Page 59 of Kiss of Wrath

“Swear jar, swear jar!” the other children hooted.

“This is croquet, not baseball,” Harek scolded Cnut.

“ ’Tis boring the regular way,” Cnut contended. “Betimes a man must exercise his muscles.” He waggled his eyebrows at Miranda, who was scowling with disapproval.

Harek gave his ball a good whack, too, and it ricocheted off the top of the metal fence, almost hitting Ruff, who thought it was part of the game. The dog chased after the ball, picked it up in his big mouth, and refused to give it back.

“You’re right,” Harek said. “It is more fun this way.” He and Cnut fist-bumped each other.

They were like big children. “Not if you have to replace all the windows in the neighborhood,” Miranda pointed out.

“Wanna make a bet?” Sam, ever the gambler, asked then. “First person to knock out a window. I bet fifty cents on Nut.”

“Cnut,” Cnut corrected.

“Rhymes with toot,” Ben interjected.

“Or boot,” Sam suggested.

“Or Gut, like that guy at the Amish market says, ‘Gut Morning.’ ” Larry beamed at his own choice of rhyming word.

“Coot,” Linda suggested, jumping up and down with glee over her word.

“Coot is not a word,” Larry said, and stuck his tongue out at his twin.

“Is so! Is so!” Linda asserted. “Like cooties.”

“Jeesh! Don’t you guys know anything?” Maggie intervened. “Cnut is pronounced like the newt, an animal.”

“You were named for a salamander?” Ben asked with incredulity. “Cool!”

Cnut crossed his eyes, which looked funny on such a big man.

“I still call dibs on the bet that Cnut is first to knock out a window,” Sam said.

“There’s going to be no betting, Sam.” Miranda gave the boy a meaningful scowl. “You’ve been warned about that before.”

“Crap! It’s not like I’m takin’ anyone’s lunch money,” Sam complained.

“Swear jar, swear jar!” the other children jeered.

The kids thought baseball croquet was hilarious, and Miranda called a halt to the games before they all tried to whack their balls up into the air and not along the ground as they were supposed to do. Someone was going to get hurt, or there would be property damage, or both.

They helped Cnut and Harek put the game pieces back in the box. No one wanted to handle the one covered with Ruff’s slobber, but finally Cnut rubbed it on Ruff’s fur and added it to the others. He told the children, “A real soldier must not be squeamish about body fluids, like blood or spit. One time I had to clean the vomit off Harek when he hurled the contents of his stomach on seeing a huge Saxon hird rushing toward us.”

Five small jaws dropped. Not that they understood exactly what Cnut was telling them, but the mention of soldiers and blood was enough to impress them. Even Maggie.

Harek flashed Cnut a glance of disgust. “Believe that and I have a longship to sell you in the desert.”

The kids went into the kitchen to wash their hands in the sink, an enterprise that would result in more water on the floor and counters than on their hands and a dozen soiled paper towels. While she had a chance to speak in private, Miranda asked Mordr’s brothers why he reacted so strongly around the children.

“Mordr had children of his own at one time. Precious to him, Jomar and Kata were. The two little ones were killed in a most heinous manner,” Harek explained.

“Oh my God! Was it recently?”

“ ’Twas a long, long time ago, but the memory lives with Mordr as if it were yesterday,” Harek said.

“Closure, that’s what Mordr needs.” Miranda was already thinking about the grief counseling group she led once a month. “How did they die?”