Page 39 of The Last Viking

“Don’t push it, Rolf.”

But his attention had already wandered. He hunkered down and was examining several slender pieces of wood, about seven feet long, which resembled tomato garden stakes. Picking up one with disgust, he weighed it in his hands, then raised it in one hand to shoulder height. In an expert move that would have put any medieval warrior to shame, he aimed it like a spear at a refuse pile twenty feet away, making a perfect landing.

“Lucky shot,” she scoffed.

“Hah!” he retorted, clearly pleased at the challenge. With his whiskey eyes flashing, he did the same with five more makeshift “spears.” Only then did he turn and grin at her.

“Show-off!”

“Nay, I will show you what is showing off. ’Tis a trick my father taught me.” Picking up another “spear,” he sauntered over and handed it to her. Then he walked ten paces away and turned. “Now, throw the spear at me.”

“I will not!”

“Do as I say, Merry-Death. You won’t hurt me.”

“I don’t know.”

“Do it,” he ordered. “And throw it hard, or the trick won’t work.”

“Okay,” she agreed, not caring for his domineering attitude at all, “but if I hurt you, I’m going to kill you.”

He laughed at the inconsistency of her statement, then danced from foot to foot, taunting her. “Come, Merry-Death, pretend I am your past-husband, and I have just told you of my mistress.”

She needed no further provocation. She threw the spear and she threw it hard. To her horror, it was heading straight for his chest. “Oh, my God!” she shrieked.

But then, to her astonishment, he caught the spear in midair and, without a pause, twisted it agilely in his fingertips and flung it back at her. The darn thing whizzed right over her left shoulder.

“I would have speared you through the heart if I’d been aiming true,” he boasted.

Good Lord, had he ever really done that in a battle? Had he really killed someone? Of course he had. He’d told her more than once that he was a renowned warrior, as well as a shipbuilder. But, no, no, no, that was his time-travel story, which she didn’t believe.

“And this is a skill my Uncle Olaf taught me,” he continued. Picking up two spears this time, he threw them simultaneously at the refuse pile, where they landed with perfect precision atop the others.

A trill of alarm went through Meredith. “You read about that in a history book, didn’t you?”

“What?” He dusted off his hands and swaggered toward her.

“That stuff about King Olaf and the double spear throwing. When you told me the first day you came here that you were related to Olaf Tryggvason, I was curious. Among other things, the sagas relate the fact that Olaf had a talent for throwing two spears at once. In fact, many years after his death, a man called-Tryggvi, who claimed to be his son by a foreign marriage, tried to win the throne of Norway. His rivals mocked him, claiming he was only a priest’s son. But in his last battle, Tryggvi supposedly flung two spears at once, successfully, and cried out, “That was how my father taught me to say Mass!”

“Merry-Death, you make my brain spin with all these words. I know not of this Tryggvi person. Many wives and mistresses did Olaf have, in many lands, and just as many sons, legitimate and bastard alike. What is your point?”

“My point is that I want you to stop this Viking time-travel nonsense. So, you learned some dumb stick-throwing trick. Big deal! But don’t pretend you were doing it with spears a thousand years ago.”

“I do not lie,” he said in an icy tone.

“You are not a time traveler.”

“I am.”

“You are not.”

He held two hands up in the air for truce. “I yield…for now, though I do not concede the battle. We will move on to a safer subject. Let me tell you of the biggest problem I detected this morn—the location. Why did your grandsire choose this site for building a longship? ’Tis too far from the water. How will we carry the completed ship down that cliffside for launching?”

“Gramps had no choice. The college is inland and crowded for space. Gramps had this extra land here, and it seemed the logical place. Besides, it’s no big deal to put the boat on a flatbed truck when the time is right and take it a few miles down the road to a docking site.”

“Well, that may be, but there is also the lack of water to soak the timbers. I must needs build a water trough…a big water trough. Blessed Balder! Can you imagine how much time and muscle power it’s going to take hauling pails of water up that cliffside, or from your keep?”

She snickered softly and strolled over to the side of the house. Turning on an outside spigot, she pulled the hose along with her as she walked back toward him. And the evil side of her nature—the one she’d just discovered since a certain Viking entered her life—kicked in, giving her the perfect opportunity for revenge. “Let’s see you smirk at me again, Mr. This-Is-Man’s-Work Viking,” she jeered, and pressed the lever on the nozzle, spraying him from head to foot.