Rough and Ready (2 page)

Torolf grabbed for the condoms and stuffed them back in his bag. "Listen, this is serious business for me. It's something I've got to do. By myself."

"Do tell," Cage said, serious himself now.

Torolf inhaled and exhaled, then decided to tell them the truth. Not that they would believe him. "I need to travel back to the eleventh-century Norselands to put an end to Steinolf, the worst tango in the world." Tango was a SEAL word for terrorist or bad guy. "He stole my family lands and tortured my sister Madrene.

Think Hitler on a longship."

His friends couldn't have regarded him more incredulously if he'd grown propellers and called himself a Black Hawk.

"You're gonna time-travel? Cool!" It was Geek speaking for the first time.

He'd

been sitting at the desk fiddling with Torolf's laptop, updating some virus software.

Cool? Does he accept time travel? I must be dreaming.

The other SEALs turned to look at Geek, shocked. The message was clear: Geek had an IQ of about a gazillion, and if he could accept time travel, well, holy shit, maybe the rest of them could accept it, too. Scary thought, that.

"You believe in time travel?" Cage asked Geek.

Tell them no. Please, tell them no.

"Not really."

Whew!

"Well, not today, but I think it might be possible in the future."

That is just great!

Geek then went on to spout some crap about time wrinkles in the stratosphere and research going on at some half-baked interterrestrial institute in D.C.

Apparently time travelers and aliens were put in the same category.

"Have you been to see Dr. Goldstein this rotation?" Pretty Boy asked Torolf.

"Yes."

Dr. Goldstein was the base psychiatrist. All SEALs were required to get psychiatric counseling after every live op in which kills were involved.

There

was a fear that they would go off the deep end over the taking of human life, even if it was the vilest of tangos. After this recent stint in Afghanistan, his platoon—a combined effort of SEALs, Rangers, and other special forces units—had all gotten in their share of killing al-Qaeda suicide bombers and shit-for-brains extremists.

They would start a new rotation next month, this time in Tikrit, where the goal was to make a surgical strike, taking out some of the remaining hard-core Baathists, remnants of Saddam's old regime.

"So, Max, have ya time-traveled before?" Cage was gazing at him with a mixture of pity and concern.

"I have."

That surprised the crap out of all of them, including Geek, who turned to give him his full attention. "How?"

"You guys can't repeat any of this," Torolf said.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," they agreed, but he could tell that they all thought he was fast turning into a fruitcake.

"When I was sixteen years old, in the year 1000 AD, my father, myself, and eight of my brothers and sisters boarded a longship. We left behind at Norstead, my family's estates, my brother Ragnor and my sister Madrene, both of whom you've met. While in Iceland, or Greenland, or wherever the hell we ended up, a strange storm overtook us, and we saw a vision where this elderly woman was praying.

When we woke up, we were still in our longship, but we had landed in modern-day California. Ragnor and Madrene came here later, at different times."

A stunned silence met his words.

Well, he might as well finish off this lunatic tale. "If it was only that Steinolf stole our property… if it was only that he'd been vicious in the invasion… my family could probably let it go. But that bastard did some things to Madrene that can't be forgiven or forgotten. Even today, her body is covered with scars from the bastard's whip."

"Yeah, but you and your family are safe now," JAM pointed out. "Assuming what you say is true, why put yourself in danger just for the sake of revenge?"

"There's more," he said with a long sigh. "I found this obscure ancient journal that says Steinolf's reign of terror went on for decades, that he ruled all of Scandinavia at one point. His atrocities were unspeakable."

"I still don't understand," Cage said.

"Look, suppose you were able to go back and eliminate Hitler before the death camps. Wouldn't you try? Yeah, it's rewriting history, but if there's even a remote chance that I can stop him…" He paused with a shrug. "How can I not try?"

More silence.

Finally, Cage coughed and said, "So, do ya have a time machine or somethin'?"

He had to laugh at the question and gave Cage a noogie on his long-haired fool head. "No, you dipwad!"

"Do you expect to do it on the high seas… in a boat?" Geek asked. "Like before?

And reverse the time travel?"

"Logical conclusion, but no. I've tried that. Lots of time in a boat off the California coast. I even tried it in Iceland when we were there last year to train the IDF in Keflavik. But nothing happened. Now I'm going back to Norway.

I'll stand on the same spot where Norstead was once located. Hopefully, something will happen."

"Ya know you've gone bonkers, don't ya?" Cage regarded him with amusement.

He probably expected him to say something like, "Gotcha!" And admit he'd been joking. I wish! "Maybe. But I've gotta try."

"You honest-to-God believe in time travel?" Pretty Boy wanted to know.

"Well, no. But I do believe in miracles. I figure God, or one of the gods…

probably Loki, the jester… destined this for my family."

"Aaah, miracles! That I can understand." JAM was nodding his head in acceptance, which was remarkable to Torolf. He didn't think anyone would believe him.

"This sounds really interesting. I'm in," Geek said. "When do we leave for Norway?"

"Me, too," each of the others said.

"No, no, no!" Torolf said as emphatically as he could.

"All fer one and one fer all," Cage reminded him. And he wasn't teasing, either.

"You can't do this," he tried one last time. "I know you have liberty for a couple weeks. We all do before we go OUTCONUS again. But, man, what if we can't come back? What if we get stuck in the past? Do you want to have a UA on your record?"

"Shiiit! If we're lost in the eleventh century, I don't think an unauthorized absence is gonna matter all that much," Pretty Boy pointed out.

Torolf decided to try a different argument. "Do you have any idea how primitive it was then? No electricity. No running water or flush toilets. No cars or planes. No computers. No condoms."

His four teammates looked at each other, then at him. They didn't believe him.

Still, Cage spoke for them all when he said, "We're willing to risk that… for you. Do y'all agree?"

The response was a resounding, "Hoo-yah!" And Pretty Boy added, "Make sure we buy a shitload of rubbers to take with us. Make mine supersize."

"The only supersize on you is yer big head," Cage told Pretty Boy.

So it was that a team of five Navy SEALs decided to go back in time to the eleventh-century Norselands. They would never be the same.

You could say she was a Dark Ages feminist…

Brunhilda Berdottir was the last living child of Styrr Hardhead and Bera the Weeper, a deceased high jarl of Hordaland and his lady wife. Though she would never be recognized as such in her present condition.

She had a broken arm, a blackened eye, and bruises from head to toe. Still she trudged on, wearing only a rough gown under an overtunic and thin, deerskin ankle boots, fur side inward, these two days and more along a remote, snow-covered mountain trail, hoping to find her great-grandsire's hunting lodge.

But then she slipped, her feet went out from under her, and her rump hit the ground with a resounding thump. Her stop caused those following behind her to fall as well in a rippling effect.

At first, they all stared at each other. Then one of them giggled. Soon they were all laughing. Not that there was any humor to their predicament, but the old sages were right when they said that betimes 'twas better to laugh than cry.

With her were five other females, ranging in age from twelve to thirty, all of them equally battered, some having been raped as well, repeatedly. The one thing they all had in common was the brutal, maggot-hearted Steinolf, who had invaded farmsteads and estates across the northwestern Norselands in a wave of bloody attacks these past three years. Her family's own Amberstead—named for her father's trading in the prized stones from the Baltic—had suffered the latest of his raids. Hilda could not bear to think of her last image of her father lying in a pool of blood outside the bailey, his body having been dealt the horrible Blood Eagle, a Viking punishment that involved hacking all the ribs away from the backbone down to loins, then pulling out the lungs as an offering to Odin.

In truth, there had been so much sword dew from him and his loyal retainers that it ran like a stream down to the fjord. Thank the gods, her mother and older brothers, Arnsten and Ketil, had passed to the otherworld many years ago.

Actually, there were more than the five of them traveling this remote trail.

There was also Bjorn, Dotta, Edla, and Stigandr. Bjorn was a huge ram; Dotta and Edla, his favorite ewes… all three brought along for this journey at the insistence of her maid, Inge. Hilda and the women had all cuddled up against the animals for warmth as they slept yestereve.

Stig was, of course, her father's hunting dog. A more contrary, lustsome beast there never was. He would obey no one, not even Hilda, now that her father was gone.

Fortunately, once Stig understood that sheep would not stand still for his carnal efforts, all four animals had behaved well. And Inge—Bless her soul—had trailed behind with the animals, picking up their droppings with a wood paddle and sack so that their enemy would not be able to trace their path. Hilda had drawn the line when Frida, her cook, wanted to bring squawky chickens, but Hilda suspected the stubborn woman had breeding eggs nestled in the swath of wool wrapped around her waist.

Over the years, her father had traveled to the far-flung trading towns of Birka, Hedeby, and Novgorod, bringing her finger and arm rings, gold and silver linked belts, silk samite fabrics from Byzantium, a polished brass looking mirror, and a red cloak lined with gray fox fur. All left behind.

"Are we almost there, milady?" Inge asked as Hilda stood and dusted snowflakes off her gunna and wool mantle. They were near a bend in Freyjafjord that they had been following since midday. The others began to rise as well. Meanwhile, the sheep foraged in the snow to nibble at the undergrowth, and Stig licked her hands, seeking some morsel of food or bone.

She ignored Stig, having nothing to offer, and pressed her lips together to stop their shivering. "I've not been here for a dozen years… since my eleventh winter… but my grandsire always said Deer Haven was only a half day's journey from Freyja's Elbow, a bend in the fjord near the ancient lintel tree."

Inge's weary eyes followed Hilda's gaze to the gnarled tree as wide as three mead barrels with bare branches resembling beastly arms.

"Let us rest here a moment," Hilda suggested.

"A fire?" Inge inquired hopefully.

Hilda shook her head. "Steinolf's men may follow us… if not now, eventually.

I

doubt me there is any imminent danger, but we must be within the safety of Deer Haven's walls, drawbridge up, when… if… they discover our whereabouts."

"What could they do to us that they have not already done?" Inge remarked with a shudder.

"Skin us alive." It was something Steinolf was rumored to practice on his captured enemies when they did not cooperate.

"For the love of Thor! We can ill afford to linger then," Inge said, and the others nodded in agreement, even twelve-year-old Dagne, whose bloody thighs had borne the seed of a dozen or more men afore they had rescued her that first night. She had not spoken since. Dagne carried a favorite lute clutched close to her chest. Hilda wondered if she would ever sing again.

But they had all suffered.

Steinolf ordered the tip of Astrid's tongue to be sliced off for refusing to take one warrior's manpart into her mouth.

Elise, only seventeen, and a thrall, had watched helplessly as her young mother had been dragged to one of the three longboats headed for the market stalls at Hedeby where she and twenty others would be sold as slaves. Their fate could be no worse than those left behind. Of course, Hilda would now release Elise from her thralldom, and she would no longer have to keep her hair close-cropped as a sign of servitude.

Frida, the oldest of them at thirty, had lain nude and spread-legged on the high table of Amberstead's great hall for a day and a half.

They were a perverted, cruel bunch, Steinolf's men were, slaking their lust like savage animals. Although Hilda had been beaten, she had not been raped or mutilated… yet. Steinolf had been saving her, as the highborn daughter of the estate, for last in hopes of drawing fleeing troops and cotters back to Amberstead. She could not imagine what atrocity he had planned for her, in light of what he'd done to lesser females in the household. There had been mention of a randy stallion out in the stable. That had been when she'd planned her escape.

Hilda looked at each of them in turn. "Heed me well. Keep heart a short while longer. This I vow: Steinolf will pay for his sins… someday. But for now, we must find safe harbor, restore our bodies and spirits, and grow strong."

The next morning they arrived at Deer Haven. Hilda surveyed it with an eye toward their defense against invaders.

It was a motte and bailey-style structure built in the longhouse style of the Vikings. It sat on an immense, raised, flat hilltop, steep-sloped on three sides and set against an almost vertical mountain background. The rustic castle—and, yea, it was a castle to the Norsemen—was surrounded by a wide moat. The palisade of strong hewn logs was half rotted away. Many hides of land went with this estate, but most of it was untillable. That's why her great-grandsire had abandoned it decades ago.

Much work would be required to restore it to its former impregnable state.

The

only entrance was through the fjord, which could be made impassable by damming the stream a short distance back… something her great-grandsire had once done in the old days when this had been his first home, long before the establishment of Amberstead and the use of Deer Haven as a hunting lodge. The drawbridge was rusted into a permanent open position. The moat was filled with mud and fallen trees. The massive, timber-and-earthworks main longhouse with its wood shake roof was in disrepair but still intact, though the wattle-and-daub huts and outbuildings that surrounded it had long ago lost their thatched roofs.