Page 48 of Viking Unchained

“Okay, so you’re from Norway and . . . ?”

“Eleventh-century Norselands.”

Her jaw dropped. Then she laughed. “When I asked if you were an escaped convict, I should have also asked if you’re an escaped mental patient.”

Nay, that is what they called my uncle Jorund. “I know it sounds demented. I thought so, too, when it first happened. I still do.”

“When what happened?”

“The time travel.”

“Oh, good grief!” She burst out laughing again. “This is a joke, right?”

I wish ’twere so. “You may as well know the entire story so you can laugh some more.” He sat up next to her and wrapped his arms around his raised knees. “I was attacked by six men in Baghdad. I had just lopped off this one villain’s head when . . .”

“Oh, no! You lopped off someone’s head?”

“They were trying to kill me. What did you expect me to do? Ask them to dance?”

“What did you use?”

What do you think? A butter paddle? “A sword, of course. Why do you look so horrified? Did your precious Dave never kill anyone?”

“I’m sure he did, but he never talked about it.”

“I never talk about it, either. It is naught to boast of.”

“Even so, it doesn’t sound so bad if you use a gun. A bullet is, well, cleaner.”

“Are you serious? There is naught clean about death, no matter how it comes about. And guns are no more civilized, either, afore you make that claim. Besides that, in the eleventh century, guns were not available.”

“I don’t know.”

Well, I do. “Dead is dead, dearling. Back to what I was saying about my being attacked in Baghdad. Just when I thought all was lost, my cousin Torolf and his band of barmy SEALs rescued me, put me on a flying bird, and brought me here. Now I must adjust to not only a new country, but a new time.”

Her eyes went wider and wider as he spoke. “What did you do when you were . . . um, back there? To support yourself, I mean.”

He thought about telling her he had been a warrior, but most Vikings were warriors at one time or another. It went without saying. “For the past few years, I have run my estate, Norstead, whilst my brother Steven is at Amberstead. We are from Norsemandy, now known as Normandy, but we went to the Norselands, now known as Norway, to help . . . on a mission, and stayed.” That story of the battle against the evil Steinolf he would save for another day.

“Estates?”

Based on his recent studies, he knew that estates meant something different here. She was probably picturing some grand mansion with picturesque grounds. “It sounds better than it really is,” he said with a laugh. “A wooden castle. A small wooden castle, in the Frankish style. A sizeable hird of soldiers or housecarls. A dozen or more house servants. A weaving house. Smithy. Brew house. Stables. Fields.

Cotters’ huts. That kind of thing.”

“And you managed it all?”

He nodded.

“My goodness! Why would you come here if you had all that?”

“Dost have dust in your ears, m’lady. I told you, I had no choice.”

“The ‘being drawn’ business again?”

At first he did not understand what she meant, but then he did. He had told her about being “being drawn” through time to this country. He nodded again, then added, “I have been engaged in tutoring these past three months so that I can fit in here, assuming that I do not get thrust back to the past. Now, do you understand?”

“Hardly. I can’t believe I’m involved with a thousand-year-old man. Amazing!” She smiled as she said the latter.