Page 17 of Truly, Madly Viking

Maggie put her face in both hands and groaned.

"Or a husband?" Beth added with a dramatic sigh.

Maggie groaned a little louder. She knew her little girls like a book, and she had to put a stop to this nonsense—now. "He is not 'the one,'" she told them emphatically.

She didn't have to look up to see they weren't buying it... not one bit.

Five days later...

"How are you feeling today? Hmmm? Are you ready to talk?" a female voice inquired sweetly. "Now don't be afraid. We just want to help you."

Afraid? Who's afraid? A soldier's fear is his doom... I need no—Jorund cracked his eyes open to mere slits. The wench with the man-hair and sexvoice was back. Again. The one responsible for his current dilemma. And she was speaking to him in the same slow-paced manner he'd become accustomed to this past sennight, as if he were a child... or a lackbrain.

He had thought for one insane moment back at the whale place that she might be his personal Valkyrie.

Ha! He'd soon rid himself of that foolish notion. It was more likely he'd landed in Niflheim, and this was the beginning of his eternal damnation.

He'd spoken a few words on first setting foot in this foreign land, but not once since. They could question him till all the warriors went home to Valhalla, but his lips were sealed. A fighting man knew to hold his silence in the enemy camp... leastways till he assessed his foe's strengths and weaknesses. Thus far for seven whole days and nights—he'd managed to remain mute under the torment of their endless questions.

He was waiting till they removed his ankle restraints and the peculiar shert that forced his arms to wrap around his body. They put the restraints on him when anyone entered his cell only because he was deemed dangerous. Sharp thinking there. And it took four good-size men to hold him down every time they put that binding shert on him... a sadistic torture device, if he'd ever seen one.

He had learned much in the prolonged period of quiet, but there were still so many questions. He supposed he would have to talk soon.

"What's your name?" she persisted in the husky voice that could turn a man's bones to butter and his thoughts to... well, certainly not butter.

The wench pulled a short stick from her pocket, which she used to write on a stack of parchment on her lap. Glancing sideways, he was able to discern some of the letters she formed, thanks to this mystical capacity he seemed to have developed for understanding her language. Silence syndrome.

It was hard to concentrate on the meaning of the words or the magic stick, however, when his eyes were drawn to her crossed knees, where sheer hose covered nicely formed legs, exposed from thigh to oddly enticing, high-heeled shoes. Vikings had long held a tradition of attaching descriptive words to a name, like Gustov TreeFeller, or Sigurd the Beautiful, or Halfdan of the Wide Embrace. So, to his mind, she was the wench of the man-hair, sexvoice, and comely legs.

A shoe dangled from the toes of one foot, which swung up and down rhythmically as she wrote. Was she nervous? Or deliberately trying to disconcert him? Or—and he felt a jolt in his lower belly—was she excited by him?

When he failed to answer, she tried a new approach... one he'd heard dozens of times from her. "My name is Dr. Maggie McBride."

Muck-bride? Did that mean she was a soiled bride? Soiled in what way? Well, of course she was soiled. She proudly proclaimed herself a dock whore. He smiled to himself. Some men might be put off by that, but Jorund preferred women with a bit of tarnish on the gilt.

He was still confused by the bride name, though. Was she a recent bride, or hoping to become one? Ha!

Aroused or not, soiled or not, she would not snare him into the bonds of matrimony. He'd made that mistake once already.

And there was another curious thing. While this wench called herself a dock whore, the other women who came into his cell, big as you please, without even knocking, called themselves Norse. There was Norse Johnson, Norse Fill-ups.

Some men also took on that Norse appellation. Oddly, none of them had any of the characteristics he would usually associate with the Norse race—blond hair, height, or exceptional appearance. Even stranger, they were all dressed in white, right down to white shoes that squished when they walked. No true Norseman would wear foot coverings that announced his arrival. It would be like shouting, "Here I am. Lop off my head."

But then, there was the wench's reference on the parchment to silence sin-drone.

He had no idea what a sin-drone was, precisely, but he was fairly certain it was not a desirable trait.

Everyone knew a drone was a male bee. And he'd noticed a flower garden below his window one day, teeming with honey bees. Mayhap this was a land of bees, just as there were said to be godlands of bears and wolves—and, yes, even killer whales. The gods of this land must favor the buzzing insects.

But sin-drone... sinful bees? That was hard to comprehend. How did one know when a male bee had erred? When it pricked the wrong queen bee?

There was much to puzzle over in this new land.

He pressed his lips together more tightly and cast the wench his fiercest glare.

She just smiled.

She must be simple. Or exceptionally daring. Either way, Jonmd was contemplating the best way to kill her... assuming that he was not already dead. He was still uncertain whether he had landed in some new mortal land, or the otherworld.