Viking Unchained

  And he’s just now telling me? “Dad! What’s going on? First, your cows. Now, the Denton barn. What do the police think? Is Mike safe? Are you all in danger? Should I bring Mike home? Maybe you and Mom and the Dentons should come stay here with me.”

  “Now, slow down, honey. First of all, the farmers in the area are on the alert, and we have surveillance teams working round the clock. We’re safe. The police found some grubby motel room down the highway where some foreign guy had been staying. In the waste can there was a crumbled copy of the local newspaper with the article about Dave’s memorial.”

  “Terrorists? Oh, my God!”

  “The FBI has been called in.”

  “The FBI! Oh, my God!”

  “Hold on, now. It’s not a terrorist group. They think it’s just some anti-American wacko.”

  “Maybe they should cancel the memorial service.”

  “The town council held an emergency meeting tonight, and they decided they damn well weren’t going to cave in. So, the service is on, but there’ll be more police than regular folks, I imagine.”

  “I’m coming as soon as possible.”

  “Will you take Mike back right away, or stay for the service?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll see what the situation is when I get there.”

  “Honey, don’t worry.”

  How could she not worry?

  When she clicked off, Lydia realized that she was shaking, too distraught to cry. She wasn’t sure why, but the first call she made was to find Finn. She tried Ian’s number, where Finn was staying. No answer.

  Next she called the airline and changed the reservations. For both of them, although she assumed she would be traveling alone since she couldn’t reach Finn. The earliest flight she could get was six A.M. the next morning.

  She was in her bedroom packing when she heard a crash in the living room. It sounded like glass breaking. Rushing out, she saw that her sliding glass door to the deck was broken, and a newspaper-covered brick lay amongst the shattered glass on the carpet.

  This was too much of a coincidence. The incidents in Minnesota. The brick through her window.

  Quickly, she got Dave’s pistol out of the locked drawer in the kitchen. She had no idea if it was loaded, but she felt secure just having it in her hand. Next, she put on rubber gloves and peeled the newspaper off, spreading it on the counter. It was the article in the Coronado newspaper about Dave’s memorial service and her aerobics studio. There were three names circled with black marker. Dave’s. Mike’s. Hers. And red drip marks stained the newsprint. Blood, she assumed.

  With a whimper, she grabbed the cordless phone and ran to the bathroom, locked the door, then called 911. After that, she began calling everyone she knew. Kirstin, Ian, Geek, getting only voice mail. Finally, Cage answered, thank God, after six rings, his voice sounding husky. Had he been asleep? At nine P.M.? But then she heard a female voice in the background and knew he’d been in bed, all right, but not asleep. That couldn’t concern her.

  “Cage, this is Lydia. Help!”

  Even wine didn’t help . . .

  Thorfinn sat in a low wooden armchair on the deck behind the house at Blue Dragon, sipping fine wine from a fragile-stemmed glass, in the midst of Magnus Ericsson’s two hundred closest friends and kin. And had never felt more alone in all his life.

  They had all come to celebrate a grand harvest of new grapes which would go into the fine wines for which this vineyard was known. Laughter and music came from the vast lawns to the side of the house, where he would be forced to return soon, lest he appear an ungrateful guest.

  Kirstin had been giving him black looks ever since he arrived last night with Ian. Madrene and Hilda gave him black looks, too, but that was the usual pattern with them. Kirstin’s attitude was new. If he were not so tired and disillusioned, he might trouble himself to ask her what was amiss. Then again, probably not.

  Someone approached, carrying an empty glass in one hand and a wine bottle in the other. It was Magnus, the father to this unruly clan of Vikings, who had settled here in the Sonoma Valley. More than fifty, he was still a formidable Norseman. There were threads of gray in his long, light brown hair, but his big body was well-honed from hard work, and his face was mostly unlined. Fourteen children in all this man had bred over a lifetime, and Thorfinn had not even one. Well, mayhap he had one, but that remained to be seen, and was something he could not dwell on now.

  “Magnus,” he said, indicating the chair next to him.

  Sinking down with a long sigh, Magnus leaned over and refilled Thorfinn’s glass, then filled his own, setting the bottle on the wood floor.

  “Is my sister Katla in good health?”

  Katla was Thorfinn’s mother and the youngest sister of Magnus, and of Geirolf and Jorund Ericsson, both of whom were here today with their families, all of whom had presumably bloody well time-traveled.

  “Last I heard, Mother fared well.”

  “She was only fourteen when she wed her Norman groom, you know?”

  He nodded.

  “’Tis odd that in this country fourteen is still considered a child. But when I look at my little Marie, who is approaching seventeen, I am astonished to think anyone would think her old enough to marry and have children.”

  “Different times and places,” he commented, a bit slowly, the wine beginning to affect his senses.

  “And, you, Thorfinn, how fare you?”

  He shrugged. “Not so well, I fear.”

  “’Tis hard to adjust at first. Give yourself time. May the gods bless me, I am still adjusting, and I have been here more than seventeen years.”

  “Was that supposed to make me feel better?”

  The two men smiled at each other.

  “Madrene tells me you are smitten with a woman.”

  “Madrene has a big mouth.”

  “That she does. Some say I left the Norselands to escape my oldest daughter’s nagging, but do not tell her I said so.”

  Thorfinn laughed, then grew serious again. “Lydia . . . she’s talking about Lydia Denton. She was married to a Navy SEAL.”

  “Bloody hell! Is every man in the world a SEAL?”

  “’Twould seem so. Leastways, Dave Denton died in service to his country, and she says she cannot be involved with another military man.” He took a long sip of wine, emptying his glass, and set it aside. He’d already had too much to drink.

  “Is that all?”

  "’Tis enough. Fighting is all I know. And do not tell me I could become a grape grower, or farmer, or any other bloody thing. ’Tis bad enough I feel like a lackwit over the simplest things in this country.”

  “Believe me when I tell you that you will adjust. Unless . . . do you want to go back, Thorfinn?”

  “I do not know. For a certainty, I would not want to leave anytime soon. There is more involved here, Magnus. You know that my wife Luta left me five years ago and took my son Miklof with her.”

  Magnus nodded, though his brow was furrowed with confusion.

  “It’s very possible that Lydia’s son Michael is my son Miklof.”

  “How could that be?”

  “I do not know. At first, Lydia thought I was her husband, Dave, come back from the grave, all because we share the same gray eyes.”

  “Your eyes are an unusual color.”

  “What difference does . . . Leastways, she seems to have given up that notion. Now she thinks her dead husband sent me to her.”

  “And the child?”

  “He has my eyes.”

  Magnus downed his wine in one big swallow. “Whew! I thought I had heard some amazing things, but your story beats them all. Could it be true?”

  “I am hoping that when I see the boy in person next week—he is visiting his grandsires in Minnesota—I will know.”

  “What a tangle you are in, Thorfinn! Not just your feelings for this woman, and, nay, do not deny you have feelings for her. It is on your face, clear as a Norseland sky on a summer day. But also there
is the issue of her not wanting a military man. Then, finally, the boy. I would not want to be in your boots.”

  Just then, Torolf rushed up to them, still dressed in his camouflage outfit. He must have just arrived back from his mission across the ocean.

  “Thank the gods you’re here, Finn. Come quickly. We’ve gotta catch a plane for Minnesota.”

  Thorfinn stood abruptly, all his senses on alert.

  “Lydia and her son are in danger.”

  Old MacHartley had a farm, E-I-E-I-O...

  Lydia was still settling in at her parents’ house at Mill Pond Farm, after hugging Mike ’til he protested he couldn’t breathe and went off to help his grandmother feed the chickens. Lydia was now drinking her third cup of strong black coffee, which she needed to keep her awake following a sleepless night at Cage’s apartment.

  You’d never know that danger lurked as her dad and Lanny Brown, his full-time farmhand, went about their regular work, accompanied by a fascinated Cage, who’d never been on a working farm before. Her mother was busy, too, notwithstanding the lurking danger. Once she was done with the chickens, her mother would come in to can the three gallons of tomatoes, which were bubbling behind Lydia on the gas stove.

  Well, what could she expect? They milked one hundred and fifty Holsteins here, with three hundred cattle total, half of them “replacements” ranging in age from just born to two years old and ready to give birth and join the milking herd. There were twice-daily chores on a farm, day in and day out, including milking, feeding, cleaning the barn and milking parlor, as well as seasonal chores, such as mowing, raking, baling hay, planting corn, and combining to make silage. Not to mention all the inputting of data onto a computer that was required on a modern farm—not that Mill Pond was all that modern.

  As an indication of the silent menace, Cage wore a pistol under his jacket. And she’d noticed his eyes were always on the alert, scanning the perimeter, even when he was talking to one of them.

  Mike, oblivious to the danger, loved it here, especially with all the fat, healthy cats that thrived on the milk they were given. She’d loved it, too . . . up to a certain age. If he’d asked her once, he’d asked a hundred times if they could bring a cat back to California with them. One of these days, she might agree. Or else get him a dog. In fact, a guard dog might be a good idea, in light of the brick incident.

  Her cell phone hadn’t rung since she’d been here, and Lydia realized that she’d forgotten to charge the battery. No sooner did she plug it in than it rang.

  “Hello.”

  “Lydia? Is that you?

  “Finn. Finally!”

  “Where are you?”

  “At my parents’ farm.”

  “Stay inside and lock the doors.”

  “It’s okay. Cage is here with me.”

  It sounded as if he was swearing under his breath in some foreign language.

  “I tried to call you last night.”

  “You did?” He was no longer swearing.

  “I couldn’t get anyone to come to the house. Except Cage.”

  “He was not there already?”

  “No, why would he be?”

  “Why, indeed?”

  “Huh?”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  She told him, but then she started to sob. Why she’d been able to hold herself together without tears so far, but break down now, she had no idea.

  “Oh, sweetling, do not cry. I will be there soon.”

  That caused the tears to dry up real quick. “You will?”

  “I am calling on Torolf’s phone from up in the sky.”

  “You’re on an airplane?”

  “Yea, I am. See the sacrifice I am willing to make for you? In any case, we will be there soon.”

  “We?”

  “Believe me, you do not want to know.”

  A Norse version of the Motley Crew . . .

  Thorfinn was in another flying bird surrounded by the most lackwitted hird of soldiers a chieftain ever had. A private jet-plane was all they had been able to hire, and even then, they could not leave ’til the next morning.

  Air-plane, jet-plane, whatever they called them, Thorfinn found riding in them a fist-clenching, heart-thumping, not-to-be-favored experience. What was wrong with a good old horse and cart? Or even an automobile?

  But time was of the essence.

  When Torolf had explained the danger that Lydia and her family were in, and that it somehow tied in with her ex-husband because he had been a Navy SEAL, every SEAL not on a mission who had ever worked with Dave Denton demanded to come along. That meant Geek, JAM, Sly, Slick, F.U., and several others whose names Thorfinn did not know. All of them carried deadly weapons.

  “All for one and one for all,” Ian—Commander MacLean—had told him last night before he reluctantly headed back to the base.

  On the remote chance that Mike might actually be his son, and therefore family, the Ericsson men said they were coming along, too, as was their right as elder warriors: Magnus, Jorund, and Geirolf, the three of whom carried their broadswords and battle-axes, which—believe you me—had been hard to explain to the policing folks at the airport.

  “There is naught mightier than the sword,” Magnus had asserted.

  While Uncle Magnus was a vintner, Uncle Jorund ran an athletics school in Tax-us for crippled people, crippled in mind, as well as body. When Thorfinn asked if he ever taught pole dancing, his uncle’s jaw dropped nigh to his chest. Then there was Uncle Rolf, who had built and managed Rosestead, a reproduction Viking village in far-off Maine, complete with longships, longhouses, and craftsmen. Thorfinn would like to see that. Many of their wares were marketed on the Internet . . . a place that he did not quite understand involving computers, he had learned from Geek and the bad-breath Blade.

  Never let it be said that Vikings did not know how to adapt to the times.

  Then Magnus’s six other sons had jumped on board: Storvald, Njal, Jogeir, Hamr, and Kolbein, who had all seen more than twenty winters, and Ragnor, who was over thirty, same as Torolf. Ragnor worked with computers; a strange job for a Viking, if you asked him, which nobody did. But no more unusual than a Viking merchant on the Internet superhighway, he supposed.

  “Young blood is needed to get the job done,” Jogeir had declared.

  Hamr was a football player, nicknamed The Hammer. Not with the Minnesota Vikings, but the San Diego Chargers. Traitorous, it was, in Thorfinn’s opinion. If a man was going to engage in bloodsport for a living, it may as well be with fellow Vikings and involve a bit of pillaging. Kolbein, who was studying to be a priest—imagine that, a Viking priest!—came, no doubt, to give last rites to the villain, once dead. Jogeir, who had been lame as a child but was no longer, due to some medical operation, was an Olympic runner who shared his father’s love of farming and would return to Blue Dragon one day. Njal, ever the mischievous one as a child and still was if the twinkle in his eyes was any indication, was a high-up officer in the Navy. Storvald, the eldest son, next to Ragnor and Torolf, was a sword-maker at Uncle Jorund’s Viking village.

  What a motley group they all were!

  The villain terrorizing Lydia and her family was going to take one look at them and either piss his braies or run for the hills. With them in wild pursuit. He could scarce wait.

  A woman in a dark blue jacket and a short garment known as a skirt was pushing a cart down the aisle. When she got to Thorfinn and Torolf, who was seated on his left, she asked, “Would you like a beverage?”

  “Yea, I would like a beer,” he said.

  “Beer?” Torolf snickered. “It’s only ten A.M.”

  “So? ’Tis better than that black sludge you drink.” Turning back to the woman, who was tapping her high-heeled shoe with impatience, he inquired, “Dost have beer?”

  “Yes,” she said huffily, and left her cart to go up front, where she got a metal container of beer and handed it to him, along with one of those throw-away cups. What he wouldn’t give for a good ol
d horn of mead! That was the way to drink beer. Then she gave Torolf his coffee and both of them a tiny bag of nuts.

  “What in bloody hell is this?” he asked Torolf, who was already tearing apart the bag and munching on the nuts.

  “Breakfast.”

  “You jest.”

  “Just eat the damn things.”

  A short time later, he told Torolf, who had his eyes closed, attempting to sleep, “Cage is in Minnesota with Lydia.”

  Torolf cracked open just one eye. “So?”

  “Dost think he is tupping her?”

  “Oh, good gods! I hope you don’t intend to ask her that.”

  “Why not?”

  “You are an idiot. Because it’s tantamount to asking if he’s fucking her.”

  “And that is wrong . . . why?”

  “You don’t drop the F-bomb around women, unless you can absolutely help it.”

  Thorfinn just shook his head at this impossible-to-understand country.

  “So, I take it Lydia isn’t your love slave anymore.”

  He shook his head. “She does not want a military man.”

  “You mean it was getting that serious already? Holy crap! You move fast. Pickup sex to wedding bells in a nanosecond. You must be something in the sack.”

  “The sack?”

  “Bed furs.”

  “Oh, well, of course I know my way around the bed furs, but that is neither here nor there. And I was not speaking of marriage.”

  “Oh, yes, you were. You just don’t know it.”

  “Explain yourself, lackwit.”

  “When Lydia told you that she didn’t want a military man, she meant for the long haul. If it was just sex, what difference would it make?”

  He frowned. “I have no intention of wedding again.”

  “Did you tell Lydia that?”

  “I do not recall. I must have. Well, mayhap not. Whether I said the words or not, she must have known.”

  “You are dumber than dirt.”

  “Your insults are not appreciated.”

  “Listen, Finn, are you in love with Lydia?”

  “No! But I do get this squeezing sensation in my chest when I see her. And I do miss her, but that is probably just the incredible sex I am missing. And I sure as sin felt jealousy for the first time over her and Cage.”