The Caged Viking

by Sandra Hill

  So far, she was rather fond of his ideas…when it came to sex.

  “We’re going a-Viking, sweetling,” he told her as he arranged her on her back with her arms and legs where he wanted them.

  “But we have no longship,” she said, getting into the game.

  “Hah!” he replied, glancing downward. “I see something long, and believe you me, this ship is looking for a harbor. But first, this Viking needs to do a bit of exploring afore he heads home.”

  “Goody!”

  They both went all Marco Polo then, leisurely exploring each other’s bodies, commenting here and then on what they saw and what they liked, laughing sometimes, gasping at others, ending with a slow, very sexy intercourse that was even more powerful than their earlier more frenetic pace. And that was dangerous because it felt almost like…horrors!...falling in love.

  Afterward, they just stared at each other with a mixture of mutual wonder and perhaps a little fear. No words were necessary.

  She was awake at three a.m. when Hauk and Egil arose. She knew the time because she still had her wrist watch. But they seemed to awaken to some inner alarm clocks, or maybe it was the sound of movement outside around the camp.

  She quickly dressed, although her gown was still damp from her wiping, and minus her panties which would never stay up due to Hauk’s rough treatment of the elastic. She watched with distress as the men dressed for war. With what was probably hysterical irrelevance, Kirstin thought once again of that popular Outlander series and noted that if she’d known she was going to time-travel, she would have planned accordingly, like Claire had. Sewing supplies, soap, gold coins, a first aid kit, antibiotics for heaven’s sake! So many things that would come in handy.

  Bjorn was awake, as well, arguing with his father about accompanying the soldiers in the assault, even if only with a rear guard. Hauk was adamant; his son would stay behind and protect her. Kirstin would have protested that she didn’t need protection, but she didn’t want the boy fighting, either.

  Before he left, Hauk stood before her, looking like the quintessential Viking warrior wearing a chain mail shirt with scabbarded broadsword and short sword, carrying a leather helmet and a shield with his family’s coat of arms, the chasing hawks design, like that on his arm rings. He put a hand on her shoulder and tipped her chin up with the other hand. “Will you stay until I return?”

  “I can hardly leave without my arm rings,” she griped.

  He leaned down and kissed the side of her mouth, softly. “Perhaps there are other ways. Promise me that you won’t try.”

  “Why?” She tilted her head so he would kiss the other side of her mouth.

  “Because you and I have unfinished business.” He kissed her full on the mouth then.

  Bjorn made a gagging sound, and Egil chuckled, but Kirstin didn’t care what anyone thought. “Like what?” she murmured, giving his bottom lip a little nip.

  Hauk nipped her back and smiled. “You know. Do not deny this…thing…that simmers betwixt us.”

  She couldn’t deny it.

  Even if there was no attraction, she couldn’t leave the past until she was sure she’d accomplished her goal, whatever it was. But that wasn’t the entire truth. If she were given the chance, would she want to leave without Hauk…that simmering thing unresolved?

  And there was something else. Hauk wasn’t important enough of a figure to show up in any history. If she left now, she would never know if he survived this battle. Yes, the Vikings would be the victors, but the fate of individuals…Hauk, Bjorn, Egil? Could she live with not knowing?

  He kissed her then, a final connection, and the kiss was sweet with promise, not good-bye. “Don’t leave,” he repeated.

  She didn’t answer.

  He looked disappointed, but then he was gone.

  Several hours later, she awakened from a nap. She’d decided to lie down when the camp was empty of almost everyone, knowing the battle wouldn’t take place until after dawn. She hadn’t expected to fall asleep.

  The first thing she noticed was her two arm rings sitting on the bed furs at her feet. She jumped up and grabbed them. Had Hauk decided to leave them, giving her the choice to go or stay?

  But, no, when he’d left, the bracelets were still in Bjorn’s custody.

  Which meant…

  “Oh, my God!” she exclaimed as she looked at the other side of the tent and saw empty bed furs. Rushing outside, she noticed immediately that the horse was gone.

  Which meant…oh, my God! Bjorn was gone! He must have followed after his father and the troops. The boy was not an experienced fighter. Oh, this was a disaster in the making.

  She looked down at the arm rings that she still held in her hands. Then she looked off into the distance, toward Winchester.

  Maybe this is a sign.

  Maybe I should just try to get back home, and call this whole experience a strange detour in my destiny. Over and done with! A success since Hauk was out of the cage.

  Maybe this is all just a dream, anyway.

  But it doesn’t feel like a dream.

  And he asked me to wait.

  What to do, what to do?

  She groaned.

  First things first, she put on her flats and went out to the woods to relieve herself. Then she used some water that had been left in a bucket back at the tent to wash her face and hands. She finger-combed her hair, which was a mass of tangles, off her face into a low ponytail that she tied with a strip of leather that she’d found hanging from the tent flap. She slid the arm rings on, not wanting to risk having them inaccessible again, just in case.

  As she nibbled at a hunk of manchet bread that had been left over from last night, she decided to explore what was left of the campsite. There were several dozen people working at campfires…women, older men, and some boys…mostly thralls, or slaves. Preparations were already being made to cook cauldrons of broths and stews to be served that evening, assuming the returning troops would have time to stop and eat and not be on the run from the Saxon army.

  Most interesting to Kirstin was the huge tent which would serve as the “hospitium” to treat the inevitable wounded. Like the war council she’d sat in on, she wished she could imprint the scene around her with all its “historic” details. The folks setting up here were friendly enough, answering Kirstin’s questions, but everything was pretty much self-explainable. One table which held sharp knives and saws would be used for amputations. Another held salves, long strips of linen for bandages, splints for broken limbs and moss to stanch bleeding. More ominous was the hot fire being built up, next to which sat a number of flat-bladed tools for cauterizing wounds.

  One man said he was the laeknir, or the healer, in charge; there were two others serving under him. Another man was the bonesetter. What they described in answer to her questions was a pretty well-organized operation for the time period when medical education was nonexistent. Despite the orderly arrangement, she couldn’t help but notice that the devices, the tabletops, and their hands were dirty. She shuddered to think what the mortality rate would be under these conditions.

  Next to this large tent was a smaller one in which an aged crone of a woman, a sorceress, was setting up runic charms to ward off fever and putrid oozings. She also made offerings, for coin on behalf of a patient, to the statue of Eir, the god of healing. The crude wooden figurines of the god, who looked like a skinny Buddha with long Viking hair and a lazy eye, were strung on leather thongs to be worn around the neck as an amulet.

  If any of her group came back with wounds, Kirstin was going to suggest they steer clear of the “hospitium,” keep everything clean, and hope for the best. Once again, Kirstin thought of Claire’s preparation for time-travel, and realized that antibiotics, or at the least a first-aid kit, would have been helpful. But then, unlike Claire in her second journey to the past, Kirstin hadn’t known ahead of time that she would be shot back in time.

  Back at Hauk’s tent, Kirstin spent some time straightening the bed
furs, where she found her mangled panties that Hauk had torn off. A lost cause until she found a needle and thread, she decided, then had to smile as she recalled something a college roommate of hers had said one time. Sonia, who was a free spirit if there ever was one, rarely wore underwear, claiming that the vagina had to breathe sometime, too. Well, Kirstin would be doing a lot of lower breathing today.

  After everything was spiffy inside the tent, she went outside and starting a pot of water in the cauldron over a small fire she finally managed to get started with the help of Viggo, a boy of about eight who’d been standing around laughing at her twenty or so attempts to accomplish the simple task on her own. The scrawny bird was purchased from Viggo’s mother, Estrid, with a coin Kirstin had purloined from a small leather bag of various coins she’d found in Hauk’s chest. She had no idea if she’d overpaid or not. For all she knew, she might have paid what was comparable to a hundred dollars. Estrid had also tossed in a handful of wild roots and herbs…limp celery, carrots, onions, and what smelled like thyme. Most precious of all was a golf-ball-size block of salt.

  Since she had no means of making noodles, not that she really knew how to make them from scratch, she decided to try some spaetzle, little dough balls, like her stepmother—Angela’s mother—used to make. “I don’t suppose you have any flour or an egg you could spare?” she asked Estrid.

  “In fact, I do,” Estrid replied, her eyebrows arched in question.

  When Kirstin explained, Estrid said, “Make enough for my pot, too.”

  It was probably foolish of Kirstin to be preparing a meal, but she needed to be doing something, or she’d go mad wondering what was happening a mere five miles away. Besides, wasn’t chicken soup supposed to have some medicinal qualities? Why else would they give it to people when they were down with the flu or some kind of fever?

  The flour she used for the spaetzle was oat and gritty, but the end result was rather good, if she did say so herself. Once she had the coals hot enough to maintain the broth at a simmer, Kirstin walked over to Estrid’s fire and said, “Mind if I join you?”

  Estrid nodded toward a log that had been pulled close to her fire and handed Kirstin a wooden mug of mead. The honeyed ale would probably taste good if it were cold, but without refrigeration, it resembled a lukewarm, thin syrup with a kick. Kirstin liked beer, on occasion, and she knew good mead; her father brewed several batches a year at the vineyard, in addition to all the fine wines.

  “Wow! That’s some cauldron you have there. You cooking for the entire camp?” Kirstin asked, motioning with her mug toward Estrid’s iron pot that must hold at least twenty-five gallons. Was she a thrall cooking for some clan?

  Estrid, who was probably in her midforties, wore the typical Norse woman’s clothing…a long homespun gunna covered by a once-white, calf-length, open-sided apron attached at the shoulders with bronze brooches in a circular design. Her gray-threaded blonde hair was braided and wound into a coronet atop her head. She was of medium height, slightly plump. Not the usual camp follower. “Nay. Jist fer my family.”

  Kirstin was a little embarrassed, to have made an assumption about her, in fact, about any of the women here. “Are they all here? Your family, I mean.”

  Estrid shook her head as she stirred her pot. “Nay. Back home in Vestfold, my eldest son Jerrik takes care of our farmstead. My daughters Bodil and Girt are off to their own homes with their own families. Come to think on it, Girt is about to pop out another babe any day now, her fourth. Mayhap it’s already born. And Bodil is a fussy one, can’t stand the sight of blood. She’d be of no use near a battlefield. Nay, I am here with my husband and five of our sons, including Viggo over there, our late-in-life surprise.” She smiled toward Viggo, who was emerging from the woods, carrying an armload of kindling almost bigger than he was.

  Kirstin thought for a moment, then exclaimed, “Eight children! And four of them are soldiers fighting alongside your husband? Holy cow!” Kirstin didn’t ask, but odds were that there were several others who had died in the womb or shortly after birth, given the life expectancy of fetuses and infants in this time period.

  Estrid arched her brows, again, this time as if eight children were nothing out of the ordinary.

  She tried to elaborate on her reaction by saying, “This is like a medieval version of Saving Private Ryan.”

  “Who?”

  “Never mind,” Kirstin said, not wanting to explain that all but one of the Ryan sons died in that Tom Hanks World War II movie.

  “So, you’re with The Caged Viking, eh?” Estrid asked with a grin.

  “Yes. For now. Though I wouldn’t mention it around him. It’s rather a sore point.”

  “Do ye have children?” Estrid asked hesitantly. She had to know that Kirstin had just married Hauk, but that would be all she knew about her history.

  “No children,” Kirstin told her, “and never been married…before.”

  “Really? How old are ye?”

  “Thirty-five.”

  “What’s wrong with the men where you come from? Yer passable comely and still have yer teeth and a few good breeding years yet.”

  Kirstin choked on her mead, then wiped her mouth on the back of her hand. Now that is what my brothers would call an ass-backward, fucked-up compliment. She noticed that Estrid assumed that Kirstin would want to be married, the goal of all females, and that no man had wanted her. Estrid would not be able to fathom a society where many women chose the single life. “And you…how old are you, Estrid?”

  “Thirty-five.”

  Oh, my goodness! She’s the same age as me! Kirstin hadn’t expected that, and tried her best not to show her shock. Estrid looked to be in her midforties or more. Well, what did I expect? Eight plus children and a hard life on a farm in the north!

  “How old were you when you got married?”

  “Fourteen.”

  That was pretty much what Kirstin had expected from her study of the time period, and not just for the Vikings. “Um…do you mind if I ask? Does your husband have more than one wife?”

  Kirstin knew that many Vikings practiced the more danico, or multiple wives. It wasn’t as rude a question as it might seem.

  “Hah! If Hulgar dared take another wife, I’d cut off his staff and feed it ta the pigs. Told him that when we were first wed, and he hasn’t strayed yet…that I know of.”

  “So, do you always travel with your husband and sons when they go to war?”

  “In recent years, yea, I do. ’Twasn’t as easy when I had bratlings at home tugging on my teats from one side and on my apron from another.”

  “You know what to expect then. Do you have any idea when we’ll know how the battle is going?”

  “Should be some men straggling back about midday, methinks. Leastways, there will be wounded by then.”

  Kirstin glanced at her wrist watch and saw that it was almost noon. “So, if you’re anticipating wounded men, you must not be optimistic about the results of the battle.”

  Estrid shook her head. “Nay, that’s not what I meant. There are wounded on both sides in any battle. Always. The question will be which side has the bigger pile of bones, so ta speak.”

  Nice image! “You seem so calm. Aren’t you afraid for your family?”

  “’Course I am. That’s why I’m here and not home dryin’ lutefisk or knittin’ socks. Holy Thor! The amount of socks my boys go through each winter! Comes from not changin’ the smelly things often enough, is what I keep tellin’ them. How are they gonna attract good wives if they smell like the back side of a boar, is another thing I keep tellin’ the fools. Luckily, we keep sheep on our stead! Lots of wool!”

  Kirstin smiled at the obvious fondness in Estrid’s voice as she spoke of her family. And her “boys” were no doubt adult men if they were off fighting a war. They continued to converse about everyday things, and Kirstin kept checking her watch. It was one-thirty, well past the time Estrid had predicted that they would have news.

  Just then, as i
f she’d conjured them up, the rumble of horse-drawn wagons could be heard on the road, coming from the direction of Winchester. Everyone in the camp rushed to get news. The three wagons passed through a gauntlet of people, peering forward to see if they recognized anyone among the wounded, some of them so severely they were unconscious. Luckily, neither Estrid or Kirstin saw any of their “family.”

  They soon learned that the battle had been won already, many of the Saxons having flown the coop beforehand and others surrendering once they realized there was no hope of winning. The men in the wagons were the first of the injured coming back to the hospitium. Others too injured for transport were being set up in the great hall and in rooms at the castle where Saxon healers were being forced to undertake their care. The Viking dead would be prepared for funeral rites on site; the Saxon dead would be burned in huge pyres.

  All this she learned from Estrid who gave her a nervous running commentary. It was only then that Kirstin realized that while there was relief that none of their men were among the wounded, now there was the possibility that one or all of them were dead.

  Another nerve-wracking hour went by with Kirstin imagining all kinds of dire circumstances. But then, she saw a number of horsemen approaching. One of them was Egil. But not Hauk or Bjorn.

  Oh, God! Oh, God! Please, God! Her heart hammered against her chest walls, and she felt light-headed as she approached the little man who was dismounting from his horse. The expression on his face was not promising.

  “What…who…?” she choked out.

  “’Tis Bjorn. He’s hurt bad. A gut wound.”

  Tears immediately filled her eyes. It was heartbreaking to think how Hauk must feel, having just found his son was alive, and now to lose him. “Where is he?”

  “In a room inside the castle.”

  “What can I do?”

  Egil nodded at her ready offer to help. “Hauk sent me to get whatever medical supplies I can, and you, if ye have any talent in caring for the wounded.”

  “I don’t have any nursing experience, but I can help. Don’t bother with any of those potions or salves in the hospitium, but grab as many of the strips of clean linen for bandages. When we get there, I’ll need hot water and maybe something to stitch the wound.”