He waved a hand back and forth in front of his face.
“No more. I must needs leave afore you force me to kill your guardsman.”
“What is it you want from me, Sidroc?” she asked tiredly.
“My father will pay one day for his perfidy, but you ... It is not what I want, but what you will do. I lost six sennights of my life because of you, six extremely important sennights, and so much more. I intend to make you my bed thrall afore either you or I leave Byzantium. Six sennights. Forty-two nights you will pleasure me in the bed furs.”
“Rape?”
“Nay. As I recall, your passions rode high when I touched you afore. They will again. Your embers will burn, believe you me.”
He was deluded if he thought she would willingly accept him under that kind of threat. Even so, she asked, “In what halfwitted circumstances do you imagine that I would agree to be your anything?”
“Everybody has a weakness. I will discover yours, and then you will yield.”
Drifa thought immediately of Runa and shivered.
“See, already I can see guilt on your devious face. What is it you hide, princess?”
“Not a thing,” she lied, knowing she must change the subject, and quickly. “Assuming you could succeed, and I am unwilling to concede that you could, what if you breed a child on me?”
“I would take it from you. Like that.” He snapped his fingers for emphasis.
Her blood turned to ice, but she could not let him see the effect his words had on her. Think of something else, Drifa. Change the subject. “You know, I have a gripe, too. Rafn told me what you said about me. ‘Bugger the bitch.’ ”
“Appropriate, don’t you think?”
“Nay, I do not. I could just as easily say ‘Bugger the bastard.’ ”
“Go right ahead. Mayhap we can accommodate each other.”
“You are such a vulgar man.”
“A little bit of vulgarity adds spice to the sex act.”
“I can’t do this. I won’t do this.”
“You have no choice; princess or not, I will have you, and I will have you good and well, and often.”
May the gods spare me from the arrogance of a Viking man! Not that it was ever going to happen, still she had to ask, “That will satisfy you?”
At first, he stared at her with contempt, but then he grinned down at her with blatant wickedness.
“I certainly hope so.”
The more he learned, the more he fumed...
Sidroc was on a military exercise field within the Imperial Palace grounds the next morning when he was approached by one of the four hersirs who had accompanied Princess Drifa.
He recognized Wulfgar now, having met him one time briefly in Jorvik while Eric Bloodaxe had still been king of Northumbria. Wulfgar was a Saxon thane, heir to some vast estate in Wessex if he ever reconciled his differences with his estranged father, Ealdorman Gilford of Cotley. He knew this from Thork’s uncle who was Lord Erik of Ravenshire, a half-Saxon, half-Viking nobleman who secretly supported Wulf’s efforts against King Edgar.
“Guntersson,” Wulfgar said in greeting, standing at the side of the arena where Sidroc had been in vigorous swordplay practice with Finn.
Swiping a forearm across his sweaty brow, Sidroc returned the greeting with “Cotley,” and could see that Wulfgar was surprised at his knowing his full name.
“Call me Wulf,” the man said, bristling. Obviously he preferred not to be known by his family name.
He could understand that. “Call me Sidroc.”