Rough and Ready Read online

  “Hell, no! I was just kidding. Threw me for a loop when she offered that. And I guarantee that these women are not witches. Definitely not nuns, either, by the way they’re making moves on us.”

  “Yeah, isn’t that great? Kinda nice to have the tables turned. Not that women don’t hit on me all the time.”

  Something is fishy in paradise. Sex on a platter, no strings? Nope, I’m not buyin’ it.

  “Did ya know that some of these women have been here fer five years . . . without men?” Cage waggled his eyebrows at him. “And not even a vibrator available.”

  Torolf laughed. “Since when do you know women with vibrators?”

  “You’d be surprised, big boy!” Cage took another drink of mead. Like my maw maw allus says, ‘Fer every old slipper there’s another old slipper.’ I think you and Hildy make a great pair.”

  Just great! Now I’m an old slipper. And Cage is back to the matchmaking crap again. “Why? Because she smells like sheep shit?”

  Cage laughed. “You could hold your nose while she’s holding your—”

  “Enough! I’m not going to sleep with Hilda. I don’t need to ‘pay’ to get laid.”

  “Does that mean we’re not gonna teach these babes to fight?”

  “I don’t know.” He rubbed his forehead with his hand. His head still ached, despite the good ministering and the “megrim powder” given to him by the resident healer, a woman missing her two front teeth. The whole time she’d been stitching the cut on his scalp, she’d been rubbing her voluminous breasts against his shoulder. Apparently, she eyed him as a potential bed partner.

  Just then, he noticed Pretty Boy making his way through the crowd. All day he’d been bird-dogging Britta the Big, who didn’t want anything to do with him. Probably playing hard to get, which would be a switch for Pretty Boy. Pretty Boy was talking to the lute player. Then the lute player stood, and he sat down.

  “What? Does he think a lute is the same as a guitar?” Torolf asked.

  “I guess so. They’re both string instruments that ya pluck with the fingers. But I cain’t imagine they’d sound the same,” Cage said.

  Pretty Boy played the guitar as a hobby. When he was blitzed, he sometimes went up on the stage at the Wet and Wild and joined the band in a few numbers.

  “Sit down, everyone,” Pretty Boy ordered. When many of them were sitting on the hard-packed dirt floor, he began to strum, experimenting with different strings. It didn’t sound at all like a guitar, but it wasn’t bad.

  “I don’t recognize that song. Do you?” Cage was into all kinds of music, especially Cajun. And dancing. Lordy, the boy could dance!

  “Shiiit! That Pretty Boy is so freakin’ smooth. How does he do it?” It was Geek speaking now as he came up and plopped down on a big chair on Torolf ’s other side.

  Torolf and Cage gazed at Geek with frowns of confusion as Pretty Boy began to sing. Now they understood. He was singing Van Morrison’s “Brown-Eyed Girl,” and he was staring at Britta standing on the other side of the room. Slowly, everyone began to grasp that Pretty Boy was singing a love song to his girl—or who he hoped would be his girl—and they alternately swooned over his singing or craned their necks to see Britta’s reaction. Pretty Boy would wear her down eventually. He always did.

  “Yep. That boy is smoother’n gator spit.” Cage grinned with admiration. “I thought I had smooth down to an art form, but he’s got me beat by a bayou mile.”

  Torolf had to agree.

  After that, Pretty Boy played a few country songs. “Your Cheatin’ Heart” went over big with the ladies, who kept nodding their heads in agreement. Apparently, they’d met a few wandering boys in their day. Then he tried Ray Charles’s “Hit the Road, Jack,” which also rang a few memory bells in these babes. Willie Nelson’s “Always on My Mind” had them swooning again. When he sang “Sixty Minute Man,” the women didn’t understand, but they liked the ballad nonetheless.

  After a while, Cage stood, put his hands to his mouth, and yelled, “Hey, guitar man, how ‘bout some dancin’ music?” Then he turned to Torolf and Geek. “C’mon. We cain’t let Pretty Boy take over this party.”

  Torolf declined, but Geek limped off with Cage. JAM was at the far end of the hall talking earnestly with some woman. Knowing him, they were probably discussing religion rather than her preference for bottom or top. JAM had been pretty serious with a schoolteacher a year or so ago. Torolf had no idea what happened, just that JAM told them it was over.

  The party really took off then, as Cage and a limping Geek taught the women how to twist to that old Chubby Checker song, “Let’s Twist Again.” Then, “Shake It Up Baby.” The women were shocked at first, especially when the guys encouraged them to “shake it on out,” but then they gave it the old college try, and soon, after a number of lively songs, many of them mastered the moves of the twist.

  Torolf wished his brother Ragnor were here to witness these Dark Ages ladies lifting the hems of their gunnas to do the twist. Not to mention shaking their bonbons like modern women did.

  After they all made fools of themselves for a couple more songs, laughing like hyenas, Pretty Boy called out, “This is the last song, folks.” Then he played a few chords, starting with the lyrics, “People say I’m the life of the party . . .”

  Torolf laughed. That was a cue, if there ever was one, in light of Hilda’s criticism of him earlier. He saw Hilda standing in the doorway that led to the kitchen and walked over to her. “Wanna dance?”

  “Nay!” She looked at him as if he’d asked her to strip naked and do the hula.

  Cage and Geek, even JAM now, were attempting to teach some women how to slow dance.

  “C’mon, Hildy.” He held his arms out to her.

  “I do not dance.”

  “Are you afraid if you get close to me, you won’t be able to resist my charms?”

  Her damn-the-torpedoes blue eyes practically shot sparks at him, and she stepped forward into his arms, taking hold of his hands, instead of letting him hold her in a dance position. She must think they were going to slow dance a yard apart.

  With a chuckle, he pulled her flush against his body and locked his hands behind her waist before she could shove him away, which she tried hard to do, muttering such endearments as “Big oaf!” “Loathsome lout!” “Arrogant son of a maggoty flea!”

  “Hold still. I’m trying to teach you how to dance.”

  They swayed from side to side.

  “This is not dancing. ’Tis nigh fornicating.”

  I know. That’s the only reason most men dance. Foreplay. “That’s how they dance in my country.”

  “I can hardly credit that. ’Tis scandalous.”

  Only when you struggle and rub your breasts against my chest.

  Eventually, she relaxed. She even let him put her hands on his shoulders.

  “I see you changed your clothes.”

  Hilda had combed her pale blonde hair and rebraided it into a single plait down her back. Her gown was plain drab brown, but clean. She was tall, slim, with a narrow waist and small breasts. In a pair of tight jeans and a tank top, she wouldn’t look half bad, despite the lack of cleavage. She wasn’t beautiful by any means. Her lips were too large for her face, and there was that slight space between her two front teeth.

  He sniffed her neck. “You smell good.” She had bathed. He recognized the same pine-scented soap he’d used earlier.

  “I didn’t do it for you,” she said defensively. “Stop holding me so close.”

  You ain’t seen nothin’ yet, toots. “Stop complaining.”

  “Stop smelling my neck.”

  He laughed and licked the curve of her neck, which was exposed by the collarless gown. And surprised himself at how good it felt. Okay, not just good. He’d felt an erotic shock shoot from his tongue on her neck down to his most favorite body part. Amazing! He was getting turned on by good ol’ Hildy.

  She gasped with shock.

  In Torolf ’s experience, it was a
lways good to make a woman gasp once in a while. “I can feel your heart beating.”

  “No wonder. You’re squashing me.”

  Liar! You’re probably getting horny, too. Okay, maybe not horny, but slightly aroused. Okay, maybe not aroused. But not disgusted. That’s something. “Are you listening to the lyrics of this song, Hildy? It’s about a guy who’s a clown on the outside, but inside he’s crying.”

  She stopped struggling. “Are you crying inside?”

  Hell, no! “Maybe.”

  “Are you going to start teaching us women how to fight on the morrow?”

  He shrugged. “What would you do if I kissed you?”

  “Do not dare. I agreed to let you tup me for a night. I ne’er agreed to any kissing.”

  Hilda, Hilda, Hilda! You do have a knack for stepping into my traps. “Didn’t you know that kissing is part of . . . tupping?”

  “Always?”

  “Oh, yeah!”

  “Is that another custom in your new land?”

  “Yep!

  “I never know when you are teasing and when you are telling the truth.”

  Thank God!

  “Exactly where is this new land where you live?”

  “I told you. America. Far, far away.” Like five thousand miles and a thousand years.

  She narrowed her eyes with suspicion. “Have you been hiding out in the Arab lands? Perchance with a harem of your own? Swiving everything in sight?”

  Sonoma, California, is a long way from the Arab lands, although I have been in Iraq and Afghanistan lately. “I’m wounded that you have such a low opinion of me.” Actually, I’m more amused than anything.

  “’Tis not you precisely that I view in that manner, but all men who think with their dangly parts instead of their heads.”

  He just smiled. Hilda just blathered on, never realizing how some of the things she said came off.

  “If not the Arab lands, then where is this Ah-mare-eek-ah?”

  He hesitated, then leaned his head back so he could look at her. Pretty Boy had stopped playing, anyhow. “Do you want the truth?”

  “Of course.”

  “I live a thousand years into the future now.”

  She made a snorting sound of disgust, obviously thinking that he teased again.

  “I time-traveled.”

  She snorted again.

  “Cross my heart and hope to die.” He made the sign of the cross on his chest. “A dozen years ago, my family and I traveled into the future a thousand years. And now I have come back.”

  She shoved herself out of his arms. “You must consider me half-brained if you think I would believe such folly.”

  Torolf caught himself grinning as she stomped away. And that was really surprising to him, because he had thought he would be miserable if he came back to this primitive time.

  I like Hilda. I really like her, he realized. Then almost immediately thought, Uh-oh!

  How to Seduce a Man, Part I . . .

  Despite the late and unusual events of the night before, Hilda and her women were up before dawn starting their daily chores. The days were short this time of year in the Norselands, and they had to take advantage of the lessening daylight hours.

  The debris left from the sheep work had to be cleaned up, and the groomed sheep driven up into the hills. Goats and chickens were fed, and the goats were milked. The cook was making porridge and the day’s manchet bread; everyone would break fast after the initial chores were done. Elise went into the weaving shed and set her helpers to carding wool, spinning and weaving cloth. A half-dozen women were hauling deadfall limbs down from the mountain; a vast amount had to be cut into firewood for the hearths before the winter snows came. The sisters, Dissa and Dotta, were drying fish that had been caught two days before and strips of venison. Astrid was bringing in the last of the honey and the combs to be used later not just for a sweetening but also for mead and candles. Dagne and her helpers picked root vegetables . . . onions, carrots, and turnips.

  The men were up already, too. They were in the storeroom where Sigrun was attempting to find braies and tunics and belts that would fit them, along with ankle boots. Some of the women here were as tall of stature and big-footed as men.

  Hilda was hoping that the men would begin training them this afternoon, but she did not want to ask Torolf about it again, lest he bring up the bedding. Holy Thor! Why had she agreed to such a deal? Because I had to, if we are ever to be able to defend ourselves once Steinolf comes.

  But first the women had requested that a Thing be held. Hilda had no doubt what the subject of discussion would be: the men. That’s all the women had been chattering about all morning. She had no idea if any of them had actually mated with them yet, and she was not about to ask. She especially did not want to know if any had been with Torolf.

  After everyone was seated in a circle, they dispensed with the reading of the laws by the law speaker, since they’d held a Thing such a short time ago.

  “Who wants to speak first?”

  Grima, the healer, stood. “There are nigh on sixty of us and only five of them. How are we going to divide them fairly?” One of Steinolf’s men had knocked out her front teeth two years past when she’d failed to cure one of his warriors of the devil’s disease of the manparts.

  Hilda put her face in her hands. Blessed Frigg! They think they can divide men up, as if they were apples.

  “We could take turns. Five at a time. If the men are still here after twelve days, and pray to the gods that they will be, then we can start the rotation over again. By the time they depart The Sanctuary, hopefully some of us will be increasing.” This was the ever-logical Gunnvor speaking.

  Five men swiving twelve women each? It sounds ridiculous, and yet I have known men who would do it in a trice.

  “Where will the mating take place? Some men do it out in the open, like pigs rutting, but I for one want privacy.” Hilda was shocked to hear Inge make this observation.

  The others voiced their agreement.

  “We could set aside places,” fifteen-year-old Tofa suggested. “Like a corner of the weaving shed. A section of the storeroom. The goat byre. The guardhouse. That extra large sleeping closet. The scullery, if it is late at night.”

  Hilda’s eyes widened with surprise. Where had those ideas come from in such a young girl?

  “Yea, and we could put soft wool blankets and candles in those places,” Elise suggested.

  Son of a troll! How obvious can they be?

  Hilda held up her arms for silence. “Slow down, ladies. You are making many assumptions here. For example, are there any of you who are not interested in coupling or breeding?”

  A dozen women raised their hands, including herself and Britta.

  “That is all well and good, but just because you all want to mate, that does not mean the men do. Men are a lustsome lot, to be sure. But dost not think the men should do the choosing?”

  Some women were disgruntled, mainly those who were not very comely, but in the end, they all agreed that it was only fair that the men make the choice.

  “But we can help them make that choice.” It was Rakel speaking now. Rakel carried a mix of Viking and Saxon blood. Rumors said she had been a woman of easy virtue at one time, mayhap even concubine of a nobleman.

  “How?” a number of women asked, believing that Rakel must know some secrets in the bedsport.

  “Seduction,” Rakel said bluntly.

  The unskilled women looked at each other with dismay.

  “I never knew how to flirt,” Britta said, “and do not wish to learn now.” In Hilda’s opinion, Britta did not need to learn. The pretty man followed her around like a newborn pup. But then, Britta was among those who had decided not to have children.

  “I have been too long away from society to remember how to flirt,” Inge remarked. “Exactly how does one seduce a man?”

  “There are ways,” Rakel said with confidence.

  Oh, my gods and goddesses!

>   “There are ways to dress that would entice a man.” Rakel ripped her gown at the neck, parting the material so the tops of her generous breasts were exposed.

  The women listened to her intently, no doubt planning to alter their apparel once they left the Thing.

  Hilda looked down at her almost flat chest and grimaced. She would never be able to entice a man.

  “And you should walk a certain way to entice a man.” Rakel demonstrated by arching her shoulders back and swishing her hips from side to side as she strutted across the clearing.

  Hilda put a hand to her mouth to stifle a giggle. The men would think all her women had gone barmy if they walked thus.

  “Bend over in front of them betimes. Some men like a shapely arse.” Rakel bent over at the waist and aimed her backside at the group.

  Never, ever would Hilda do that. Not purposely.

  “Bat your eyelashes, like this. And give them sultry glances with your lids half-shuttered.”

  How absurd! Half of them are looking cross-eyed.

  “Most of all, there is the art of good bedsport. How many of you have tried tongue kissing?”

  Chapter 6

  Where was Juan Valdez when you needed him? . . .

  “Can y’all believe it? There isn’t a drop of coffee in this whole damn place,” Cage griped early that morning. “Honest to God, a Cajun cannot live without his chicory fix.”

  Little do you know, my friend. There is a whole lot more missing than meets the eye.

  “My back is killing me. Men were not designed to sleep on hard wood benches.” It was Pretty Boy complaining now.

  “Did any of you notice that there isn’t one single book here, not even a Bible?” That was JAM, of course.

  Stop complaining. You have that miniature Bible that you always carry in your back pocket.

  “And the head is outside. Shiiit! I do not like freezing my ass when I take a whizz. But you know, something isn’t quite right here.” Geek was studying the interior of the great hall where they were sitting like it was a specimen under glass.

  Wait till he goes into computer shock. I can’t imagine our resident genius laptop-deprived.