Garrick was slower to rise. He put his swordpoint to Royce’s chest and held it there for an agonizing moment, then stuck it in the ground, too. He also tossed his helmet aside, shaking loose his thick mane of golden hair.
“Aye, we would both be fools to continue, for I cannot kill you, either. But I feel no such qualms about this.”
The fist caught under Royce’s jaw, putting him flat on his back again. But he rolled over quickly and, with a mighty thrust, plowed his shoulder into Garrick’s belly. The fight was still in earnest, but with fists now instead of swords.
Upstairs, Kristen began to cry in relief. Across the yard, Brenna turned away to hide her own tears. Both women smiled, sure now that their men would live. The Vikings did not so much care that the thrust of the fight had changed. They still cheered on their man, as did the Saxons across from them.
When it was finished a long while later, Royce could not raise his head to save his soul. Garrick, still on his knees, was hailed the victor just before he keeled over on top of Royce. The yard was quiet then. The possibility that both men would still live had not been considered.
Kristen allowed no time for them to consider it at all. She ran toward the fallen combatants and gave orders they should both be taken into the hall. When no Saxon moved to obey her, she pierced Alden with a furious glare.
“Do not make me regret forgiving you, Saxon. Get them moving!”
He did, and Kristen quickly picked up one of the discarded swords as her uncle and most of the others approached. She faced Hugh with it, brandishing it before her.
“It is done, Uncle Hugh,” she warned him angrily. “I am going to marry that Saxon now, and woe betide anyone who dares to stop me. He has fought for the right to demand peace. Give it to him.”
Hugh threw back his head and laughed mightily. He slapped Brenna on the back, which sent her stumbling ahead. “Like mother, like daughter, eh, Brenna? Odin help us all if this is the new breed of women we are raising on our shores.”
Brenna turned around to glare at her brother-in-law. “Oaf! And how would she have survived here if I had not taught her how? Give her the answer she awaits, Hugh.”
He smiled at his niece. “Aye, your man fought well. He can have his peace.”
“And you will all leave?”
“Not until we see you properly wed.”
Kristen grinned, and then she burst into joyous laughter and threw herself into her uncle’s mighty arms.
Chapter Forty-four
Royce was not so stiff and sore today, but he still did not think he was ready to crawl from his bed. He was improving after three days, but he had never felt so wretched in his life. For a while it had seemed as if every bone in his body had been broken. Some were, and Kristen had bound his chest tightly to set the cracked ribs.
But he did not need to leave his bed to know what was going on in his hall. It seemed as if everyone in Wyndhurst had traipsed through his chamber at one time or another. His people to see how he fared, Kristen’s people to meet the man who would marry their fair flower of Norway.
Darrelle came the most, for she was in a state bordering on hysteria with so many Vikings in her hall. Alden was amused by it all. And Meghan, that amazing child, was awed and delighted with their visitors, and had even come to tell him excitedly that Kristen’s uncle Hugh had promised to show her his Viking ship. The change wrought in his sister, thanks to Kristen, was truly a wonder. But then, the vixen had changed him, too.
He wondered sometimes if the fates hadn’t corrected the err in taking his first love in a Viking raid, by sending him Kristen in another raid. She had certainly healed the emptiness he had lived with all these years. He rarely thought of Rhona anymore. When he tried to picture her in his mind, it was aqua eyes he saw, and flowing tawny hair. And Kristen loved him. After all he had put her through, she actually loved him. This would never cease to amaze him.
The only one who had not come to his chamber to see him was Kristen’s father. Brenna had told him with a half smile that Garrick was not up to leaving his bed, either. That confession had made Royce’s day, for he dearly hoped the older man was suffering just as much as he was. The man had wanted his blood, and Royce had spit mouthfuls of it. He could wait until doomsday before he had to come face to face with that merciless Viking again.
Doomsday arrived three days later, or so Royce felt. Kristen rushed in to warn him, only seconds beforehand, that her father was coming. Royce buried his head under his pillow. She giggled and swiped it away from him. And then Garrick Haardrad appeared in the doorway, filling it with his large frame.
He had seen the superb body in action, but this was the first opportunity Royce had to really look the man over. He did not look old enough to have a son only five or six years younger than Royce.
It did not sit well with Royce at all, knowing that he had been trounced soundly by a man nearly two score years his senior, and a merchant, a man who by rights should have grown soft with his advancing years. And worse, he was up and about first. Royce knew the power of his own strength. A man Garrick’s age should have been bedridden for a fortnight at the very least.
Yet here he stood, straight and tall, with only a few remaining signs giving testimony to their battle: a scab on his lip, a bruise still on one cheek, a slight discoloration beneath one eye. Royce wished he could have seen the eye when it was at its blackest and still swollen. God’s breath, he resented the Viking’s ability to heal so quickly.
Garrick wore a sleeveless leather tunic with his long, tight-fitted leggings. His soft-skinned boots were studded with gold and came to his knees. Golden links also trimmed the tunic. In fact, he was a walking fortune, with a gold buckle the size of a fist on his belt, gold with precious jewels winking from his fingers, a solid-gold medallion on his chest, and more gold clasped to his wrists.
Royce found to his consternation that he was intimidated, not by the wealth and strength that exuded from every inch of the man, but by Garrick’s grim visage. This was Kristen’s father. One word from him and Royce could lose her.
It might be true that the wedding feast had begun, flaunting tradition, before the wedding, and without the happy couple in attendance. In fact it began on the very day of the battle, because Hugh Haardrad had claimed they would have to sail for home before winter made the voyage too difficult, that they could not afford to wait until Royce recovered. So they began the celebrating before the fact, as Viking celebrations had to be long, drawn-out affairs or Kristen would not feel she had been properly wed. So Hugh claimed.
This had made Royce feel the matter was settled. And yet, looking at Kristen’s father, he knew it was not. He still had to have this man’s approval, and at the moment Garrick did not look as if he would give it.
The fact that Kristen was smiling softened the edges of Royce’s rising panic. If she did not see anything amiss in her father’s stern countenance, mayhap Royce was overreacting. After all, he did not know the man. It was possible he always looked so forbidding.
