Page 3 of Truly, Madly Viking

"Do females make a habit of trying to attract you with farts?"

I was correct. "What a ridiculous notion!" Jorund snarled, then realized that Magnus was chuckling under his breath. "Aaarrgh!" he said. Carrying on a conversation with Magnus was like talking with one of his dumb cows. His coarseness knew no limits, his earthiness coming, no doubt, from his dealing so much with... well, earth. Not that Jorund was unaccustomed to coarseness, being surrounded as he was by soldiers whose every other word was apt to be an expletive of the foulest nature. He'd uttered a few himself.

But, really, his brother had fallen into the most annoying habit of late—teasing him. Holy Thor! Who ever heard of grown men engaging in such youthful games? Life was too serious—and fleeting, as he well knew—and their mission was too important for frivolity. It was probably boredom, or frustration at being lost at sea. Well, not quite lost, just a mite off course.

Ignoring his brother's smirking face, he looked off into the distance, where the magnificent killer whale the sailors had named Thora was indeed performing her ritual dance. It was to her that Magnus had attributed blowing kisses, of all things.

Just now, her sleek black-and-white shape leaped into the air with a spectacular flourish, a maneuver that had come to be known among seafarers as breaching.

The whale, at the height of her impressive leap, gave the false appearance of standing on her tail fins on the surface of the water for several long moments.

Then she twisted her sleek body into a perfect arc with an agility remarkable for her size and dove back into the salty depths to swim swiftly beneath the waves she had created. If she followed her previous routine, she would be repeating the performance another two or three times, ofttimes varying the act with backflips, all accompanied by boisterous squeals and chirps and rapid clicking noises, before swimming off a short distance to watch and follow their sailing vessel.

There was no escaping the killer whale. They had tried to elude their unwelcome companion by rowing fast with a strong wind at their backs, and still she kept up. Surely the killer whale must be the fastest animal in all the oceans.

They knew it was a female because of her comparatively small size to the male of the species, though this friendly beast was still nigh as big as his dragonship.

Well, perhaps that was an overstatement. At the least, she had to be four times his body height from mouth to tail.

There was no question in Jorund's mind—though he would never acknowledge it to his brother—that it was himself the animal had developed an affection for. The whale had been shadowing them for more than fourteen days, coming closer and closer. But that wasn't how Jorund knew that the whale was following him. He knew because the whale was talking to him.

Amazing as that sounded, even if oddly to his own ears, Jorund had taken to communicating with a killer whale. He talked to the whale in his head. And the whale talked back to him.

Languages of other countries had always come easily to him. And not just Norse and English, the

language of the Saxons, which were very similar. He was also fluent in the tongues of Frankland, Byzantium, Baghdad, Rome, and Cordoba. But never had he been known to speak with animals. No one did, that he knew of, except perhaps the gods. And he was no god.

Where did this voice in his head came from? When it was late at night and his men were asleep, he would stand at the prow of his long ship and converse with a killer whale, of all things. Good thing Magnus was unaware of this insanity, or he would really have something to tease him about.

Was he going mad? Were the events of the past year too much for his brain to bear? Or was it the cumulative effect of years and years of bloodshed finally crushing down on him? Stronger men than he had gone berserk.

How can this be? he had asked Thora yestereve. It was an indication of his sorry state that he sought advice on his mental condition from an animal.

Click, click. Squeal, squeal. Click, squeal, click, squeal, the whale had answered him in ever changing patterns. In other words, Men question too much . Listen with your heart; speak with your heart, my friend.

I ask for help, and you give me riddles, he'd wailed silently. I don't understand. He need not speak aloud for the whale to hear him—another amazing happenstance.

With her usual clicks and squeals and chirps, Thora had told him, You will, you will . Then, just before the whale had swum off, she'd added, Open your heart, man. Only then will there be no barriers of country or animal... or time.

Time? What has time to do with this?

"Jorund, has your mind gone awandering again? Are you all right?"

Jorund blinked and reined in his thoughts. His brother's big paw of a hand was resting on his shoulder with concern.

Am I all right?

Nay, I am not all right.

"I'm fine," he said.

But he was not fine, he soon found out.

Bam! Bam! Bam!

"Blöd hell!" he and Magnus exclaimed at the same time, then repeated, "Bloody hell!" A number of his sailors, who followed both the Christian and Norse religions, were making the sign of the cross on their broad chests. All of them stared gape-mouthed out to sea.

Bam! Bam! Bam!