“WHOA!” THE man cried, prying his shirt free from Bjorn’s hand. “Let go of me! You’re going to be okay. No need to damage the goods.”
“Britisk?” Bjorn muttered. His brows knitted in pain as he tried to sit up. Having spent several years a-Viking in and around the Isle of Man, Bjorn had had the opportunity to learn the language of Storbritannia. But it had been awhile since he’d last spoken it, and what he remembered seemed only vaguely similar to what rolled off this man’s tongue. It sounded as if he were accusing Bjorn of sacking his possessions. How could Bjorn sack anything when he could barely move? He flopped back onto the sand, exhausted.
“No, my name is Chase. I don’t know anyone named Britisk. Look, I don’t have my cell phone with me, so I’m going to run back to the hotel to call an ambulance, okay?”
Bjorn had no doubt his brain had been muddled by the amount of seawater that had filled his ears. It sounded as if the man had called himself Chase, which was an odd name, even for a Britisk. Although he did say he was going to run somewhere, which was in keeping with his odd moniker. What disturbed Bjorn was that he’d also mentioned a cell. Bjorn couldn’t allow himself to be taken prisoner—he had to find the rest of his men.
“No! I will go nowhere without my men!” Bjorn cried, shaking his head. “I ask you again—my men, where are they? Have you seen them?”
“No, I haven’t seen anybody but you. What happened? Did your boat sink in the storm last night?”
Storm?
“Ja! The storm,” Bjorn said, wearily closing his eyes. Now he remembered what had happened. The sea had taken Dragonslayer, and his men with her. Had he alone survived? Suddenly panicked, his hand slid to his waist. Ah, thank Odin! Skullsplitter was still at his side, tucked securely in its sheath. The waves could have stripped Bjorn as bare as the day he’d been born, but he would not have felt naked as long as his sword was still with him. Some of the tension he’d felt drained away with the familiar weight of his weapon on his hip.
“You really need an ambulance,” Chase said, sitting back on his heels.
Bjorn cracked open his eyes again, although the light from the rising sun burned. “Amble where? Heed me, boy. I am not so weak that I will easily be taken prisoner!”
“Oh, shit…. Did you steal the boat or something? Is that why you’re afraid of being locked up?”
“The Dragonslayer was no spoils of war. She was mine. Or rather, she belonged to my father, the jarl, and was my responsibility, as were the men aboard her.”
“How many men were with you? I’m sorry to tell you this, but I don’t see anyone else. Maybe they were rescued at sea,” Chase said. His eyes looked troubled to Bjorn, as if he didn’t really believe what he’d said.
Sadly, neither did Bjorn.
“Nei. There would be no one to save them.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Why? You did not call up the storm, did you?” Bjorn’s eyes narrowed. Perhaps this Chase was a magician, a sorcerer of Jorund the Shit-Eater.
“Of course not. You don’t need to take an attitude with me. I’m just trying to help.”
He seemed sincere, and Bjorn supposed that had Chase been a magician, he could have already spelled Bjorn into a toad if so inclined. “Am I still on the shores of Norge, or did we sail as far as Sverige?” he asked impatiently. He had no time for this nonsense, not if he was to find his way back to Lagarvík and seek revenge on the man who was truly responsible for his men’s deaths—Jorund the Ball-Licker.
“Huh?”
Surely this man was addled. Bjorn spoke again, slowly, as he would have spoken to Hans the Simple, the man in Lagarvík who had sustained one too many blows to the head in battle. “Where. Am. I?”
“Florida.”
“I am aware that I am on the floor. It is a consequence of lying down.” Bjorn sat up and felt every muscle in his body scream in protest. Was it not enough amusement for the gods to merely drown me? Did they also feel it necessary to beat me black-and-blue with Thor’s hammer while they were at it? “Now, I ask again. Think carefully and tell me where I am.”
“I just did. You’re on the beach just south of Fort Lauderdale.”
“There is no stronghold named Lauderdale in Norge.”
“Where the hell is Norge?”
“Bah, simpleton,” Bjorn muttered beneath his breath. Gathering his feet under him, he tried to stand. His legs felt like the tentacles of the giant jellyfish that washed ashore each summer—boneless and weak. He was surprised when Chase insinuated a shoulder below his arm, helping him stand.
“Can you walk?” Chase asked, looking up at him. Several inches shorter than Bjorn, Chase was nonetheless stronger than he looked. He held his own under Bjorn’s weight remarkably well for one so scrawny.
“Ja,” Bjorn answered. He shook Chase off, his pride not allowing him to accept help, especially that of a stranger, and a dull-witted Britisk at that. Swaying, he managed to keep upright and even took a step before what he saw nearly caused him to collapse again.
Never in all of his travels had Bjorn seen such magnificent buildings as those that lined the outlying edge of the sand for as far as he could see. The rays of the rising sun glinted off them as if they were made of some precious metal, like gold or silver. Enormous, just one alone could easily have housed every man, woman, and child in Lagarvík with plenty of room to spare for all the dogs, cattle, horses, and sheep.
One thing was for certain: Bjorn was not in Norge, nor Sverige, nor any part of Storbritannia he had ever visited. In fact, no people he knew of had ever built such glorious castles. They towered above the shore, their tops nearly reaching the clouds—or so it seemed to Bjorn.
Chase wedging his shoulder under Bjorn’s arm was all that kept him from falling to his knees as a dreadful idea hit him. Perhaps, Bjorn thought, he had not survived after all. Perhaps he was dead and these gleaming castles were the homes of the gods in Asgard. It made sense. Sadly, Bjorn had not died in battle, as was a fitting death for a warrior, so it could not be Valhalla.
“Am I… am I dead?” he finally asked, unable to tear his eyes from the buildings in the distance.
“What? Of course not!” Chase said. “What makes you think that?”
“Is that not Asgard?”
“No, it’s the Marriott.”
“Marry Ot? Who is Ot? I am not wed,” Bjorn said, shaking his head. “You are confusing me.”
“I’m confusing you?” Chase laughed. “I’ve felt a little like Alice down the rabbit hole ever since you woke up. That, my friend, is my hotel. Now, come on. We can call an ambulance from my room. What’s your name, anyway?”
“I have many. Bjorn Eriksson. Bjorn the Traveler. Bjorn the Conqueror. You live there? In such a palace?”
“Okay… Bjorn it is. And yes. For the next week and a half, she’s mine, all mine.”
“Week? How long is that?”
“Please tell me that you’re kidding! You can’t remember how long a week is? It’s seven days.”
“Ah, a sennight. Why did you not say so in the first place? Why do you live here for only a sennight?”
“Um, because I don’t live here. I’m only staying here. I live in New York. I’m renting a room here for two sennights… er, weeks.”
“Did something happen to the old one?”
“The old what?”
“York.”
“Okay… I’m thinking that maybe your boat didn’t sink. Maybe you drank a little too much—make that a lot too much—last night and fell overboard. C’mon. I’ve got coffee in the room. That ought to sober you up,” Chase said. He shook his head and urged Bjorn up over the dunes toward the bright lights of the spectacular longhouse.
JORUND SOUGHT shelter in the shadows of a wooden dock and built a small fire from scraps of driftwood he’d collected along the beach. Shaking with both cold and rage, he huddled near the tiny blaze, trying to warm himself.
The Bear’s Claw had been gaining on Eriksson, slicing through the black waters of the sea, when the storm blew up. Suddenly the Dragonslayer (a pompous, arrogant name for a longboat captained by a whoreson whelp, as far as Jorund was concerned. Midge-slayer would have been more appropriate. Flea-slayer, perhaps) had disappeared into the gloom, hidden by the driving sheets of rain.
Grunting, Jorund admitted Eriksson and his men showed more spirit than he’d given them credit for having. They fought back bravely, refusing to yield even though they were outnumbered and far too weary to have the slightest hope of winning. Indeed, they managed to stay alive long enough to reach their longboat and cast off, although that was partly the fault of Jorund’s men. He’d specifically ordered half his force to hold until Eriksson and his men were engaged before slipping around and cutting off his retreat, but Jorund’s men were too impatient, too worked up by the war cries and the clash of sword against sword, to obey. Unable to contain their berserker nature, they surged into the fray too early, allowing Eriksson a clear path to the beach.
Jorund had followed in The Bear’s Claw, vowing not to rest until Eriksson joined his father in death. Eriksson was the only remaining threat to Jorund’s claim on the Lagarvík throne. As long as Eriksson breathed, there would be those who sought to see him as jarl, and Jorund had no intention of giving up his newly won keep. Lagarvík was a key location—the man who held her would rule the coast of Norge, and by extension, the seas. Jorund was determined to be that man. It was his destiny.
Even when the seas turned violent with a storm such as Jorund had never before seen, he kept his course, hounding the heels of the old Jarl’s whelp. As the winds whipped his ship like a twig on the white waters of the river, he noticed his amulet was glowing with a strange green light. Then he remembered nothing until he awoke on the beach with the crashing of the waves, the thunder of the wind, and the screams of his men still ringing in his ears.
His mind wandered to several nights before. Erik Fairhair was safely in his grave, his head neatly placed next to his body and the pendant he’d once worn gracing Jorund’s neck instead. Carved from a single emerald that might have once been as large as Jorund’s fist, its center held a mysterious verdant light unlike any jewel Jorund had seen before. Talisman of the Lagarvík, it proclaimed its wearer to be jarl. Legends had long been told of the talisman’s power, fables at which Jorund’s priests scoffed. Jorund himself was less apt to discount them. He had been raised on such tales, stories that were as much a part of his heritage as the gods he still secretly worshiped out of the sight and hearing of his priests. Jorund had torn it free from Fairhair’s neck an instant before relieving him of his head and had slipped it over his own.
Jorund, as was traditional and expected by the villagers of the new jarl, had sought out the local soothsayer to have his future scryed, against the strenuous objections of his priests. He’d found the old woman in a hut on the outskirts of the village nearest the forest. One eye rheumy with age and the other milky with blindness, she’d cackled wildly as she slit open the belly of a fish on her tabletop, then sprinkled the entrails with a liberal amount of dried leaves and small bones.
Only a single candle had burned within the hut, casting a weak, flickering yellow glow over the table. Jorund wondered how she could see well enough to foretell anything, considering the witch was blind in one eye to begin with and he, who had perfect vision, could barely see in the gloom.
“Seek not to follow on the wet path, for the waves will swallow you whole,” the witch had said, her gnarled, dirt-encrusted fingers picking at the mess she’d tumbled across the table. “Leave the pup to the mercies of the gods and keep to dry land. Take to the seas and your rule will end as quickly and as violently as it has begun.”
Jorund’s priests, of course, had mocked the old woman’s predictions and warned him of the dangers of trusting superstitious nonsense. Her methods reeked of the old ways, summoning up visions of moonlit dances and bloody sacrifices to gods denounced by those who worshiped the one God. She was a threat to the priests’ power, and Jorund knew they would like to see her and her beliefs dead.
He’d dismissed her prophecy and barely restrained himself from following his priests’ suggestion to relieve her body of her black soul at the same time. Witches, they’d cried, should all be burned. Only fear that the villagers would not accept his rule peaceably kept Jorund from indulging their request. He’d not wanted to expend any more effort or gold in securing Lagarvík. His coffers were already close to empty.
This morn Jorund was of the opinion his priests should likewise be dipped in pitch and set aflame. Had he listened to the old blind bitch instead of his priests, he’d not now be huddled over a pitiable excuse for a fire, shivering in wet clothes, his belly rumbling with hunger. It was they who had convinced Jorund that the Eriksson whelp remained a threat.
One thing was certain. Wherever it was he had washed ashore, it was a land he had never set foot upon. Buildings larger than any he had ever seen lined the shore in both directions far into the distance, sparkling like jewels.
He cast a look first in one direction, then the other. The beach was as yet deserted. No peasants, no warriors—not a sign of anyone, just the raucous calls of the seabirds that swooped over the swells of the ocean.
His empty belly grumbled angrily. He’d been too anxious to worry about food when his lookouts spotted the Dragonslayer in the distance. Jorund was thirsty as well, and thirst, he knew, would kill him long before lack of food.
Dragging himself to his feet, he drew his sword, Scourge, from its sheath. Strapped firmly to his hip, he had never felt more relieved than when he’d realized it remained with him. His sword’s metallic song comforted him, reminding Jorund of the strength of his arm and the keenness of his mind. He was Jorund the Vanquisher. Jorund the Invincible.
Someday soon he would be known as Jorund, King of Norge, King of the Seas.
Someday he would be a god.
Despite his empty belly, Jorund smiled.
As the sun lightened the sky, it also lightened his spirit. After kicking sand over his small fire, he left the shelter under the dock and headed toward the gleaming buildings in the distance.