Viking Ecstasy (40 page)

"Apparently, she didn't think it —you —so enjoyable."

Ingmar scowled. Tabor tensed the muscles above the knee of his leg. It was a feigned preparation for an attack. Ingmar backed away three steps. He believed he could read Tabor's moves in advance.

The third time Tabor pretended to prepare for his attack, Ingmar took the offensive, slashing hard at waist level in a long, smooth arch. Tabor leaped backward, curling around the sword's point as it barely missed his stomach.

They squared off again, too tense now to waste breath on insults. Always moving, each looked for some sign of weakness in the other. Soon, the women who had been hiding came out from their homes. Some of them, emboldened by the news from the pier and recognizing Tabor, ridiculed Ingmar, taunting him. They cast aspersions on his sexual prowess and anatomy.

"How does it feel to be surrounded by so much love?" Tabor asked sarcastically.

"How does it feel to be dead?" Ingmar replied, lunging forward, leading with his broadsword.

Tabor parried Ingmar's thrust, spinning to his left, and swung hard with his axe, hoping to keep his foe sufficiently off balance to prevent an immediate second attack. But Ingmar was not brushed back by the sharpened blade of the battle-axe. Rather than passing harmlessly past his nose, the blade struck him solidly above the ear as he lunged toward Tabor. Ingmar crumpled to the ground, unmoving.

"You killed him."

Tabor looked at the woman who had spoken. It was the young prostitute who had warned him of the surprise attack. She looked upon Tabor now as though he had killed the Devil himself.

"He'll never bother you again."

More women came from the houses now that Ingmar was on the ground. One walked up to the corpse and kicked it. Another did the same.

Tabor turned away, not having any desire to watch the desecration of his old enemy. He looked at the axe in his hands as he made his way back toward the pier.

From afar, he heard a shout. Looking up, he saw Tanaka. She waved and rushed toward him. Tanaka . . . his future. As he watched her run toward him, he thought about the son she'd said they'd conceived on the mystical ground in England. Tabor smiled, amused that sometimes his wife had the silliest ideas . . .

H
is name was Thor, Son of Tabor; and though he was only fourteen, he already possessed a physique that caught the eye of Egyptian women in the city of Opar. His smile was the mirror image of his father's, and there wasn't a female heart in all of Egypt that hadn't melted for Tabor, the too-handsome blond Viking who had moved to Egypt and married the high priestess of the palace, Tanaka.

Thor was navigating his boat into port, smiling as he always did whenever he was upon the sea. As usual, he was late returning to port. His mother would be worried, afraid that something unfortunate had happened to him to cause his tardiness; his father, Tabor, would be angry, not because he was late, but because he had caused his mother worry.

There were four other boys in the small boat with him. They looked to Thor for guidance and leadership. Though he was unaware of it himself, Thor had been born for leadership, conceived on hallowed ground and entering the world while his mother and father sailed from Tabor's homeland to Egypt.

"Some day, I'll get us a bigger boat and a larger crew," he promised. "Then we'll really do some adventuring, eh, men?" And his companions heartily agreed as one.