Of all the captives from Lord Cyneric's estate, I was the last to wake the next day. We were all crowded into a tent-like structure made from animal skins stretched over a frame of thin, flexible saplings. A large fire pit, filled with dimming embers, sat in the center of the space and my fellow prisoners clustered tightly around it. When I moved to get closer to the heat, someone casually shoved me away and I, still drowsy from a terrible night's sleep, just sat back on the dirt floor, pulling the woolen tunic one of the Viking women had given me tightly around my body and wondering if I was ever going to be warm again. My stomach began to rumble as the smell of something delicious – was that bacon? – began to waft into the shelter.

Within a couple of minutes two girls entered with large wooden plates piled high with chunks of dark bread in their hands. A third girl followed with a little wooden cask that she lifted with a loud grunt onto the single piece of furniture – a crude wooden table – in the hut. I watched as the bread was passed out, snatching my own piece from the hand of one of the girls and stuffing it into my mouth with haste, before anyone could think to steal it from me. And after bread came a heavy clay mug of light, amber-colored liquid. I leaned down, sniffing, and wrinkled my nose.

"What is this?" I asked, and at once I felt a number of pairs of eyes on me.

And just as quickly as the attention had focused on me it was swept away, and onto a new target when someone walked in through the leather flap behind me. The girls bearing bread and strange drinks immediately bowed their heads respectfully, followed by the other prisoners. All except me, because I still hadn't been in the past long enough to learn the reflexive social niceties of the place. I turned around, shielding my eyes from the bright morning light and saw, silhouetted in the doorway, a broad and familiar figure. Ragnar.

"It's ale, girl," he said, taking the mug from my hands and draining it before handing it back to one of the servant girls with a nod to fill it again. "And if you knew what was good for you, you'd take your sustenance before questioning its bringers."

"Ale?" I asked, confused. "For breakfast?"

Were the Vikings trying to get the prisoners drunk? And if so, why? I'd thought we were going to be used to work, but how could we work efficiently if we were all stumbling around wasted? These questions and more ran through my mind, distracting me from the fact that there was a new tension in the air. A few moments later, as the Jarl sternly declined to answer my question, I looked around to discover that everyone was staring at me.

"What?" I asked, mildly annoyed. "I just asked a question. I was just wondering why –"

"COME WITH ME!"

Before I even realized what was happening, Ragnar had clamped one of his enormously strong hands onto my arm and whisked me out into the chilly morning.

"What are you doing?" I protested, trying unsuccessfully to twist my arm out of his grip as a natural anger at being hauled away like a misbehaving toddler rose up in my chest. "Let me go! What the fuck are you – I just asked a question! ALL I DID WAS ASK A – OH! Oh my GOD!"

Ragnar, leader of this freezing and godforsaken camp, seemingly beloved and respected by his people, had plunged my face full-on into a fresh snowdrift. And now he was standing back, trying not to laugh at me as I panted and clenched my fists with the shock of the cold snow.

Like my mother, I don't lose my temper often. There are people who have known me for years who have never seen me lose it. But when I do - again, just like my mum – I really do. And nothing infuriates me more than people who seem to think it's fine for them to treat others in a way that, were the same treatment meted out to them, would make them start ripping off heads. What right did Ragnar have to shove my face in a snow-bank? What universal set of laws allowed him to humiliate me like that for asking a simple question?

"Oh my God," I whispered a second time, when my ability to speak returned. "Did you really just rub my face in the snow for asking a question, Ragnar? Did that really just –"

I felt my head suddenly jerked back, then, and a sharp pain at the nape of my neck. The Viking had a handful of my hair clutched tightly in his hand, and he was leaning in very close to my face now, close enough so I could see the individual strands of dark copper-colored stubble on his dimpled chin.

"Jarl," he whispered to me, and I could see from the look on his face that he was no longer amused in any way by what was happening between us. "You will address me, girl, as Jarl. Do you understand that you have no status here? That whoever you were where you came from, you are no longer that person here, with us? You're not even a thrall here! You're a prisoner, of no more value than a pig. Less value, I reckon, as we can't make tasty hams out of you. Many a Jarl would have killed you for speaking to me the way you just spoke to me in that –"

I made a sound then, halfway between a laugh – because it was all so absurd, and a sob – because I could tell the Jarl wasn't joking, not even a little. My anger was aimed as much at myself as it was at him and his manhandling. I needed to get home. I was in the 9th century. I should have been passive, acquiescent, waiting for my moment quietly and without giving any of the Vikings a hint that I even wanted to leave.

"I'm sorry," I said, flicking my eyes down so as not to seem so confrontational. "I didn't mean to offend you – or anyone. It's just that we don't drink ale for breakfast where I'm from and I, um –"

"You should be grateful for the ale –"

"Yes, I'm sor –"

"Even as you apologize you speak over me!" Ragnar shouted, exasperated. "The water isn't always good here, girl. The ale saves us the upset bellies, sometimes worse. It's daytime ale, light and less prone to making a man sleepy or wayward. Do you think we spend our days drunk?"

"No," I shook my head vigorously. "No of course not. I – " I paused, because that actually was what I'd thought. I remembered some of my studies, though, as Ragnar told me the ale they drank in the daytime was weak. People in the past had drunk mildly alcoholic drinks over plain water, because the process of turning them mildly alcoholic tended to kill off the bugs that caused illness. I knew none of the Vikings would be able to tell me precisely why the ale was safer to drink than water, but they knew it was and that was all that mattered.

"I'm sorry," I repeated. "It was my mistake. I didn't understand. I'm sorry, Ragnar."

"Jarl. You must address me as Jarl, girl, it's as it is."

It's as it is. I'd heard one of the men on our trek back to the Viking camp the day before use the odd phrasing. "Yes," I said softly. "Yes, Jarl."

As hard as I tried, though, it was impossible for me to keep the fact that I was deeply offended by what had just happened entirely out of my body language. When Jarl Ragnar loosened his hand on my hair and helped me to stand up straight again there was a stiffness in my body that I just couldn't force away.

"You're so angry, Emma," he commented, and I saw that his own anger seemed to be gone. Perhaps the freedom to shove the person who made him angry into a snowdrift helped with that? "I don't know that I've ever met a woman so willing to spit fire at such small things."

Small things?! I wanted to shout. No, I didn't want to shout. I wanted to suddenly develop the strength to drag his ass out of a roomful of people and chuck him into the snow. Then we'd see how 'small' he really thought those things were.

"Look at you," he laughed, touching my cheek – gently that time. "Your cheeks burn pink. Even as you speak softly, I see the truth in your face. You're beautiful."

It took me a few seconds to understand that Jarl Ragnar had, in fact, just thrown in a casual 'you're beautiful' at the end of his comment. It threw me off balance, too. That melting sensation came over me the way it does when someone – especially an attractive male someone – pays you a compliment. I didn't want to feel that way about a man who'd just rubbed my face in the snow.

"Oh," I said, and then coughed because I didn't know what else to say right away. "Um. Well –"

He laughed again and again there was a maddening softening somewhere inside me at the sound of it. "Willing to fight a Jarl in the snow, but not willing to hear herself called beautiful?" He smiled. "Perhaps you're no woman at all?"

"It's just odd," I said. "For you to call me that – what you just called me – after I thought you were going to rip my head off."

Ragnar removed a large, dark fur from around his shoulders, revealing another one directly beneath it. "Here," he said, wrapping it around me. "I brought this for you. Are you hungry, Emma? I can't offer much, not during this season, but we have some dried fish in the feasting hall, and some salted pork left over from the feast last night. Would you like some?"

I looked up – because everyone had to look up to Ragnar, the man was insanely tall – and tried to figure him out. Was he toying with me?

"What is it?" He asked as he began to lead me to the feasting hall. "You need to learn to take a gift when it's offered, girl."

He was right. I did need to learn how to do that. We weren't far from the tree, but I had no idea how many days it was going to be before I could get back to it – I needed to keep up my strength.

The feasting hall was a sturdier building than the one in which I'd spent the night, long and narrow and built of logs not more than 3 or 4 inches in diameter. It was gloomy inside, the way all the Viking dwellings were without electrical light, and lit with the chunky, slightly off-smelling candles that dripped a greasy substance onto the earth underneath them.

The Jarl sat me down at a long wooden table and signaled to a woman standing near the door. "Bring her what she wants," he said. "Bread, dried fish or pork. And ale," he grinned down at me. "The girl loves ale."

And with that, he left. Make no mistake, I was genuinely grateful for the opportunity not just to eat but to sit in a warm-ish building (a fire blazed in a stone fire-pit not ten feet away from me), but it wasn't until Jarl Ragnar left that I realized I'd been expecting him to eat with me.

"Aye," said the woman who had been instructed to bring me what I wanted. "He's a pretty one, isn't he? Don't look so sad, he never does this – not even with the Northwomen!"

"Is that true?" I asked, annoyed with myself for feeling so pleased.

The woman nodded. "It is. Our Jarl has taken a shine to a prisoner – it is the talk of the camp this morning! Now – do you want bread and butter, too?"

Pleased or not, I ate with one thing on my mind and that was getting back to 2017 and calling my friends and family, who by now would surely be convinced something terrible had happened. Jarl Ragnar was gorgeous, and it was impossible not to be taken in by the sense of natural authority he effortlessly projected, but flirtation could not be my priority. As I tentatively chewed on one of the dried fish the Viking woman brought me, I resolved to spend the rest of the day scouting the camp. I didn't know the exact route back to the tree, but I knew it was close – and I knew that the Vikings weren't just going to let me go. Which meant I had to learn a little about their routines and just how secure their encampment was.

The second I stepped outside of the feasting hall, though, I was met with a stout, barrel-chested man who, after I brushed past him, began to follow me closely. I picked up my pace – he matched it. I took a sudden turn down a path worn into the frozen grass – he took the same sudden turn.

I spun around then, eyebrows raised. "What?"

"Jarl Ragnar says I'm to watch the prisoner," he replied, and something about the slow pace at which the words left his mouth told me he might not be all there, "and make sure she doesn't run away. I am Kiarr."

I sighed. But I kept walking. So far, Kiarr had followed me. Perhaps I could still get a sense of the boundaries of the Viking settlement, and the paths that led away from it, with my new companion on my heels.

No such luck. The minute I left the tight arrangement of dwellings and headed away, Kiarr grabbed my wrist and stopped me. He wasn't going to negotiate, either, I could see as much on his face. His Jarl had given him a task to do and he was going to do it.

"Well what am I supposed to do?" I asked him. "Where am I supposed to go? I was only trying to go for a little walk after break –"

"No walking."

"OK," I agreed. "No walking. Fine. So, as I said, what am I supposed to do?"

Kiarr shrugged at that and held his ground. It didn't matter what I did, as long as it didn't involve stepping outside the boundaries of the settlement. If that was the case, I wanted to be somewhere close to a fire. Winter's cold fingers were already creeping underneath my tunic and caressing the back of my neck.

As it was obvious Kiarr wasn't going to be any help I just turned around and headed back to where we'd just come from, hoping to find the prisoner's sleeping quarters again, hopefully with a roaring fire inside. But none of the buildings had markings or signs of what their function was, so I mostly just wandered around, not even having to pretend I was lost, and kept my eyes and ears on full alert for information.

It was as passed one of the larger dwellings that I came to a sudden stop when I thought I heard a certain word being spoken inside it.

"Eirik."

Eirik. I knew that word. I knew that name. The Viking who fathered Paige's baby, the reason she came back to this place. I pretended to be examining my foot so I could lean in closer and try to hear more. And upon doing so I realized that the voice I could hear belonged to Jarl Ragnar.

That was all I needed to know. I strode to the leather flap that functioned as a door, pulled it back, and walked inside.

"Rag – uh, Jarl?"

It was not well lit inside the little dwelling, but I could see two figures, one sitting on a wooden chair, the other sprawled out on a pile of furs. The second figure was unmistakably Ragnar, as no one else was that size. As for the second, I had no idea. And both were looking at me.

"Kiarr!" The Jarl shouted and at once my companion entered, lowering his head in Ragnar's direction.

"Yes, Jarl?"

"Why is she in here? Did I ask you to let her into my private –"

Jarl Ragnar didn't even have to finish his sentence before Kiarr was dragging me away.

"Wait!" I screeched. "Just wait! Hold on! I know the person you're talking about. Eirik. I know Eirik!"

I didn't know Eirik. I didn't even know if they were talking about the same Eirik I had in mind. But if they were, then there was a chance, perhaps, for me to hear news of my friend.

"Stop," the Jarl commanded Kiarr, who immediately did just that. "What is it you say, Emma? You know Jarl Eirik? But you're not one of us, how is it that you know –"

"I know his, uh, his wife. Yes, his wife – Paige, she is a very close friend of mine. We –"

Ragnar held up one of his big, scarred hands, shutting me up, and turned to the man sitting next to him. "Did Jarl Eirik marry? Do we know who?"

I didn't actually know if Paige and Eirik were married, but I suspected that the Vikings would be confused by a term like 'baby daddy.' Marriage made it sound more serious, and even if they hadn't married, I needed to say whatever I could to increase the likelihood of hearing from – or maybe even seeing – Paige. I missed her – quite a bit more than I was willing to admit. I wanted to apologize more fully than I had done for disbelieving her when she first told me about Caistley. Also, I wanted her advice and maybe her help to get home. She knew this place and its people far better than I did.

The man sitting with Jarl Ragnar – smaller by quite a bit but with an air of seriousness about him – nodded. "At the end of the summer, I believe. She's given him a baby, a –"

"A son!" I broke in, desperate to prove I wasn't just making things up. "A boy, Paige had a boy. His name is Eirik, too."

Ragnar looked to the other man again and he nodded.

"Yes, I believe it was a son. And Eirik, same as his father. How is it that you know these things, girl?"

I saw something in Jarl Ragnar's body language when his companion addressed me casually. A slight blanching, maybe? Whatever it was, the other man saw it, too, because he immediately straightened his back and asked me again, more respectfully the second time.

"Please tell us how it is you know Jarl Eirik."

"This is Fiske," Ragnar told me, getting to his feet and leading me to a second chair. "One of my closest advisors. Now please, tell us of your relationship with Jarl Eirik."

"I – uh, well the truth is I don't know Jarl Eirik. It's his wife I know. Paige. We're from the same, um, place."

"I heard Jarl Eirik married a foreigner," Fiske weighed in. "Not one of the East Angles, either – a real foreigner. I seem to remember some talk of her being from the south, across the sea. Perhaps even the southeast."

"The southeast?" Ragnar replied, chuckling. "Across the sea to the southeast? It's impossible. But what you say about the south could be truth – this one is not an East Angle herself, nor a Northwoman. She hasn't been forthcoming on the point of her homeland."

Fiske glanced up at me again, and now my eyes had adjusted to the low light I could see the penetrating intelligence in his gaze. I was being appraised, judged to be trustworthy – or not. "Are you and this Paige from the same place, then, is that it?" He asked quietly.

I knew where the questioning was going, but I had to give the answer I did, because I needed to see Paige. I needed Ragnar and his advisors to believe it was important.

"Yes," I replied.

"And where is this place?"

"It's – it's quite far away," I stammered, before latching onto something Fiske had said. "The south, as you said. Across the sea. Yes, the south."

"Why do you sound like you're just repeating what I said a moment ago?" He shot back. He wasn't speaking loudly or aggressively, but I knew I was being interrogated all the same.

I coughed and swallowed, forcing the breath slowly out of my lungs, trying to gather myself. "I'm not repeating you," I responded a few seconds later. "I am from the south, across the sea. So is Paige."

Fiske stared at me, saying nothing. He stared at me for so long I started to fidget with discomfort. Eventually he seemed to have gleaned something about me that provided him with a measure of reassurance and he gave me a quick nod. "Well then, perhaps we'll be able to check your story soon, as Jarl Ragnar is to travel north to meet with Jarl Eirik."

I bit my lower lip and closed my eyes briefly, refusing to show how happy Fiske's words had just made me. I knew one thing, as the Vikings told me of their upcoming journey and I tried to react casually: if I couldn't find my way back to the tree before they left to go north, then I had to go with them. I had to see Paige.

"You're going to meet with them?" I asked, to make sure I wasn't misunderstanding something. "To meet with Eirik – and Paige?"

"Aye, girl," Ragnar started, but just as he was about to continue Fiske coughed pointedly.

"Jarl, perhaps it's best if we leave discussion of your plans until later?"

The man was small and pale next to Ragnar – his mousey-brown hair thin on his scalp and his hands and fingers delicate and fine, like a woman's. It's not that I thought Fiske hostile, not exactly. It's that I sensed an utter focus on the tasks at hand – a focus I did not quite sense from Ragnar himself – not when I was around, anyway.

"Yes," Ragnar responded, his voice a mix of both annoyed and slightly sheepish. "Of course. Kiarr, take the captive to the prisoner's dwelling. No, take her to the women at the cooking pits. She can help to prepare the food."

"Jarl!" I exclaimed, before Kiarr dragged me off. "Would it be alright if Kiarr took me to the beach first? Just for a little while – seeing the sea would help me to feel less frightened."

Something in me knew that Ragnar would react protectively if I told him I was scared. It wasn't a lie – I was scared. I was also intent on getting my bearings in the camp, figuring out what direction was north, south, east and west, and trying to pick which path led back to the tree.

Ragnar looked at me, as if about to allow the trip to the beach, but then at the last second he glanced across the table towards Fiske.

"No," he replied a moment later. "You're a prisoner, Emma. You don't get to go for walks on the beach while the others toil. Take her to the cooking pits, Kiarr."

Damnit.

Petulantly, I tried to yank my arm away from Kiarr as he marched me away, but all that did was cause him to sink his fat fingers even deeper into my flesh.

"Ow!" I screeched. "Stop it! You're hurting me!"

But Kiarr didn't even seem to hear me. When we arrived at the cooking area – open to the winds but covered with a roof of branches and straw held up by wooden poles and thick enough to keep the weather out at the same time as it was thin enough to let the smoke dissipate – Kiarr shoved me towards a red-faced woman who seemed to be in charge. She wore a rough linen apron over her tunic, and it was smeared with filth.

"Jarl says she's to stay here," Kiarr told her and she sighed heavily, as if Kiarr had just told her she had fifteen minutes to train me in the art of diamond cutting.

"Doesn't the Jarl know that I'm busy?" The woman asked plaintively, looking to me as well as to Kiarr, as if I had something to do with the situation. "I've barely time to make sure these foolish girls don't burn everything to a cinder – now I have prisoners to tend to? Does the Jarl know how –"

Kiarr didn't respond with words. No, Kiarr simply raised one meaty fist above his head and the red-cheeked woman ducked away, understanding she would get no sympathy from him.

"Fine," she shrugged, still wearing a look of being immensely put-upon on her face. "You can prepare the sneeps. Here."

I found myself shoved towards a table piled high with a mound of short, pale root vegetables that looked a little like misshapen parsnips. And as I stood there staring, wondering what to do with them, lady red-face shoved a knife into my hand and opened her eyes wide at me, the way you do when someone is failing to understand something incredibly simple.

"Well, girl?!" She yelled, causing me to cringe away from the smell of her breath as she got closer to my face. "Are you dull? You understand how to prepare a sneep, do you not?"

"Yes," I replied stiffly, because I did not feel I'd done anything to deserve getting yelled at by some dirt-smeared Viking with terrible dental hygiene, even if I didn't actually have any idea how to prepare sneeps. "I do."

"Well get on with it then!" She barked, slapping me hard on the back.

I put my hands softly on the table in front of me, breathing as I had done earlier when I needed to keep my emotions under control – slowly in through the nose, and then out through the mouth - like I'd been taught in the meditation class one of my friends at Grand Northeastern had insisted I take with her.

The knife in my hand was blunt. So blunt I doubted it could have drawn blood with it even if I tried – so murdering my new boss was out of the question. As, it seemed, was peeling the odd, pallid things she'd referred to as sneeps. Nonetheless, I tried. I bent over the table, clutching a root in one hand, and trying to use the edge of the knife to peel the skin off it, like one would with a carrot. The blade slid uselessly down the vegetable and I tried again, pressing harder that time. And again and again, each time using more force, until a thin shaving came off. It was going to take hours.

I looked around as I peeled, observing other young women in the cooking area, all hard at work chopping enormous chunks of flesh into smaller pieces or stirring pots of admittedly delicious-smelling liquids set over open fires or kneading dark lumps of dough on wooden tables the surfaces of which were worn smooth with their labor.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING!"

I jumped about three feet into the air as the head cook screeched directly into my ear. Not that I even had time to think about responding before she snatched the knife out of my hand and waved it in my face.

"Are you deaf, girl? Is that it? Is the Jarl sending deaf girls to me now?! Why must I –"

Angry, I snatched then knife back out of her hand, which caused all the other girls to stop whatever it was they were doing and stare at me, waiting to see what my punishment would be.

Not that I intended to let their boss lady deal out any kind of punishment. When she reached to take the knife back from me once more I held it above her head – she was quite a bit shorter than me – and she reacted by punching me in the stomach. I doubled over, groaning, stupidly not having expected it.

"Fuh –" I wheezed, trying to get my breath back. "Fuh –, fuhhh –"

"Fuh, fuh, fuh," the cook giggled, mocking me and sending my rage level spiking.

"FUCK YOU!" I finally shouted, when the air returned to my lungs. "Fuck you! You fucking –"

She went for me before I could finish, but I saw her coming and threw the useless knife aside so I had both hands free to shove the cook to the ground and jump on her, raining sloppy but somewhat effective blows down on her head. When she wrapped her hands around my neck and began to squeeze the breath out of me, though, I stopped hitting her and clawed at her fingers, digging my nails into her flesh until she screamed. She didn't let go, though, and I could feel myself starting to lose consciousness.

Before the darkness at the periphery of my vision could take over, I suddenly found myself lifted clean off the cook by the scruff of my wool tunic. And then the cook herself was snatched up from the ground and a loud voice boomed through the cooking pit.

"WHAT IS GOING ON HERE? INGA! WHAT IS HAPPENING?!"

Jarl Ragnar. He had both of us by the backs of our tunics, practically dangling in the air. Inga, the crazy cooking-pit Viking, was still eyeballing me. I swung out wildly and missed, and the Jarl gave me a single hard shake – hard enough to temporarily dampen my anger at Inga.

I couldn't see his face but I could hear his heavy breathing and I could sense his – not quite his anger, not just yet, but his disbelief.

"One of you best start explaining at once," he snapped. "Inga we've spoken of this! I've already had to ask you to go easier on your girls. And I the Jarl! I who should be dealing with the fitness of my warriors and the plans of my raids – you've forced me to come to the cooking-pits too many times for it to be amusing any longer!"

Inga hung her head. I did not, because I didn't feel I'd done anything wrong.

"You send me such useless girls," Inga burbled, managing to sound both obsequious and presumptuous at the same time. "And Jarl, I –"

"Enough!" He barked, suddenly letting go of Inga so she crumpled to the floor. "I swear it by Thor's fist, woman, if you speak so much as another word I'll whip you myself!"

The Jarl wasn't kidding, that much was clear. Even more so when he set me down roughly and caught me smiling.

'And YOU!" He growled. "I am starting to suspect you're as crazy as the old man in my home village, who spends his days laughing at the sky. What's got you chuckling like an old man then, Emma? And why are you giving my cook trouble?"

What could I say? That I was grinning helplessly because of his use of the phrase 'by Thor's fist'? No, I could not do that. Crazy or not, I was aware that it would be a bad idea to tell the Jarl I found his swearing hilarious. Besides, I was still incensed at Inga.

"I was doing exactly what she told me to do, Jarl," I replied, not quite managing to keep the indignant anger out of my tone. "She told me to prepare the, uh – the sneeps. So I was preparing sneeps. I was –"

"Preparing sneeps!" Inga cut in, yelling again. "Preparing sneeps! Girl you were doing something to those sneeps but it wasn't preparing them for the stew! She didn't chop a single one, Jarl, the whole time she –"

"I WAS PEELING THEM!" I shouted back, immediately regretting the volume of my response and quieting down. "I'm sorry to yell, Jarl, but what she says isn't true. I mean, I was peeling them, that part is true, but I don't see how –"

"You were?" The Jarl asked, cocking his head at me curiously like I'd just told him I was casting spells on the sneeps. "Peeling them, girl? Why? What is it to peel a sneep, anyway?"

"She was, Jarl!" Inga piped up. "Fair rubbing the knife down them like she was cleaning a deerskin. Dull she is, as dull as my husband."

I bit back a comment on the necessity of a man's stupidity if he was going to take on a horror like Inga for a wife and replied once again, that yes, I had been peeling the vegetables.

Inga knocked her fist against her skull, a gesture I actually recognized as the further accusation of 'dullness' that it was. "We cut sneeps, girl," she told me, speaking slowly the way one does to a child, and miming chopping with the side of her hand. "Chop chop, into pieces. You understand, now?"

"And you didn't notice that whole time?" I asked sarcastically. "Really, Inga? Are you sure you didn't just let me peel all those sneeps just so you'd have an excuse to yell at me? Because you seem to really enjoy yelling at –"

My tone was designed to piss her off, and it had. She snatched out for me, trying to grab my arm, and the Jarl shoved her away so hard she landed on her ass. Then he rolled his eyes, sighed, and grabbed me up by the tunic again, dragging me outside.

"Finish the vegetables," he called back to Inga. "Or I'll see to it you don't sit comfortably for a moon."

I considered struggling, I really did. But the truth was I was tired. The Jarl was the Jarl – even I with my idiotic modern ways, was beginning to understand that. If he wanted an explanation, he would ask. If not, he wouldn't. In the meantime, there was little to do but dangle from his grip, like a kitten in its mother's teeth.

The Jarl kept going, past his own roundhouse, past the feasting hall, out beyond the boundary of the camp, currently marked on that side with a deep, wide ditch that he leapt over with ease, even with me hanging off one arm.

"Where are we –" I started, when we got to the top of the beach and he kept going, down to water's edge. Before I could finish he'd freed me from his grip and I turned, eying him, waiting to see what he was going to do to me.

And what Jarl Ragnar did was fix me with a stern look that lasted all of five seconds before he suddenly burst into a fit of helpless laughter. He looked even more handsome than usual when he laughed.

I waited for him to finish. And when he did, and I thought I might ask what was so funny, he started up again.

"The look –" he giggled, stopping to crack up again. "The look on her – on her – ha ha ha – did you see the look on Inga's face!? Did you see it? She wasn't –"

He broke off again, exploding into another gale of laughter, his whole body shaking with it.

Ragnar gasped and took a deep breath, in the midst of his laughing fit. "Gods, Emma, was she angry! None of the cooking-pit girls will so much as squeak at Inga, she's got them as scared as mice. And you – you –" he chuckled helplessly, only managing to get it under control about 30 seconds later – "she wasn't expecting you, was she?"

And as so often happens when you're witness to another person lost in mirth, I began to crack a small smile, too. Inga had looked pretty shocked. Still, it was difficult for me to find the situation quite as funny as Ragnar seemed to.

"You let her do that?" I asked, when his giggles seemed to die down. "You let her treat the other girls like that?"

Ragnar was bent over, hands on his knees, trying to get himself together. But he directed a suddenly skeptical eye in my direction when I questioned him about Inga's treatment of her workers.

"My concern is whether or not my people have good food on the feasting table, Emma. And they do. So there is no reason for me to interfere with how things are done in the cooking pits. A Jarl who is seen to be concerning himself too often with the domestic tasks will lose the respect of his clan."

I could have kept questioning him – indeed, the part of me that is never satisfied with pat answers dearly wanted to. But I needed to stay as far away from the Viking Jarl's bad side as possible.

"You don't like my answer," he commented, having seen the look on my face. "Do the warriors prepare the food where you come from, Emma? Do the women fight in battle? Is that how it is down south and east, across the sea?"

"The warriors don't prepare the food, you're right," I replied. "But we don't have so many warriors down south and east, and there are a lot of men who cook meals for their families. And yes, some of the women do fight in battle. It's –"

Ragnar scoffed loudly. "Some advice for you, girl. If you're going to lie, make your lies believable. No land that makes its women into its warriors will survive."

He wasn't wrong, not from his perspective. Combat in Ragnar's world was still of the hand-to-hand variety. Size and strength were the deciding factors in who won a battle. And I knew there was no point in trying to explain advanced weapons to him, or how women were just as capable of pressing buttons and pulling triggers as men. So I just nodded, not in total agreement but as a signal that I was conceding the point.

"You want to carry a sword, girl, is that it? Here, try mine."

And with that, Jarl Ragnar removed the sword that he wore strapped around his waist at all times. It looked large in his hands – longer and broader than I would have expected – but it looked absurd next to me. He balanced the tip in the sand and leaned the hilt towards me and as soon as I had wrapped my hands around it I knew it was going to be too big for me to wield with any grace.

"No," I said, pushing it back. "It's OK. I don't need to –"

"Pick it up," Ragnar insisted. "Go on."

Challenged directly, my pride got the better of me. I gripped the hilt with one hand and tried to lift the sword. It was incredibly heavy – much heavier than I would have guessed – and it barely moved. I used a second hand and managed to get it off the ground by a foot or two.

"There," I said, looking Ragnar in the eye. "I can –"

"Swing it," he cut in, grinning. "You can't, can you?"

He was right. I couldn't. "We don't use swords where I come from," I told him as he took it back and refastened it at his waist.

"Well we do," he replied amiably. "And you can barely lift one, let alone swing it at an enemy. Don't look so offended, Emma – did you expect anything else? I'm bigger than you, and stronger by far. Did you really think you would be able to wield a Jarl's sword?"

I looked out to sea, at the dark gray waves and the whitecaps in the distance, unable to think of what to say.

"The beach," Ragnar said, joining me in looking out across the water. "You said you wanted to come to the beach and here you are. Perhaps I am not as terrible a monster as you would have it?"

He took the fur that he carried draped over one arm, then, and I saw that it was the one he had given me earlier. It must have fallen off in the tussle with Inga. Ragnar wrapped it around my shoulders, pulling the leather ties tight at the front with surprising tenderness.

"You miss your home," he said quietly, after making sure the fur was secured. "Look, I can see it there on your face. You think of home."

The Jarl was eerily accurate in his mind-reading. I was thinking of home. Specifically, I was thinking of England, where, confusingly, I was standing at that exact moment. But it was not 9th century England I thought of. It was my England, the country where I knew my parents were worrying about me, wondering where I was.

"You're right," I said, as the high wind from the sea blew my hair off my face. "I am."

"Why did you leave it?"

As I began to reply, the Jarl led me a few paces back to where the driftwood piled up at the top of the beach, and sat me down on a log bleached pale by the elements.

"I'm not sure," I replied. "Well, maybe that's not true. I was having a difficult time. I didn't really mean to leave."

And just like that, as the words 'I didn't really mean to leave' left my mouth, my eyes welled up with unexpected tears. I tried to blink them away but they were too voluminous and instead of disappearing they just spilled down my cheeks, freezing before they could reach the corners of my mouth.

Instead of offering me comforting words, or pretending he understood what I was talking about, Ragnar turned my face towards him and looked right at me for a few seconds. I searched his eyes, looking for a meaning behind what he was doing – was it another question? Another challenge? It didn't seem to be either of those things. What it seemed to be was a kind of seeing – an acknowledgement. And when the seconds had passed he used the softer linen of his shirt, pulled out from under one heavy shearling sleeve, to wipe my cheeks.

It was one of the most careful gestures I have ever experienced from another human being, so perfectly attentive that I was unable, in my strange modern embarrassment at honest emotion, to deal with it. I turned away as Ragnar dried my face, and then I changed the subject.

"Is it true that you're going to see Eirik?" I asked. "He's north of here, with Paige?"

The Jarl gave me a harder look, then, and narrowed his eyes. I hoped he didn't blame me for looking away a moment before. "Fiske thinks I shouldn't talk to you about any of this," he said. "I wonder – is he right?"

"Do you think I'm a spy?" I asked, laughing at the idea. "Me, a weak little woman – as you so thoroughly pointed out with the sword? How could I –"

"Ah!" Ragnar stopped me. "Lifting a sword is one thing. Your arms are not as strong as mine, Emma, but your mind may be stronger by half. It's a stupid man who assumes a woman his lesser because she can't best him in combat. And Fiske is right, you seem reluctant to give details of where it is you come from."

"I just want to see my friend!" I replied. "I miss her. There are things I need to discuss with her that I cannot discuss with anyone else. Besides, she's married to Jarl Eirik and is the mother of his child. Do you think she has a nefarious plot, too?"

"I've never met her," Ragnar said. "So I can't speak to her plots. Do you feel that, Emma? Do you feel the way the wind changes?"

I lifted my head up, then, and focused my senses outwards. The Viking was right, the wind had picked up.

"Look," he said, pointing out to sea, "look at the tops of the waves – do you see the way the foam blows backwards at the peak?"

I followed the direction of his finger with my gaze and saw what he was describing, the mist blowing back even as the waves drove forward. "Does it mean something?"

"It means bad weather," Ragnar replied, concerned. "A storm – it will be here before night falls. We have food to last us, but we didn't expect a winter like this in the Kingdom of the East Angles. I'll have the fire-pits stocked high with firewood and the roundhouses lashed to the ground-posts, but it feels bad. Do you feel it right now, in the air?"

Once again I tried to divine the information it seemed Ragnar was receiving from the wind much more clearly than I was.

"I don't know," I told him. "I don't think so. It just feels really... windy."

"Come," he said, standing and reaching for my hand. "You distract me, Emma – perhaps Fiske is right about you?"

As we began to make our way back into the camp I tried to ask the Jarl what he meant by that, but the wind was blowing too hard, I don't think he heard me.