Page 86 of Alien Viking's Plunder

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“Ido,” Josie said, her heart beating hard and fast.

“Then before the eyes of Zhor, in the light of Straum and in front of all witnesses, I state that you are now husband and wife.” Heidran the shaman bowed.

Bragr took her hand, and they turned around. The field was full of people as far as the eye could see, and now they all exploded in a joyful, thunderous cheer.

“I think they like us,” Josie said, having to wipe a tear of relief. All through the ceremony she’d heard them behind her, thousands of Vikings murmuring and coughing and clearing their throats. She wasn’t sure what to expect when she turned to face them. This was better than what she’d hoped for.

Aretha and the other girls were in the first row. Most of them were smiling and applauding. Josie gave them a little wave and a big grin. There was no such thing as bridesmaids on Gardr, but they had all banded together for her and persuaded the Vikings that she needed a white wedding dress, not a gray and drab one the way the Hjalmarheim tradition said.

She was happy, too. It was all crazy, she knew. This was an alien planet filled with monsters and creatures from out of some dark fairy tales, and Bragr was a Viking chief with a crazy father and horns growing from his head. Still, she had never felt more at home than she did in Hjalmarheim. And she had never felt more loved than she did in the arms of her abductor.

She was dizzy with how fast it had happened. But she had never been more certain about anything.

She and Bragr walked down the aisle in the open-air temple to his gods before some of his warriors couldn’t stand it anymore and rushed in to do their wrist-grabbing armshake and congratulate him. Josie could swear some of the grizzliest warriors had tears in their eyes from genuine joy. She’d learned that they could be quite emotional, at least when they weren’t fighting some battle or other.

The surroundings were suitably beautiful. The jarlagard had the ocean on one side and green hills on the other. There was a constant hiss from the surf, the springtime air was clear and fragrant, and Straum beamed hard in the sky. The light made Josie’s white dress shine like the snow-covered mountains in the distance.

Bragr was surrounded by well-wishers, and soon they were parted by the crowd. The Viking women were shy around Josie, but when Solveg’s starry-eyed teenage daughter dared to walk over to Josie and congratulate her, all the others rushed in, too. There were embraces and hugs and congratulations that seemed genuine.

It took a while before Josie could seek out Aretha and the four other girls.

She wiped a moved tear from her cheek. “This is more intense than I expected.”

“They know how to celebrate,” Aretha said, her voice a little unsteady, dabbing at her cheeks with a piece of cloth. “I guess it comes with all the fighting they do.”

“It has to,” Josie said. “There’s got to be some balance.”

“You look incredible, if I do say so myself,” Celeste said as she straightened her yellow space ship mechanic’s jumpsuit. “I know we designed that dress in one day, but a lot depends on the bride who wears it, too. Damn, we made your ass look great. Together, I mean. You by having it in the first place. Us for helping you show it off.”

Josie laughed. She’d only known Celeste for a few days, but she already really liked her direct ways. “I know. No such dress was ever seen on this planet. They’ll talk about it for years.”

“I bet they’ll start using the same type themselves!” the girl called Chen exclaimed. “Because it’s the only color that makes sense. Who wearsgrayto get married? Okay, fine, I guess guys do sometimes. Like in England. But they’re guys! They don’t want to… to… shine! Well, maybe they do. Nobody cares. It’s not like they need to. But we do! And now these Viking women will! I tell you, we’re doing important work!” She grinned happily as the others laughed. She had a knack for spreading her mood, whether cheerful or downbeat. And she switched quickly between the two extremes.

What exactly she had been doing onUnityin the first place was hard to guess. Chen was so evasive about it, Josie had started to assume she’d been a stowaway.

“Anyway,” Chloe said smoothly as she stroked her dark, impossibly silky hair from her face and lifted her finely-sculpted chin. “I hear the ship is ready. Not that we want to leave immediately, Josie. You know that. We’ll stay for a day or two more, maybe. If you insist. It was nice of you to fix that for us.”

TheDead Sonhad been quickly renamedGudruna. Bragr had made sure it was ready to take the five girls back to Earth anytime they wanted. It just needed a small crew, and they would be on the way home, never to see Gardr again.

“Honestly, it’s the least they could do,” Josie said. “I know they only abducted you guys because they got carried away when they saw Bragr take me, so it’s not like they had a plan with that.”

“They don’t have a plan with a lot of things,” Chloe sniffed. “But now they have you to help them along a little, I suppose. If that’s your thing.” She was a metals trader who had been onUnityfor two weeks when the raid happened, and Josie knew that she was filthy rich back on Earth. She had paid for extra security on the station, and the staggering cost for the food and freshly-made cosmetics she had sent up from Earth by rocket every single day was becoming legendary among theUnitylifers.

“They plan the things they need to plan,” Rafaela countered calmy. She was a miner who had spent months on Mars before she arrived onUnityright before the raid. “Maybe they figure that not everything has to be about making as much money as possible.”

“Maybe they should figure out how not to steal others away from their homes,” Chloe snapped. “Maybe if they did some actual work themselves, they wouldn’t need to.”

“Anyway,” Aretha said quickly before it turned into a quarrel, “this is Josie’s wedding day, and we’ll celebrate before we talk about going home. When is the coronation, Josie?”

“Weeks from now,” Josie said, grateful for Aretha redirecting the conversation. “Bragr has made up all kinds of reasons to push it back as far as possible. He’s not relishing the idea, but the huskarls threatened to tie him up and drag him through all of Hjalmarheim so he could ask everyone in the land if they wanted him as king. He thought that would take him away from me for too long, so he relented. God, I never heard so much grumbling and whining! His latest idea is that the earldom is in a state of mourning for his crew and the seeress and the warriors who died in the battle.”

Celeste frowned. “I thought those huge pyres last night were the end of that. There sure was a lot of crying.”

Josie shrugged. “They were. He made it up.”

“But not that much will change, will it?” Chen asked. “It’s just a new title. He was already the boss.”

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