voice, male and young, like the first, but more nasal. “We have you. Surrender.”
“Never.”
A silence. And then the unpleasant sound of a fist hitting flesh. A grunt. Scuffling.
“Hold her, Trigg…”
“Loki mock her, she’s slippery as an angry otter…”
The blows and grunts continued. Brit didn’t like to shoot with gloves on, but there was no time to remove them. She drew her SIG, levered back the safety. Carefully, gun at the ready, she crept forward toward the sound. At the next curve in the path, she came upon them. Two boys—renegades, no doubt.
And one young woman, dressed much like them, in rawhide leather, high lace-up moccasin-like boots on her feet. The woman struggled against the grip of the larger boy as the other tore at her clothes.
Rape in progress? Apparently.
Her pulse pounding in her throat, Brit acted. What else was there to do? She stepped out into the open, gun straight out, aiming steady with both hands. “Stop. Now.”
The boys froze and turned. “Balls of Balder, who are you?” demanded the one with the nasal voice.
Brit gestured, a twitch of the gun barrel. “Hands up. Now.”
The boys, looking sullen and snarly, did as instructed.
“On the ground,” Brit said. “Facedown.” The boys dropped to a sprawl. “Spread your arms wider. And your legs.” They complied.
The woman, whose blond hair had come loose from a thick braid, and half-covered her face, spared not more than a glance at Brit. She seemed totally unmoved by what had almost happened to her. “I’ll bind them.”
Brit didn’t argue. “Great idea.”
The woman, who was about Brit’s size, was already striding to a leather pack that waited on the ground a few feet away. She dropped to her haunches and took out several lengths of leather twine. Brit held her gun on the pair as the woman swiftly and expertly tied their hands and ankles.
When she finished, she stood tall and spat on the ground between the two would-be rapists. “There. That’ll hold ’em.” She raked her wild hair off her face and looked directly at Brit for the first time.
Brit gasped. “My God.”
The woman had an ugly cut on her full lower lip, a deep scratch on her cheek and an angry bruise rising at her jawline. But it wasn’t her injuries that had Brit staring, open mouthed. It was the woman herself.
Injuries aside, she was the image of Brit’s mother. She was Ingrid Freyasdahl Thorson, just as she looked in the old pictures in the family albums at home. Brit’s mother. Twenty-plus years ago.
How could that be?
“Princess Brit?” The woman smiled. It was Brit’s mother smiling, Brit’s mother in her midtwenties, with a cut lip and a naughty gleam in her sea-blue eyes. “Don’t answer,” she said. “There’s no need. I know you by the look of you. And isn’t this a story to be told around the tent fire on a cold winter’s night? The gods must be pleased with us. They have sent you out to meet us.”
Us?
Right then, from directly behind Brit, another woman said, “Drop your weapon, Your Highness. Or I’ll be forced to send my arrow flying straight to your heart.”
Chapter Six
One hand in the air, Brit knelt and carefully set the SIG on the ground. Still grinning, the woman who looked like her mother darted forward and snatched it up.
She pointed it at Brit. “Got her, Grid.”
The other woman—Grid?—came around in front of her, an arrow in her bow, but pointed at the ground. She was much older than the first woman, with graying brown hair, broad shoulders and thick legs. “By the wolves of Odin, Rinda,” she said. “I dare not leave you on your own for the span of a minute.”
Rinda shrugged. “No real harm done. And look who has come to my aid.”
“Of that,” said Grid, “I cannot complain.”
Brit cleared her throat. “Look. I’m on your side. There’s no need for you to take my—”
“Silence,” barked Grid.
“But I only—”
Three words. That was as far as she got. By then Grid had drawn her free hand across her barrel chest. Smack. The back of Grid’s hand caught Brit hard on her right cheek. Brit went spinning. She landed on her face in the dirt.
“Get up,” growled Grid. “And don’t speak again unless you are first spoken to.”
The whole right side of Brit’s face felt numb. Lovely. Brit brought her hands up to push herself to her knees. Her right hand brushed against a few hard little balls—M&Ms, fallen from her pocket as she dropped. She managed to drag them along with the back of her glove and to grab them in her fist before she scrambled upright. Neither of the women seemed to notice. Good. She really needed them. Nothing like a peanut M&M when a girl was under stress….
Eric checked his traps in the woods east of the village, finding one angry white fox. He released it, chiding himself for a too-soft heart.
Then, hoping the rage of his reluctant bride would have cooled somewhat by then, he returned to his aunt’s longhouse. The women were there, clustered near the fire, busy with their sewing, the children playing quietly around them. There was one woman missing.
The most important one.
The others looked up from their stitching and saw him. A small silence followed, one brimming with expectation.
Asta broke the silence. “Why, where’s Brit?”
“Bwit,” said little Mist, who was sitting on the floor near Eric’s sleeping bench. “Gone, gone, gone.”
Eric frowned. “She was here when I left.”
The women shared quick glances. Sif said, “And we assumed she was with you.”
He looked at the pegs by the door. Her big blue jacket wasn’t there. Her boots should have been waiting on the floor beneath the missing jacket. They weren’t there, either.
The women were shaking their heads.
Mist had gotten to her plump little feet beside his sleeping bench. She reached for something among the furs and then held up a silver chain. His marriage medallion turned at the end of it. “Ohh, pwetty, pwetty.”
Eric approached the child and knelt before her. “Mist. That is mine.”
Mist frowned, but then, with a long sigh, she offered the chain. “Ewic take.”
He plucked the dangling medallion from the air, winking at the winsome child as he rose. He slipped the chain
