Tork and Frode gasped with horror. A soft cry of pain escaped Brandr’s lips, which soon thinned with fury. The Sigurdssons and Igorssons had done each other great scathe over the years, but naught like this.
His sister Liv was only thirteen years old. It broke his heart to think of what horrors the impish girling must be experiencing at this very moment. Last time he heard, she had not even had her first monthly flux.
It hardened his heart to know of the blood that had been spilled and all the more blood he would now be compelled to spill. There would be a virtual flood of sword dew. “And you two . . . how did you escape?”
“We were off to Birka, trading furs for winter goods,” Arnis told him.
Bear’s Lair was a remote northerly estate, rocky and cold, not conducive to farming. But bears abounded, huge brown creatures, and up near the Arctic region, the prized white bears. “Two days late, we were,” Arnis continued, his voice raspy with emotion, his blue eyes glazed in remembrance of the horrors he must have seen. “Not that our presence would have made a difference. We learned from the few survivors that Sigurd came with a hird of two hundred strong.”
“How many men are left?” Tork interjected. His good friend would be returning with him, Brandr knew, without his asking for help.
“Three dozen able-bodied, another three dozen injured but will recover, the gods willing, and another dozen crippled for life.”
“Hrafnasueltir!”
he exclaimed and spat on the ground. “Raven starver, that is what Sigurd is. A coward. Less than a nithing.”
Tork took Frode by the elbow and led him back toward the fortress. “Looks like you will be blooded in battle sooner than expected, brother. Let us see how many Jomsviking warriors will join us in this good and noble cause.”
Brandr would not be surprised if a worthy hird would be at the ready within the hour to travel back with him to his estate, or what was left of it.
How could his life have changed so, in a matter of minutes? This had been a good life for him, a middle son. He had been contented. Well, no more.
Taking out Flesh Biter, his favorite pattern-welded broadsword, tears welling in his eyes for the first time since he was a baby, Brandr stabbed the weapon into the ground with a roar of fury and proclaimed with a loud cry to the high heavens, “This I swear afore Thor and all the gods. We will be avenged!” His throat clogged for a moment before he repeated hoarsely, “We
will
be avenged!”
The howl that followed was like that of a crazed wolf.
That was the day Brandr Igorsson turned berserker.
You could say they were GI Janes, or more likely, GI Jokes . . .
“Quack, quack, quack!”
“A-ten-shun!”
“Let’s see a little more waddle, duckies.”
“A-ten-shun!”
“Move it, move it, move it!”
“If they walk like ducks, and quack like ducks, they must be . . . Navy WEALS.”
These were among the taunts hurled at Joy and five other women early that evening by SEALs or SEAL trainees returning to the grinder from the chow hall.
When one of the women muttered something disparaging about their manhoods, Cage burst out laughing. “Now, now, sweet thangs. Doan get yer feathers ruffled. Like my maw maw down the bayou allus sez . . .”
“You are so full of it, LeBlanc,” the repulsive Frank Uxley, appropriately nicknamed F.U., said as they walked off. “Screw your maw maw.”
“I beg yer pardon, dickhead. How would you like it if I said that about
your
grandmother?”
“I don’t have a grandmother, asshole.”
“Born under a rock, eh,
cher
?”
The women, all wearing Navy-issue shorts, T-shirts, and boondockers with heavy socks pulled up and folded over, just like the men, were being punished with gig squad in front of the officers’ quarters, a Navy method of punishment for infractions too trivial to merit ringing out but too serious to overlook. Mostly, it involved them doing duck squats, a humiliating exercise in which persons squatted down as far as they could go without toppling over, then walked back and forth like a bunch of idiots . . . duck idiots. It wasn’t a punishment reserved for the women, though. The SEALs were the ones who made gig squad famous.
Sweat poured off of Joy in rivulets, and it soaked her hair, which had been pulled into a neat, high ponytail this morning but was half-mast by now.
And, really, all the five of them had done was laugh when Instructor JAM . . . aka Lieutenant Jacob Alvarez Mendozo . . . ordered them to do
another
five-mile run on the beach. That following on not only a previous jogging rotation, but a full PT cycle around the various implements of torture on the grinder’s obstacle course, like the Cargo Net, the Skyscraper, the Slide for Life, the Wall, the Weaver, and the “Dirty Name” log evolution.
While SEALs were required to build up their endurance to six-mile swims and eighteen-mile runs, the standards were lower for WEALS, but not by much. Unbelievably naive in the beginning, she’d figured that if she could withstand “drownproofing,” where trainees were dropped into a pool with their wrists and ankles tied together, the rest was sure to be a breeze. Hah! More like a hurricane. And don’t even mention Hell Week.
The day she’d started hand-to-hand combat training had been an eye-opener, as well. But then, she should have been prepared when she’d seen the padded walls of the room and a bald Marine the size of Godzilla waiting for the female trainees with a maniacal gleam in his eyes.
Joy had been in WEALS training for a year now and had earned her preliminary WEALS trident badge, but she felt like a newbie. There was so much to learn, and every bit of it was damn hard. Not just the physical exercise, either.
Commander MacLean walked up and loomed over her. She continued to duck walk.
“Petty Officer Nelson!” he shouted, about breaking her eardrum. He always shouted. Really, the man didn’t have a normal tone of voice. And when he wasn’t shouting, he was spouting goofball inspirational sayings, like, “A peacock who sits on his tail is just another turkey,” or his favorite, “Join the Navy, travel the world, meet interesting people, kill them.”
His shout surprised her, about causing her to fall backwards. She immediately jerked to a standing position, her arms stiffly at her sides, staring straight ahead.
Joy could have opted for officer candidate school when she’d first enlisted in the Navy’s WEALS program, but she’d declined, wanting to get into action ASAP. Not that being an officer would have made her training any easier. And she would still be answerable to Commander MacLean.
“In my office. Oh eight hundred. Tomorrow morning. Don’t be late. Resume rotation.”
“Uh-oh,” she murmured to her fellow duck squatters. “Why me?”
“Never a good idea to be singled out,” Dottie Ellison agreed, huffing as she spoke. “Jeesh! My hamstrings are killing me.”
“Pain is your friend,” April Abramson reminded them of that notorious SEAL motto.
“The commander must be wearing off on you, girlfriend.” Dot laughed and spouted another dumb-ass SEAL motto, “The only easy day was yesterday.”
“I’ll tell you the one I like,” said Candy Williams. “If something is hard, it must be good.”
“If something is hard, it must be attached to a horn dog Navy SEAL, if you ask me.” This from Kathy Billings.
They all laughed then.
A bunch of laughing ducks. Jeesh!
“Anyone want to go to the Wet and Wild later?” Dot asked. The Wet and Wild was a bar where single Navy personnel hung out, especially SEALs and WEALS. A good place to pick up—uh, meet—guys.
“Yeah, I’m about due to get lucky,” Candy responded with a grin. “All work and no play and all that, y’know, is making me a very dull girl.”
“Tell me about it. I ain’t had some since God was a child,” Kendra Black added.
“I’m game,” the others joined in.
Except for Joy, who had been celibate for a remarkable two years now after a long line of failed relationships with full-of-themselves, good-looking men. And she wasn’t missing
it
at all.
Well, hardly.
Maybe the answer was to find a homely man, or at least one who wasn’t in love with himself.
“Give me a break!” Joy was amazed that she could talk and duck walk at the same time . . . an indication of how far she’d come, she supposed. Being a competitive athlete, even a short-term body builder, had in no way prepared her for the rigors of Special Forces training. And all this extreme exercise hadn’t reduced the size of her butt one iota. Still, she was in good shape; her deltoids and obliques and quadriceps had been honed to the max. “A warm shower, a five thousand calorie pizza, and ten hours’ sleep. That’s the closest to an orgasm I want to come . . . and I mean that literally.”
They all laughed then.
“I think you’re afraid that one of the big bad SEALs will hit on you,” Candy said.
“I’m not afraid of those jerks.” Joy liked men, even SEALs, but casual sex was not her thing, and she hadn’t had an opportunity in like forever to develop a romantic relationship, no matter the kind of man. After Matt’s death, she wasn’t in the mood for casual anything.
Some psychologist she was! It was obvious that she had serious commitment issues.
“You haven’t had a date since we started training a year ago,” Kendra pointed out. “Maybe you’re afraid of yourself . . . that you’re so hot for it that
you
might jump a few male bones.”
She grunted her opinion. “Don’t be silly.”
But then Dot hurled the magic words. “I dare you to come.”
When the Wet and Wild beckons . . .
As it turned out, there were only four of them who ended up at the Wet and Wild that evening, after taking a shower and long nap: Joy, Dot, Kendra, and Candy. April and Kathy had blind dates with a set of twin Navy hot guns, arranged by a mutual friend. Bunk chatter later tonight should be interesting.
Of the four of them who entered the bar, cringing at the ear-splitting blare of Trace Adkins’s “One Hot Mama,” only Candy, a self-proclaimed wild child, went through the politically incorrect T-shirt spraying device at the door. Who cared that the rest of them had to pay a cover charge? Joy wasn’t about to give a bunch of horny men reason to get hornier. Candy, on the other hand, considered it one of her major goals in life to turn on all of the male species.
The male-female ratio was about three to one, so the four of them were surrounded by testosterone the minute they entered the bar. Luckily, three of the full-fledged WEALS they’d come to know well were sitting at a table on the far side of the bar and waved an invitation, thus allowing them to escape the crowd, a mix of all services but mainly Navy, including some SEALs. There was Terri Evans, a petite red-head with green eyes that always seemed to be dancing with mischief; Donita Leone, tall, black, stunningly gorgeous, a former Olympic swimmer; and Marie Delacroix, a Cajun ex-Marine who’d joined WEALS after her father was killed in the Twin Towers.
“Hey, ladies, how’s training going?” Terri asked after they sat down.
The four of them groaned.
The waitress showed up and hitched a hip, not bothering to ask what they wanted, her attitude saying it for her.
“You have to try one of these,” Terri suggested, waving her drink in front of them. “It’s called a Dark and Stormy.”
Joy had never heard of that one before. “What’s in it?” “Good rum, preferably Bacardi Gold, cracked ice, ginger beer, and lime to balance out the sweetness. Yum!”
Joy laughed. “A little too exotic for me, although I do like the name.” Turning to the waitress, she said, “I’ll have a Sierra Nevada pale ale. And a menu, please.” Growing up in a family of men, Joy had learned to appreciate a good beer.
The rest of them ordered drinks, and they all decided to share two everything pizzas and a double order of hot wings, heavy on the celery and blue cheese.
“So they’re still working you hard,” Donita remarked.
“Like horses,” Kendra answered, then laughed as the band segued into Toby Keith’s “Whiskey for My Men, Beer for My Horses.”
Donita ignored Kendra pointedly and asked Joy, “Were you able to improve your timed miles with those exercises I recommended?”
Donita had a love/hate relationship going with Sylvester “Sly” Simms, a former
GQ
underwear model, of all things. Kendra loved to goad Donita by flirting with the black SEAL, and Sly flirted right back.
“Actually, I did improve,” Joy told Donita, “but still not good enough. I’m not sure God intended women to run so fast.”
They all grinned.
“Unfortunately, God failed to tell that to the Marquis de Sade instructors,” Terri said.
“When I was back home on the bayou for a little R & R over Christmas las’ year, my brother asked me why my thighs were so muscular,” Marie said in her deep Southern accent. “After I whacked him upside the noggin, I tol’ him it was from doin’ a rodeo on so many Navy men. He actually believed me. Talk about!”