LITMIR.BIZ

      Chapter One

      Wessex—902 A.D.

      “Leave me in peace,” Adelar muttered drowsily, one arm draped over the naked woman beside him. The serving wench sighed and burrowed deeper under the warm blankets laid upon the fleeces in the storage hut.

      “My lord Bayard summons you,” Godwin repeated, a wry grin on his round, perpetually pleasant face.

      “Bayard sends his gleeman to give his orders?” Adelar growled skeptically, barely opening one eye to squint at the minstrel. “I expect you to sing them, then.”

      “Alas, oh my bold lover, your game must now be o’er. My lord calls you to the hall and you must away ere break of day,” Godwin warbled, his fine voice filling the hut as he took hold of the Saxon warrior’s exposed bare leg and tugged.

      Realizing Godwin had no intention of leaving him alone, Adelar rose from the makeshift bed. “You do not rhyme well and the noon repast finished long ago,” he noted sarcastically while he drew on his breeches.

      The wench sat up, displaying a pair of enormous breasts and a pretty, pouting countenance. “You must go, my lord?” She twisted a strand of her tangled dark hair around her finger.

      Gleda was her name, Adelar recalled. She was relatively clean, had breasts like small mountains and a most enthusiastic manner, but her high-pitched voice was enough to drive him mad. Not that he had to listen to her much, of course.

      “Indeed he must,” Godwin said mischievously. “But not I, my dear, my own!” He threw himself down beside her and wiggled his eyebrows comically.

      “You had best be telling me no falsehood, Godwin,” Adelar muttered.

      The minstrel clasped his hands over his heart in mock dismay. “I, my lord? I, who am but a humble gleeman in the hall of the burhware of Oakenbrook? Of course I speak the truth, for I am honored to act as messenger to Bayard. Indeed, I am honored to breathe the same air, eat the same food—”

      “—Talk too much and rouse men from their well-deserved rest,” Adelar finished.

      “Aye, you need the rest, after what you’ve been doin’...and doin’ and doin’,” Gleda said with a giggle and a lustful look in her eye as she gazed at Adelar’s muscular body.

      Adelar bent down to pick up his tunic. “What is so important that Bayard summons me?”

      “He wants you to help him bargain with the Danes.”

      “I have no desire to be among Vikings, or Danes, or whatever you wish to call them,” Adelar replied harshly. He was happy to be of use to Bayard, but the only time he wanted to be close to the Danes was in battle. He reached for his scramasax and tucked the short sword into his belt.

      “Then you never should have let anyone know that you speak their language,” Godwin retorted, his hand straying toward Gleda’s naked breasts.

      Gleda studied Adelar warily while neatly intercepting Godwin’s caress. “You can talk to those animals?”

      “I understand them.”

      “A most fascinating tale, my buttercup,” Godwin began. “He was kidnapped by a vicious band of Vikings when he was a child and—” He stopped when he saw the warning look in Adelar’s eyes. “I shall tell you some other time.”

      “What kind of bargain does Bayard seek to make with those thieves?” Adelar demanded.

      “I am not in Bayard’s council,” Godwin answered lightly. “Nor am I his cousin. I only do what I am told to do and since Bayard was in no mood for my amusements, I think his request must be somewhat urgent.”

      “You should have said that before,” Adelar snapped. He slung his sword belt over his right shoulder and across his chest, his broad sword brushing his left thigh.

      “Will you be coming back soon?” Gleda asked.

      “Perhaps I will,” Adelar said when he saw that she was waiting for an answer. “It will depend upon what my lord decides. Or how long the bargaining takes.” He tugged on his boots. “Dagfinn probably wants to increase the Danegeld. We already pay those dogs enough money to keep them from our land.”

      “And Alfred never should have allowed the Vikings to have the Danelaw,” Godwin added somewhat wearily, as if he had heard these words many times before. “It was that, or fight forever.”

      “Then we should have fought forever. There is no honor in buying off our enemies.”

      “I am no warrior, but it strikes that me that there is no honor being dead, either,” Godwin replied.

      Adelar marched from the shed, not bothering to wait for Godwin, who might very well decide to stay with Gleda, which troubled Adelar not at all.

      As he hurried to the hall, Adelar surveyed the newly completed walls of the burh, which had been built on a rise at the junction of two rivers. Nearby, a forest of oak, beech and hazel trees was beginning to show the first signs of early spring.

      Although it was not the Saxon way to live in villages, the invasions of the Vikings and Danes had forced the Saxons to construct fortresses, an idea the recently deceased king, Alfred, had championed. Cynath, Bayard’s overlord, had been one of the first to see the wisdom and the necessity of such structures, for his lands bordered the Danelaw, a large

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