by Sandra Hill
“Yes, he is,” Linda insisted, holding even tighter onto the man’s thigh. “He called today and said he is coming pretty soon, and then he came, and . . .” Linda began to sob.
Red flags unfurled in Miranda’s brain. “Linda, honey, did you pick up the telephone today? You know that we have a rule about answering the land phone when it rings. That’s why we have a cell phone.”
Linda stopped crying and said, “Oops!” But then she raised her little chin. “But it was Daddy! It was!”
“It’s okay, sweetie,” Miranda soothed Linda. She would have a talk with her and all the other children later about the dangers they faced, being careful not to paint Roger as too much of a villain. He was still their father, after all.
Still, the fact that Roger had discovered her new, private number was chilling. He might have pretended that he was calling to talk to one of his kids, but he was making a point loud and clear. To Miranda. He was out there and coming.
So, it is starting already, Miranda thought as a shiver of dread swept over her. She raised her eyes and noticed the big man staring at her with questions in his startling blue eyes. He knew, or at least sensed, that there was some danger. Then, with a strangeness that was remarkable in this day of strangeness, he nodded to himself and said, “Ahhh, that is why I have been sent here. Some danger is threatening you, is it not?”
She nodded, hesitantly.
“You need not fear, m’lady. I am here to protect you.”
Six
Take this job and love it! . . .
Mordr stood in the backyard on a patch where there was still dry grass, not mud and muck. With a hand on one hip and hose in the other, he was watering down the mudlings, the whole time lecturing them sternly. In the old days, he would have just tossed the errant youthlings in the fjord until they learned their lessons or were clean, or both. Today, this misguided society would deem that child abuse.
At first, the boys had protested and tried to run from him, but once he’d convinced them that he meant business by picking them up by the scruffs of their filthy necks, they stood still and let him hose off the layers of mud that had already started to cake in the hot sun. Even the dog sat at attention, tongue lolling, while Mordr sprayed his fur.
“What are your names?” Mordr growled out. I am going to have a thing or ten to say to Mike next time I see him. Putting me, who has avoided children for centuries, in the midst of not one or two but five of the little ones . . . it is barbaric, that is what it is.
Mordr could swear he heard a voice in his head say, Get over yourself!
“My name is Ben,” said Blue Shirt. “I’m eight, and I’m the oldest boy.”
“Sam,” said Red Shirt. He was identical in appearance to Ben except for a small mole beside his left eye, Mordr made note for future reference. “And don’t pay any attention to Ben. He’s only five minutes older than me.” He elbowed his brother, and his brother elbowed him back.
Mordr narrowed his eyes at the two of them, hosed both their fool heads, and told them, “Behave yourselves lest you raise my ire. I have not been around children for a good while and I am not in the mood for misbehavior.” The two boys, water streaming down their faces from their plastered hair, went back to standing erect, elbows to themselves, for the moment.
Last came the little one . . . the one who resembled his beloved Jomar. Except for the freckles. Jomar hadn’t had freckles, as far as Mordr could recall, although Mordr had rarely been home in the summertime. Too busy a-Viking. So, the sun spots might have popped out then and faded by winter. Even so, the little boyling was very like Jomar in age and height, except for the blond hair. Jomar’s had been black. . . . Oh, please God, let there not be dimples when he smiles so innocently at me.
The little boy hitched up his wet shorts, which hung precariously on his tiny hips, and smiled up at him. Yes, to Mordr’s dismay, there were dimples, but only on one side. One saving grace, at least. “I’m Larry. But you can call me Lar.” He sounded out the nickname to sound like lair, as in bear’s lair.
The dog barked then, and Larry patted its wet fur, which smelled rank. “This is Ruff,” Larry said.
Mordr arched a brow. “Rough? Because he is rough with you children?” Mordr had witnessed on more than one occasion the bodily damage a vicious dog could do, especially to small persons.
They all laughed.
Mordr frowned, seeing no humor in his question.
“Not that kind of rough,” Ben explained. “More like ruff, ruff!”
Ruff flashed Mordr a doggie grin and barked, “Ruff, ruff!”
The boys chimed in and they produced a chorus of “ruffs.”
They are too frivolous, by half. I will go mad if I have to stay here for long.
He turned off the hose and told the children, “We are going to clean up this yard. Sam, roll up the hose. And do not turn the water on again, if you value your life. Larry, pick up all the shoes and socks lying about and put them on a pile by the door. Ben, come with me to see what damage was done by that grill.” He paused, then gave each of them a dark look, “If one of you dares step in that mud again, you will find yourselves hanging from a tree, bare naked, with red bottoms.”
Jaws dropped on three little faces at that picture.
“We don’t have a big enough tree,” Sam pointed out.
“That is irrelevant,” Mordr said.
“Red bottoms? You mean, like Rudolph the Reindeer has a red nose, we’ll have red asses,” Ben had the nerve to say. It was clear to Mordr that this boy was the hersir of this small hird. A ringleader. What he did or said, the others followed. Much like my Kata.
Mordr sighed. No, he could not think of that now. No, no, no!
“Swear jar, swear jar,” his laughing brothers hooted at Ben.
He picked Ben up by the waist and tossed him over his shoulder, swatting him once on his rump. Over his other shoulder, he ordered the others, “Get to work. Now!”
Ben’s slim body, which weighed no more than a small sack of meal, was quivering. With fright, or laughter, Mordr wasn’t sure. Putting him on his feet near the grill, Mordr hunched down so that they were eye to eye.
The boy wasn’t afraid of him, not one bit, which was rather alarming to Mordr. First of all, a Viking man did not want to lose his ability to frighten his enemies. Not that these little ones were his enemies, but they were combatants whom he had to conquer, in one sense. Secondly, a good soldier, and a good child, must have fear of some things, lest they mistakenly fall into danger. Fear was a man’s friend, truly.
“Listen and listen good, bratling. If you ever defy me again, you will get more than a soft pat against your buttocks. I do have a sword, and I know how to use it.”
Well, that was not a nice thing to say to a child.
Ben nodded his head, no longer grinning.
I guess “not so nice” is needed in some cases.
“Now, tell me, what the he— what in heaven’s name were you going to do with the grill?” Mordr asked, straightening to stare at the open grill, burnt matches, and charred newspaper.
“We . . . I . . . wanted to surprise Aunt Miranda by cooking dinner. I watched her barbecue hamburgers lots of time. But I couldn’t get the grill to start.”
It was a gas grill, which should have started with a mere click of a button. Mordr leaned down and examined the propane tank underneath. “Did it occur to your dimwitted brain that it might be out of gas?”
Apparently it hadn’t because Ben’s face reddened and he said, “Oh. So I guess it wouldn’t have started even if I poured gasoline on it? A little bit of gasoline,” he quickly added on seeing Mordr’s horrified expression.
“Do you realize the damage you could have caused? Not just to yourself and the other children, but to the house itself. The siding could have caught afire like tinder, and a mere hose might not have been able to put it out.”
“I’m sorry! I only wanted to do somethin’ good for Aunt Mir. She works real hard for us, and she’
s not even our mother.” Ben’s eyes filled with tears.
That was all Mordr needed. Making a child cry. Quickly he patted the boy’s shoulder and said, “We learn from our mistakes. Do not ever do that again.”
“I won’t,” Ben said, swiping at the snot dripping from his nose with a forearm. “Do you really have a sword?”
“Yes, child, I do.”
“Will you teach me how to sword fight?”
A sudden image came to Mordr of the wooden sword he had brought home for Jomar, a gift he never got to see. But this boy wouldn’t know that. “I will make you a wooden sword to practice swordplay, not sword fighting, if you behave yourself.”
“Yay!” Ben said and turned to no doubt lord it over his brothers that he’d gotten something that they hadn’t.
“I will do the same for your brothers, if they agree to the same terms.”
Ben’s shoulders deflated for a moment, but he quickly got over his disappointment and gave his consent, “Okay.” In the way of children everywhere, his brain skittered to another subject. “I wish my hair was long so I could have braids like yours on each side of my face.”
“War braids.”
“Huh?”
“They are called war braids.”
“Cool!”
“One more thing. Can you tell me why your mother—I mean, your aunt—looked so fearful when Linda mentioned a phone call from your father?”
Ben’s face reddened, again, not with embarrassment as it turned out, but anger. “Because my dad’s an asshole.”
Mordr just caught himself from saying, “Swear jar.”
“That is not a nice thing to say about one’s sire . . . father.”
“My father isn’t a nice man. He beat my mom, before she died. A lot. And he locked me and Sam and Larry and Linda in the closet one time when we tried to help, and then he forgot to let us out, and it got dark, and we were . . . afra— mad. He even beat Maggie’s back with a belt when Mom wasn’t home.”
Owl Girl was beaten with a belt?
A rage rose in Mordr and he could practically feel the steam coming out of his ears, but he caught himself just in time before going berserk. When he was calm again, he remarked, “But your father is in prison, is he not? That is what your sister told me.”
Ben nodded. “Yeah, but he’s gettin’ out soon. That’s why I need to learn how to use a sword. Or a gun.”
Oh, hell in a basket! I hope there are no guns about. Forget about the danger of a barbecue fire, this child is going to shoot his eyes out, or someone else’s.
At Mordr’s order, Ben went over to sit with his brothers. They looked like little angels . . . sodden, dirty angels with cowlicks and freckles and enough energy to launch a longship. Just to punctuate that thought, one of them let out a loud fart.
Mordr was shaking his head at the daunting task of trying to turn those mischievous boys into well-behaved young men. It would be like trying to harness a whale and riding the seas on its back.
He was putting the cover over the barbecue grill when Miranda came out. She had changed to black denim braies . . . tight black denim braies with a sleeveless red shirt. Her wild red hair was piled atop her head with a claw-like thing. She was barefooted, and he noticed that her toenails had been painted a pale peach color, like little shells.
The woman was not young—at least in her thirties, probably older than his thirty-one human years. She was slim, and he preferred a little meat on the bones of his women . . . well, back when he had women. She had small breasts while big ones were more desirable, in his opinion, leastways ones that filled a man’s hand. And of course there was that red hair. Still, once again, Mordr felt a punch to the stomach, and lower, just gazing at her. What did it mean? Well, he knew what it meant, but why now? Why her?
She took one look at the boys sitting elbow to elbow, behaving, and demanded of him, “What did you do to them?”
“Disciplined them. As should you, if you were not gallivanting off to casinos.” Gallivanting was a perfect word he’d picked up from some old lady in Louisiana when visiting Ivak last year. Tante Lulu was her name.
“Discipline?” She bristled. “Did he lay a hand on any of you?” she asked the boys.
Mordr saw Ben consider telling her about the slap to his buttocks, but reconsidered. The three boys said, “No.”
“He’s jus’ gonna hang us from a tree,” Larry offered.
“Whaaat?” She turned to Mordr.
“It was a jest.” He favored Larry with a dirty look, and the boy just grinned at him.
By the runes! I am losing my fearsome demeanor.
“He is going to give us each a sword, though,” Ben chirped in, “if we behave.”
She gave Mordr a look that would have intimidated a lesser man, but not him. He just flashed the same look back at her. “You will not give these boys weapons of any kind,” she said evenly. “Not a sword, not a gun, not a knife, not brass knuckles, not anything that could kill or maim. Do you hear me?”
“They heard you in California.”
The boys were protesting loudly. “Please, Aunt Mir. Please, please, please.”
“We’re gonna be real good. I’ll even change my underwear every day.”
“I’ll do my homework, even when I don’t wanna.”
“He’s a Viking. He kin show us how to use a sword without cuttin’ off a finger or nothin’.”
“Absolutely not!” she said vehemently.
“Don’t you think you are overreacting?” Mordr asked. “Even little ones need to learn how to protect themselves.”
His mention of protection seemed to give her pause. But then she reaffirmed her opposition, “Not with a deadly weapon.”
“Son of a Saxon bitch!” he exclaimed. “Since when is a wooden short sword a deadly weapon?”
“Wooden?”
“Did I not mention that they would be wood?”
“Uh, no! I think I would remember that. But I don’t care if they’re made of bubble gum. No swords, big boy.”
Big boy? Does she mean me? “Sarcasm is not an admirable quality in a woman,” he pointed out.
She breathed deeply, in and out, as if he were trying her patience.
Which caused her small breasts to press against the tightness of her shirt. He noticed that the nipples were prominent under the stretchy material, which compensated for her flat chest, he supposed, though it would take a lot to compensate for that red hair. He would wager his best sword that she was red down below, too.
A shot of lust hit him again, like a sharpshooter’s bullet to his groin. Erotic tingles radiated out from his ballocks to all his extremities.
This had to stop. He shook his head like yon wet, shaggy dog to clear his brain and other body parts.
While his mind had been wandering to places it hadn’t been in centuries, she had been reprimanding the boys, ending with “I want you boys to go in the house and take a shower,” then quickly added, “one at a time. Then, you will go to your bedrooms and do your homework. After dinner, we will decide what to do about your behavior today.”
Once the children were gone, Miranda turned on him. “Darla and I have some questions for you.” Hands on hips, she tapped a foot impatiently, just as Owl Girl—Maggie—had done earlier.
“Darla of the broken window and long-handled brush weapon?”
“Darla of the pistol that she is even now filling with bullets, one of which has your name on it, if we find out you’re a crony of Roger’s. I made her stay inside to wait for us because the mood she’s in, she might just shoot off those fool braids of yours.”
“I thought you liked my braids.”
“Don’t try to distract me.”
“Who is Roger?”
She darted a quick glance at him to see if he was being honest. “The children’s father.”
“I thought he was in prison.”
“You know an awful lot about us. How did you know Roger was in prison?”
“Child chatter.�
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“Did they also mention that he is out or about to be released?”
“Yes. Do you know when?”
“No, I’m not sure.”
Another woman, Darla, he presumed from the pistol dangling from one hand, stuck her head out the kitchen door and yelled, “Either you come in here, or I’m coming out there.”
He agreed and followed Miranda into the house, not because he was afraid of the short woman with a ferocious frown, waving a gun, but because it was past time he found out exactly why Mike had sent him here. He observed, with typical male irrelevance, that Darla was shorter, plumper, bigger-breasted, rounder-rumped, with black, not red hair. For his sins, Mordr did not feel one tiny bit of lust.
Suddenly, he noticed a most pleasing fragrance wafting back at him from Miranda. Faintly floral. Familiar. Ah, he recalled now the scent of the flowers Alex had shown him in her garden last summer. As if he cared a whit about flowers! Lilies, they were called. It must be her perfume, he decided.
As they walked through the kitchen, he saw Maggie washing dishes in the sink. She pushed her glasses up her little nose when she saw him. He winked at her, a sign of assurance. Why he did that, he had no idea. She just blinked in acknowledgment, then smiled. And it was a wondrous smile that transformed her plain face.
The little one, Linda, was wiping the now clear table with a wet sponge. She gave him a toothless smile. All he could do in return was nod his head, his heart was racing so fast.
As a result of his distraction, he almost ran into Miranda’s back as she slowed and entered the door of a room off the corridor. Not the formal parlor he’d seen on first entering the house, nor the dining room, which had been converted to a family room with low sofas and a flat-screen TV. He knew all about flat-screen TVs. They had what Vikar called “the biggest, badass, flat-screen TV in the universe” back at the castle in Pennsylvania. This one of course measured about a tenth that one’s size. No, this was a home office, complete with desk, floor-to-ceiling shelves lined with books, a Persian rug, and two armed chairs.
Miranda sat behind the desk, while he and Darla sat in the opposing chairs in front of the desk. He stretched out his long legs and crossed them at the ankles.
