Rough and Ready Page 3

  “I heard they were hunks,” one young woman commented, probably a girlfriend of one of the college boy rowers. She wasn’t blonde or buxom, but she wasn’t unattractive, despite the tongue piercing. He noticed Pretty Boy watching her, too. He would probably be hitting on her before they were back on land.

  The professor/captain smiled at her question. “Actually, the Viking men were taller and better looking than the average men of that time.”

  Torolf smirked at his friends.

  “Plus, they bathed more often than other folks. No wonder so many women of so many different lands welcomed them into their beds! There’s no doubt that they enriched the races of the countries where they settled.”

  “Did you bathe a lot?” Cage asked.

  “How many races did you enrich?” Pretty Boy wanted to know.

  “This is really interesting,” Geek said. He was soaking up the touristy lecture like a sailor at his first strip show.

  What a . . . geek!

  “Ya know, we Cajuns are a lot like Vikings,” Cage said.

  “I’ll bite,” Torolf said. “How are Cajuns like Vikings?”

  “They’re both drop-dead gorgeous, sexy as sin, have a great sense of humor, and women love ’em.”

  His remark was met with snickers.

  “Besides, like my maw maw always says, ‘The truth is in the roux.’ ”

  “What the hell does roux have to do with Vikings and Cajuns?” Torolf would undoubtedly regret asking the question.

  “Roux is the heart of most Cajun dishes. At heart, Vikings and Cajuns are good lovers, husbands, fathers, sons.”

  “That is the most half-assed logic I’ve ever heard.” JAM liked there to be an explanation for everything. It was probably why he was no longer a Jesuit wannabe.

  Just then, Torolf noticed something. “Oh, my God!” He shoved his friends aside so he could see better over the side of the longboat. Like a well-oiled machine, his teammates went on immediate alert, joining him in a search for danger, scanning the ship and the quickly passing landscape. They knew what to do in a crisis and how to work together without words. In a situation like this, explanations took precious time away from action.

  Torolf shouted to the tour guide, “Hey! Watch yourselves. We’re entering shallow waters, and there’s a bend or obstruction up ahead.” He rushed to the helmsman manning the rudder, and the idiot wouldn’t let go. Quickly, he clipped him on the chin, knocking him out, and tried desperately to turn the rudder in the other direction.

  Cage and Geek grabbed oars from some stunned “Vikings” and attempted to reach the front of the ship to forestall a crash.

  JAM and Pretty Boy were perched on a gunwale, about to dive overboard and secure the anchor.

  But it was too late.

  There was a loud crashing noise, and everyone standing was thrown off their feet by the impact.

  He glanced up from his prone position, and as if in slow motion, he felt the longboat teeter from side to side in its now dry-docked state and then tip over. Before he could react to that catastrophe, something even worse happened. The heavy yardarm and mast came crashing down over them. Under the massive, heavy sails, he heard screams, cracking wood, cursing, more screams, piercing pain in his head and shoulders . . .

  And then silence.

  So, this is how it ends, he thought. In death.

  Men . . . can’t live with them, can’t live without them . . .

  “We need men!” shouted Britta the Big, chief archer of The Sanctuary and head of its guard.

  Truth to tell, they had only ten axes, one broadsword, which hardly anyone could lift, fifteen shepherd’s crooks converted into lances, long-handled cooking ladles, pokers, wooden clubs, slingshots, and bows and arrows. Every woman practiced weaponry regularly, in case of an attack, under Britta’s supervision.

  “Not for me,” Britta explained in an aside to Hilda. “I speak for the others.”

  Britta’s chant was taken up by the sixty other women in the inner courtyard of The Sanctuary. “We need men! We need men!”

  Hilda put her face in her hands, counted to ten silently, then said with forced patience, “Men are scurvy curs . . .” Stig and his new bitch growled at her feet with doggie consternation. “We have flourished these past five years without men.”

  “It matters not. Now they need men,” Britta asserted.

  Hilda flung her hands out with disbelief. “Truly, Britta? Must needs we cower under a man’s shield for protection?”

  Britta, who was as tall as a man, with wide shoulders and muscled arms, stiffened. “Nay, not for our defenses.”

  All of the women sat on the ground in a five-deep circle under the warm autumn sun. The law speaker, Kelda Sigundottir, had already recited the Thing law codes of their female community, calling on Forseti, god of justice, for guidance. A Thing was held to discuss problems and settle disputes. Minor quarrels had already been resolved today by the debating of both sides of the issues. Two women fighting over a fox fur pelt. A girl negligent in her kitchen duties. An argument over which was the best recipe for curing cheese curds for skyr. A game of hnefatafl that went badly, resulting in one black eye and a bloody shin. Weevils in a sack of flour. A smelly garderobe.

  It had been five years since Hilda arrived at Deer Haven, now The Sanctuary. The first year had been brutal. Often they had feared either freezing to death in the cold fortress or starving to death or being discovered by Steinolf and his comrades-in-cruelty. More escapees had made their way to safety, increasing their numbers. Only occasionally did they have to fend off invaders, small bands of errant knaves. Steinolf was busy grabbing lands in surrounding countries.

  Hilda acted as head of this community, much like an abbess in a nunnery or a chief crone in a witches’ coven, which was the word they had spread to keep men away. But, really, everyone was equal here, all assigned duties for which they were best suited.

  Now, after all this healing and prosperity, they want men here? Hah! I will become a Valkyrie afore that happens! “Frida, do our hunters not bring you enough woodcock, grouse, geese, hares, foxes, reindeer, duck, plover, and the occasional boar? Do the fisherwomen not catch you enough pike, roach, rudd, sea bream, perch, eel, herring, cod, haddock, ling, mackerel, smelt, and lampreys?”

  A blush crept over the cook’s face. And speaking of bounty, Frida was now the size of a small warhorse due to that bounty.

  “Inge, will the goats produce more milk or the rams swive more sheep to increase our flocks if a man were tending them?”

  “You know they will not,” Inge replied with a touch of affront. Inge, who was the same age as Hilda at twenty and eight, was in charge of all the animals, her original flock of one ram and two ewes having multiplied into four rams, twenty ewes, and twenty-five lambs, not to mention the ten goats they kept for milk.

  “Dost envision Viking men tending your gardens, Dagne? Or playing your lute on a long winter’s eve?”

  Dagne, still folk-shy, lowered her eyes and shook her head sharply. She was seventeen now and had just begun to speak again this past winter. Her recovery had taken longer than most.

  Astrid, a bitter woman who spoke with a slight slur due to her mutilated tongue, gave Hilda no chance to question her. “And, nay, I do not need a man to gather honey and meddle in the making of mead and candles.”

  Elise, now twenty-three, giggled when Hilda’s eyes lit on her. Never in all her life had Hilda encountered such a cheerful person. No longer a thrall, Elise organized all the spinning of wool and weaving of cloth. A sizable enterprise for sixty women. “ ’Tis laughable picturing men with their big, dirty hands working a spindle or weaving cloth.”

  Still others in the community were cleaning maids, laundresses, gardeners, woodworkers, carpenters, and various other occupations. Each had an opinion on the man situation.

  Bemused, Hilda was only half attending as the women continued to chatter among themselves. Finally, she put her hands on her hips and said, loud enough to over
ride the voices, “Krrr!” Then, she repeated, “Quiet!” When everyone gave their full attention, she asked, “What is amiss here?”

  Inge spoke for the rest. “We need men.”

  “Bld Hel! All of us have suffered in one way or another from the misdeeds of men. You would allow men with their brutish urges to slake their lust on us?”

  “Yea and nay,” Inge answered.

  Hilda arched her eyebrows. “Is the springtime sap rising in you women? You may not have dangly parts, but have you become lustsome, like nature’s animals . . . the ram, the bull, the rooster, and . . . and men? By Odin! That is it, is it not?”

  Inge’s face reddened, as did others. “Not precisely.”

  “If not a craving for a good tup, then what?” Hilda could be frank of manner when the occasion warranted.

  As one, all the women answered, “Children.”

  “Aaaah!” Hilda sighed. The maternal instinct. “But you must know, bringing men into this community would change things.”

  “You say us wrong, milady,” Inge said. “We need them for the breeding only. Not for a lifetime.”

  Hilda laughed. “You expect to bring men here for the mating and then dismiss them when they are no longer useful?”

  “Men do it all the time,” one voice shouted.

  “That I own, but ’twould bode ill for us if Steinolf ’s men learned the exact whereabouts of our refuge from those discards.”

  “There might be a way,” Britta said. “We could kidnap them and bind their eyes with cloth.”

  Hilda’s jaw dropped. “They would be outraged. They would never accept us on those terms.”

  “Hah! They would have no choice if they were chained to a bedchamber wall.” It was young Dagne who spoke, to Hilda’s surprise. Others found great amusement in that prospect.

  Hilda had to raise a hand to quell the laughter and ribald remarks. “We must not make a hasty decision. Let us think on the matter and discuss it again at next month’s Thing. Mayhap the Norns of fate will guide us.”

  Everyone nodded and went off, a betwittered mass of laughter and giggles. They had not yet convinced her. Far from it.

  Two sennights later, it appeared as if the Norns had indeed intervened. They were in the midst of clipping thorns out of dumb sheep who had waded unkowingly into a briar patch. ’Twas a sweaty, stinksome, greasy job, which could not wait till spring shearing. But then the call to arms came.

  “Danger! Get your weapons! Come quickly!” one of Britta’s sentries yelled, running up the motte, lance in hand. “A longship has wrecked, and there are men.”

  Instantly, the community of women gathered weapons. Their demeanor bespoke a mixture of shock and exhilaration.

  “Are they armed? How many are there? Best I bring ropes to tie them up.”

  “The gods have answered our prayers.”

  “I hope there is a flaxen-haired one. I do so want a flaxen-haired bairn.”

  “Not me! Black-haired men are more virile.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Makes no difference, as long as there are seeds in the pods.”

  Seeds in the pods? Oh, good gods!

  “Are any of them comely? Not that it matters. In the dark, all manparts look the same.”

  “I heard my brother make that selfsame remark about women.”

  Much giggling and huffing and puffing followed.

  I have landed in the middle of mayhem with a flock of randy, lackwit woman warriors, and none of them are considering the fact that it might be Steinolf and his men. Raising her hand, Hilda signaled for them to stop behind a ridge of trees . . . the very place where they had spent many a day building a dam in the fjord, stone by stone. There had indeed been a shipwreck. The longboat lay on its side, splintered, but even more disastrous to those aboard, the collision must have caused the mast and yardarm to fall, crushing those beneath.

  “The vessel had to be traveling fast to have hit the low water and then the dam itself,” Inge noted.

  “The captain of the dragon ship must have been incompetent to have failed to see the obstruction up ahead,” Britta commented. “Or else he was drukkinn.”

  They approached the longboat cautiously, many of them grim-faced with disappointment at the severity of the wreckage.

  “Be careful,” she cautioned. But what she really thought was, They are probably all dead.

  And, oddly, she was disappointed.

  Chapter 3

  Is this the ultimate male fantasy, or what? . . .

  Torolf came groggily back to his senses and noticed a number of alarming things in a gradually lessening haze, like the slow flicking of a deck of picture cards.

  Alarming thing number one: The sails, mast, and yardarm had been lifted off them. Who did it? And how?

  Alarming thing number two: He had the mother of all headaches. That’s probably blood seeping down my forehead.

  Alarming thing number three: His four buddies were in the same state he was. Geek’s right leg was stretched out at an odd angle. Pretty Boy had an ugly slash on his bicep that would need stitches. JAM was bleeding from a superficial head wound, same as him. Cage was the only one seemingly unscathed; even his goofy cowboy hat was still in place.

  Alarming thing number four: Everyone else on the longship was gone. That included the captain, the rowers, and the tourists. Huh? How could that be? He shook his head to clear it and had to grit his teeth at the pain. Yep, it was just the five of them and—Omigod! How could I not have noticed right away?—their arms were restrained in front with ropes.

  Alarming thing number five, and it was the most alarming thing of all: A group of wild, screeching women surrounded them, brandishing an odd assortment of weapons. If he didn’t already have a headache, he would now from their shrill voices. And their appearance . . . unbelievable! Some wore the traditional attire for a Norsewoman: an ankle-length gunna covered with an open-sided, over-the-head, calf-length apron, held together at the shoulders with brooches. But most of them wore slim pants and over-tunics that went to the hip and were belted at the waist. Their clothing didn’t come from Frederick’s of the Fjord, that was for sure. They looked like Amazons in a bad B movie.

  And, phew, they smelled to high heaven. Sort of like wet wool, dung, and—Oh, yeah! As a farm boy from way back, I’d recognize that smell anywhere—sheep. That would explain the shepherds’ crooks that doubled as lances in some of their hands.

  “Call me crazy, but are we really surrounded by a couple dozen women brandishing cooking ladles?” Pretty Boy stared at the women surrounding them . . . women absurdly trying to appear ferocious. But then Pretty Boy’s gaze latched onto one big mama of a woman who was holding a broadsword with two hands. Even big men sometimes had trouble managing a broadsword. This Xena babe had to be six feet tall with the shoulders of a linebacker and the waist of quarterback, although her breasts and long legs under the brown tunic and slim pants spelled W-O-M-A-N. Pretty Boy sighed and said, “I think I’m in love.”

  Whaaat?

  “Is this a joke? Oh, now I get it. Yer playing a joke on us, aren’t ya, Max?” Cage was laughing and would have probably jabbed him in the arm if his arms were free. “First the time-travel crap, now this. Whoo-boy, ya really punked us this time.”

  “Don’t be an idiot. How would I be able to pull this off . . . a freakin’ shipwreck, then these loony bird women? I’m not that good.”

  “You’ve done dumber stuff,” JAM pointed out. “Like the time you talked Ensign Nixon into pretending to be a hooker and luring Cage into a surprise birthday party at the Wet and Wild.” The Wet and Wild was a bar near Coronado that catered to Navy guys.

  “It didn’t take much talking. Celia Nixon has had the hots for Cage for years.”

  The whole time they were chitchatting like a bunch of imbeciles, the women were talking among themselves, also like imbeciles, “weapons” still raised. The fine hairs stood out on the back of Torolf ’s neck when he realized something important. The
women were speaking in Old Norse. Quickly, he surveyed the area, as best he could from his sitting position. An alarming idea came to him, and he didn’t know whether to be happy or scared shitless. Probably both. The enormity of his realization stunned him for a moment.

  “I hate to break the news to you guys,” he said, “but I think we time-traveled. I’d bet my left nut we are now in the eleventh century.”

  “Ha, ha, ha! And I’d bet my right nut you’re pulling our legs,” Pretty Boy said, never taking his eyes off Big Mama. “Hey, sweet thing, how about untying me?” he called out to Big Mama. “Or . . . happy days . . . are you into bondage?”

  Big Mama glared at him as if he were an insect under her size-ten boots.

  Torolf blinked repeatedly, trying to get his bearings.

  Cage glanced at him with concern. “Man, yer weirding me out.”

  Torolf was where he wanted to be . . . well, where he had tried to be for a long time, but now he was worried. It was one thing to be responsible for himself and the possibility he might be locked in the past. But what about his buddies? Even though they had pushed their way into accompanying him to Norway, they hadn’t really expected this.

  Okay, time to get this show on the road.

  Torolf stood clumsily in front of another woman who had a pair of sheep-shearing scissors in one hand and a short-bladed knife in the other; she seemed to be the leader. Her long, very light blonde hair—platinum blonde, like his sister Kirstin’s—had escaped a single braid that hung down to the middle of her back, and there were bits of fleece in the unruly, flaxen strands. Clear blue eyes were framed by thick, light brown eyebrows and lashes. She was tall, though not as tall as Big Mama . . . maybe five eight or so. Barefoot and grimy, she wore a long beige gown belted at the waist with a thin rope. And he could swear those spots on her forearms and gown were sheep shit.

  “Who . . . what are you?” he asked.

  “A witch,” she said.

  “A nun,” Big Mama said at the same time.

  “Oh, no! Please don’t tell me you’re a nun!” Pretty Boy pleaded with Big Mama.