With one bothersome thing and another, it took Sidroc more than a month to be ready to leave Miklagard. Most of it due to the boring, dithering, nonsensical requirements of an imperial court and imposing women.
The other two groups arrived safely back in the Golden City soon after Drifa’s departure, and all of them were being housed at Ianthe’s, despite the cramped quarters. It seemed easier to protect everyone in that confined space. He and Finn stayed in their Varangian rooms at the palace, though ever watchful for sabotage.
Then he ended up in Mylonas’s prison after confronting the bastard over his treatment of Drifa. To his immense satisfaction, he’d broken the rat’s nose afore two of his guards dragged him off. He would have been doing the world a favor if he’d managed to kill the miscreant, and he’d later told the emperor just that.
Of course, he would be limping for the next century or so over the thigh wound he suffered, at his own hands, for the love of Frigg! He’d swung his battle-axe high in the air in Mylonas’s office, hoping to lop off his loathsome head, but instead the evil toad ducked, and the sword struck deep into the wood of the eparch’s worktable. When he’d yanked back, the blade flew off the handle and into his leg. Everyone thought he was wounded by Mylonas. He let them think so. Of course, if his axe had cleaved the rat’s head between his beady eyes, Sidroc would probably be decorating a pike somewhere by now, food for the carrions.
The emperor eventually ordered his release from the dank cell, and the royal physician tended his injury, but only after letting him stew for two days. The emperor was furious with both him and Mylonas ... with his eparch for his dastardly deeds and with Sidroc for failing to come to him for aid, right off. The emperor was particularly offended that Sidroc thought he might have been involved in the plot.
Even so, the emperor walked a fine line between appeasing his valued eparch and the safety of the empire on one side, and offending all the Norsemen in his Varangian Guard on the other side. It would be disastrous for the empire if the Norsemen pulled out of his elite forces, and they just might if they felt one of their own had been targeted.
Most surprising of all, it turned out that the new empress was not the quiet mouse they had all thought her to be. She had berated one and all for their treatment of a royal guest, meaning Princess Drifa, not him, and as a result, she was the one who made sure Sidroc’s longship carried all the plants Drifa had requested. And then some!
And that was another thing. Drifa had never even hinted that there would be so much! Saplings, she had said, not full-blown trees, in some cases. And who knew there were so many different, thorny, bloodletting rosebushes in all the world? He scarce had room for supplies in his hold with all her dirty plants.
And who was going to water them and make sure they did not die at sea on the long journey back to the Norselands? Me, no doubt. Everyone else was just laughing too hard.
He arrived at Ianthe’s now for his final farewells to find yet another reason for delay.
“I have decided to go with you,” Ianthe declared.
What? He could see that her entire living quarter had been nigh gutted. Carpets rolled up. Furniture stacked as if for carrying out. Trunks—many trunks—piled high with furnishings, and clothing, and jewelry-making tools and supplies.
He recalled having asked Ianthe—what seemed ages ago, but must have only been a few months—if she would like to leave Miklagard with him, to settle in a new land. But things were different now. Bloody hell, did she think his offer to take her with him as his ongoing mistress still held?
What would Drifa think about that? He, Ianthe, and his daughter? Hah! Drifa would stab him with a kitchen knife in his other leg, or another body part.
“Uh,” he said.
Ianthe gazed at him, waiting for his answer. Then she swatted him on the chest with the palm of her hand. “You idiot! I did not mean that.”
“Oh?” He was developing a talent for one-word lackwit responses.
“I no longer feel safe in this country, despite everything the emperor has promised. For all we know, he could be murdered in his sleep, like some before him.”
“Shhh!” One did not even whisper such thoughts for fear of being overheard.
“Drifa once mentioned to me a lovely section of Jorvik, in Northumbria.”
“I know where Jorvik is,” he grumbled.
“She said craftsmen and traders have their own homes and shops and stalls right in the Coppergate section. Methinks I could be happy there.”
His fuzzy and, yea, relieved brain registered only one fact. “You want to go to the Saxon land. But I am headed for Stoneheim, not Northumbria.”
“Are there not ships there that go to the market towns?”
He nodded hesitantly.
“Besides, Isobel wants to go back to her homeland. We can travel together.”
He groaned. Another passenger. “Ianthe, with all of Drifa’s trees and plants, and her three guardsmen, where would I fit all this?” He waved to the mountain of items piled about the room.
“That is the best part. I have bought another longship for you with the funds I raised selling this building.”
“You. Bought. Me. A. Longship?”
“Yes, isn’t that wonderful?” She beamed at him, as if another longship was the best gift in the world.