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Ivar shook his head.
“What?” Sidroc snapped.
“Fools! The two of you are fools!”
“You don’t know the half of what she’s done.”
“And neither do you.”
Whatever that meant! If there were more secrets, he didn’t want to know about them. Not yet. Not until he’d digested the other deceit.
The old man stomped off to some nearby bushes to relieve himself. Drifa filled a bucket and went into the tent to bathe.
When they sat about the fire after both Ivar and Drifa had bathed as well as they could out of a bucket and donned clean clothing, Sidroc asked Ivar, “Did you have any trouble today?”
“Lot of good it does for you to ask now!”
Sidroc felt his face heat. It had been immature of him to ride off alone.
“Nay, there was no trouble, just not being able to stop and rest our weary bones for trying to keep up with you. What were you trying to prove, boy?”
Boy? Oooh, Sidroc had done bodily harm to men who gave such insult to him. “I needed to prove I could hold my temper when stabbed in the back.”
“I didn’t stab ... oh, what’s the use?” Drifa cast him a disgusted look. “You won’t believe anything I say anyhow.”
“Talk,” he demanded. “I am ready to listen now.”
“Well, mayhap I am not in the mood to talk now.”
“Uh, I think I will go set up my sleep furs in the tent. You two can argue all night for all I care. I am so tired my bones hurt.”
“Mine do, too,” Drifa said, and was about to stand and follow Ivar.
“Sit!” Sidroc ordered.
She arched her brows at his command, but sat back down on the stump she’d been using for a chair. He and Ivar had been sitting on a fallen tree.
“You know, Sidroc, I would think you would be pleased that your daughter is alive.”
“I am.”
“Then why are you so furious?”
“Because you kept this news from me.”
“I already told you, Rafn traveled far and wide at my beseeching, trying to find you, but you were nowhere to be found. He even went to Vikstead to ask your father if he had seen you, telling him that you had suffered a head wound and we were worried about your condition.”
“I can imagine my father’s distress over news of my possible demise.”
“Your father is not a nice man.”
He almost smiled at her understatement.
“Rafn spent months looking for you, and after that whenever he went trading or a-Viking, he would ask after you, to no avail. You seemed to have disappeared, or—”
“—died,” he finished for her. “And that is why you were so distressed when first you saw me in Miklagard. I was alive and it did not fit in with all your plans.”
“Nay, that is not how it was. Not exactly.”
