Page 4 of Thor

Fenrir saw him looking, and laughed. "A pretty pledge, though hardly necessary. You and your hammer are the property of Jarl Erik now. King Erik, if he has his way. And he will if none are strong enough to stand against him." A look passed between Fenrir and Astrid, before she ducked her head and looked away. "Come, little man. If you make a good impression on Erik at the feast, he may even give you your hammer back."

Thor followed Fenrir out of the cottage.

"Fenrir..."

Fenrir halted. "Yes, Miss Astrid?" His entire stance was expectant, hopeful. What did a creature like him hope for?

"Don't hurt him. I'd hate to have to heal him all over again. It was hard enough work the first time."

Disappointment flickered over Fenrir's face for only a moment, and then it was gone. "As you wish, Miss Astrid. Your wish is my command, of course." There was no mockery in his words.

Thor wondered if his subservience was because the girl was a witch, or because she was Jarl Erik's daughter. Curious that she had not issued the same command to Thor as she had to Fenrir. Did the girl mean to make it easier for Thor to have his vengeance for Sif's murder, in forbidding Fenrir to fight back? For the moment Thor had his hammer back, the wolf man's life was forfeit. This Thor swore.

"Whatever you think you know, you are wrong, little man," Fenrir said softly as they moved away from the cottage. "Forget Miss Astrid, for you have taken up enough of her time. If you so much as look at her again, I will kill you, no matter what her father says. Jarl Erik may rule Utgard and all of these lands, but it is Miss Astrid I am sworn to serve, which I will do to my last breath. Which will come long after yours, I promise you."

Fenrir flashed a grin, and for a moment, Thor thought there were more fangs than teeth in the man's mouth. A wolfish smile indeed.

So Jarl Erik commanded a witch and a wolf. That explained the sorcery on the battlefield, as well as this beast. If the man was so powerful, could anyone stand against him?

It was Thor's turn to grin. He'd never been one to back down from a battle, even if he was the last man standing from the raiding party that had come through the pass. The moment Erik gave him his hammer back, Thor would show both Erik and Fenrir what a true warrior was.

FOUR

"You know, you really should try the porridge one day. A hot breakfast does wonders for you when you're working in the snow all day," Lara said, ladling out a bowl for Jorunn. The site manager reminded Sibyl of Tacey, the way she took care of everyone, or tried to.

Sibyl scrunched up her nose. "No thanks. I lived with my cousin when she was introducing her baby girl to solids, and we spent months pretending to like all kinds of mush so she'd eat it. I like my cornflakes with plenty of crunch, even if it's with powdered milk. I have my coffee. That's hot enough for me." She held up her cup in a toast to morning caffeine, the miracle drug that got everyone going, even when it was minus ten outside, like today.

Jorunn laughed so hard she almost snorted her porridge. "Sounds like enough to put you off having kids for life. Is that why you're here, doing your PhD a world away from there? To escape your family, like me?"

Homesickness smote Sibyl hard. "No. I love my family, and my cousins. Even Rory, who's five now, and at school. I'm here because..." Because she'd always had her family around. Mum, or her cousins. Out here, without them, she had to do stuff for herself. Make her mark, a mark that was hers alone. "Because I want to do something that's just me, alone."

Jorunn grinned as she reached for an apple. "So you joined an expedition with a whole team of us, so you can't possibly do anything alone?" She dropped her voice into a pretty good approximation of Karl, the expedition leader. "Safety first, never go alone!"

Even Lara laughed at that. "He's right, though. Never leave camp alone. There are wolves and bears in these mountains, and you don't want to meet a wolverine, either. Unless it's Hugh Jackman. That man could share my tent any time."

"Ah, if we're talking Aussie actors, I'd prefer a Hemsworth over Hugh. Right, Sibyl?" Jorunn asked. She tossed her empty porridge bowl in the washing up tub and bit into her apple.

Sibyl felt her cheeks grow hot. "I came all the way over here for a real Viking, not some Aussie bloke pretending to be one."

Jorunn laughed again. "Oh, that's right! But if you do find a Viking body in the ice, you are not bringing him into our tent. Even if he is hotter than a Hemsworth, I draw the line at necromancy."

Sibyl choked on her cornflakes. "Don't you mean necrophilia? Necromancy is raising the dead. Necrophilia is sleeping with them."

"No to either of them, especially in our tent. Then again...if you raised him from the dead, he's not really dead, and if he's still hot, would it really be necrophilia? Theoretically..."

Sibyl smacked her arm. "Now who's considering sleeping with a corpse? We'd have to find one first, and even Karl thinks that's unlikely. But he still brought the body bag, just in case."

Jorunn tossed her apple core in the bin and headed back to the washing up tub to do her dishes. "Everybody wants to be the one to find the holy grail. Don't tell me you don't want to find one of Hemsworth's ancestors under the ice."

Nik stormed into the mess tent and slammed his mug down next to the pot of hot water. "What is wrong with you Australian girls? Always you are wanting to find that actor man here, when you will not find anything at all unless you keep your mind on your work! This is not the place to find bodies. For proper human remains to study, you must go to Egypt, where even the ancients knew how to preserve a body properly, instead of by accident like these primitive Vikings!" He let out a string of words that sounded like swearing, before stomping out of the tent, slopping coffee over his boots and swearing some more.

Sibyl turned to find Jorunn's eyes on her. "Are you still feeling sorry for him?" Jorunn asked.

"We had a pool in the office, to see how long it would take before one of his colleagues in Egypt shut him in a pyramid or something," Lara said. "Ah, we all wish he'd gone!"

Sibyl sighed. She rarely wished ill of people, but after a week of working with Saint Nik, she had to admit, "If I was working on the same dig in Egypt as him, and I knew about your pool, I would have volunteered to do it, even if he only stayed stuck in there for an hour or so."

"Only an hour or so? A thousand years is too good for him! Imagine archaeologists a thousand years from now, finding him and thinking he's a tomb robber!" Jorunn said.

---