She arched her eyebrows in question.
“When I was with Inga, and we were engaged in … you know …”
She arched her eyebrows higher.
“… I did what I was supposed to do, but I had no … um, ‘enthusiasm’ to speak of.”
Madrene’s lips trembled with a half smile. “That was six months ago. Libertine that you are, how has your ‘enthusiasm’ held up with other women?” She choked on her own stifled laughter.
I knew I should not have discussed this with Madrene. She does not take me seriously, not by half. Still, he blundered on, “There have been no others. Dost think something is wrong with me?”
“I don’t know. Have you truly not lain with any other woman in all that time? I mean, ’tis unremarkable for me—I have not known a man in five years. But you? By thunder, ’tis a miracle.”
He could not tell for certain whether she made jest with him. He felt himself blush, and he never blushed.
“None? Well, well, well.” The expression on her face was marked by equal parts disbelief and amusement.
Rose, who sat a short distance away licking her fur, hissed out what could only be a snicker.
“ ’Tis not that I can’t. I just don’t want to. I seem to be yearning for something more. And you misspeak in calling me a libertine, truly you do. I do not fornicate any more than the average Norseman.”
“Which is an excessive amount.”
I cannot believe I am having this conversation with my sister.
She squeezed his arm and said, “Ragnor, methinks you are finally growing up. At the ripe old age of twenty and seven! Praise the gods! You need a soulmate, not just a bedmate.”
“I take exception to that conclusion. Why is it that women always think the answer to every man’s problem is marriage? Soulmate? There is no such thing.”
He had no chance to discuss the matter further because Madrene motioned over a house carl, who carried a tray with a large metal cup on it. When Ragnor recognized the contents, he protested, “Oh, nay. I could not … please … stop shoving it in my face, Madrene.” His sister forced to his lips her usual concoction for curing the aftereffects of the mead madness. It was warm and green and slimy. The fact that it usually worked was beside the point.
“Stop being such a whineling.”
“Yech!” he said as he swallowed the horrid mess all in one gulp. It landed in his stomach with a thud, and soon thereafter he began to feel better … once he stopped gagging.
“About your marriage,” Madrene persisted.
“You overstep yourself, sister,” he cautioned. “I am the jarl here.”
“Am I supposed to be impressed?”
“Well, nay, but you should treat me with more respect … and stop bringing up marriage.”
“You are the last male in the line. You must have sons … legitimate sons … if our father’s bloodline is to continue.”
Ragnor would have asked why Madrene did not do the job herself, but he knew better. Her husband, Karl, had put her aside five years ago for failure to breed. Pronounced barren, she had vowed never to wed again. Personally, Ragnor suspected Karl was not that great a husband or lover, and that the fault might have lain in him … at least partially. But he decided not to broach that subject with Madrene. She would no doubt bring up her “dangly male parts” theory again.
“I will consider marriage someday,” he promised. “But it will be on my own terms. With a bride of my choosing.”
Madrene nodded.
“In the meantime, I will be departing in a sennight or two.”
“A-Viking?”
“Mayhap.” Most men of his acquaintance went raiding in the spring, after planting, or in the fall, after harvest. It was midsummer now, but the land did not bind him as it did others. “Or I will join forces with other Norsemen to assault the Saxons.”
“Come, brother, let me help you to your bed furs. You need to sleep for a good long time. Then we will discuss your future plans.”
Leave it to Madrene. She did not berate him for his plans to go a-Viking or soldiering. She was a good Norsewoman. A strong female. And handsome, too, when she was not nagging. He only wished she’d been able to find a husband who pleased her, in hearth and heart, but most especially in the bed furs. Forget that nonsense about soulmates, a good bedmate would do.
He looped his arm around her shoulders, though he did not need her to lean upon, and she wrapped her arm around his waist. As they walked through the great hall, heading toward the staircase leading to the upper chambers, she said, “I know what this is all about, Ragnor.”
“What this?”
“Your mood. ’Tis that time of year. Midsummer. That was when our father left with nine of our brothers and sisters on his sea voyage.”
“And never returned,” he finished for her.
“Yea, never returned. Dost think there is any chance they are still alive?”
He shook his head at her, sad that she would even ask the question. “Nay. You know Faöir would have sent us word. He would not disappear for eleven years without telling us, if he were still alive.”
“I know,” she said on a sigh. “Still, we have no proof. Just news of their longship having been in Greenland and beyond. Then nothing.”
“They are dead, Madrene,” he said gently. “Betimes, though, I wish that we had gone with him on that fateful trip.”
“Then we would be dead, too.”
He shrugged as if that might not matter so much. Odin’s breath! This kind of talk would put him in an even darker mood. He tried to brighten up Madrene, at least, if not himself. “Well, we still have each other. And I will not be leaving for a good many days yet. Shall I challenge you to a game of hnefatafl this evening?” He leered at her like some crafty gambler.
She smiled back and nudged him in the ribs with her elbow for his teasing. “I always win, you rogue, unless you cheat. Methinks ’tis time you brought me a few more baubles back from your adventuring. Yea, that is what I will take for my prize this time. A woman can never have too much amber … or gold.”
Ragnor laughed and hugged her to his side as they walked up the stairs. Inside, though, he thought, What a sad and lonely pair we are!
Chapter Two
A thousand or so years later. … Are we having fun yet? …
“Magnusson! Get your hairy ass up here and give me fifty. You are one sorry sonofabitch! You run like a girl. You breathe like a girl. Pff-pff-pff! Are you a girl? Are you, Viking?”
Ensign Torolf Magnusson, the object of that tirade, looked up at his instructor, Master Chief Petty Officer Ian MacLean, and wondered idly if that bulging vein in his tormentor’s forehead might just blow. One could only hope.
“Haul ass, boy,” the Master Chief continued to yell. “Remember, winners never quit. Are you ready to quit? We haven’t had a quitter today. Yet. You ready to give it up, loser? Huh? I’d love to have you ring the bell.”
Oh, shit! Here we go again. Like I would ever quit over a dickhead like you. Like I can’t handle a measly spill into a mud pit. You’re not going to break me. I survived Hell Week. I can survive you. Torolf, one of the eight members of Team Five in SEAL Class 500, crawled out of the ditch where he had fallen during the obstacle course known in BUD/S training as the Devil’s Spawn. BUD/S was the acronym for the SEAL training program Basic Underwater Demolition/Seals. Training was done here in Coronado at the Naval Special Warfare Center. Sometimes, like today, Torolf wondered why it had always been his dream to be here.
He spat a wad of crud out of his mouth, wiped the mud out of his eyes with the back of his dirty hand, then levered himself up and out by muscle-strained arms. Standing to attention, he said, “Yes, Master Chief, sir.”
Master Chief MacLean stood glaring at him through dark Matrix sunglasses, hands on hips. On his shirt shone the coveted trident pin that all SEAL wannabees aimed for. Better known as the Budweiser, the trident pin, featuring an eagle grasping Neptune’s pitchfork in one claw and a
weapon in the other, was granted only to men who had gained SEAL status.
Without having the order repeated, Torolf dropped to the ground to do fifty push-ups, on top of the five hundred he’d already done that day. And it was barely oh-nine-hundred on a bright California summer morning.
His seven teammates, equally wet, dirty, and bone-tired, stared with seeming solemnity at him as he completed his “punishment.” None of them cracked as much as a grin, knowing full well that they could be next.
Seaman Justin LeBlanc, that crazy Cajun from Loo-zee-anna, did wink at him, though … a brief flutter that could be interpreted as a blink if noticed by the chief or any of the three other instructors in attendance. Cage was his swim buddy. In SEALs, swim buddies could never be more than six feet apart.
Petty Officer Second Class Sylvester “Sly” Simms, a big black dude from Harlem who used to model men’s tighty whities for Esquire, gave the chief a surreptitious finger behind his back.
Petty Officer First Class Travis “Flash” Gordon crossed his eyes, as if a bug had suddenly crash-dived on his nose.
Seaman Frank Uxley, nicknamed F.U. for obvious reasons, didn’t blink or gesture; he’d been doing duck squats all morning for failure to lift his IBL (Inflatable Boat, Large) fast enough in a predawn surf op. No way was he chancing a repeat of those hamstring-punishing exercises.
Lieutenant (jg) Jacob Alvarez Mendozo—JAM—moved his lips slightly; he was probably praying, being an ex-Jesuit priest. JAM always claimed he had God on his shoulder, while all Torolf had was that puny-assed Thor.
“You boys need a little loosening up before breakfast,” the Master Chief said. “What say we go for a short run … say ten miles?”
What a comedian!
Torolf knew that ten miles meant it would probably be fifteen … maybe more. It would be an uncomfortable run in heavy boondockers, with sand between their toes and in every bodily orifice from their early-morning beach roll-arounds. They were in full ruck today, which meant BDUs and carrying about seventy-five pounds of military field gear. At least they weren’t carrying their IBLs on their heads while they ran, which was the norm.
Torolf refused to show the Marquis de Master Chief his displeasure. There had been a contest of wills going on between him and the “Lean-Mean” from the get-go. Hell, they all knew what a “Mac Attack” meant, and it had nothing to do with hamburgers. The chief prided himself on being the “professor of pain.”
The chief yelled out one of his usual nauseating inspirational quotes: “The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.”
“Or with a lot of bitching,” Torolf muttered to himself.
“My sister’s going to run with you boys today,” the chief announced. “Hope you can keep up with her.”
There was a communal groan as Lieutenant Alison MacLean arrived. Though she had spent less time in the service than her older brother, she out-ranked him. Ian Maclean had attained the highest rank an enlisted man could reach, master chief petty officer. But with the injustice typical of the military, any person who graduated from officers’ candidate school outranked the highest enlisted officer.
Lieutenant MacLean was clad in running shorts and a U.S. Navy T-shirt. She didn’t have any breasts to speak of, like many extreme female athletes, though her long legs bordered on spectacular. Her red hair was short and tousled. Torolf was tall—six foot four—but Lieutenant MacLean had to be close to six foot herself. And big-boned. He liked his women blond and petite. Nope, she was not his type at all.
On the other hand, Ragnor would like her, he thought of a sudden. His brother, whom he hadn’t seen in more than ten years, had always had a preference for redheads and women with brains. Why he would be thinking of Ragnor now, he had no idea. I’m probably hallucinating from exhaustion.
Lieutenant MacLean was a physician here at the naval base with a specialty in sports medicine. She and two other physicians worked exclusively with the trainees and SEALs themselves, checking them out after every evolution. The teams had their own medical facility at Coronado with excellent, much-used rehab capabilities, all of which were headed by the good lieutenant. Often called upon to work with the muscle-related injuries the SEALs sustained in their grueling workouts, she even went out on field ops on some occasions. The SEALs program barred females, but Lieutenant MacLean was as close to a female SEAL as they came.
“Do you think she’s a dyke?” Flash asked as they fell in behind the chief, his sister, and three other instructors, jogging slowly off the “grinder”—the asphalt P.T. arena—and heading toward the beach.
“Hell, no,” F.U. answered with a laugh. “Where’d you get that dumb-ass idea?”
“She’s so big,” Flash answered. Flash was only about five foot ten; so any woman taller than he would seem big.
“And big means lesbo? You are such a frickin’ asshole.” That was Cody O’Brien speaking. He and Flash hated each other with a passion because 1) Flash loved country music; and 2) Cody hated country music. Simple as that.
“Takes one to know one,” Flash answered.
“Asshole or lesbo?” Cody countered.
“You are achin’ for a breakin’, man,” Flash snarled.
“Hoo-yah! Kiss my achy breaky ass, sweetie pie,” Cody said, laughing.
“Sticks and stones may break my bones, butthead.”
“Well, that retort came right out of kindergarten,” Cody said. “Oops, that’s how far you went in school, isn’t it?”
“I think she’s a hottie.” JAM spoke right over Flash and Cody in his educated Mexican-American accent.
None of them had even broken a sweat yet, but they would in another mile or five. For now, they were able to talk and run at the same time. They all looked at JAM. For an ex-priest, he wasn’t all that priestly.
“JAM, JAM, JAM, you poor boy! I think you need to get laid,” yet another of the SEAL trainees chimed in. This time it was Frank “Pretty Boy” Floyd, the team’s hands-down quintessential ladies man from Bangor, Maine. He had been a race-car driver before entering the SEALs. Race-car drivers were known chick magnets, apparently, or so he told them on numerous occasions. Humility was not one of his strong suits.
“Eff you,” JAM said. Definitely not priestly.
“You called?” F.U. replied. It was a standing joke among them, and they all laughed.
“Actually, JAm’s right. She’s not bad. I like Lieutenant MacLean,” Torolf said. “And as for big, lots of Viking women are tall. Nothing wrong with that.”
They all groaned.
“Oh, no! Not the Viking crap again, Max,” Sly said, bringing up the rear. All the SEALs and SEAL trainees were given nicknames, his being short for Magnusson. “I swear, I am going to puke if I hear one more story about how great it was to ride the open waves in a longboat, or wield a sword that has a name, or eat dried fish back in the freakin’ Norselands.”
Everyone laughed again, including Torolf, who had told them a story or two about eating the dreaded lutefisk in the dead of winter or on a longship when out on a prolonged voyage. Not that they’d believed any of it.
“You all think this is funny?” the Master Chief called back to them. Thank God he hadn’t been able to hear their words, especially about his sister. “Well, then, let’s pick up the pace. And how about a little jody call, boys? It’s your turn, Petty Officer Gordon. Remember, if something’s hard, it must be worth doing. Let’s hear it, loud and clear. Tell us why hard is good.”
“I don’t know but I’ve been told,” Flash yelled out.
“I don’t know but I’ve been told,” they all repeated, keeping beat with their running as they chanted.
“Navy SEALs are mighty bold.”
“Navy SEALs are mighty bold,” they sang back.
“Ladies watch how a SEAL runs.”
“Ladies watch how a SEAL runs.”
“SEALs have real hot buns.”
“SEALs have real hot buns.”
“But we all know why the women fl
ock …”
“But we all know why the women flock …”
“ ’Cause SEALs have got a great—”
“Gentlemen!” the Master Chief interrupted, turning and jogging backwards as he addressed them. “Do not go there! There’s a lady on board.”
Flash grinned and finished, “… sweet talk.”
And the rest of them chanted back, “ ’Cause SEALs have got a great sweet talk.”
“Sound off, one, two …”
“Sound off, one, two …”
“Three, four.”
“Three, four.”
When their running exercise—which did end up being fifteen miles—was over, the Master Chief yelled over to Flash, “Petty Officer Gordon. In my office at nineteen hundred hours. We need to discuss your choice of grody jody lyrics. Perhaps a bit of Gig Squad will teach you to be a better composer.” Gig Squad, held for one hour after dinner, consisted of the usual physical-torture punishments, like sit-ups and duck squats, but they were inflicted outside the instructors’ offices, where everyone passing by could witness the humiliation. Poor Flash! They’d all been there at one point or another in the past three months.
Torolf walked up to the chief’s sister, who was bent over at the waist, breathing heavily. It had been a grueling run, and her hair was wet and plastered to her head, no longer fluffy. He had to give her credit. She had kept up nicely.
“Sorry if we offended you,” he apologized, even as he breathed deeply in and out, like she did, to get his heart rate down.
“No problem,” she said without looking up.
He felt rather guilty over his teammates’ remarks about her physical appearance and decided to be a nice guy. “Excellent run, Alison,” he said. Using her given name probably crossed the line, but what the hell. Maybe she would like to get to know him better. He was a good-looking guy. He could be charming. He decided to give her a shot.
She straightened and gave him a level look, taking in his sudden interest in her sweat-soaked T-shirt, which revealed that her seemingly nonexistent breasts did, in fact, exist. Hoo-yah! They more than made up for her height. With a laugh of understanding, she said, “Drop dead, swabbie,” and walked off.