Sandra Hill - [Vikings I 05]

by The Blue Viking

  “I have no idea,” he answered truthfully. “Later, I will probably be alarmed by that fact, but for now I cannot care. I am more interested in what ‘Lance’ is up to.” He waggled his eyebrows at her and flexed himself inside her body.

  She laughed… a most frivolous, joyful sound. “Up being the most important word, I presume,” she replied impudently.

  “Precisely.” He was about to show her just how far up he could go, when he heard an odd sound. Close by. And it sounded like … a dog.

  Swirling about, with Maire still in his arms, and Lance still in his element, Rurik almost fell over with astonishment. It was a dog, all right, who was swimming rapidly toward him, his tongue lolling out with excitement.

  “ ’Tis Beast. My pet wolfhound,” he informed Maire.

  “But how can that be? Isn’t he in Northumbria with…”

  They both looked toward the shore, and groaned simultaneously. Standing and sitting astride horses were a vast array of finely dressed folk: Tykir, Eirik, Selik, and their wives, Alinor, Eadyth, and Rain, not to mention a large number of children. And witches were swooping forward, too. And a slew of Scotsmen. And his comrades-in-arms, Bolthor, Stigand, Vagn, and Toste, including Jostein.

  Lance immediately drooped and slipped out of his safe harbor. Maire drooped and slipped down into the water till it covered her up to the chin.

  “Do something,” she ordered him, as if this were all his fault.

  He did the only thing he could think of.

  He waved.

  Rurik was sitting at one end of the great hall, sipping uisge-beatha with Tykir, Eirik, and Selik, who declared the beverage a gift from the gods, and determined to carry barrels of it back with them to their estates in Northumbria and Norway. All five of his Viking comrades were there in the background, indulging equally, even Jostein, who was full of himself for actually succeeding in bringing Rurik’s three friends back with him, along with a troop of fifty men, even if their services were no longer needed. The soldiers were camped outside on the hillside of Beinne Breagha, none the worse for wear, especially since they’d been given rations of uisge-beatha, as well.

  Eadyth was off examining some natural beehives with Nessa. Eirik’s wife was an expert in raising bees and selling their products in the markets of Jorvik, including what she called the world’s best mead. It was.

  Alinor, Tykir’s freckle-faced, red-haired wife and the most pestsome woman this side of Niflheim, had one of Maire’s weavers in hand and had trotted off to an outbuilding, where she was examining the looms. Already she had mentioned a new pattern they might not be familiar with. No doubt, she would be inspecting the sheep, too. Alinor thought she knew every bloody thing in the world about the wooly-headed animals and their products. She probably did.

  Rain, a noted healer and wife to Selik, was in the kitchen, where a line of patients had already formed for her medical diagnoses. Everything from ringworm to the lung cough.

  Beast, the traitor, was off trailing after Rose, of all things. Eirik had told him with disgust that Beast was too fastidious by far and had declined to breed with his bitch wolfhound, Rachel. Fastidious, hah! Not when he’d developed an affection for an ugly cat!

  And Maire was an even worse traitor. She’d left him to face all his friends alone. In fact, she was probably hiding somewhere, hoping she wouldn’t have to come out till everyone was gone, which was not bloody likely. He’d been the one who’d had to walk out of the loch bare-arsed naked, to the laughter of one and all. He’d been the one to carry her garments out into the water so she could cover herself. He’d been the one to shoo everyone away so she could emerge in dignity. And how did she thank him? By running away and leaving him to face the jests of his old friends. And that was just what they’d been doing for the past hour… making mock of him.

  The most persistent teasing related to the witches.

  “Ne’er have I seen so many witches in one place in all my life,” Eirik proclaimed as he watched through the open door, wide-eyed and gape-mouthed, as a half dozen of the old hags practically flew by in the courtyard, chasing after a herd of black cats, which were chasing after Beast, who was chasing after Rose. “Not that I have ever really witnessed witchery in the past.” Eirik sank back down into his chair and directed a gaze of astonishment at Rurik.

  “Do they all live here… born and bred?” Selik inquired with equal amazement. “Are they your witches, Rurik? Or do you have a habit of drawing witches to your person … like the one who marked you?”

  “Nay, they are not my personal witches. They’re here because of Maire,” he explained with a frown on his face.

  “Maire called up this vast array of witches?” ’Twas Tykir who spoke now, and his tone implied that Maire must be daft.

  Now, Rurik had considered Maire daft on more than one occasion, but he did not like others suggesting the same thing. So he defended her by saying, “It was an accident. She only wanted one witch… Cailleach, her old mentor… to come, but her spell went awry … and all the witches in Scotland somehow arrived.” The explanation sounded rather daft, even to Rurik’s ears.

  Rurik hoped his explanation, daft as it was, would satisfy Tykir, who was the most persistent fellow when he got a bug lodged in his … well, body cavities.

  “A spell? Gone awry? Is Maire really a witch, then?”

  He should have known Tykir would not just drop the subject.

  “Yea, she is a witch. Nay, she is not a very good witch. And, afore you ask, yea, I have made love with the witch again. And, nay, she has not turned other body parts blue.”

  Everyone raised his eyebrows at the excessive explanation.

  “I see you still have the blue mark,” Eirik remarked, not even trying to hold back the smile that twitched at his lips.

  Rurik’s only response was a growl of displeasure.

  “But Rurik Campbell?” Tykir asked with that infernal grin on his face. And, really, Tykir had the most irksome grin in the whole wide world. Besides, what the Campbell name had to do with his blue mark, he had no idea. He suspected his old friends were jumping from one distasteful subject to another, just to throw him off balance. ’Twas a tactic he’d employed with them on more than one occasion.

  “How could you … a fierce Viking warrior… become a Scotsman?”

  “I told you,” Rurik hissed. “It was a misunderstanding. I did not become a Scotsman.”

  “I suppose you will be eating haggis now,” Tykir commented with an exaggerated sigh, “and playing the bagpipes.”

  “Nay, I have not developed a taste for haggis, and Bolthor is the one who has taken on bagpipes as his weapon of choice.”

  “Odin’s Balls! Do not tell me,” Tykir said in an aside to Rurik, so as not to offend the skald. “Bolthor is playing the bagpipes … and reciting poetry?”

  Rurik nodded and plastered an evil grin on his own face. “And I can guarantee you, he will be doing both for you back at Dragonstead this winter.”

  Tykir looked as if he’d been poleaxed.

  “But you have a son,” Eirik pointed out, still belaboring the Campbell appellation that Rurik had been given by Maire’s clan, “who will one day be a Scottish laird.”

  “Yea, but being father to a Scots-boy does not make me a Scotsman. Oh, what’s the use! You men will believe what you want anyhow.”

  “Rurik is right.” It was Bolthor coming to his defense, to Rurik’s surprise. “He did not become Rurik Campbell because of Wee-Jamie. He became a Campbell because he is their hero.”

  Rurik groaned aloud. He could just predict what Bolthor would say next, and apparently so could everyone else, because they were grinning from ear to ear.

  “This is the saga of Rurik the Greater,” Bolthor began.

  “Hey,” Tykir protested.

  “If you knew what was good for you, you would stop right there,” Rurik advised Tykir in an undertone.

  But Tykir blundered on, “I thought I was supposed to be the great one. Remember, Boltho
r, you always used to say, ‘This is the saga of Tykir the Great’?”

  Rurik shoved his cup to the side and pressed his face to the table. He wished he could just fall asleep and waken when this whole nightmare was over.

  “Ah, you are correct in that, Tykir,” Bolthor explained, “but Rurik reminded me that ‘Great’ was your title; so, we changed his title to ‘Greater.’ ”

  “Except when he lost his knack,” Toste interjected with a chuckle. “Hoo-eee! He was not so much greater then.”

  “His knack?” Tykir, Eirik, and Selik all inquired.

  Rurik moaned against the tabletop, where his forehead still rested.

  “Yea, he forgot how to or-gaz a woman in the bed furs, but not to fear,” Toste blathered on, “he got his knack back eventually.”

  Tykir put his lips near Rurik’s ear and whispered, “Does or-gaz mean what I think it means?”

  “It does. And I swear, Tykir, if you do not take your skald home with you to the Northlands, I am going to take away your ability to or-gaz.”

  Tykir and everyone else at the table were laughing hysterically.

  Bolthor was already launching into his latest saga, to Rurik’s mortification. Good thing no one could see his telling blush … for certainly then they would be teasing him about being a blushing Viking, and Bolthor would be telling a poem about it for all posterity to recall.

  Once was a Viking warrior

  Who loved the glory of war,

  But came he to Scotland

  Where folks came to understand

  That here was a figure

  Who was more than soldier.

  He was a hero,

  Through and through.

  That is why he is now called

  Rurik, the Scots Viking.

  A stunned silence followed Bolthor’s saga, which was the usual response. Finally, Tykir cleared his throat, then remarked, “You have refined your rhyming skills, Bolthor.”

  Forsaking modesty, Bolthor nodded in agreement. “I must tell you, though, Tykir, Rurik has given me much more fodder for sagas than you ever did. There is: ‘Rurik the Vain,’ ‘The Viking Who Lost His Knack,’ ‘Rurik the Blind Viking,’ ‘Rurik the Scots Viking,’ ‘Sex and the Single Viking,’ ’Vikings Who Name Their Cocks,” “The Blue-Balled Viking,” and ever so many others.”

  Rurik turned his face so his cheek was resting on the table top. Then he cracked open one eye. Sure enough, everyone was staring at him, openmouthed with incredulity. It took a lot to turn a Viking warrior incredulous. But he had. And it was no great achievement.

  “Of course, I am thinking that Toste and Vagn might be good topics for some of my upcoming sagas,” Bolthor continued.

  Toste and Vagn could not have appeared more horrified if he’d suggested they cut off their manparts.

  “Yea, I can see all the twin possibilities. ‘Sex With a Wily Witch.’ ‘Vikings With Extra-Ordinary Endowments.’ ‘What Twin Vikings Can Do In the Bed Furs and Others Cannot’ ”

  It was Rurik’s turn to grin widely. Mayhap there was hope for him yet. Mayhap Bolthor would decide to latch on to the twins and devote his poetic life to their escapades.

  But then Selik tilted his head to the side and asked, “Why do all the men here have yarn bows tied on their middle fingers?”

  “Well, actually, I can answer that,” offered Stigand, who had been quiet thus far.

  Rurik stood abruptly, not even waiting for the lengthy reply that Stigand was sure to give… one which would somehow make him look even more foolish.

  “Where are you off to?” Eirik asked with a knowing smile.

  “The garderobe.”

  But what he was thinking was he’d like to find Maire’s hiding place and hole up with her there for a day or so… or a sennight.

  Tykir was waiting for him in the corridor outside the garderobe. Not a good sign. Nor was it a good sign that Tykir wore a serious expression on his usually mischievous face.

  “I am worried about you, Rurik,” Tykir said right off.

  “Why?”

  “You are not yourself.”

  Hah! That is an understatement! “It will take some getting accustomed to fatherhood, that is all.”

  Tykir smiled. “ ’Tis a wondrous thing, is it not… being a father?”

  Rurik smiled back. “Yea, ’tis. I ne’er thought to be a father… I am not sure why. Nor did I crave the passing of my blood on to another. But I find myself grinning in the most ridiculous fashion whene’er I gaze upon the child.”

  Tykir nodded in understanding. Then he brought up the topic that Rurik had been avoiding. “About Maire?”

  “What about Maire?”

  “Do you love her?”

  Rurik refused to answer. He was not being deliberately rude. In truth, he did not know the answer.

  To his dismay, Tykir began to laugh uproariously.

  “I cannot imagine why it should be so funny that I might conceivably be in love with a Scottish witch.” He looked at his friend, who was so much like him, then admitted, “Well, all right, ’tis rather funny. A joke on me. In fact, the supreme joke from the gods in a lifetime of jests at my expense.”

  Tykir shook his head at him, tears of mirth rimming his eyes, “On the other hand, perchance it is a gift from the gods.”

  Now there was a thought.

  Chapter Eighteen

  It was evening, and they were celebrating another feast… this time in honor of their guests. Good thing there was lots of food left over from the night before.

  Rurik sat beside Maire, dressed in richly embroidered garments that would do a prince proud. She had managed to drag out an old arisaid of the softest emerald green wool with gold braiding that predated her wedding … a perfectly suitable garment… but she hated the fact that Rurik was more beauteous than she was, both in form and apparel. Her hair was a mass of red curls since she’d been unable to dress it properly after her impromptu bath in the loch.

  Tykir, Rurik’s friend from the Northlands, had taken the liberty a short time ago of tugging on a lock of Maire’s hair and watching with a bemused expression on his face as it sprang back into a tight coil. He’d glanced at his wife’s red hair, then back to her, before he’d commented to Rurik, “Another flame-haired goddess!”

  Rurik—the oaf—had muttered something under his breath that sounded like, “Redheaded women… God’s plague on man.”

  She’d elbowed Rurik in the ribs, hard, at that insult, but it had barely fazed him. Not only was he thickheaded, but he was apparently thick-skinned as well.

  Rurik’s friends had seemed to find her actions vastly amusing.

  She would like to wring Rurik’s neck … not just for forcing her out of seclusion but for sitting at the high table with her now as if everything between them was just fine and jolly, when he knew as well as she did that everything was a shambles. Oh, she’d managed to seduce him in the loch, but look how that had turned out. And, truly, she didn’t think she had many more seductions under her belt… so to speak.

  Under ordinary circumstances, she would have enjoyed herself. A person couldn’t help but like Rurik’s friends. They were attractive and charming and full of teasing mirth.

  Even the older couple, Selik and Rain, who had to have seen close to fifty winters, were surprisingly fit and pleasing to the eye. Rain, who was allegedly a famous healer in Britain, equaled her husband in great height, and their blond hair matched as well, even to the sprinkling of gray strands. They’d brought four of their eight natural children with them, between the ages of ten and seventeen. They’d left behind the other four, plus many foster children, in an orphanage they operated outside the trading city of Jorvik in Northumbria, under the care of a young woman named Adela and an elderly man named Ubbi.

  Already Rain had taken Maire aside and asked whether there might be a place here at Beinne Breagha for some of the young people searching for trades. Maire had readily agreed, especially since so many men and boys had lost their lives the past few
years to wars or feuds with the MacNabs. They had a need for new blood in the Campbell clan.

  Then there was the darkly handsome Eirik, Lord of Ravenshire in Northumbria, who must have seen close to forty winters. Not as handsome as Rurik, of course, but then no one was that handsome. The half-Viking, half-Saxon man brought with him his wife Eadyth, who had to be the most beautiful woman Maire had ever seen, with silver blond hair and violet eyes. Over a silk headrail, she wore the Norse kransen, a gilt circlet with embossed lilies on it. Though in her mid-thirties, Eadyth’s creamy skin showed no sign of aging. This couple had brought with them Eadyth’s illegitimate son, John, a sixteen-year-old boy who was already causing Scottish lasses from miles around to swoon. He had been adopted by Eirik, of course, as had Eirik’s two illegitimate daughters, seventeen-year-old Larise and fifteen-year-old Emma. John and Jostein had apparently become great friends, and both of them had eyes on two of Selik and Rain’s daughters. In addition to those three children, Eirik and Eadyth had also brought four they had had together, all boys, and all full of rambunctiousness.

  Jamie was having the time of his life with all this young company. Beast and Rose were enjoying themselves, too, if all the yipping and meowing were any indication.

  Maire was amazed that this noble couple openly acknowledged the illegitimacy of some of their children, but she was equally amazed when she was told that Eadyth was an accomplished businesswoman who sold the products of her beehives in the markets of Jorvik—mead, honeycombs, and timekeeping candles.

  Finally, there was Tykir, Eirik’s half brother and Rurik’s best friend in all the world. Oh, what a wicked-eyed, mischievous fellow was Tykir, despite being of middle years … about thirty-five or so. As vain as Rurik, he had his hair plaited on one side only, where a thunderbolt earring dangled from his ear.