Sandra Hill - [Vikings I 05]

by The Blue Viking

  The Blue Viking

  Sandra Hill

  This book is dedicated to my mother-in-law, Ann Harper, who was born in Scotland and whose maiden name was Campbell. She is as generous and proud and full of wit as the Campbell clan depicted in this book. To her, family is so important… just like my Maire Campbell.

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  Other Books by Sandra Hill

  Praise

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  Kaupang, the Northland, A.D. 935

  “Pig boy! Pig boy! Runt of the litter!”

  Rurik’s head jerked up with alarm on recognizing the band of youths in the market square shouting taunts at him. “Thor’s toenails!” he muttered, and began to run for his life … as fast as his skinny, eight-year-old legs would carry him.

  Normally, Rurik would have relished the sounds and aromas of the busy trading town. Roast mutton turning on a spit. Oat cakes dripping with honey. Mulled ale sizzling around a hot poker. The clang, clang, clang of the sword maker’s anvil. The brays and bleats and neighs and moos and cackles and quacks of various animals. The importuning pleas of the vendors, cajoling passersby to sample their wares.

  The ruffians chased after him, as he knew they would, tossing insults like sharp burrs on a north wind. Some of them stuck … if not to his skin, to his oversensitive soul.

  “Come back ’ere, you bloody bugger.”

  “Wha’ he needs is a good dunk in an icy fjord to wipe off that hog stink.”

  “Do ya think the starvling suckles on the sow’s teat? Mayhap that’s why he’s so ugly. Ha, ha, ha!”

  “Oink, oink, oink!”

  Even as he puffed loudly, his arms pumping wildly to match his strides, Rurik’s eyes watered at their biting words.

  Why do they hate me so?

  It mattered not that they were Norse, as he was.

  It mattered not that he had only seen eight winters, and they more than eleven.

  It mattered not that he was small and frail of frame, while they were strapping youthlings.

  Oh, it was true he smelled, from lack of bathing and from living amongst the pigs, but his pursuers were not so fragrant themselves. For a certainty, none of them, himself included, had bathed since last spring.

  But what had he ever done to them that warranted such viciousness? They were as poor and ill-dressed and mistreated as he was.

  Could it be that some people enjoy meanness for its own sake?

  Mus’ be.

  The first to catch up with him was Ivar, the blacksmith’s son… the meanest of the lot. Rurik was just beyond the stall of Gudrod the Tanner. Phew! Talk about malodors! Right now, the leather worker was spreading chicken dung on a stretched animal skin—an ancient method for curing hides. Ivar lunged forward, knocking him to the ground.

  “Hey, now!” Gudrod yelled. “Get out of here, you scurvy whelps. Ye’ll ruin me bizness.”

  Without a sideways glance at the merchant, Ivar stood and dragged Rurik by the back of his filthy tunic to a nearby wooded area. There, in the ice-crusted snow, he began to pummel Rurik in earnest, marking each of his blows with comments such as, “That’ll teach you ta run from yer betters.” Alas, Rurik was much smaller, and all that he could do was hold his hands over his face protectively.

  Ivar’s other friends soon caught up and added then-jeers and punches to Rurik’s battering. Rolling on the snowy ground, they proceeded to wallop him mercilessly.

  Suddenly, another voice was heard. “I thought I told you bloody bastards to leave the halfling alone. Some folks’re so thickheaded they don’ know when their arses are gonna be kicked from here to Hedeby and back.”

  An ominous silence followed as Rurik’s attackers realized that Stigand had arrived. His “protector.” The band of malcontents stood as one and began to back away, but not before Stigand grabbed hold of Ivar, their leader. Stigand was only ten years old, but he was big … very big … for his age. And stonyhearted. More so even than Ivar and his spiteful friends. With his left hand, Stigand lifted Ivar off the ground by grasping his neck. Then he swung his right fist in a wide arc into Ivar’s quaking face. Even before the blood started spurting, there was the sound of cranching bone. Ivar’s nose had surely been broken… perchance even his jaw, too. Stigand landed several other jabs as well, before releasing the now sobbing Ivar to run off after his cowardly companions.

  Stigand held out a hand to help Rurik to his feet. Shaking his head with dismay at Rurik, Stigand remarked, “You are pitiful.”

  “I know,” Rurik said, brushing off his tattered braies which now had a few more rips. But he smiled his thanks at his only friend in the world.

  A short time later, he and Stigand sat with their backs propped against the pigsty wall. Stigand was playing with a small pig he had named Thumb-Biter. It was the only time Rurik saw any softness on Stigand’s face … when he hugged and caressed the undersized piglet that had been rejected by its mother. A true runt of the litter when it had been born, it was now flourishing under Stigand’s special care.

  Rurik’s stomach growled with hunger.

  Stigand glanced over at him and grinned. “Best you grab a hunk of manchet bread afore the old hag comes home.”

  Rurik nodded. “I’m in fer one of her beatin’s, fer sure, once she sees I been fightin’ again.”

  “I’d hardly call what you do fightin’,” Stigand observed drolly.

  “Jus’ stayin’ alive. Jus’ stayin alive,” Rurik answered with a sigh. “That’s my kind of fightin’ … fer now, leastways.”

  “Well, you won’t be alive fer long if that bitch Hervor catches you. Poor little ungrateful orphan boy.” That last was a mimicking of the phrase the old hag liked to use with them afore their beatings with a birch switch.

  Both boys grinned at each other.

  Rurik and Stigand were among the dozen “orphans” who had been rescued… if it could be called that… by Ottar the pig farmsteader. Ottar was not so bad, and his intentions were pure. Unfortunately, his wife, Hervor, was not so good-hearted. Also, unfortunately, Ottar was gone from home much of the time. While he was away, all of the orphan boys were worked nigh to death and whipped for the least infraction.

  Stigand had been “rescued” after running away several years ago from his birth-home where he’d suffered horrible abuses from his father and older brothers. Hard to believe that anything could be worse than the beatings that Hervor levied, but even at Rurik’s young age, he could see that it was so. The blankness that came into Stigand’s eyes on occasion bespoke some unspeakable pain.

  Rurik’s story was entirely different. In some of the harsh northern climes, there were still Viking people who abandoned newborn babes deemed too frail to survive … like Rurik’s father, a noble Norse jarl who demanded perfection in his offspring.

  Vikings were not the only ones to practice such cruelty to children. In the Saxon lands, and many other Christian kingdoms, the most socially accepted method for getting rid of unwanted children, whether they were illegitimate or imperfect, was to donate them to a l
ocal monastery, where life often became hell for the orphan. On the surface it would appear as if these acts were great sacrifices made by loving parents to God, but, in fact, they were a respectable method of cutting off the weakest limbs of a family tree.

  Rurik had been born early, small of size and ailing. After one look at him, his father had forced the mid-wives to lay his naked body out in the freezing snow. It was there Ottar had found him. His mother had died soon after the birthing of childbed fever.

  Sometimes Rurik saw his father in the market town, riding his fine horse, laughing with his comrades. Never did he glance Rurik’s way, though he was surely aware of his existence. Once, when Rurik was five and had learned of his birth, he made the trek up the hills to his father’s grand stead. What a sight he must have been! Half-frozen, snot-nosed, wearing his beggarly garments. He’d been turned away rudely at the gate by none other than his own father, who told him never to return. “No runtling such as you is a get of my blood,” he’d added. As far as his father was concerned, he was dead.

  “Someday, I’m gonna be so big and strong that no one will be able to beat me,” Rurik promised himself aloud, wiping at tears that welled in his eyes.

  “Could be possible.” Stigand was still petting his piglet, which kept nipping at his big thumb, rooting for food. “Some lads do not get their full growth till they are twelve and more. Besides that, you can build muscle with hard work, that I know for certain.”

  “What? I do not work hard enough here on the pigstead? From dawn till dark?”

  Stigand elbowed Rurik playfully, which caused Rurik to wince. Ivar must have bruised a rib or two.

  “ ’Tis another kind of muscle-building work I speak of,” Stigand explained. At Rurik’s frown of puzzlement, he added, “ ’Tis the kind of exercise fighting men engage in. Never fear. I can teach you.”

  Rurik blinked at his friend, grateful for that small glimmer of hope … which gave him courage to hope for more. “It’s not just my size,” he went on. “When I am a grown man, no one will be able to mock my looks, either, for I intend to be so handsome all the maids will swoon.”

  “Tall and strong and beauteous?” Stigand began to laugh uproariously, he and Thumb-Biter rolling on the ground with glee. Apparently, some dreams were based in reality, and some dreams were just… well, dreams.

  But dreams were all that Rurik had.

  Chapter One

  Scotland, A.D. 955

  “Do witches fall in love?”

  “Aaarrgh!” Rurik groaned at the halfwit query that had just been directed at him. He would have put his face in his hands if they were not so filthy from his having fallen ignominiously into a peat bog a short while ago. Distastefully picking pieces of musty moss from his wet sleeve, he glared at Jostein, who had asked the barmy question, then snarled, “How in bloody hell would I know if witches fall in love? I’m a Viking, not an expert in the dark arts.”

  “Yea, but you have lain with a witch. One would think you have firsthand knowledge of such things,” declared Bolthor the Giant. Bolthor was Rurik’s very own personal skald, for the love of Odin! He’d been shoved off on him at the inception of this three-year trip to hell… Scotland, that is … by his good friend, Tykir Thorksson … well, mayhap not such a good friend, if he’d tricked him into taking with him the world’s worst poet.

  Rurik would have glared at Bolthor, too, if he were not the size of a warhorse. Bolthor—a fierce fighting man—did not take kindly to glares. He was oversensitive by half.

  Jostein, on the other hand, turned red in the face and neck and ears at having earned Rurik’s disfavor, and Rurik immediately regretted his hasty words. It was not Jostein’s fault Rurik was in such an ill temper. Rurik was well aware that the boy, who had seen only fifteen winters, thought he walked on water. Foolish youthling!

  “Well, I was just thinking,” Jostein stammered, “that mayhap your problem stems from the witch being in love with you.”

  The problem Jostein referred to was the jagged blue mark running down the center of Rurik’s face … the selfsame mark that was at the heart of his three-year quest to find the damnable witch who’d put it there…. Actually five years if one counted those first two years when he’d only searched half-heartedly and spent the winters in Norway and Iceland.

  Just then he noticed the reddish-brown stains on his hands and clothing. ’Twas from the tannin in the bogs. Holy Thor! If he was not careful, he would carry not only the blue mark, but red ones, as well. Could his life get any worse than this? Rubbing his hands briskly on the legs of his braies, he grumbled aloud, “Since when do wenches show their love by marking a man for fife?”

  “Couldst be that you hurt the witch’s feelings?” Bolthor offered. Bolthor thought he knew a lot about feelings … being a poet and all. “Mayhap Jostein’s thinking is not so lackbrained. Mayhap the witch was in love with you, and you hurt her feelings, and she put the mark on you for revenge. What think you of that notion?”

  “A fool’s bolt is soon shot,” Rurik mumbled under his breath.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Bolthor wanted to know.

  “Not a thing,” Rurik replied with a sigh. “I was just thinking about Scotsmen,” he lied. But to himself, he translated, Dumb people don’t mind sharing their opinions. “Besides, methinks it matters not why Maire the Witch put the mark on me. I just want it removed so I can resume a normal life.”

  “But—” Bolthor started.

  Rurik put up a hand to halt further words on the subject, but Stigand the Berserk, another of his retainers, was already joining in. “The witch made a laughingstock of you. Everywhere you go, people smirk behind your back and make jokes about you.”

  Rurik frowned. He did not need to hear this.

  And, really, what could Stigand be thinking … to risk provoking him so? His trusted friend pushed all bounds by reminding him that people were making jest of him; he knew better than most what a sore point such mockery had always been with Rurik.

  “You should let me lop off her head,” Stigand suggested gleefully. And he was serious.

  Was that not like Stigand… ever the protector? Rurik could not help being touched at the fierce soldier’s attempt to shield him from pain. But Rurik was quick to state, “You are not lopping off any more heads.” The bloodlust was always high in Stigand and had to be reined in constantly. He had a habit of decapitating his enemies with a single blow of his trusty battle-ax, appropriately named Blood-Lover. Throughout their three-year quest, they’d constantly had to restrain Stigand, lest a sheepherder or unwary wayfarer get in his path when he was in a dark mood. So intense were his berserk rages on occasion that Stigand actually growled like an animal and bit his own shield. In fact, just last sennight, he’d almost decapitated a Scottish princeling who’d winked repeatedly at him. Turned out the young nobleman was not a sodomite, but had suffered from a nervous tic since birth. “Leastways, do not think of lopping off Maire’s head till she has removed the mark.”

  “I know, I know—” the twins, Vagn and Toste, said as one. ’Twas eerie the way the two grown men, identical in appearance right down to the clefts in their chins, would come out with the same thought.

  Vagn spoke first. “I have an idea. Now, do not be offended when I tell you this, Rurik…”

  Toste snickered as if he knew what his brother was about to say.

  Rurik was sure he was going to be offended.

  “You always had a certain word-fame for woman-luck, but perchance you have lost the knack,” Vagn elaborated, “and that is what caused the witch to mark you. ’Twas frustration, pure and simple.”

  “The knack?” Rurik inquired, against his better judgment.

  “Yea, the ability to bring a woman to pleasure,” Vagn explained. “Wenches like the bedsport, too, you know. I certainly have that knack.” Vagn puffed out his chest.

  “Me, too,” chimed in Toste, Bolthor, Stigand… even Jostein in a squeaky, not-quite-man voice.

  Rurik suspe
cted that the twins were using his mission as an excuse to sample women all across Scotland. This was new carnal territory to explore.

  How did I ever gather such a bizarre retinue? Rurik thought. Which god did I insult to bring on such misfortune? But what he said was, “The only thing I know for a certainty is that witch-hunting is becoming one immense pain in the arse.” He was not exaggerating when he said that. Truly, a Viking should be on the high seas sailing a longship, not bouncing his rump on the back of a horse for days at a time. Portly Saxons, or dour Scotsmen, might not mind the constant jostling, but Vikings, being physically fitter than the average man and having less fat on those nether regions, were better suited to other modes of transportation, in Rurik’s opinion. He had to grin at the egotism of that observation.

  Mayhap, he should suggest that Bolthor create a saga about it.

  On the other hand, mayhap not.

  Based on past experience, it would have a title like “Viking Men With Hard Arses” or some such nonsense.

  All five men fixed their gazes on him, and he realized that he had been chuckling to himself witlessly.

  With a sigh of despair at his own disintegrating brain, he sank down onto a boulder. Picking up a small knife, he began to scrape peat moss and other slimy substances—like mud mixed with twigs and grass—from his leather half boots, which had been made in Cordoba of the softest skins and cost three gold coins.