Page 29 of Alien Viking's Passion

Aretha!

It all came back to him, an avalanche of memories, one more alarming than the next.

That big shieldmaiden in a heap of vanquished skrymtir! Bragr and him in the shortship! The race to find Aretha. The trolls—

And then the hut, the berries, the fire…

His throat felt tight, and ice settled in the pit of his stomach when he remembered who she was.

“Zhor!” he exclaimed. That was the alien female he had to avoid! She was the greatest threat to the whole principality of Ragnhildros because he was on the verge of falling for her! The passion was too close with her, and he had felt it acutely.

Even now, he longed to touch her cheek, to kiss her awake, to cup that chest...

He hurried outside. The fog was gone, and it was a bright early morning in the woods. Beyond the treetops he saw tall peaks and the steep mountainsides on three sides. It was a deep valley.

There were no threats, no trolls, no skrymtir. Only the little iglsnutr that had befriended Aretha.

He remembered the shortship, useless and broken on the rocks. He may have to swim ashore. But what about Aretha, then? He couldn’t just abandon her here.

Striding through the woods, he quickly found that there was water all around. It was an island, and there was nobody else here. Everything was calm. There were no enemies, only the majestic mountains and the lake.

He was getting over the first shock. Yes, he was here with Aretha, the woman he really had to avoid. But they were here now, and who was to say that he was in fact falling for her? He’d spent all afternoon and evening in her company, being completely innocent, simply making up silly poetry and building a hut. Hehadn’t kissed her once. That wasn’t passion, was it? Of course not.

He’d wanted to, of course. But surely any man with the slightest life in him would want to kiss a female as attractive as her. It didn’t mean anything. Nor did his strong arousal mean much. That also wasn’t passion.

And surely Kofraks the draugr was nowhere near and couldn’t possibly know which emotions Craxon might have for this random alien female.

No, this hadn’t made things worse, he concluded. But he should get back to the jarlagard soonest, then leave on the ocean-going ship if his longship was still broken.

He got back to the shortship and looked at it. It was largely intact, with only the odd scuff mark here and there.

“Feeling better?” a thin voice said from behind.

He resisted the urge to turn around, reach out and stroke her cheek. “I find my head is still tender, but I seem to have recovered.”

“You remember now?” She came up beside him, hiding a yawn behind her hand in an adorable movement.

“I remember some things,” he told her. “But it is the curse of this injury that I don’t know if I remember it all. Perhaps there are events and favors I will never recall. I remember the shortship, but not the crash.”

Aretha climbed into the shortship. “You’re lucky. It wasn’t pretty. Oh, here’s that sword I got! You found it?” She held up the skrymtir blade.

“It is my guess that you dropped it when the trolls took you. Is there any life in the shortship at all?”

She fiddled with the controls, but the shortship didn’t so much as twitch. “Doesn’t look good.”

He put his hands on his hips. “I have found that it is an island we’re on. We have no raft to carry us ashore, and the lake is as cold as the bite of afenrin winter. We shall need to use our wits to escape to the shore.”

Aretha rapped her knuckles on the painted wood of the shortship. “This thing looks like a boat, more or less. Do you think it might float?”

He considered it. “As it is right now, I fear it will float just as well as these rocks. But if we were to tinker with it, perhaps we can make it deserve the ‘ship’ part of its name. Though it makes my beard bristle to think of laying blade and nail to what was Earl Bragr’s fastest shortship.”

“It’s not his fastest anything now,” Aretha pointed out. “Do you think he’d prefer that we stay here, rather than trying to use his sled as a raft?”

“Bragr was always a practical one. Doubtless he would prefer us to return to the safety of hisgildeskalrather than survive on nut and berry in these vettir-infested mountains.”

“Exactly what I was thinking,” Aretha said. “Let’s get back before the vettir attack us.” She turned around to look over to the distant shore they’d come from. “You don’t see any trolls, do you? Or tall stacks of rocks?”

Craxon shielded his eyes against the glare from the Big Shine, reflected in the lake’s calm surface. “If they are there, they arewell hidden. Nor can I spot a horde of skrymtir.”

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