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The feature of the ville that had caught the friends' eyes were the boats or
were they ships? Ryan had never been that sure of the difference between the
two.
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Each craft was forty to fifty feet in length, narrow with high sides and ports
for a number of long oars. The elongated prow ended in a carved head of what
Ryan recognized was supposed to be a kind of fire-breathing monster or dragon.
Most of the men of the ville wore some kind of dagger or short sword at their
sides, and several had axes with hafts two feet long. A number of helmets hung
over the entrances to the huts, looking as if they were made from varied
combinations of iron and leather. The one common factor of the helmets was
that all of them were horned.
But now the baron was speaking.
"Outlanders here in Markland! By Baldur's eyes! This is a strange day. There
have not been outlanders here in more than a score of years. Fishermen, cast
up on our shores in a violent storm when I was a stripling of a dozen
summers."
"What happened to them?" Ryan asked.
"The outlander fishermen?" Jorund gave a great bellow of laughter, echoed by
many of the thirty men who had crowded into the hut. Not a single woman, Ryan
noticed. "By Freya's dugs, my one-eyed friend, if my memory serves me well, I
think they went to sleep with their fish."
"A man swims badly when his knees are broken, outlander!" someone yelled,
earning a look of angry reproach from the baron.
"Egil Skallagson! Hold your tongue, or I swear I'll feed it to the midden
curs.
These men are our guests."
Krysty took a step forward. "And the women, Baron? Are we not welcome in your
ville?"
Jorund ignored her and spoke to Ryan. "In this ville the nonmen do not speak
out like that. Not without our permission. Will you chastise the firehead
thrall for her forwardness?"
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"She is not a thrall." Whatever that was, thought Ryan. "Where we come from
the women are equals of the men and can speak how and when they wish."
There was some laughter at that, as though he'd said that where he came from
it was usual to drink through your arse and piss through your ears laughter
tinged with a profound disbelief. The baron didn't even smile.
"Here in Markland, you follow the old ways of Markland, or it will go hard
with all of you. Your women will be as our women a willing thrall at the
cooking and a pliant receptacle when we wish to spend our passion. Is that one
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also a woman?
Beneath the hood?"
Ryan's heart sank. He had only known Mildred for a couple of days, but he
already knew enough to guess she wasn't going to sweet-mouth Baron Jorund of
Markland.
He was right.
Mildred didn't remove her hood, but her voice was loud. Loud and angry.
"Try to spend your passion in my 'receptacle,' bro, and you'll be picking
slices of your cock out of the middle of the lake."
Ryan felt the chill of the butt of his pistol, knowing that J.B., Krysty and
Jak would be doing the same.
The tall Viking looked at Mildred, wrinkling his blue eyes as though trying to
penetrate the darkness beneath her hood. There was a total and quite
overwhelming silence in the hut. Outside they heard the laughter of a young
woman and a child crying for comfort.
"The ways of an outlander " he spoke with a measured slowness " are not our
ways. But we have our own rules, and any outlander while he is with us in
Markland shall observe them. Or the price will be high."
In his life Ryan had heard a lot of threats and more than a few promises, and
he'd
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learned to tell the difference. This was a promise.
Mildred turned slowly to look toward Ryan, holding his gaze for twenty beats
of the heart. Then, even more slowly, she turned back to face the baron and
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