Vikings battle Zeppelins while forbidden desires spark! (Swords Versus Tanks Book 2) (5 page)

Jasmine had a vague recollection of a bedraggled figure negotiating the cliff path ahead of Ragnar and Ranulph.
She scrubs up well.

"… but there is he, all this time…" King Ragnar thumped the table. "
Impaled on broken oar
! Ho! Ho!"

Jasmine laughed politely but her stomach knotted and she saw again the spear projecting from Marcel's back.

The king lurched from his chair and lumbered off in the direction of the latrines. Servants swirled around him like minnows. Each bore yet more platters of meat, this time fragrant joints of mutton served with onions and black bread. Raucous chatter rose up on all sides.

Sir Ranulph laid his long dagger on the table beside the leg of lamb. "Shall I carve, Milady?"

Jasmine nodded dumbly. The last time she’d seen that weapon, it was angling in towards Clifford’s eyes.

He hacked off a lump of meat, spiked it, and dumped it on the wooden platter she'd have to share with him. He leaned in closer. "You were not amused by Ragnar's story."

"There's nothing funny about war," said Jasmine.

"Would you swear that you did not laugh when your ironclad engines caught Clifford's men by surprise?"

Jasmine grimaced. "In the heat of battle…" She sipped her mead and shrugged.

The knight raised his own mead horn. "Well then, let us drink to our fellowship."

Jasmine put hers down. "We have nothing in common-"

"-but for honour, and devotion to arms."

"Duty and bloodlust aren’t the same," she said.

"Ah," said Sir Ranulph. "You have lost a friend."

Jasmine flinched. She twisted to face the knight and, as levelly as she could, said, "What the fuck makes you think that?"

Sir Ranulph’s big face creased into a sad smile. "When first we spoke, you were almost courteous. Now…" His deep voice softened. "…you are all claw and beak."

Jasmine’s shoulders slumped. Her vision blurred. Damn him.

The torchlight glinted on tears running down his big face. "We have a grief in common, Lady Jasmine."

Of course. Why else would the artist – back in the real past — spend the next thirty years immortalising his late master? Why had he wasted years of potential artistic career trailing around after the knight in the first place? "The Genius?
Albrecht
, I mean. You were close?"

Sir Ranulph's brow furrowed. "You called him that before."

"How long were you…" she nearly said
together.

"Seven years, or thereabout," said Sir Ranulph. "From the summer's morning I took his part in a trial by combat against one Master Gerhart, until the autumn afternoon when he was slain."

Strip away the titles and the history, and the knight was just a fellow soldier who'd lost his buddy. Jasmine reached up to touch his shoulder. "Tough break," she said. The black velvet hid smoothly contoured muscles that reminded her of Albrecht’s
Battle of Love’s Marsh
. Rosetta would kill to have him model nude.

Jasmine snatched back her hand.

Sir Ranulph’s eyes flickered down then up, as if seeing her properly for the first time. Suddenly Jasmine was very aware that she’d neglected to fasten the top buttons of her combat blouse. Lowenstein had insisted on the uniform "to impress the savages", but she preferred not to look like a grizzled veteran when she could avoid it.

Sir Ranulph reached for her hand.

She slipped hers under his, and caught his wrist. With the fingertips of her other hand, she traced the lines on his palm. "I thought a swordsman would be scarred."

"I am." Neatly manicured fingers tugged up his right sleeve. A thick welt ran over his wrist and ended in the muscular heel of his palm.

Jasmine winced. It looked like an old bayonet wound. "Ouch."

"I let a sword into my gauntlet cuff. A novice's mistake, though experienced swordsmen have been known to make it." Sir Ranulph laughed. "I must confess that Sir Douglas faired worse. I…"

"…broke his neck with one punch of your uninjured hand," completed Jasmine. She flushed. “It’s a well known story.”

Sir Ranulph raised her hand to his lips. "I have more scars… elsewhere. Each has its tale."

The touch thrilled down Jasmine’s arm and jolted her heart, making it difficult to breathe. She knew how to play it from here.
I'm about to kiss Sir Ranulph Dacre
. Lips tingling in anticipation, she rose from the bench and leaned forward.

He tilted his head. Their noses brushed-

-she snatched herself back. "I bet you use the same line on all the boozed-up tournament groupies."

Sir Ranulph recoiled as if she'd slapped him. "I meant no offence, Colonel Klimt."

"But you weren't treating me like a fellow soldier either." It was OK to play the ditzy flapper for the dockers and prize fighters and hope they didn't notice her muscles until they sobered up. This was different. She wanted her hero's respect. But how the Hell was she going to earn it?

"Ha!" King Ragnar reappeared at the head of the table. "Is time for talk. Ambassador, Hjalti and Ranulph – drink up and to the Council Chamber." He laughed. "Surprised? What you think we are? Barbarians? Pah! We have proper council chamber. Come!"

Lowenstein caught Jasmine's eye as he rose. He tilted his head in Lady Maud's direction.

Jasmine nodded. Once Sir Ranulph and the others had gone, she turned to Lady Maud. "I don’t suppose I could have my book back?"

CHAPTER FIVE

Lady Maud leaned across the table and proffered the volume to Jasmine. "It is yours."

No foundation garment
, thought Jasmine with a wicked tingle in her belly. Of course not. It was the Middle Ages. She’d never really considered what sort of underwear a princess would wear. Some sort of flimsy shift, perhaps. She reached for the volume.

Lady Maud moved it just out of reach. "But first, I charge you; render up the proof of my safety."

Jasmine shook her head. How could she reassure the girl without giving the game away about the time travel? Invading your own past might have been a stupid move, but now the Army of the Egality was here, it would not do to have everybody worrying about killing their own ancestors. Plus, the less the natives knew, the better.

Lady Maud sat back. She flicked some coppery strands out of her face then riffled through the book. "I would know if it were enchanted." She snapped it shut and stood up. "I shall make further examination in my chamber."

As Jasmine rose in pursuit, one of the barbarians reached across the trestle table and yanked the beard of the man opposite. The victim roared and dived at his assailant, knocking over drinking horns and scattering haunches of meat. Both men rolled onto the stone floor of King Ragnar’s hall.

Jasmine took a running jump, cleared the wrestlers, and caught up with Lady Maud a few metres from the threshold. She put a hand on her wrist. "You can’t leave with that."

The girl looked down on her, green eyes angry and proud.

Jasmine’s fingertips tingled. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. She shivered. She was touching – actually touching – a real princess.

Lady Maud lowered her gaze; a modest gesture, but also an inadvertent invitation to Jasmine to look at the taller woman without embarrassment.

Jasmine’s mouth went dry. The red-haired girl really was one of Rosetta's paintings made flesh. The perfect, delicate Real Princess. "Please," she managed, feeling the butterflies in her stomach leach the strength from her voice.

Lady Maud tugged her arm free. "First, speak of my fate."

The wrestling match had snowballed into a general brawl. Three barbarians crashed into a bench, splintering it. Others rolled on the floor, sending scavenging gryphons fluttering for the rafters. Those feasters too old to join in hollered a raucous song, banging their drinking horns on the long table. Nobody would notice if Jasmine snatched the book. She edged a little closer.

The girl's shoulders hunched forward. "I beg you."

Lowenstein had already talked about
oracle books
. "Look at the date on the caption," said Jasmine in her parade ground voice. "You should already be dead."

"I require better light," said Lady Maud, and with a whirl of red hair, was gone.

Electricity prickled across Jasmine chest, as if the Princess had actually brushed against her. She rubbed her eyes, came to the only logical conclusion, and – leaping over a second pair of tussling warriors – ran to the exit. The guards swung open the huge double doors, and the night air hit her like a bucket of ice.

Long legs hidden by the green dress, Lady Maud glided across the moonlit courtyard and vanished into the shadows.

Jasmine watched, mesmerised, through a haze of her own condensing breath. She shook her head. "They probably don’t even have a word for it."

#

Jasmine broke into a sprint just in time to see the girl enter the landward gatehouse through which she and Lowenstein had been admitted that afternoon. She hesitated, then followed. A spiral staircase led up to a heavy wooden door. It was unbarred.

Warm air embraced Jasmine. Lady Maud looked up from the fireside, freckled face moon-like in the light from a row of candles on the stone mantelpiece. "You did not knock."

"You left the door unlocked," said Jasmine.

"I also sent away the maidservant." The Princess giggled. "Come. Show me of what you speak. Then, by my faith, I shall grant your every wish."

"The last time a princess granted me that," said Jasmine, negotiating the end of a big four-poster bed. "She broke my heart."

"Is your heart so very fragile?" Lady Maud smiled coyly. She patted the fur rug. "Come. Sit by me."

Jasmine settled next to the Real Princess. It really was a bearskin. She grinned to herself. Marcel would
have been
delighted.

Lady Maud squirmed around to face Jasmine. Now she sat with her velvet-wrapped legs folded under her like a mermaid’s tail. "A fair miniature." Her fingers fluttered over the photograph. "Yet I think it too smooth to be a work of oil and tincture."

Lady Maud had pianist’s hands – though pianos weren’t due to be invented for another three hundred years. "It’s a copy," said Jasmine, her pulse quickening.

"A very fine copy, indeed," said the Princess.

"Modern printing techniques," blurted Jasmine. "I mean, look at the date in the caption." She pointed at the small print. Another centimetre or so, and their hands would touch.

Lady Maud squinted. "The language of the
Modern
– if that is the name of your people — is uncouth. But in truth, it does tell of a day and hour now past." She laughed. "So, I
did
truly avoid my doom."

Jasmine closed her hand on the corner of the book and tugged. "I‘ll have it back now, please."

Lady Maud wrenched it free, rose -

- and vanished. She gave a disembodied giggle. "You must first lay hands on my person!"

Jasmine rocked back on her haunches and swore.

A dress –
an invisible dress
— rustled. "So, your folk have no magic, otherwise you would have been less astonished!"

Jasmine pounced. The invisible princess squeaked. Something soft brushed Jasmine’s fingertips. Her hands closed on empty air.

"Sir Ranulph spoke of you as a lady knight," came a voice behind her. "Is that not unnatural?"

Jasmine turned and shifted her head from side to side, trying to gauge the girl’s position from her voice.
This is crazy. Nobody can turn invisible.
Yeah, just like nobody could hack up a tank using an oversized novelty letter opener. "Not with my people," she said.

A pair of foot-shaped indentations broke the flow of the bearskin. "But all those rough men and no runes to keep your honour!" exclaimed Lady Maud. "What if you were got with child?"

Jasmine edged to the side, so as not to knock the girl into the fire. "Modern birth control makes for modern attitudes. We fight and die like the men. Like them, we also –" Jasmine chose the word carefully. "-
fuck
as we please."

Lady Maud giggled.

Jasmine sprang at the source of the sound. Her arms closed around warm velvet.

The book thudded into the bearskin. Lady Maud smiled down on her. She slipped her hands behind Jasmine’s neck.

Jasmine wanted to see where the book had landed. But somehow she could only gaze up into the Real Princess’s wide green eyes.

"So…" Lady Maud stooped and, pulling her close, kissed Jasmine on the mouth. She nipped her lower lip then drew back. "Is this in accord with your Modern customs and usages?"

"Yes," stammered Jasmine. She returned the kiss, deeper this time, and let her hands drift up the girl’s back, tracing her spine. Her nails snagged imperfections in the velvet. It was thinner, rougher, than machine-woven fabric. The heat from the fire became almost unbearable.
Kissing a Real Princess.

Lady Maud twisted her lips free. Her breath was warm on Jasmine’s ear. "From whence did you come?" Now her teeth nipped at Jasmine’s neck. "I desire to visit the land of the Modern People."

The question startled Jasmine out of her daze. Was she being played? She glanced at Lady Maud. A flush ran from the girl’s cheeks, down her long throat and onto the speckled tops of her breasts. It triggered an answering heat in Jasmine. "We came through the…" She recalled the traditional name... "Puck Stone on Unicorn Hill." That much was public knowledge.

Lady Maud drew Jasmine down onto the rug. "From Fairy Land?" she purred. "Since when were elves so buxom?"

Jasmine laughed and eased the redhead onto her back. It was the most natural thing to coax a small breast free of its velvet mask. The medieval girl’s skin tasted earthy. Of peat smoke, fresh perspiration, herbs.

Lady Maud stroked Jasmine’s head, teasing out her hair. "Do you think us otherworldy?"

Jasmine looked up and eased Maud’s dress from her mottled shoulder. "You are a dream." And there, half-draped by Maud’s red hair, was the book.

With a mental sigh, Jasmine reached for it.

Lady Maud lashed out and sent the book skidding over the stone floor. With a peel of laughter, she rolled onto all fours and crawled after it.