The Norse King’s Daughter Read Online Free Page B

Father, it is also Jarl Ormsson’s granddaughter.”
    “Uh-oh!” the three men in the room said as one.
    “That Gunter Ormsson is a mean buzzard. Good gods, we will have all the Vikstead warriors attacking us now,” Rafn said.
    “Why would the man attack us when the jarl did not want the baby to live?” Drifa asked.
    Rafn shook his head at her. “Drifa, Drifa, Drifa, you do not understand men.”
    Well, that was obvious.
    “A man may not want something for himself, but he will fight to the death to hold that something if someone else wants it,” Rafn explained.
    “That is pure male drivel.”
    “Plus, pride may be involved, if Gunter thinks his honor is involved,” Adam added.
    “The man has no honor,” she said hotly.
    The three men in the room just shrugged.
    “Well, that settles it then. Return the baby to Vikstead,” her father said on a long sigh, his hopes for the marriage of his last daughter being dashed.
    “I cannot do that. Ormsson plans to kill the baby,” Drifa told him.
    The king put fingertips to his forehead and rubbed. “All this thinking is giving me a head megrim.” He turned to Adam. “Dost think I need another head drilling?”
    “Nay. What I think you need . . . what I think we all need is,” Adam said with an exaggerated pause, “a beer.”
    Soon she stood alone in the solar, wondering how she’d gotten herself into such a mess. This was almost as bad as the time she and her sisters had killed the earl of Havenshire and buried the brute in the bottom of a privy. Except now she was stuck with the evidence of her crime. Living, breathing, squalling evidence.
    Just then, Rafn stuck his head back in the doorway and grinned at her. “Sidroc did have a message of sorts regarding you afore he left.”
    She arched her brows at his mischievous expression.
    “He said, ‘Bugger the bitch!’ ”
    Drifa threw a ball of yarn at his retreating back.
    Oh well. She was sure to find Sidroc soon and he would joyfully take the baby off her hands.
    Oddly, she could swear she heard laughter in her head. Was it the Norns of Fate making mirth at her destiny?
    Mayhap she was the one needing a head drilling.
    On the other hand, mayhap not. One of her body parts might enlarge, or she might grow one she did not want.

Chapter Three
     
    Five years later, on the way to Byzantium
     
    There are passions, and then there are passions . . .
     
    “W ake up, princess. Time to smell the roses. Ha, ha, ha!”
    Princess Drifa turned over on her pallet under the canvas shelter in the center of the longship, and pretended to be napping.
    “I smell flowers . Does anyone else smell flowers ? Ha, ha, ha!”
    Do not react, Drifa. Do not react.
    “Mayhap it is your armpits, Arne. Seems to me I saw grass growing there. Ha, ha, ha!”
    Oh, good gods! You’d think they were youthlings, not grown men.
    “I for one plan to plow a few fields once we land, and I don’t mean grass . Ha, ha, ha!”
    We have been too long asea if that crudity passes for humor.
    “My wife has a garden . Betimes she likes me to till it for her . . . with me hoe . Ha, ha, ha!”
    Yea, way too long.
    “You are so full of shit, but then manure is good for the soil . Ha, ha, ha!”
    Do they think I will be shocked by their coarseness? If they only knew, I have heard far worse. Drifa had been raised in a keep of fighting men, ofttimes two hundred warriors in residence at one time. It was not the first time she had heard that word.
    “When my lily blooms , it wants naught but a wet furrow to rest in. Ha, ha, ha!”
    I have seen your lily, Otto, and it is naught to brag about.
    “Someone best tell the princess to get up off her flower bed and come see what is on the horizon.”
    It did not matter that the seamen made mock of her with their floral jests. Better that than toss her overboard as had been threatened more than once when they’d been hit with one misery after another and the food supply had dwindled down to the hated