Kirstie considered wearing her armor during the ceremony as a sign of protest, but in the end, she dressed in her blue dress. She kept telling herself that it was up to her to try and make it work. She cried a lot, and Yrsa cried with her, and she understood. Making her marry Kare was Harrold’s way of getting revenge.

In the end, Kirstie stood quietly and said nothing. When they got sprinkled with the blood of the goat sacrifice, they went off to a tent that had been set up some distance from the camp. The men would drink all the mead while the couple consummated their marriage.

“You know, this is not Frigg’s day,” Kirstie said to the priest. “You are asking for trouble.” Weddings were always conducted on Friday or Frigg’s day. Frigg was the goddess of marriage and the family. To marry on any day other than hers was an insult to the goddess.

“I know,” Toke said, and he said it in a tone of voice that suggested for the only time in Kirstie’s hearing that he was not happy with Captain Harrold’s decision, and with the whole thing. He was just following orders.

Kirstie considered running away, but she had nowhere to go.

She considered the hags of Abraxas. At least she should not have to go running off to some foreign port to kill any more of them.

Abraxas was a would-be god, son of the Greco-Roman god Janus and the Irish Celtic, Asgardian rooted goddess Morrigu. Abraxas was a god of fire and water and claimed to be a god of good and evil, but nobody ever saw the good in him. The problem was Abraxas was born roughly a hundred years before the dissolution of the gods, so he was barely counted as an adult before the gods went away—and he was supposed to go with them over to the other side but he refused to go.

When Kirstie’s Nameless god banished him from the lands of Asgard, he had a second chance. When the other godly lives Kirstie lived, Amphitrite the queen of the seas and the Greco-Roman world, Junior Amun of Egypt, North Africa, and the Middle East, and Danna, the mother goddess of the Celtic gods confined him to the British Isles, he had a third chance. He still refused to go over to the other side and created hags out of women to enforce his will. He wanted to father a new pantheon of gods. Danna had to throw him off the planet altogether.

Now that Abraxas was banished from the earth and confined to the second heavens, the Abraxas hag problem was settled as far as Kirstie was concerned. She decided it might be nice to stay home. She did her best, and in the morning, she felt that Kare was satisfied despite the impossible expectations he may have built up in his mind over the years.

Kirstie dressed in her armor and thought of it as protection from many things. She made Kare dress, and they went to Harrold.

“We need to leave this island before we are discovered,” Kirstie said. “Now that I am married, if you have anything more to say to me you have to speak to my husband.” It was her way of saying she was not planning on speaking to him ever again.

Harrold said nothing to her. He merely nodded and got the men, some of whom were still drunk, to pack everything for the voyage home. The voyage took almost two weeks due to bad winds. Kirstie looked at Toke more than once, but all he said was, “I know.” Fortunately, they did not run into any sort of storm.

Kare, who sat behind her, spent those two weeks constantly touching her back, hair, arms, and wherever he could reach. He got really annoying, and Kirstie swallowed her words many times. They hit the Norwegian coast a bit to the south and sailed up to the Trondelag. When they got back to Strindlos, a good two months after they left, they divided up the bit of loot they got. There had certainly been plenty of less profitable voyages.

Kare claimed Kirstie’s portion, and he claimed Yrsa’s, since Yrsa was Kirstie’s maid servant. Harrold got generous and gave Kare an extra portion to help him buy his own longship. He called it a wedding present. Kare stopped by the shipwrights and gave the whole amount to them before he checked the progress of the building. The ship was fully framed. It had a strong and sturdy looking mast. It looked solid, a good ship, and the planking was being added before the fixtures for the sail and the oars.

Meanwhile, Inga visited with Kirstie and the first words out of her mouth when she heard the story were, “I am so sorry.”

“It was inevitable,” Kirstie said softly. “Sadly, I have fallen in love with someone else. I only met him twice, but I love him, and I believe there is a real connection there. Wilam. He is from Northumbria, so I will probably never see him again.” She took a deep breath. “Kare is my husband now, and I need to try to be a good wife.” She almost choked saying Kare and husband in the same breath, but she was resigned and determined to make the best of it.

“Kirstie,” Kare called, and she went to him. She walked. She did not run. “Let’s go home,” he said, and Kirstie turned toward her home. He stopped her with the words, “Where are you going?”

“Home,” she said.

“I don’t live there.”

“You do now,” Kirstie responded. “That little shack you live in is not fit for a ship’s captain. I have a good farm and thralls to keep it earning a profit. Plus. I bought the two properties next door toward the long field when the families moved to Nidaros. We can lease those properties to families to work it for a portion of what they grow, or we can find a few more thralls to work the land ourselves. I have the forest in my back yard where we can hunt for skins and furs to trade. We can sell your little shack, or maybe build a warehouse there down by the water to store all our goods for trade.”

Kare thought hard about it. “You got any more money?”

Kirstie tried hard not to curl her lip as she took Kare’s hand and led him to her place. “No more money,” she said, whether that was true or not. “You are like a nobleman now, land rich and cash poor. As long as you treat the thralls and men willing to work the land with respect, we can slowly accumulate plenty of money; maybe more than you can imagine. Of course, if you drive off the help, we will gain nothing.”

She looked at him and he understood the look well enough. “I can be good to the hired help,” he said.

She said, “Better let me run the farm. After all, you will be sailing off on regular trade missions once your ship is finished, so you won’t be around. Just don’t be mean and demanding of the help. I don’t need the headache of constantly trying to make peace.”

“I’ll be good. I can be good,” Kare insisted. Kirstie would have to wait and see. She figured she would rather go hag hunting than be put in the middle of the demands and complaints and hurt feelings, and constantly having to come up with compromises. She prayed that they finished Kare’s ship real soon.