Page 107 of The Viking’s Captive

That is just wonderful! A soft soldier! A voluptuous Varangian! A weak woman!It appeared she would have to work more on her masculinization. More groin scratching, and swaggering, and spitting. She already knew how to curse like a sailor.

“As to your question,” she said, changing the subject, “nay, I have no second thoughts. This is the right thing for me.”

“Me, too,” Egil remarked, coming up on her other side.

“Do not even think of touching my arse,” she warned. If Egil put his hand on her buttocks one more time, as seemed to have become a reflex with him, she swore she was going to pull out her dagger and slice him across the knuckles.

He put a palm to his chest, as if wounded by her words. “My lady, your words do me wrong. I am betrothed to be married.”

“Oh, really! That did not stop you from making indecent proposals to me.”

“What indecent proposals?” an interested Gunter wanted to know.

“The same ones you have been making,” she told Gunter.

“Oh,” Gunter said, clearly disappointed that there was not some new form of indecent proposal he had not yet heard of. Men! “But I am not affianced, Tyra. So I am free to provide for your pleasure. Unlike Egil here. By the by, Egil, who are you trying to impress with those tight braies?”

“What has my being affianced to do with having sex with another woman? My Inga does not expect me to remain chaste whilst I go off earning treasure for her bride price. And as to my tight braies, at least I have something substantial to fill them.”

Gunter stiffened and dropped his arm from her shoulder. Next they would be calling for the holmganga, a duel that was fought within a ten-foot square according to strict ritual rules.

“Would the two of you just stop? We are about to dock.” With that in mind, she called out to Ivan, the rudder master, “Pull up to the Gate of Phanar. That is closest to the Palace of Blachernae, where the emperor and empress should be in residence.”

Ivan nodded, and soon they were docked.

“Go to Romanus and send my regards. Request an immediate audience for me,” she ordered Gunter and Egil. “I met him five years past when his father, Constantine, was still alive. He was only seventeen or so at the time, but he should remember me. If not, give him this as a gift.” She handed Gunter a velvet-lined box containing a large piece of rare amber on a heavy gold chain. Although she was not much given to ornamentation, she had been wearing it at the time over her tunic, and he had admired it.

Tyra stepped over the plank then. She had been aboard ship too long now and much preferred to await the emperor’s summons on land. When she stepped ashore, carrying with her the shield that Adam had given her, she sighed deeply.

With those first steps onto a new land, tears welled in her eyes. A new episode of her life was about to begin.

ONE SENNIGHT AFTER DEPARTURE FROM STONEHEIM

Samsonite? Did someone say Samsonite? …

“When I made the decision that I wanted Tyra … that I should go after her … I never realized that she carried so much baggage with her,” Adam grumbled aloud. He was standing at the prow of the ship, which was riding the large waves of a stormy Baltic Sea.

In truth, Adam was growing excessively tired of longships and stomach-churning waves and wet boots and watery horizons. Once he got back to his home in Northumbria, he swore he would not travel again for a good long time, and definitely not over water.

“What baggage would that be?” Tykir asked.

How his uncle had come to be on this journey was another story altogether. But here he was, and Alrek, too. Not to mention Bolthor, who was off somewhere composing an Ode to the Ocean, or Saga of a Shark, or some such thing. You would think that Tykir—a man with a newborn child—would feel the need to stay close to home, but, nay, Tykir had sent Alinor back to Dragonstead under heavy guard. For some reason, he believed that Adam needed him more than his wife and children did. Alinor had agreed to let him go, but adamantly refused to allow their son Thork to accompany his father. Tykir appeared alternately prideful and dismayed by his incorrigible son, who was surely a miniature version of himself as a youthling.

“The baggage I refer to is a troublesome family,” Adam explained. “I did not realize that caring for someone”—he still had trouble saying the love-word—“meant involvement with all these other appendages.”

Tykir laughed. “Appendages, huh? That is a good way of describing family members. But, really, Adam, you should not be surprised. It is the same for everyone. For example, when I fell in love with Alinor, I also had to deal with her barmy twin brothers, Egbert and Hebert. When she fell in love with me, my family became hers, and that included not just Rain and Selik, Eirik and Eadyth, and all their children, but you and Adela, too. Plus our friends Bolthor and Rurik and all the rest.”

Adam winced at the mention of Adela. “But don’t you ever just crave privacy?”

“All the time. Well, not all the time. When things get too loud or bothersome at Dragonstead, I go off on an amber dig to the Samland Peninsula, or to Hedeby for trading. But you know what is really odd? No sooner do I leave the fjord harbor at Dragonstead than I am missing my wife and family … even all the chaos that accompanies them.” Tykir shrugged.

“She will change my life, won’t she?” Adam asked.

Tykir chuckled at his nephew’s woeful tone and informed him with much glee, “Oh, Adam, she already has.”

ABOUT THAT TIME, IN BYZANTIUM

The golden city didn’t shine for her…