Usually Fenris welcomed the challenge of sparring with a warrior near to his own skill level, but on this morn, every swing from Randulfr’s sword felt like an insult. And soon the fighting became more serious than intended with great clanging of their swords and much sweat on both their parts.
Finally, Randulfr backed away and said, “I would have an end to this play.”
“Nay,” Fenris said, “I would have you continue to fight.”
“I am not in prime spirits, having stepped off the boat only yesterday.”
“Lift your sword.”
Fenris advanced on him, attacking in the expectation Randulfr would defend himself as opposed to wasting his breath with further protest. But then he ended up using all his strength to stop the blade just short of his friend’s neck when Randulfr dropped his sword to the ground in the known sign of surrender.
Fenris lowered his own sword, having to resist the urge to punch his friend in the face for refusing to fight any further. “You disappoint me.”
“Nay,” Randulfr answered, with a knowing grin. “Your prick does make you fast to anger. Do I need to be the one to suggest you find your queen and set her to screaming?”
“She is otherwise engaged these moons. Big with our pup and making many preparations for our wedding.”
Randulfr picked up his sword and re-sheathed it at his waist. “Then if I were my Fenris, I would bid her pause. You are in need of a lay.”
“I am in need of a fight,” he all but growled back.
But Randulfr was already walking away, “Nay, a lay,” he called out almost like a song, without bothering to look back.
WHEN CHLOE HAD FIRST TRAVELED BACK IN TIME, it hadn’t occurred to her she’d have two skinny blonds washing her hair every Saturday, but apparently the servant women washing all the other women’s hair was a thing on Saturdays. She’d actually concocted a sort of conditioner out of eggs, honey, almond oil (thank goodness she had learned how to make it for a Black Mountain Woman show), and a yogurt-like food called skyr. And as it turned out, teaching them to finger comb it through her hair every wash day hadn’t been too hard.
The only problem was she was now having a hard time making a big enough batch of it every Saturday. Fenris’s young girl cousins had tried her conditioner a few months ago and had been shocked at how shiny and lustrous their locks turned out after air-drying. And soon all the other women in their household wanted to try it. Then because the males, contrary to the way Vikings were often depicted in the movies, were even vainer about their hair than the ladies, they’d demanded a weekly batch for themselves. Somehow word spread and folks started showing up at the door, offering all sorts of trades for conditioner. Which was how Chloe found herself spending most of her Saturday mornings overseeing the preparation of pots of conditioner and preparing for a wedding at the same time.
“It would seem you would have a trade in any time you did set foot,” Fenris teased her two Saturdays ago when she clumsily climbed over his body to get out of bed at the crack of dawn.
It was true. Over the last few weeks, Chloe had worked harder than she ever had in her life. Though she was a queen, nothing came easy in the Viking village. She had to make the fabric for her wedding dress, then sew it all by hand. She also had to plan the menu for the big wedding feast, which meant overseeing the roasting and spicing of boars, ducks, goats, and apparently a couple of sharks—which she hadn’t been able to convince her family not to serve, though at least she’d been able to draw the line at horse meat. She also had to pre-memorize her vows in Old Norse and learn to do a few traditional dances expected of the bride and groom. The last few weeks, she’d been rising at the crack of dawn every morning and falling into bed exhausted to her very bones every night.
And she loved it.
Unlike the wedding she would have been harangued into having with Rafe, which would have been catered by the most sought after chef in Colorado, and overseen by the most exclusive wedding planner Rafe’s mother could find, with a wedding dress provided by a designer everyone recognized by name; her wedding was everything she’d always dreamed it would be. And in many ways it felt like she had been planning her whole life for this.
The only thing she did mind, was she’d barely had a chance to do so much as mind-chat over dinner with Fenris, and even though they slept in the same bed closet, she found herself missing him.
“Is it your plan to wash Fenris’s hair at the hot springs then?” Aunt Bera asked when Chloe rushed out of the lake as soon as the servants were done rinsing the conditioner out of her loosened curls and started putting her wet hair back in its side braid while sitting on the bank. Whatever modesty she might have had about sitting around naked in front of a bunch of other women in Colorado had been killed after six months in no-privacy Viking Norway.
“No, after I braid my hair, I will return to the house to sew my wedding dress some more.”
“Let us put thread to your wedding dress this day,” his mother’s aunt said. “We would not have Fenris grow his beard again.”
She scrunched up her face. “I do not understand your words.”
One of her girl cousins came to stand by her mother. “Before you came to this place, we did call our king Fenris the Serious. Never smiling he, never one to let us feast in celebration, not even for a harvest.”
“Why think you I was so keen for him to avail himself of the fated mates spell?” Aunt Bera asked.
The cousin continued, “But now you have cut off his beard again, he is allowing feast, and we hope to have his ear for another at the winter to mark the yule-tide, and mayhap another one at the beginning of the resting sun.”
“Wait,” she said in English. Then she remembered herself and switched back to Old Norse. “What does his beard have to do with it?”
“When first he did return, we did tease him mightily about being without his beard. And on that first eve he said in your land the men do not care for beards and so do not the women, and that was why it was removed,” the cousin said.
Her mother chimed in then. “We all would be surprised, because no Northman would be without his beard in these lands, human or wolf. We realized our Fenris must hold you dear indeed, if he would allow you his beard. But then his beard did grow back and did he become both serious and quick to temper until you did start screaming every few moons. And at the next wash day his beard was once again disappeared.”
“But now it does grows back for a sennight or more,” Aunt Bera said, her tone growing dire. “We would not have his beard back. We would wish it good-ghost if it doth mean a less serious king.”