Hvitserk leaned his head back, drinking in the sunshine with his face as his camel ambled across the sand. It may have been a few centuries, but he was still a Northern boy at heart, and this heat never really sat right in his blood. At times it was wonderful and he felt like a happy house cat in the sun. Other times he wanted to peel off his skin to expel the infernal heat. Danika would remind him how lucky he was. He could not be burned by the sun the way he normally would if he were not time frozen. No matter how many hours they rode in the blazing sun, Hvitserk's skin remained milky white. It was a topic of jokes for many of their travelling companions.

"How can I be frozen when I feel like a cooked egg in a pan?" he complained.

"Still happy I suggested we go on this trip?" Danika pulled her camel alongside his, resting her head, covered in a scarf, on his shoulder. As a testament to his discomfort Hvitserk, the biggest cuddle addict and hug dealer on the planet four centuries running, pushed her head away.

"It's too hot for that, Dani."

Danika ran through the city streets of Venice, weaving between the many merchants and tourists, ducking under awnings and around carts. She nearly upended a person with a basket of bread who yelled at her, making her slow her run to a less disruptive pace. She and Hvitserk had only just arrived in Venice, and he was still looking for lodgings while she got the lay of the land. It was in that pursuit that she overheard the news. She just needed to find him to share it. He's going to be so excited.

She found him near the Grand Canal, asking around, and she put on the brakes before she barrelled him into the canal. Pulling to a stop right in front of him, much to the surprise of the person he was talking to, who turned away with a disapproving look and vanished into the crowd. Pulling her into his side and squeezing her arm, he smiled down at her.

"For someone who is such a good actress, I do not think that man will give us lodging given your-" he popped a kiss on her nose, "-unladylike behavior."

"Do you mind?" she stuck out her chin, settling her hands on his chest, wearing a tunic which had to be at least fifty years old. It was sun faded and she could name the year of every tear she had mended on it.

"I did not say that," he smiled that perfect smile, the one that had made her leave the woods of Kattegat to see. "Now what has you running like someone set your hair on fire?"

"Marco. Polo." She punctuated each word with a tap on his chest. His reaction was as big as he had hoped. He grabbed her waist and spun her around, earning them frowns from the older folk who were watching from their windows at the scandalous public display of affection.

"He's here?!" Hvitserk had heard about the great Polo family, one of the most prestigious merchant families in the world. They travelled to the East, to new places no one had ever been. Danika had also given him the sneak preview of the coming few decades. Marco Polo was the only thing she could recall. "This time period goes from boring to tragic real fast," was all she said on the matter. He had been talking about going East for years, but Danika insisted that while it was feasible for them to go it alone, it would not be comfortable at all. Like they'd probably starve, un-stave, freeze, un-freeze, and what else several times over.

"Aaaaaaand he's leaving for a journey to Cathay, today! Forget lodgings, if we run we can probably join as mercenaries!" Danika grabbed his hand and practically shook it off his arm. Ever since they had left England, it had been new country after new country, new languages and for Danika and Hvitserk many new journals. They had to sail back to Iceland once to store them all! Hvitserk never tired of seeing something for the first time. Danika would have described him like a child receiving a new toy. The look of giddy joy. She couldn't wait to see his face when he saw China, or Cathay right now, for the first time.

Unlike Danika with her butterfly movements and snake-like grace, Hvitserk's great height and broad shoulders made it more difficult to race through the skinny canalside streets. Several times Danika had to stop while he caught up. Eventually they just hopped on a gondola, which greatly quickened their journey to the docks. Danika nearly capsized the gondola as she leaned to point out the ship that would bring the Polo party to Acre to begin their journey on the Silk Road. Putting up his hand to shield his eyes from the rising morning sun, Hviterk looked at the small galley, which was being loaded with crates and barrels. He felt his heart do that familiar flip before an adventure. Even after all these years, it never went away.

They walked down the pier towards a man in a red-brown leather tunic, and a hat with a feather. He had a series of maps and other papers and he was calling out orders. Clearly this was the man to talk to.

"Excuse me, sir, are you leading the Polo expedition?" Hvitserk made the approach.

"That I am." he held out a hand, "Niccolo Polo. Can I help you?"

"Niccolo?" Danika asked, "I was told about a Marco Polo."

Niccolo pointed up to the ship, where a boy of about seventeen years was scribbling into a book and wandering around the deck, checking crates and taking counts. Her eyebrows popped up before returning to normal. He was a boy! Maybe it was just her modern sensibilities, but she was still a little weirded out by how girls of 14 could be mothers and boys of 17 were considered men. Hvitserk was 22 on the outside, 423 years old technically, and he still acted like a 5 year old when she brought sweets home from the market. But apparently this young man was the one to inspire exploration and a very fun swimming pool game for centuries to come. He was still a bit in his awkward stage. His hair was curly and unruly, flapping about in the wind around his face, despite his cap. He had a fair face with ruddy cheeks and his dark hair and just a shadow of stubble painted a contrasting picture, he stood out against the clear blue sky.

"We were wondering if you were interested in hiring any people to protect you and you're cargo on your journey?"

"Are you a Condottiere?" Niccolo asked, looking Hvitserk up and down, through mostly up.

"No, just two mercenaries looking for work," Hvitserk stood to his full height and rested his hand casually on the pommel of his sword, a habit he had never dropped in all his years.

"You don't look Italian," Niccolo commented on his decidedly Norse appearance, "and I don't want any masnade causing trouble."

"Don't worry, sir, we are not masnade, or marauders. Just mercenaries."

Niccolo considered him for a moment. "We could use the extra hands. But this is not a journey to be taken lightly. This will be many months on the road. No one knows what we might encounter. I need men who can think on their feet."

"We have travelled all over Europe. We are excellent fighters."

"Well then, get your man and tell him you have a contract." Niccolo pulled out a paper outlining the standard mercenary contract for the expedition. Hvitserk read carefully and then signed, handing the document to Danika, and waited expectantly for the man to protest.

"Your mercenary is a woman?" Niccolo snatched the quill from Danika, who wasn't even surprised at this point.

"Yes."

"Women bring no good luck on a ship."

"From what I understand, a majority of the trip is over land. I'll try to keep any bad luck to myself on the ship voyage." Danika stood tall with shoulders back. Respectful, but ever so slightly defiant. Hvitserk's arms were crossed as he waited for her to sort this out, he was honestly not even paying attention. But to Danika's endless irritation, Niccolo looked to Hvitserk. Whether it was to control her, or vouch for her she didn't know.

"Well-" Niccolo trailed off.

"What can I do to prove my usefulness?" Danika cut to the chase.

"You can come here and give me a ki-" A sailor loading a crate onto the ship started a sentence, but did not finish it. Hvitserk refocused his eyes just in time to see Danika dump the lewd sailor into the shallow waters off the pier. Niccolo looked on, calmly if only a bit disturbed.

"Impressive for a woman, especially a foreign one, but we may run into much more skilled assailants on the journey."

Danika walked up and stood barely a foot away from him. "Who do I have to fight to earn my spot?"

One defeated condottiere and several months later and Danika was sitting on a camel next to Hvitserk trekking through what she estimated was geographically modern Iran. To keep their small historical footprint Hvitserk had taken the name Matteo and Danika had become Daniella. He could still call her Dani. Four centuries in and she still didn't have a nickname for him. Hvitserk already was a nickname, she said. He had so many nicknames for her. She only ever used them to be funny. Dearest, Darling, Beloved, Sweetheart. No, when she meant it she used his name. Hvitserk.

"Matteo? Matteo?" her voice worked its way into his melting brain.

"Yes?"

"Want some water?" she held out a leather pouch to him, which he took.

Despite the heat, and sun and endless days of travel, Hvitserk had to say he was enjoying himself. They had travelled through so many cities which reminded him of when he had gone to the Mediterrainean with Bjorn. But they were bigger. So much bigger. Bigger than any of the cities in Europe. The people had skin that ranged from dark honey to like the night sky itself. Every building was made of stone or earth, even those of the populace. In Europe, houses were made of wood. Near East buildings were tall and painted in the most brilliant colors. The air smelled of spices he couldn't even describe. He learned Arabic and Persian from a mercenary from these regions. It was absolutely thrilling.

He learned to use the scimitar, a curved sword whose technique was much different than the straight swords he'd been using for 5 lifetimes. Danika bought him one made of beautiful swirling damascus steel. The swordmaker gave her a discount after Danika spent one lazy evening singing in the town square, much to the joy of the swordmaker's children.

Danika herself was also over the moon. She bought bottles of chemicals, both medicinal and otherwise, to her utmost delight. Hydrochloric acid, Sulfuric acid, mercury chloride and many others in glass bottles with neatly written labels. Hvitserk bought her a gift as well. It was much thicker than a quill, but it was beautifully made and had a pointed tip.

"They call it a qalam habar. For your books."

"It's a pen!" Danika absolutely lost it, jumping up and down, nearly dropping her bottle of newly purchased nitric acid. Hvitserk caught it and handed it back, smiling in the presence of her unrestrained happiness. It warmed his heart to see her so happy, when most of history normally made her so somber.

As the summer heat became increasingly harsh, the party would rest beneath tents for shade during the day, and would travel in the cooler darkness of the night. It was much more tolerable but it had its consequences.

"Those mountains, there, what are they called?" Hvitserk asked, pointing ahead.

"I'm not sure what they are called right now, but in my time, they are called the Himalayas. The tallest mountain in the world is there." Danika looked past the rippling heat waves on the ground to see the distant peaks. She could see Everest sticking out like an arrow above all the rest. At least she thought it was Everest. They were nearing the northern Himalayas. It could just be another very tall mountain.

"It does not look that tall."

"That's because it is still very far away."

"Yes, but they are not that far, are they?"

"How far to the mountains?" Danika called ahead to one of the guides.

"Ten days or so."

Not even a few seconds after the words left the guide's mouth, the whistle of arrows and the pounding of horse hooves broke the silence of the rising dawn. Thieves!

Hvitserk jumped off his camel and had his axe in one hand and his new scimitar in another. Ducking under the swipe of an enemy sword he brought his axe into the man's stomach, knocking him off his horse. Grabbing the horse, he began to ride towards the expensive cargo he was charged to protect.

Danika's camel was charged by another horseman. Pulling up her feet and resting them on the camel's back, she jumped off. Deflecting a hit on her way down, she landed behind the horseman and snaked her knife under his arm and into his chest. Tossing him from the horse, she took the reins and rode towards her charge: the young Marco Polo, along with some other men. She was racing another attacker to him. She was ahead of all the other guards, and although Marco had his sword out, he was not much of a fighter. She saw the attacker raise his crossbow.

"Marco! Get down!"

He didn't hear her. Launching once more from her mount, she collided with the boy, sending them both to the ground. She felt the bolt lodge itself in her back. Any sound of pain she made was blocked by the two of them hitting the ground. While Marco came back to his senses, she pulled the bolt out and felt the warm blood start to flow down her back. From her personal experience, arrow injuries take about 30 mins to recover when taken to the body, but not the heart. It only takes 20 mins when hit to the arm or leg. She thankfully had no data on head shots yet. The other guards had arrived and dispatched the bowman. She looked down at the young man underneath her.

"Thanks," he whispered out, perhaps being in shock.

"Don't thank me until it's over." Danika yanked him to his feet and pushed him to mount the bowman's horse.

"If anything bad happens, ride to the high ground and wait for it to be over."

"Is this not bad enough?" he asked to her back as she took a defensive stance with the other guards around him.

"It can always get worse."

"Do you think we'll survive?" he asked. He was genuinely asking for her judgement, he didn't sound so afraid now.

"I'm sure you will," she replied.

"You're bleeding."

"The blood isn't mine," she smoothly lied, " Focus on staying aware of your surroundings Master Polo. This isn't over yet."

The raiding band was not a large one, and the mercenaries accompanying the Polo expedition made short work of them. No one approached Marco again, so Danika had very little to do. But Hvitserk proudly got to brag about taking down four men in his job of protecting one of the cargo wagons.

"Was anything lost?" Niccolo asked.

"Nothing this time." Hvitserk responded, having taken a count with other cargo mercenaries.

"That is good. We will move on a little further and break for the day. Well done Matteo," Niccolo commended him, before mounting up again and riding on. They would trade the horses at the next village for more supplies. All in all, they probably made some money off that raiding party.

Danika guided her horse back towards Hvitserk's. He looked for the most part undamaged but his arm was hanging strangely. Taking his arm, she relocated his shoulder.

"It was going to go back on its own!" Hvitserk winced and gripped his shoulder ruefully.

"It wasn't going to hurt any less when it did, you might as well get it out of the way."

Rolling out his shoulder and shaking out his arm, he noted her bloody shirt. "Get hit?"

"Saving Marco. But does Niccolo care? Nooooo…"

"His opinion doesn't matter örlög mín," he ran his hand over her face.

"I just saved Marco frickin' Polo!"

"Do you want a reward?" he asked. She mumbled, "maybe."

Turning her face, he leaned over to kiss her for what was definitely seconds in the double digits. One of the mercenaries behind them whistled, garnering a few quiet laughs from the other men. The two of them didn't much care. Those men would be dead in 70 years. They didn't matter.

Crossing the mountains had been like returning home for Hvitserk and Danika who really were much more accustomed to the cold. Some of the other mercenaries who hailed from hotter climates wrapped their gear close around them and huddled close to the fires at night. But Danika and Hvitserk kept their hoods down and let their hair get wet from falling snow. At night they would hike beyond the others in search of the perfect cliff to see the stars. It was like sitting on the top of the world, even more so than Kattegat. There were no trees and no fjord. They could see for miles and the sky had never seemed quite so big.

"Sing me a song?" Hvitserk asked, his feet dangling over a crevice so deep that in the darkness it seemed bottomless.

"What kind of song?" Danika waved her feet, enjoying the feeling in her mind that her shoes might fall off, even though her boots were firmly strapped to her feet.

"A slow one. Like the ones you sang on the cliffs back in Kattegat all those years ago."

"Was it really that long ago?" Danika sighed, "it feels like just yesterday I had a cute, funny Viking bargaining with cake in the woods." She slithered her hand under his and waited while he wrapped his sword callused fingers around hers. Taking a long breath she sang a slow rendition of Castle on the Hill by Ed Sheeran. By the end of, as it usually happened, Hvitserk's head was resting comfortably in her lap, hands folded on his stomach with one foot still hanging off the ledge.

"I remember those times too," Hvitserk mumbled.

"Do you ever miss those times?" Danika gently ran her fingers down the bridge of his nose, along his forehead, eyes, lips, and all across his face.

"Yes. Sometimes in my mind we are back in Kattegat, and we are living in my house by the beach. My brothers are there and for once we aren't all fighting. We have small children and we grow old."

"I don't think that's a memory, Hvitserk." She pulled the corner of his lips up into a smile.

"I know. But it makes me happy to imagine it. I cannot imagine your time when we won't be frozen anymore. So I imagine us in mine."

"Sometimes I imagine what it would have been like if instead of you freezing, I unfroze and started aging again. I would have become a real Norsewoman, had Viking children." Hvitserk saw her eyes glaze over as she saw all those possibilities drawn out in the stars overhead. Taking her hands, he traced the lines of her palms.

"You would never get to see your family again, or your home. Ivar would still have tried to kill you and he would have eventually succeeded and you wouldn't have come back to me. I may have only had you for ten years. Now I have had your for over four hundred and for me it is still not enough."

"You left your world for me, isn't it only fair? And you are my home Hvitserk. I would have stayed."

"No it's different. I saw my world fade away. And I'll get to see yours be born. But it is sweet to know you would have stayed. Without you I never would have seen all the things I have seen."

"And we aren't even halfway through yet."

He laughed at this.

I'm just as surprised as you are that Marco Polo was a 17 year old boy when he went to China for the first time. All the inventions and chemicals that Hvitserk and Danika find in the Middle East are actual items that had been created before or during this time period. Nitric acid was used to make aqua regia, a chemical mixture which could dissolve gold! I could not find a recorded name for the fountain pen predecessor that Hvitserk gives to Danika. So I simply went for the modern Arabic translation of fountain pen. A linguistic tragedy but what's a writer to do?

Niccolo's comment about Hvitserk being a masnade was because condottiere were Italian mercenary captains, who led kinda like private armies, but masnade were often from the Germanic principalities or Spain, so Hvitserk's norse looks would have indicated he was more likely a masnade. Condottiere were also more respectable, with masnade being leftover soldiers from the crusades who were depserate enough to work for anyone or steal from anyone to make ends meet.

They are on their way to China which will be in the full swing of its Yuan dynasty. I've loved reading your reviews so far. They brighten my day.

Any predictions? Any questions?