Page 38 of Alien Viking's Passion

Her words sent a surprisingly sharp barb to his heart. “Do you really have to? Josie won’t.”

She didn’t reply, but there was a querying look in her clear eyes that said ‘you tellme’.

Or maybe he was imagining it.

“There may be a way,” he said, voice gruff.

He hoped it was true. How much did he have to love someone before Kofraks’s curse would come true? There were no signs of disaster yet. Perhaps the curse wasn’t real. Perhaps Kofraks was dead, perhaps he had never existed, perhaps it was all a plot by the soothsayers and the chaperones and the Royal Council to keep their prince under control. To keep him unhappy.

He wanted to think of something else. “Get your skrymtir weapon. We will spend the last of today’s sunrays learning to fight. I will not have you defenseless on Gardr ever again.”

She let go of him and went into the hut to get the crude piece of rusted iron. She held it awkwardly with both hands. “It’s pretty heavy.”

He took it from her and hefted it. It was badly balanced and tragically blunt. But a warrior could do a lot of damage with it.“So it is good for long slashes, not stabbing. Good. You will hold it with both hands. Like this.” He showed her, then handed the blade back. “There’s no reason to give it a name. I will make sure you get a real weapon when we get back to the jarlagard. Indeed I shall forge it myself. Now swing it at me, trying to hit…”

He taught her basic sword fighting until it got too dark. She was an astonishingly quick study, making such fast progress that she was always ahead of his instructions. Her only weakness was that she lacked the killer instinct to place a fight-ending stroke.

“A sword fight is won within the first three swings,” he told her. “Your aim must be to slash before the enemy does and make sure it’s a killing blow. Many a swordsman has been killed by his own hesitation. Do it like this…”

He showed her a slash that had an inbuilt feint, a vicious move that most warriors never took the time to learn. Aretha mastered it within a few attempts, but still there was hesitation in her. That was something he couldn’t teach her to overcome. She would have to find it in herself.

“Good,” he praised. “I doubt Tyr himself could do better.”

“Who is Tyr?” Aretha asked, wiping sweat from her brow.

“He is the god of war,” Craxon explained. “But he would want your blade to be sharper than this. May I?”

She handed him her blade, and he sharpened it as well as he could. The steel was softer than he liked, and the structure was grainy. But it would do for their journey back. After all, Craxon would be there to protect her.

Straum had set, and the stars were out. Aretha was sitting on the ground, busy weaving a basket from the same kind of vines theyhad used onKvad.

She was completely focused, her little hands working fast, sometimes pushing hair out of her face. “Did you try these fruits?” she asked, nodding towards a small pile of purple bulbs.

“I tried them,” he replied, “but they weren’t sweet.”

“Do you think they’re poisonous? Sonic wouldn’t eat them.”

“I don’t like that color. But they may be harmless. Sonic is your god of basket weaving?”

She chuckled. “Sonic is the iglsnutr. It’s the name of a famous, ancient iglsnutr from my planet.”

“Ah, you have them there, too.”

She sent him a grin, all shiny teeth. “Something like them, anyway.”

He wanted to squat down and kiss her again.

So he did, stroking her cheek with one hand. “I also wish things were different, my love.”

Her eyes widened.

He recoiled.Whathad he called her? The words had come out all by themselves.

Stiffening, he looked around. But the evening was as quiet as ever, with only birdsong and the hiss in the treetops to be heard. The world didn’t go under, Ragnarok had not started.

Perhaps Kofraks was indeed powerless.

“But we can change the way things are,” he continued, not sure what he meant. “Let’s get back to Hjalmarheim, and we shallsee.”

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