Page 14 of My Fair Viking

Tyra looked so doleful he almost felt sorry for her.

Almost. Humor outweighed pity, however. "Let me guess. You are the eldest."

She nodded.

"Why not just get married?" he asked when he was able to bank his mirth.

"Look at me," she said, sweeping a hand from her blond head to her big-booted toes.

I'm looking. I'm looking. I'm looking way too much. "What is your point?"

"My point is that I do not have the usual feminine attributes that attract a man."

I beg to differ, my lady. "If you say so."

"Besides, by the time I had seen ten winters, my father realized that his seed was only going to bear girl-fruit. He decided that if he wanted his kingdom to pass to his blood kin, it would have to be me. So he trained me to be a soldier… a good soldier. That's why it's urgent that you heal my father. If he should die, I must continue to lead his men."

"I'm confused. If your father dies, you will lead his men. So, if you want your father to live, it must be so you will be able to find a willing husband."

She glared at him. "Nay, you dunderhead. Do you deliberately misunderstand? I do not want a husband, but I do want my sisters to be able to wed. And I want my father well again. Then he can take back his chieftain duties. Then I can announce the severing of our kinship… a divorce, if you will. If I am no longer his daughter, there is no need for me to take on a loathsome oppressor… in other words, a husband… for my sisters' sake."

"If this severing is such an easy task, why have you not done so before?"

She blushed. " 'Tis a recent idea of mine."

"This is the most far-fetched bit of feminine ill-logic I have ever heard," he said. "What in the name of God would you do if this… this… divorce took place?"

" Tis simple. I will join the Varangian Guard."

"In Byzantium?" His jaw hung open for a moment before he noticed and clicked his teeth in place. "I have never seen or heard of a female in that prestigious group of Viking warriors."

"I have already spoken with the emperor's captain. He thinks a female addition to the Guard would not only be permissible, but highly desirable." She raised her chin another notch, daring him to disagree.

All he could say was, "Oh, my God!" Adam started to laugh then. And laugh. And laugh.

When he told the story to Rashid that evening, he was still laughing.

Rashid, of course, homed in on the most irrelevant part of the story. "Four sisters! Five in all! Dost think that is a Norse version of a harem? Allah be thanked, that it might be so!"

"Five sisters do not count as a harem. Definitely not! And do not dare bring up the subject!" He couldn't stop laughing, though.

However, his assistant saw things in a different light. "If her father dies, mayhap her tribe, including the sisters-harem, will look for you to be the warrior princess's husband."

Adam stopped laughing.

Chapter Three

"I will never become a fierce Viking warrior," Alrek complained dolefully. Tears pooled in his green eyes which he quickly wiped away on the sleeve of his tunic.

Adam was still tied to the mast pole, but he'd sunk down to the deck. The boy, whose hair was bleached almost white by the sun, had plopped down beside Adam and was now munching on a piece of gammelost wrapped within a slice of manchet bread. Every time he took a bite, he pinched his nose to avoid smelling what he was eating.

"Why do you eat the overripe cheese if it tastes so bad?" Adam had asked him more than once.

Alrek had replied, " 'Cause I need to eat so I kin grow big and strong."

Both sets of legs were extended outward. Alrek's were half as long as Adam's… and so skinny, it was pitiful. Even more pitiful were the bleeding blisters that marred the palms of his hands—testament to his dogged determination to become a sailor and a fighting man.

Alrek had a habit of hanging around Adam when he wasn't busy elsewhere. He liked to spout off endlessly about all his failings. In truth, he liked to spout off on any subject. It didn't matter if Adam contributed to the conversation at all; Alrek just wanted someone on whom he could unload his problems.