Page 14 of Truly, Madly Viking

He inclined his head to her and said, "M'lady."

She nodded back at him, but instead of saying, "My lord," in response, the normal expression when returning a salutation, she exclaimed, "Good Lord!"

He wondered if she were one of the Valkyries sent to welcome him. If so, he would not protest—not even with that man-hair. Her body was the type meant to please a man—rather, him in particular—of that he was convinced. He held out his hand to her as he recalled that the Valkyries were to take the chosen warriors by the hand and lead them into Valhalla.

Instead of stepping up to him and leading him off, the woman plopped back down into her seat, dazed with bewilderment.

"Mother! That man is flirting with you," someone said, diverting Jorund's attention away from his Valkyrie.

"I am not flirting. I was merely..." Jorund's words trailed off as he got his greatest shock of the day. The person speaking had been a young girl, no more than eight or nine, and her identical twin sat next to her.

At first he thought it was Greta and Girta, but soon decided he was mistaken. The two girls with honey blond braids and a slight dotting of freckles on their small faces were older than Greta and Girta had been, and their hair was a darker shade of blond than his daughters', and they wore strange metal jewelry on their teeth.

But, oh, look at that! One twin had ribands tied at the ends of her braids—multicolored ribands, in all the colors of the rainbow. The other wore cloth shoes of a bright red color... not silk harem shoes as Girta had requested, but close enough, to his way of thinking.

Was it a cruel jest of the gods? Or was it a sign? He had no time to ponder further. His attention had been distracted by the woman and two girls, but not so much that he didn't notice the moment that the soldiers broke through the crowd.

They were rushing at him now, weapons raised. In fact, one of the weapons made a loud popping sound. He felt the whiz of air just past his ear, not unlike that of an arrow in flight, and then noticed the splintering of a lettered board behind him.

"No shooting, you fool! Hold your weapon," one of the soldiers yelled at another, who responded, "I thought he was reaching for a weapon."

He hadn't been, but he was now. With well honed instincts, Jorund drew his sword from its scabbard and prepared to fight off the assault—though why they should be assaulting him was unknown to him at this point. There were at least ten of them, but he had been outnumbered before. He could handle this.

"Halt!" one guardsman yelled. "Drop your weapon."

"Use the stun gun," another guardsman suggested.

Jorund had no idea what a "stung one" was, but he was taking no chances. When he did not comply, but instead took the battle stance, crouching with his sword at the ready, another guardsman raised a weapon of a different kind. In the blink of an eye, Jorund felt a sharp pain in his shoulder, which radiated down his arm to his fingertips, causing him to momentarily loosen his grip on his sword. Shocked, Jorund saw that there was no blood, and yet he felt as if he'd been struck by lightning. In that split second of inattention, the guardsmen jumped on him, knocking him to the ground.

In a daze, Jorund realized that he had been bested. It was humiliating that he—the most noted warrior in all the Norse and Saxon and Frank lands—should be struck down by such weak specimens, but there it was.

Even as he fought against the overpowering waves of dizziness that he sensed would lead to loss of consciousness, he was somehow able to hear and understand the words Greta and Girta sobbed pitifully: "Mother, help him. Please. You have to help him." Ah, good girls! That's it, intercede on my behalf.

But, no, he reminded himself, they were not Greta and Girta. These were merely twins who resembled his dead daughters. And he needed no intercession from children. If only he could stand. For some reason, though, he was not even able to lift his arms.

"Shhh! He's a stranger," the mother answered in a voice that he recognized, even in his foggy, limp condition, as husky and deliciously sensual.

"No! No, he's not a stranger!" one of the twins wailed. "He's the one."

"He is not the one," the mother said indignantly.

"Which one?" he tried to ask, but, though his lips appeared to move, no words came out.

"Don't let them hurt him," the other twin cried. "He's not dangerous, Mommy. He's just mixed-up."

Mixed-up? That's an understatement.

They were all standing about, peering down at him as he lay ignominiously on the ground the twins, the mother, and several guardsmen.

Finally he heard the woman with the man hair tell the guardsmen in an authoritative voice, "I'm a doctor.

I work at the Rainbow Psychiatric Hospital."

She's a dock whore? And she works in a hospitium? Amazing!

"This man is clearly under mental duress. He's my... uh, patient."

Man-tail door-ass? Pay-shun? I do not think I care to be described thus. He wasn't sure of the meaning of those words she'd used to describe him, but they must not be good, since the two girls gasped and the guardsmen growled with displeasure. But then, maybe not, he thought, when the girls turned to their mother as if she'd granted them some great favor... like his life.