by Sandra Hill
He heard a rustling in the bedchamber and the padding of feet to the bathing chamber. “Oh, my God!” he heard her exclaim. She’d probably looked in her mirror and seen what he’d seen … the face of a woman who had been good and truly tupped. Bed-mussed hair, whisker-rasped cheeks, and chin, bruised mouth. Every man’s fantasy lover.
“What are you reading?” she asked, walking into the kitchen a short time later. Her short hair had been wetted down and combed off her face. She must have applied some tinted ointment to hide the redness of her skin, though there was no hiding the kiss-swollen lips. Barefoot, she wore a big, thigh-length tea-ing shert with the words “Navy Brat” on the front.
He glanced down at the document in front of him and said, “I do not know. What is this?”
She walked closer. “A calendar.” Then she frowned at him. “Why wouldn’t you know what a calendar is? Every country in the world has a calendar to record the days of the month.”
He frowned now, too. “But ne’er have I seen one in parchment form. Oh, I suppose the monk scholars keep track of time in their manuscripts. And farmers certainly need to follow the seasons. But this …” His words trailed off.
He was still confused, but more than that, he sensed that something important was about to happen. And it related to this calendar. Mayhap he was about to discover exactly what country he was in and why he had been spared death to be sent here.
“What is that?” he asked, pointing at some letters at the top.
“The name of the month. This is August.” She flipped through various pages and remarked, “September, October, November.”
“And those words?”
“Days of the week. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and so on. Max, you are really starting to scare me. You seem to have this Swiss-cheese kind of memory, where commonplace things have slipped through. I’m beginning to think I need to report you as a medical risk.”
He ignored her misgivings and continued his questioning. “And what is this number at the top?”
“The year.”
It was almost as if he rose outside his body then. He could see his own eyes widen with shock. He saw his mouth drop open on a gasp. He saw his body go rigid, braced for some death blow. But then he came to himself and said, “That is impossible. It is the year one thousand and ten.”
“No, it is not, and stop fooling around. It’s not funny.”
“Do I look as if I’m laughing?”
“If what you say is true, then I am more than a thousand years old. Or—oh, holy Thor! Could it be I have traveled a thousand years forward in time? That must be it. I cannot believe it. I do not believe it. But it answers so many questions.”
“Max, there is no such thing as time-travel.”
“I would think not under normal circumstances, but I am increasingly convinced that time-travel must be the answer. Inside,” he said, patting his hand over his heart, “I sense that I have finally been given an answer.”
“I repeat, there is no such thing as time-travel.”
“I repeat, give me another explanation. I was born in the year nine hundred eighty-three. I live on the family estate at Norstead. I am a trained warrior, and a good one. I own a fleet of twenty longships. I am a far-traveled adventurer. My sister Madrene runs the family farmstead nearby. I was twenty-seven in the year one thousand and ten. I went to battle with Svein Forkbeard, king of the Danes. During the battle, he fled, but all his other ships and four of mine as well were lost to the bloody Saxons. I drowned. I swear I did. Or leastways, I thought I did. When I awakened, your brother the chieftain was holding my head underwater.”
He kept shaking his head, as if to shake free of this most outlandish notion. Time-travel? Me? Impossible! But it was the first thing that made sense to him in the past sennight of senseless happenings.
“I’ll give you another explanation,” she said, sitting down in the chair next to him and patting his forearm with compassion. “You had a severe head wound. Scientists still don’t know everything about the effects of head wounds. Sometimes they defy logic. For example, there was that American woman who had been in a coma for a long time, and when she awakened she had no memory and she spoke with a British accent.”
“Is that supposed to reassure me?”
“No, I’m just saying there is a logical explanation for what is happening to you, but we don’t know what it is yet.”
“I never had a head wound and have no scars to prove it,” he insisted.
“Maybe you’re a quick healer.”
“Pfff!” was his opinion of her theory. “If this is the year and the century you say it is, then I have time-traveled. I am not barmy. Confused, yea. Shocked, yea. But I am not yet demented.”
Just then the tell-a-fone rang, jarring them both. Who would be calling her at this late hour?
“Hello,” she said, picking up the black box on the cabinet top. “Yes. Yes. Okay, he’ll be right down.” She replaced the black box on its holding tray, then looked at him. “That was your friend Cage. He’s downstairs in a taxi, waiting to take you back to the base. He says it’s important that you guys return right away.”
“How can I go back now when I have just discovered that I am a time-traveler?” Besides, with a little convincing, I might be able to manage another peaking.
“You are not a time-traveler. Max, you have to go back. Otherwise, you are going to land in a hospital or the brig. Either way, you will be out of SEALs.”
He waved a hand dismissively. “What do I care about SEALs when I have this more important issue to resolve?”
“There is nothing you can do tonight. Go back. Don’t act hastily. I’ll talk to you sometime tomorrow.”
“Perchance that is best, as you say. My father always said that unplanned actions always lead to disaster, though I do not see what could possibly be more disastrous than this.”
Within moments, though, he was walking out of the apartment with Alison and down the stairs. They must have awakened Sam, who was barking loudly behind Lillian’s closed door. Ragnor opened the front door and waved to Cage that he would be right out.
Then, in the open doorway, he kissed Alison farewell, lifting her up onto her toes. “There will be other nights,” he said against her mouth.
“Maybe,” she replied dreamily, leaning up for another kiss.
No maybes about it!
The driver of the yellow car beeped his horn.
Ragnor ignored the interruption and told her again, “There will be other nights.” Setting her away from himself, he told her, “Go inside and lock the doors after you, both of them. I will watch till you are safe inside.”
She did as he asked, and he took great pleasure in watching the sway of her arse up the steps, an arse he’d had the good fortune to become intimately familiar with tonight. Despite everything that had happened to him … or seemed to have happened … he could not be unhappy about tonight and his connection with this woman.
With a grin, he walked to the car and got inside to see an equally grinning Cage.
“Got lucky, did you, buddy?”
“More than you know.”
Chapter Twelve
Sweeping the enemy with … brooms? …
By the time Ian arrived at his office Monday morning, the pile of paperwork on his desk had reached monumental proportions. A Master Chief’s bane!
He’d been in D.C. over the weekend visiting his father and as usual suffering the constant exhortation that he go to officers’ candidate school. Being the highest-ranking enlisted man never had been good enough for Admiral MacLean. His father raised guilt tripping to new heights. In the end, Ian had told dear ol’ Dad that he’d think about it seriously, but dammit, he was happy where he was now. His personal life was the pits, but professionally, he was okay.
Two days away from the base should have resulted in rest and relaxation, but he’d returned with the mother of all headaches. Which was about to get worse.
Right off, he noticed that among the
stack of memos was an urgent request from that goofball Magnusson that he see him as soon as possible. Six times he’d come in! And it was only ten a.m.
First, he had to take care of some more important matters. Like, how the hell would he know why thirty-seven broom handles had disappeared from the various SEAL trainee buildings? Maybe someone had developed a cleaning fetish. Jeesh!
Just then, his aide, Seaman Rogers, rushed in. “Excuse me, Master Chief, sir. Welcome back. Sorry to barge in, but, holy frickin’ hell, you gotta come out to the Grinder and see what Magnusson is doin’.” The expression on the young man’s face was a mixture of amazement and bust-a-gut amusement.
Ensign Flaherty, one of the SEAL instructors, poked his head in and added, “At least we now know what happened to all the broom handles.” Flaherty was laughing so hard he could barely speak.
“Broom handles, huh? And Magnusson? What have we got here?” Ian inquired, not so amused, as he rose from his chair and proceeded to follow what ended up being a stream of chuckling men leaving the SEAL offices and heading for the exercise arena. “A Viking Mary Poppins?” He couldn’t help chuckling at his own joke.
He stopped dead in his tracks a short time later, no longer chuckling.
“Good God!” someone said behind him.
“Don’t blame God,” Ian countered, without turning around. He still stared bug-eyed at the spectacle before him. “God invented intelligence; man invented stupidity; Magnusson took stupidity to a new level.”
Magnusson was standing alone at one end of the field while forty feet away his teammates were lobbing broom handles at him, like spears. But instead of the spears hitting him, Magnusson was deftly catching them in a hand, one at a time, twirling them about in the fingertips of the same hand, and sending the spears back to his “attackers,” all within seconds.
Seaman Rogers informed Ian, “He says it’s a trick he learned in the Norselands from his grandfather, a jarl named Eric Trygvasson, and Eric’s brother Olaf.”
“Not that it matters, but what in God’s name is a jarl?”
Rogers shrugged. “Hell if I know. Something like an earl, I think. Anyhow, Magnusson says this trick comes in handy when attacked by a troop of spear men.”
“Now this trick I learned from my great-uncle King Olaf,” Magnusson yelled to his teammates.
A king now? As if anyone here gives a rat’s ass if he’s related to a king or the Pope or Genghis Khan.
Now he was throwing two spears at once and aiming them directly at the chests of Cage and Pretty Boy, who presumably were supposed to twist them agilely in their fingertips and fling them back at the dingbat. Instead, the two SEAL trainees ducked. Smart men! But even before the double spears had sailed over their heads, Magnusson threw another set. A regular spear-throwing machine he was. His teammates were laughing and ducking like crazy.
Men all around him were laughing like crazy, too, and some were actually impressed. Meanwhile, jackhammers were doing the rumba in MacLean’s head.
Enough of this nonsense! “Magnusson! Get your hairy butt over here! I swear you are going to be in Gig Squad till graduation … if you last that long.”
“Dost speak to me?” he asked, genuinely puzzled.
Ian wanted to cross his eyes in frustration. If ever he was inclined to shake a trainee silly, this was the time. “Of course I’m speaking to you. Who else would think nothing of stealing thirty-seven broom handles, making a spectacle of himself, and taking time away from real training exercises?”
“I do not have hairy buttocks … leastways, that I am aware of. That is why I wondered if you addressed me, or some other person with hairy hindquarters.”
Ian did cross his eyes then.
“And it is not a waste of time to demonstrate a skill which could be handy during battle,” the numbskull argued.
“Seen a lot of broom handles in battle lately?” MacLean asked several SEAL instructors who stood next to him, lips twitching with suppressed laughter.
“Not a one,” Ensign Brown answered.
“You missay me, chieftain,” Magnusson had the nerve to reply. “Not broom handles. Spears.”
“Seen a lot of spears in battle lately?” Ian asked the SEAL instructors.
“Nope,” they answered as one, still fighting laughter.
“Come with me,” he ordered Magnusson. “Not that I would mind chewing your ass out in public, but you have pushed some boundaries today that are going to take at least an hour for me to detail for you, and I don’t plan on doing it standing in this hot sun.”
After a brief discussion with the instructors about the morning program, Ian set off for his office with Magnusson trailing behind him. Well, not behind him. The idiot caught up with him and walked alongside him, as if they were equals.
“Actually, there are some things I need to discuss with you, too, Chieftain,” Magnusson said.
“I know. You came into my office six times this morning.”
“Where were you?”
“Out of town. Not that it’s any of your business.”
“Well, truth to tell, it is my business when your sister is involved.”
Ian stopped stock-still and turned slowly to glare at the ensign. “Am I going to have to hit you for mentioning my sister’s name?”
Magnusson frowned. “I do not know. I mean, I would not let you hit me. But, yea, you might want to hit me. I did compromise your sister, but my intentions are honorable.”
Ian growled. He was pretty sure he knew what compromise Magnusson referred to, and he was equally sure he did not want to know for sure. What could his sister be thinking, to involve herself with this joker? Never one to avoid trouble, Ian took a deep breath and demanded, “Explain yourself, and make it quick.”
“Could we not do this in private?” Magnusson asked.
Ian realized that they were drawing curious stares from passersby. He continued to walk.
“I am worried about Alison.”
“Alison?” Ian said so softly it sounded like a shout to Ragnor’s ears. “You dare to use her given name? She’s your freakin’ superior officer.” The compromise was becoming clearer and clearer to Ian, and the ramifications could be ominous for both his sister and the SEAL trainee.
Magnusson waved a hand airily.
“Why are you worried about my sister?” They entered MacLean’s office, and he slammed the door loudly behind them. He sank down into the chair behind his desk, mainly to put some distance between them. He couldn’t recall a time when he’d been so tempted to wring a man’s neck, except maybe for the slimeball that had screwed his fiancée when he’d been OUTCONUS on a field op.
Magnusson, ignoring protocol, sat down in the chair in front of Ian’s desk and sighed wearily. Apparently, broom-handle tossing was hard work. “When I was at her keep last night, there was a man loitering in the side courtyard. That on top of the stalking telephone calls, and her quarters having been entered on another occasion. Even though she called the policing man for help, I believe she needs guarding. And not just from that puny dog of her landlady’s, either.”
Ian pressed the fingertips of both hands to his eyeballs in a futile effort to calm his pounding brain. Besides, if his hands remained idle, he just might leap over the desk and throttle him-who-had-no-brain.
Taking Ian’s silence for permission to proceed, the dimwit did just that. “I understand that our SEAL teams will be going to jump school soon in far off George-hah, though I find it hard to believe that jump school is what Cage tells me it is. Surely you would not make your soldiers jump out of the sky and float to the earth like bloody birds. I for one refuse to kill myself by splattering my body in a thousand pieces; a sword to the heart would be preferable, if you ask me. Besides …” His words trailed off as he noticed Ian’s red face and bulging eyes. He concluded quickly, “That is why I needed to speak with you. Together we must needs come up with a plan to smoke out Alison’s enemy, and to keep her safe whilst doing so.”
“Do t
hey ever shut up on your planet, Magnusson?”
“Huh?”
“There is a rule about holes.”
“Is this another of your bloody motivating sayings?”
Ian glared at him, though he had to smile inside, knowing how the trainees felt about his irritating motivational quotes. “As I was saying, the thing about holes is, if you are in one, stop your damn digging.”
“Huh?” the dingo said again.
Ian counted to ten silently, then said icily, “Let me see if I understand you. One, you were in the home of a superior officer of the opposite sex last night for reasons I do not want to know. Definitely a high-level infraction of Navy rules. Two, I was aware of the Breather phone calls Alison received in the past, but you are saying they continue and that her apartment was broken into, police were called, and that last night you personally saw a man in her yard. But no one thought to let me know, least of all my sister. Three, there is a guard dog at Alison’s house that I was unaware of. Four, you are telling me that you do not choose to go to jump school. Is that the whole friggin’ story, Mister Good News?”
“Well, there is one little other thing.”
“I am afraid to ask.”
“It appears I am a time-traveler.”
Ian grinned. What a fruitcake!
“And methinks your sister is my destiny.”
Ian started to laugh then, and once started, could not stop. What else could he do?
Clean sweep it was not …
By mid-afternoon, Ragnor had run from one end of the Coronado beach to the other at least a hundred times, had completed endless numbers of pushing-ups and jump-in-jacks, had survived the O-Course three times including the Slide for Life, climbed a rope wall as tall as a small mountain five times, having fallen off only twice, and had sand in every wrinkle and orifice of his battered body. In between, he’d been in the lean-and-rest position for long periods of time, which involved the body being parallel to the ground with no sag and his weight being held up by his extended arms and tips of his boots. And he’d been told to “hydrate”—which meant drink water from a vessel attached to his belt—so many times that his bladder was about to explode. Still, the chieftain was not satisfied that he’d been punished enough. And, to give the chieftain and other instructors their due, they were in prime condition, working just as hard as the poor trainees.