The man just smiled and turned to speak to the lady from Crete on his other side. The lady was a distant relative of the emperor.
Later, when she told Ivar about the strange proposal, she thought he would laugh. But instead he ranted and raved. “We should go home immediately. It is as I expected. More and more danger. Everywhere you step there are pitfalls.”
“Ivar! It was a silly marriage proposal from afar. The man did not even ask me himself. And, besides, this is not the first marriage proposal I have ever received.”
“More like fiftieth,” he grumbled.
“What did you say?”
“Nothing,” he grumbled some more. Then, he straightened. “Methinks I should call in some seamen from your longship to help us stand guard over you.”
“What? Nay! That is ridiculous. Four Viking guards is plenty. Any more and I will just be calling attention to myself.”
“As if you do not already!”
“Ivar, I do not like your tone, not by half.”
“I do not mean disrespect, m’lady.”
She bowed her acceptance of his apology and put a hand on his forearm. “We will be careful, my good friend. And if there are any further ‘problems’ we will reassess the situation. I promise you, I will agree to go home if it is deemed a clear danger.”
He nodded, but he was not happy. “The back of my neck is twitching all the time, a sure sign that something bad is coming.”
The next sennight, the bad arrived.
For whom the bell tolls ...
Sidroc and Finn had been at the mountain retreat of General Leo Biris for a sennight when they had to admit that the warlord was no imminent threat to the emperor. And they told him so.
“I ought to lop off both of your fool heads for sneaking into my camp under pretense of joining my guard,” roared the big bear of a man with a mane of thick black hair and full beard.
“Please don’t. You might get blood on my hair, and I just washed it. Rather, one of your pretty maids washed it for me.” Finn finger-combed the long blond locks off his face in a preening fashion.
For a moment, Leo went slack-jawed at Finn’s halfwit humor. Then he slapped him so hard on the back that Finn nigh went flying across the table where they sat following the evening meal.
“Leo, you must understand that Finn is a man like no other. He takes some getting used to.”
“That is for sure. I swear, Finn, if I had not come across you tupping my wife’s weaving maid behind her loom, I would think your bells gonged in a different direction.”
Finn straightened with affront. “My gong goes in only one direction.”
They all laughed.
“Have I mentioned that I have five unmarried daughters?” Leo inquired slyly, not for the first, or twentieth, time. If they were not careful, they would find themselves landlocked and wedlocked on a Byzantine mountain.
Sidroc had kept his braies tightly laced since he left Miklagard. For him, that was a long period of celibacy when there were willing partners aplenty. Finn, on the other hand, had tasted every other comely being with breasts that came within smelling distance.
“I have not touched one of your daughters,” Finn protested.
“I know,” Leo said unhappily.
He and Finn had discussed in private that neither of them should so much as find themselves alone in a chamber with one of Leo’s daughters, aged from fourteen to twenty. Not that they weren’t attractive. They were. But Finn was determined to find the most beautiful woman in the world, one to match his beauty. And, if Sidroc was going to be forced into marriage, he would rather it be with a woman of his choice. For some odd, infuriating reason, Drifa came to mind.
I should not have coerced her into doing the things I did.
She should not have complied.
An innocent maid deserves better than such rough handling.