got a hold of her… And she annoyed the hell out of him. Big time. And he wanted to nail her so long and so hard that her blasted hot blue eyes rolled around in her head like the cherries on a slot machine. You gotta love the male imagination. Yep, he was losin' his mind.

Testosterone: God's way of reminding men that, cut to the bone, they are only dumb men.

"Why are you muttering to yourself?" Hilda asked, pouring more wine into his goblet. He hadn't realized she'd come back into the hall. Her hair hung down her back in a single braid, but many tendrils had escaped due to the heat in the hall from the fires and body heat from so many people.

I am not picturing it as it looked loose and spread out like a silver blanket, the dark red of the fox pelts beneath her, and me above her. And that lurch of pleasure between my legs is just an alcohol buzz. Oh, this is just great!

Half-blitzed and now half-hard, too!

She wore a finer gunna tonight than she had previously… a dark blue wool.

Nothing like the silks she'd no doubt owned in the past, but pretty nonetheless.

Is she dressing to please Steven or Thorfinn ?

He bit his bottom lip to keep from growling.

Steven came up then and smiled at Torolf as if they were good friends.

"Hilda,

come rest a bit, and we can discuss those hidden tunnels of yours at Amberstead."

Hah! I know which hidden tunnels you're interested in, Steve-o-lech, and they aren't at Amberstead.

Hilda set the urn of wine on the head table beside him, then wiped her hands on her apron before removing it. She was about to walk off with Steven when she glanced his way, then did a double take. "What ails you, Torolf? Your face looks fierce, as if in some pain."

Oh, yeah, I've got a pain all right. "Gas," he said, and stood, waving a hand for them to take the empty seats at the head table, while he walked off to join his buddies. Time to take this half blitz to a full-tilt boogie, knee-walking, mind-numbing drunk.

A short time later, he and his buddies, to the accompaniment of Pretty Boy on his lute-guitar, were belting out drinking songs. First, Garth Brooks's old favorite, "I've Got Friends in Low Places," which the Viking men loved and asked them to repeat three times. Then, The Animals' "We Gotta Get Out of This Place,"

a particularly apt song for him and the other SEALs. They sang that one three times, too. By the time they got to "Crazy," a mix of Patsy Cline and Aerosmith, they were all schnockered and more than a little bit… yep, crazy.

He awakened the next morning with a big head. A big head that was resting on the hall's trestle table where it had fallen the night before. His head felt the size of a pumpkin, and he could swear an AK-47 was ripping out ammo inside.

His

fuzzy tongue tasted like gammelost. And he suspected he was drooling.

Can life get any better than this? Or worse?

Turns out, it could. Try teaching four hundred Vikings with the ale head how to jog.

Men will be boys… even Viking men…

Hilda stood at the top of the motte, surveying the incredible scene down below, across the wide sward that led two hectares toward the fjord.

Dozens of tents and small fires dotted the landscape where hundreds of Viking warriors stood about, eating, sharpening weapons, and practicing warfare skills.

And here, in the section closest to the motte, a large group watched Torolf and his two cousins entertain the crowds.

"What are the fools doing?" Hilda muttered to herself.

"It's a trick Max and all of his family members can perform," Cage told her, coming up behind her on the drawbridge. "They claim they can do this in the middle of a battle, but, me, I doan know 'bout that."

Torolf stood at one end, about twenty paces from Steven, who stood twenty paces from both him and Thorfinn. Each held deadly lances in their hands. Torolf threw his lance with accuracy toward Thorfinn, who caught the spear, and, in one deft movement, twirled it about his fingers and threw the lance back at Torolf.

Torolf, in turn, caught the lance, flicked it betwixt his fingers and sent it to Steven, who also caught it. Over and over, they performed this exercise, laughing like youthlings over silly games. Even the dour Thorfinn was mirthful today.

Stig was tied to a tree off to the side, sitting and watching Torolf with an adoring expression on his dog face.

"Torolf told me once that he has a great uncle, King Olaf, who perfected this talent, and all the rest of his family have learned to do it, too."

" 'Tis a dubious talent."

Cage wore that ridiculous cowboy hat and boots. Who ever heard of a boy who was a cow? But he was a wickedly handsome man, ever jestful, just like Torolf. "I doan know 'bout that, chère. It sure impresses the ladies back home." He waggled his eyebrows at her in a lackwit manner.

"Speaking of your home… this Ah-mare-eek-ah, do you share Torolf's assertions that it is a land far away in the future?"

Cage's mischievous expression turned serious. "Hard to believe, but it sure seems so. Either that, or we're all in the middle of some fantastic dream.

It's

gone on too long for it to be a joke, and, me, I've never had a dream with such detail."

Hilda still thought there had to be some other explanation. "Are you anxious to get home?"

"Yeah, I am."

"Do you have family there?"

"Just my maw maw… that's Cajun for grandmother."

"No wife or promised one?"

"Nope, I like to play the field. Spread myself around."

She had to laugh at the rascal's merry words. "And Torolf?"

"Why not ask him?"

"I have, but 'tis hard to know when he teases and when he tells the truth.

The

man does joke overmuch."

"Don't judge a book by the cover."

"Huh?"

"Max gives the impression of allus bein' cheerful, but he's deep, like all of us. I think he feels guilty fer havin' a more privileged life… fer not bein'

here to help Norstead and his sister, Madrene. And he works damn hard to defend his country. Mostly, he's a good friend to me, and good friends are rare."

"I did not mean to give offense."

His eyes were dancing merrily again. "I know that, but Max and I are very close.

We finish each other's sentences… can sometimes read each other's thoughts.

So,

hurt him, and you hurt me, too."

"What makes you think that I could hurt Torolf?"

"He cares about you, Hilda."

"Hah! He cares about what I have betwixt my legs."

Cage laughed and hugged her about her shoulders. "That, too, babe. But, seriously, my maw maw, she allus says, 'The apple, she gotta fall from the tree sometime.' "

She was afraid to ask, sensing a trap. "What does that mean?"

"It means that every man and every woman gots to bite the love bullet sometime."

"Love? I do not understand you by half, but one thing I do know, there is naught of love betwixt me and the lout."

"If you say so," Cage replied with a grin. "Another thing my maw maw allus says, 'Everyone gotta have a little joie de vivre in their life.'"

"Jwah duh vee?"

"Yeah, love of life. So, bit of advice here, bébé, let some of Max's joie de vivre rub off on you. It's a good thing."

Torolf saw them coming and set his spears aside. "Hey, Hildy, I have something to show you." His eyes danced just as merrily as his friend Cage's.

She looked down below his belt to his zipper and said, with a sauciness that was new to her, "I have seen all you have to show, knave."

Cage squeezed her shoulder and said, "Way to go, honey!"

But Torolf got the last word in when he replied, with equal sauciness, "Wanna bet?"

Just a little male bonding…

Torolf and his buddies sat around a campfire with Thorfinn and Steven, sipping fine ale, following a day of hard military exercise.

The two Norsemen had no knowledge of modern weapons or military maneuvers, but they were excellent warriors, just the same. All of the SEALs, himself included, had been impressed at how well they had kept up with a hard routine today.

And,

actually, the two men had taught them a thing or two about fighting, as well.

"I know we believe in different types of fighting," Torolf started off with his cousins, "but there are some basic tenets we all have to follow on this mission…

or all bets are off."

"What tenets?" Thorfinn asked suspiciously.

"First of all, we—the five of us—are U.S. Navy SEALs."

Steven grinned and made a barklike sound mimicking seals: "Ork, ork, ork!"

"Not that kind of seal, lamebrain," he remarked to Steven, not unkindly. It was hard not to like Steven. Hilda would say it was because they were cut from the same "jestsome" cloth. "SEALs is the name of an elite military group that stands for sea, air, and land."

Thorfinn studied him closely. "Why did you not just say so, instead of taking on that silly name?"

Aaarrgh! "One of our integral exercises is based on CQD, or Close Quarter Defense. That's what we insist be followed in taking Steinolf down."