Page 6 of Viking Unchained

They were just pulling into the parking lot. Ian and the three children were standing on the grassy area behind the building near the water. Ian didn’t see them yet, and what a picture he made! Holding the baby in one arm, cuddled against his chest, he laughed as the two little boys chased each other around his legs, the toddler comical in his staggering gait. Ian glanced up then and saw Madrene approaching. The light that came into his eyes was priceless.

A searing, crushing pain seized Lydia’s chest. It should be Dave and our children. It should be Dave giving me “the look.”

She stayed in the car, windows open, while the others piled out.

“I was called back to the base; so, I brought the kids over here,” Ian said after giving Madrene a quick kiss of welcome.

Kirstin and Alison waved as they made for their own vehicles, with Kirstin calling out, “Remember. Girls’

night out. Soon.”

As Ian walked Madrene and the children back to the van, Lydia heard Madrene say to her husband, “What would you think of me pole dancing?”

Ian stumbled, then stopped stock still. Turning slowly, inch by inch, to look at his wife, he merely grinned.

That was answer enough.

Lydia drove off then to pick up her son. And for the first time in a long time she wept for all she had lost.

She felt so very lonely.

Maybe it was time to move on.

But no military man ever again!

Chapter 2

When the Norns of Fate come

calling . . .

Thorfinn was a strong military man, but he was unprepared for and outnumbered by the six Arab men who attacked him on the way back from Baghdad the next morning.

The woman and child he had sought turned out to be a false lead once again. No surprise there. It had been ludicrous, really. The woman was blonde, like Luta, but she had a hooked nose and weighed as much as a small horse. The child was a girl, not a boy. And the husband, who had been away from home, was Arab, not Saxon.

He had sent Steven and his men on ahead after their wasted trip back into the city whilst he had stopped to speak to a horse breeder who betimes traveled to trading posts in the Norselands . . . Hedeby and Birka, in particular. The man promised to come as far as Norstead on his next trip. Steven should have the two longships ready to launch by the time he got to the harbor.

But then the unbelievable happened.

He was caught off guard when he was some distance from the city, but not yet close to the river where the longships were anchored. He did not see the men coming at him. He did hear a noise behind him that saved him from the spear which merely lanced his shoulder, not his heart, as intended.

Nimble-footed, despite his size, from years on the exercise and battlefields, he danced back, at the same time drawing his battle sword from the scabbard at his side.

Luckily, it was his favorite pattern-welded sword, “Skin Biter,” an especially powerful weapon. All swords were strengthened by quenching the hot metal in liquid . . . water, honey, oil, wet clay, or in this case, blood.

Unluckily, there were six of these miscreants to his one, and they were weapon-heavy, brandishing lance and bow and knife as well as sword.

In Arabic, he asked his attackers what they were about afore he gave them a sample of the flavor of his wrath. They did not appear to be thieves. Mayhap they had mistaken him for someone else.

One of them, seemingly the leader, snarled out something about how Thorfinn had befouled their sister-by-marriage when he gazed on her beauteous face.

Ah, the woman he had just visited. Beauteous she was not with that huge nose and splotchy skin, but no matter. Arab men took a harsh view of their wives’ faces being seen by other men. And these were six outraged brothers of the husband.

He apologized for his mistake. “I did not mean to give offense.”

The leader said a foul word in Arabic.

So be it!