Truly, Madly Viking

  "What's wrong with a good pair of oxen to pull a cart? Or a sturdy horse?" he muttered to Mag- he, who was checking names off a piece of parchment on her clipping board as the other members of the group filed up the steps of the vehicle. It was a sign of his condition that he paid no mind to Mag-he's tight den-ham braies and short sleeved sweat-her that exposed a tiny bit of her midriff each time she lifted an arm in the air to wave someone new onto the death cart.

  Mag-he darted a quick look of concern toward him, sensing his reluctance to join the others. "There are plenty of horses in Texas, but a bus is more practical for our purposes... and safer."

  "So you say!" he muttered under his breath. It would not do to outwardly show his trepidation, especially when everyone, even Not-a-lie, the wench who was afraid of crowds, had already bounced up the steps. Not-a-lie was wearing the most unseemly garb: white boots, a cowgirl hat—Who ever heard of a cowgirl? Or bragged of being such?—and a shert and short gunna, known as a skirt, both with fringes all along the edges. With that amount of skin showing, she could pass for a harem houri.

  Dock-whore Hairy was behind a large wheel inside the bus. He was going to drive, not trusting Mag-he and her demented troop to go off on their own. Two of the guards, who were known as attendants in this world, would accompany them as well. Norse Hatch-her came, too, surprisingly feminine in a long, gauzy purple skirt and matching shert with the words, C'mon. Make My Day. On second thought, she resembled a giant plum.

  Bracing himself, Jorund forced himself to go up the steps, feeling much as if he were walking the plank. Breathing a sigh of relief at passing that hurdle, he glanced down the rows of seats, many of which were empty, since their group numbered only twelve—their original therapy group and a few others.

  "Stop touching my fringe," Not-a-lie snapped to her seat partner.

  Hair-vee ducked his head sheepishly. "I was just counting them for you."

  "Well, I don't need you to count them," she grumbled. "And why do you have to sit next to me? There are plenty of other seats. You're crowding me."

  Not-a-lie's waspish demeanor was belied by her shivering body. This outing must be an ordeal for a person with her unique anxieties.

  Hair-vee got up and stared longingly toward the empty seat next to Rosalyn, the mousy woman who worked all day long with books—a lie-bear-ian, which was amazing, really. In Jorund's world, books were a rare commodity; in this world, they were as plentiful as grass. Rosalyn gave Hair-vee a glare that was as forbidding as a berserker with a battle-ax guarding a castle wall. All of the men had been trying to get n Rosalyn's good side ever since she'd announced her extraordinary longing for sexual activity.

  Rosalyn's word-shert spelled out, Read My Lips. He tried to read her lips, to no avail. Apparently he was capable only of reading whale's minds.

  Jorund began to walk down the aisle when his gaze snagged on Furr-red Burns-fine. He stopped dead in his tracks. The man had gone too far this time. Much too far!

  Last week, at group therapy, Furr-red had arrived in the garb of a caveman.

  Cavemen were apparently the ancestors of all human beings, though Jorund could hardly credit that. Jorund's Viking forbears had never looked like that rendition of early man—of that he was certain. Furr-red had worn naught but a beaver skin, which turned out to be one of Norse Hender-son's winter outer garbs—a coat—wrapped around one shoulder like a Roman toga. When he bent over, everyone got a good view of his bare, flabby buttocks... not a pretty sight. And he'd carried a huge club, which Mag-he had immediately confiscated, claiming that it was the trunk of a newly planted Crab apple tree from their back courtyard.

  Today Furr-red was impersonating his idea of what a Viking warrior would look like. It was insulting, to say the least. On his head was a long, blond wig that Jorund could swear he'd seen on a scullery maid's head just yestereve. On his upper arms were two makeshift bracelets formed from strips of tinfoil, a product used in modern kitchens to save food. He wore tight sweating braies on bottom and a loose black T-shert with the sleeves and neckline ripped off, the whole cinched in at the waist by a wide, brown leather belt.

  "Who the hell are you supposed to be?" Jorund demanded.

  Furr-red cowered back into his seat near the window. He was nigh whimpering when he replied, "Fred the Viking."

  Jorund shook his head from side to side. The man meant no harm, he decided. Still, under his breath, he commented, "More like Furr-red the Idiot."

  Just then he noticed Steve, who was motioning him toward the back of the bus. He headed in that direction, passing other Rainbow comrades along the way, including Chuck the Duck. That was who he assumed Chuck was today, since he was quack-quack-quacking to no one in particular. Just as long as he didn't drop any bodily "gifts" in the bus, Jorund could care less what animal he chose to be this day or any other. Chuck's message-shert said, Out of My Mind. Be Back in Five Minutes.

  Mag-he sat down in the front seat, directly behind Dock-whore Hairy. The doors swished shut. And they were off. Well, he assumed they were off. At first the bus lurched and stopped, lurched and stopped, lurched and stopped till Dock-whore Hairy got the feel of driving a bus. Holy Thor! Not only am I riding in a most dangerous horseless cart, but I am putting my life in the hands of an incompetent driver. 'Tis comparable to going a-Viking with my sister Katla at the rudder.

  But they were riding smoothly now. Jorund let out a pent-up breath, although he held on to the seat in front of him as they traveled at an excessive speed out onto the road.

  "What's the problem?" Steve asked, staring at Jorund's white knuckles and his face, which was, no doubt, white as well.

  "Must we travel so fast? What is the hurry?" he complained.

  "Huh?" Steve responded. "We're only going twenty miles an hour on this entrance ramp. Wait till we get on the highway. The speed limit there is sixty-five."

  "I cannot wait," Jorund said dryly.

  Steve was frowning as he studied his rigid demeanor. "You've never ridden on a bus before?"

  "I've never ridden on anything that moved without animal power... unless it was a ship on the open seas, driven by the winds and the hard rowing of well-muscled men."

  Steve shrugged his shoulders sadly. "Man, you are as screwed up as the rest of us."

  "Nay, I am not," Jorund declared. "What you all cannot accept is that I really am a Viking, come here from the tenth century."

  Instead of arguing, as he usually did, Steve asked skeptically, "Why?"

  Jorund relaxed back into the seat. As long as he didn't look out the windows and see the landscape passing in a blur, he could almost forget where he was. He pondered Steve's question. "I do not know. I am hoping some answers will come to me today."

  "At Boot Scootin' Cowboy? In a music hall? Hell, I know a lot of guys who think they can find answers in a bottle of booze—I did for more years than I can count—but I guarantee that even a glass of beer will be off-limits to us today."

  "I did not mean that music place. I was referring to the killer-whale place."

  "Do you still think that a killer whale is the key to your being here in Galveston?" Steve and all the others in his group therapy had laughed this week when he'd told them the tale of his arrival atop Thora's back, bare-arsed and raging mad. Steve wasn't laughing now.

  "I know it." Jorund snorted with disgust. "If I can find her, I'm certain that this puzzle will become clear." Leastways, he hoped that was the case. He thought of something else. "Mayhap you will get some answers yourself when we visit that war praise-wall."

  It was Steve who turned stiff then. "I am not getting off this bus when we get to that freakin' wall. I swear, I'm not. I know Dr. McBride has all these piss-poor ideas about making a big breakthrough with me, but it isn't gonna happen there... or anywhere else, for that matter." He turned away and stared morosely out the window. In an undertone, he murmured, for his own benefit only, "I don't see enough of 'Nam in my dreams. I gotta see it on a damn wall, too?"

  The hairs r
ose on the back of Jorund's neck then. In the distance, he could see a large sign that said, WELCOME TO ORCALAND. And beyond that was the water inlet that led out to Galveston Bay and the seas beyond.

  Would this be the day he returned to the past?

  Maggie found Joe, finally. He was sitting on a small promontory near the outer rim of the inlet, arms resting on bended knees, gazing out beyond the bay.

  Of course, he had defied all rules by wandering away from their group, which was still watching the Gonzo show back in the arena. "Joe?" she inquired softly.

  At first he didn't seem to hear her. Even though his lips were moving, no words came out. It was as if he were speaking some silent language. Then he turned.

  Maggie's heart almost broke at the bleakness in his gray eyes.

  "She's not there," he told her.

  "Who's not there?" Maggie dropped down to the ground beside Joe and put a hand on his shoulder in concern.

  "Thora."

  "The killer whale?"

  He nodded. "Much as I've tried- o communicate with her, there is no response."

  "You... you talk to orcas?"

  "Not all orcas... leastways, I don't think I can talk to them all—just my own personal pain-in the-arse killer whale, Thora."

  This was not good news. After all the progress Joe had made, believing that he could talk to an ocean mammal could be chalked up to additional delusions, along with his time-travel and Viking claims.

  "Does the whale talk back to you?"

  "Yea, it does. In my head."

  Oh, God.

  He slanted a glance her way. "You think I'm demented, don't you?"

  "Of course not."

  "You are a poor liar, Dock-whore Muck-bride."

  "Well, anyhow, it's not the end of the world that you didn't have a chat with Thora today," she said brightly. "Let's view it in a positive light."

  "For the love of all the gods, spare me," he replied with a groan. "You are going to start the sigh-colic-jest blathering again, aren't you?"

  She raised her chin, affronted. "I don't know what you mean."

  He exhaled with a loud whoosh. "All those words and phrases that say nothing: 'I see. How do you feel about that? What do you think?' Never do you answer a question directly, but always turn it back on your pay-shuns. 'Tis enough to drive a sane man mad, I tell you."

  She began to ask him how he felt about that, then stopped herself short. He was right. She did have a tendency to spout psychobabble, when the philosophy behind Rainbow was to avoid the therapist-as-robot approach. Psychologists no longer needed to hide personal emotions and reactions or remain silent and unmoved in the client relationship. At Rainbow, a therapist was supposed to be free to be oneself, while remaining objective at the same time. "What I started to say about putting a positive light on this event is that maybe this is a sign—I know you are big on signs—that it's time to put aside the past and move forward."

  "To heal myself?"

  "Yes!" she said enthusiastically.

  He shook his head. "There is no bright side in this catastrophe today... and, yea, it is a catastrophe. Look at this from my perspective, m'lady. There is no winter chill in the air here, but winter has already begun in other parts of your country. On the seas I need to travel, the air will be frigid—too cold for sailing on an open longship till springtime. Have you ever tried to row a boat with ice on the oars? Have you ever stood for hours at a time in weather so wet and cold that every hair on your body turns to icicles, even the chest hairs? Of course you haven't. Can you not see that I must communicate with Thora soon, or be forced to wait many months to leave this land?"

  "Is that such a bad thing?"

  "Yea, it is the worst of all things. My brother Rolf is in danger. Every day might count in my completing his rescue."

  Maggie thought about all his impossible words. "Assuming I believe everything that you've said, Joe, it seems to me that there must be a good reason why you were sent to this land... and this time." She nearly choked on that last part. "If you're going to accept that the Fates—or the gods... or even a killer whale—are determining your destiny, then you also have to accept that coming to Galveston was preordained."

  He followed her words with interest. "I have considered all these things, and I agree that it was no mistake that landed me on these shores. But sometimes man can influence his destiny. In fact, does not your Christian religion have a saying that God helps those who help themselves?"

  Maggie had to laugh at Joe's quick mind. She wished she knew who or what he really was. Aside from being a gorgeous specimen of manhood, he was intelligent and strong and a born leader. What did he do for a living? Was he a career military man? A construction worker? An adventurer, or an extreme exercise fanatic... like the father of her two children, who had a perfectly good career as a resident physician but had to jump out of airplanes, as well? There should be a clue in all she knew of Joe, but the answer eluded her.

  "Well, enough of this for today," she said, standing and brushing the dirt off the rump of her jeans—a maneuver that Joe watched with decided masculine interest, despite his desolation over his predicament. "We have to get back to the orca show. It should be over soon."

  As they were strolling in front of the bleachers toward the Rainbow group, which was watching the show avidly, Joe remarked, "I just wish that damned killer whale would get back here and rescue me, so I can rescue my brother."

  Just then Gonzo swam up and flicked his huge tail fins, causing a wave of water to cover Joe from head to toe. So much for communicating with killer whales! Or maybe Gonzo was communicating, after all, in response to Joe's deprecating comment about whales. Sort of an orca version of "Screw you, Viking!"

  Jorund and Steve sat alone in the bus.

  In the distance, across a wide lawn, could be seen the rest of the Rainbow group staring at a stone wall, which apparently contained the names of all the dead soldiers who had fought in the Battle of Vee-yet-numb. It was a good idea, in Jorund's opinion... one that he intended to mention to King Olaf when he returned to Norway. Of course, they would need a wall much bigger than this one if they were going to record all the dead Vikings in battle after battle through the centuries, rather than any one war or another. In truth, there had been so many Norse wars, the skalds had lost count long ago. Some people, especially those bloody Saxon clerics who recorded English history, claimed a Viking would fight with anyone, even his own brother. It was true.

  A few of the people who had come to view the Moving Wall besides the Rainbow group gave curious looks at Chuck the Viking... and at Not a-lie, too, who was wont to break into song at the least provocation. Right now she was singing about a honk-key-tonk angel, her fringes swaying from side to side as she danced to her own music.

  "Come, Steve," Jorund urged his friend. "You are a man of courage. Are you going to turn coward now?"

  Jorund was not in a good mood, especially after his disappointing failure to locate the elusive Thora. Although he had not voiced this particular concern to Mag-he, the worry nagging at him most was the possibility that he might no ever find Thora or his way back to his own time. What would he do then?

  In his present ill temper, he did not feel inclined to prod a stubborn ox like Steve to see the error of his ways. But the grief-stricken ma was as close to a friend as Jorund had made this godforsaken land of the twentieth century and he could no more abandon him to his pail than he could his own brother, Magnus... or brother Rolf, he reminded himself guiltily.

  "Get lost, birdbrain," Steve responded in most thankless manner. "The last thing in world I have is courage."

  "Did you not win that famous medal for valor? Have you not endured thirty years of inner torment? Do you not stay away from your soul mat Shell-he, for love of her? Do you not battle with demons every night in your dreams, and come out the victor? That spells courage to me." Jorund had never been a talkative fellow, but he certainly seemed to have developed a taste for tongue flapping now. And he was g
ood, too. Puffing his chest out, he concluded, "Betimes, survival itself is a form of triumph."

  Steve gave him a level stare. "You are so full of it."

  "Let me tell you a story—"

  "Oh, God! Not another freakin' saga. I swear, if I hear one more tale about Sigurd and the Dragon Lady, I'm gonna puke."

  Jorund lifted his chin, affronted. Well, mayhap he had been overdoing the life-lesson legends a mite, but he felt a little closer to home and his old life when he retold the poems and stories of his people. In truth, he probably sounded like his brother Magnus when he'd tipped the mead horn once too often and began to sing ribald songs... except in Jorund's case, he told stories. "I thought you liked my sagas."

  "I was being polite, man. Hell, they might be perfectly good yarns when the poets—uh, skalds—put them together, but let me give you a bit of advice, pal: you are no storyteller. Stick to fighting, or whatever the hell it is you do."

  Jorund bristled. Should he punch Steve in his sullen face? Or better yet, should he hoist him by the scrawny neck, toss him over his shoulder, and carry him bodily to the bloody wall?

  It was an easy decision. He turned slowly and let a slow smile crease his lips.

  "Wh-what? Why are you looking at me like that?" Steve asked warily. Then, "You wouldn't! Oh, no, you wouldn't!"

  Jorund would.

  "Maggie, they're safe in the bus," Harry told her. "But ff you're worried about them, go back and wait there. I'm capable of handling the rest of the group, along with the aid of Gladys and the two attendants."

  "No, no," she said. "I wouldn't want Joe and Steve to think I didn't trust them." Still, she glanced back toward the parking lot at the unmarked bus. Then she glanced again. "Oh, boy!"

  Jorund was striding across the lawn, carrying a cursing, squirming Steve on his shoulder. He did so with ease, even though Steve was at least six feet tall and a hundred and seventy pounds.