Sandra Hill - [Vikings I 04] (3 page)

“And look,” Bolthor added, “she carries a staff. Everyone knows that a witch carries a magic staff. And a bell and a crystal, of course.”

A tinkling sound came from the neck of the female sheep being swived by the lusty ram. The fine hairs stood out all over Tykir’s body at that affirmation of at least one of the witch’s tools.

They all narrowed their eyes to see if she might be wearing, or carrying, a crystal. They saw nothing but her
simple, rumpled gown. No doubt she kept it hidden.

“Do you think she dances naked in the forest?” Rurik wondered. “’Tis a common witch practice.”

“Did your witch?” Tykir asked with a grin.

“Yea, she did,” Rurik told him, grinning back. “’Twas almost worth receiving her cursed mark to see that exhibition.”

“I’m not sure there would be so much pleasure in seeing this witch naked,” Tykir said. They all concurred.

While they were making these observations, Rurik’s dog was barking wildly, the sheep were bleating, and the nervous horses were neighing. In the midst of this chaos, a mangy sheepdog galloped over the fells toward them, a flock of bleating sheep following behind. Apparently, the sheepdog had noticed Rurik’s wolfhound, Beast, who stood near his horse’s right front leg, trying to appear aloof but pissing trickles of excitement.

The jaws of Tykir and his comrades nigh dropped to the ground with this ungodly spectacle.

Just then, the ram finished his rutting and his sheeply mate escaped. But apparently the randy ram had other ideas. He chased after her, then stopped dead in his tracks, did an about-face and began chasing Lady Alinor, who had been shouting at the two of them to desist at once. When the ram bumped Lady Alinor’s rump with his curly horns, she fell to the ground, rump in the air.

And all three men stared, transfixed, at one particular spot.

Did she have a tail or didn’t she?

The Vikings really were coming.

In fact, they’d come.

And they were staring at her posterior.

Lecherous heathens! Bloody libertines! Viking curs! If they dare try to rape me, I’ll pull out my shears, and at least one of them will no longer have the lewd inclination.

Elswyth was whimpering, a continuous “Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh” of mortal fright. The dog and a half-dozen sheep were circling the whole lot of them, with Beauty yipping an overexuberant dog welcome to the beautiful wolfhound who’d arrived with the Northmen. Meanwhile, David had already mounted the finally docile Sheba, and the look on his face was pure ecstasy.

Alinor would have been mortified if these were anything but Vikings, who probably witnessed such crude behavior all the time in their primitive lands.

“My good men, what do you here on my lands? How
may I assist you?” Alinor inquired in the Norse tongue, which was very similar to English. She’d become proficient in the language these past years as she’d negotiated for her wools in the markets of Northumbria, which were heavily populated with peoples of Viking descent.

Now, as she spoke to them, she scrambled clumsily to her feet and put one hand on her hip, trying to strike a casual pose of fearlessness, at the same time adjusting her headrail with the other hand. Except that her headrail and wimple had managed to disappear. Alinor raked her fingers through the disarray atop her head. She suspected that she looked like a flaming, long-haired sheep before the shearing. Truth to tell, Egbert had once told her just that, in a lame attempt at encouraging her to improve her appearance to aid their matrimonial pursuits for her. When her ragged nails kept snagging on the knots in her hair, she gave up. “My manor house is over the fells a short distance,” she informed the Vikings, pointing westward. “If it is food and drink you seek, my steward will offer you and your fine steeds hospitality. We are a poor estate, but you need not fear….”

Her words trailed off as she tossed her hair back off her face and got her first good view of the three Viking men, who still sat atop magnificent black destriers with finely tooled leather and silver trappings. She shivered, but not from the cool autumn breeze, which was brisk and gaining strength. Deadly sharp swords, pattern-welded in the Viking tradition, hung from scabbards at their sides. On their horses were highly embossed shields. All of the men were uncommonly tall and hugely muscled.
Jesus, Mary and Joseph!
She had to bite her bottom lip to keep from whimpering, just like Elswyth.

All the men wore slim black wool braies and short leather ankle boots, cross-gartered up trim legs. The one
on the left was a veritable giant—at least a head taller than the other two, and they were exceedingly long of frame themselves. His white-blond hair hung loose to shoulder-length. He wore a brown wool tunic, belted at the waist and covered at the shoulders with several layers of matching mantles of different length that left one arm exposed, an arm that rested on a long-poled battle-ax, braced now on the ground. He had probably seen no more than thirty winters, but harsh lines etched his face, aging him beyond his years. A black patch over one eye completed the picture of battered soldier.

The Viking on the right was dark haired, and, Alinor guessed, vain as a peacock. At least five years younger than the giant, he stroked his silky mustache. His beard and hair were woven into intricate braids—a habit many warriors adopted to avoid their hair flying into their eyes in the midst of battle—but this Viking’s plaits were interlaced with colored beads. Most interesting was the blue jagged line down the middle of his face, which detracted not at all from his appearance; in fact, some might say it enhanced his attraction. He wore a blue wool tunic, matching his eyes and his face design, but instead of a shoulder mantle, a gray fox skin was tossed carelessly from shoulder to opposite waist, front and back, tucked into a wide belt of tanned leather. The animal that had died for his comfort must have been huge. Reaching down nimbly to the ground, he patted the clamoring dog, cautioning, “Shhh, Beast. ’Tis just a scurvy bitch. Beneath your interest for a quick dalliance, my good dog.” He grinned at Alinor as he spoke, making it unclear whether he was referring to Beauty or to her.

But it was the Viking in the middle—the apparent leader—who caught and held her interest. Alinor’s head
had never been turned by a man’s pleasing countenance in the past. It was now.

His long hair was light brown streaked with pale yellow strands, giving the appearance of shimmering gold—the effect caused by the bleaching effects of the sun during many years on the open seas, she would wager. He was older than the rest, possibly five and thirty, and godly handsome. Blessed St. Bonifice! His years sat well on him, indeed.

His hair, too, was braided, but only on one side, where a silver earring in the shape of a thunderbolt dangled from one exposed ear. Dressed all in black—braies, tunic, belt—he was covered shoulder to ankle by a cloak of magnificent wool of the best quality, lined with black sable. The cloak was pinned off one shoulder with a heavy gold brooch in a design of intertwining snakes with clear chrysolite eyes. Hanging from a chain around his neck was an amber pendant in the shape of a star with a bloodred drop in the center.

“Well?” he said, his honey brown eyes taking her measure with icy disdain.

“Wh-what?” He must have been talking while her mind had been woolgathering.

“I said, my lady,” he repeated with exaggerated patience, “
é heiti Tykir
…My name is Jarl Tykir Thorksson, and I have not come this great distance for your food or drink.”

She cocked her head to the side. “Why then have you come?”

“’Tis for
you
I have come, Lady Alinor.”

“Show me your tail.”

“Ta-tail…?” Alinor reeled inwardly with shock. Oooh! She would like nothing more than to take a wooden
trencher off the table and whack the thick head of the crude oaf, Tykir Thorksson. His reference to a witch tail was the latest in a series of outrageous remarks he’d made to her since they’d come from the sheep pasture, the first and most outrageous being that he’d come all the way from Norway
for her.

She was sitting next to him at the high table in her great hall with an iron hand clamped on her forearm, locking her to the arm of her chair. Otherwise, she’d have risen long ago and exited his presence, forthwith. He and his two comrades had refused to leave her out of their sights since returning to the manor house, not even when she’d gone to the garderobe.

“Listen, uh…” The brute had informed her from the first of his title,
jarl
, which was one step below a king and similar in nobility to an English lord. He held this rank of the upper Norse nobility, thanks to bloodlines linking his grandsire, the famous, long-dead King Harald Fairhair. As if she cared whether he was a lowly thrall or a high jarl! Or whether he was Viking, Frank, or Saxon, for that matter. The man was still a crude oaf.
But how does one address a Viking of higher station? My lord? My jarl? My barbarian?
“Listen, my jarl—”

He let out a hoot of laughter. “Call me Tykir.”

Nay, a wooden trencher would be too mild a punishment for this one. Better a rock. A big one.

“Well, are you going to show me your buttocks and end these bothersome protests? If you have no tail, prove it…though I am inclined to believe that a true witch could make a tail appear and disappear at will.”

Despite her efforts at restraint, she bared her teeth and made a low hissing sound of affront.

He grinned.

“If I were a true witch, I would put a spell on you right now and turn you into a toad.”

He laughed. “Be that as it may, I have wasted more than enough time in pursuit of you. I expect to be aboard my longship in Jorvik three days hence. So end your senseless malingering.”

Aaarrrgh!
She’d been trying to convince the stubborn blackguard of her innocence ever since he’d told her out on the fells that he’d come to Graycote for the witch who’d put a spell on some Viking king. A likely story! No doubt he was searching for a target to pillage. Well, he’d find naught of worth in her poor keep. Or perhaps he hoped to kidnap her for hostage. Little did he know that her brothers wouldn’t pay even a farthing for her return. Her only value to them was in the bride price they received for her every blessed time they arranged another marriage…along with the estates that ceded to her on widowhood, of course.

And her aging castellan, Gerald, would be of no hope. She grimaced with dismay as her gaze hit on her supposed protector, leader of her hird of soldiers. He was over there at the end of the high table, nodding off to sleep, and it barely past high noon. These Vikings must think they’d been handed a gift from their heathen gods on viewing the weak protection of her keep. Hah! That was a deliberate tactic on her part. Her prosperous farms and sheep pastures were in sharp contrast to the starkness of her keep, which was well-maintained and stocked with provisions, but with no embellishments or luxurious furbelows, like wall tapestries or silver tableware. If ever Alinor enlarged her timber and stone manor house into a fine castle, Egbert and Hebert would take it from her in a trice. The same was true of her hird of soldiers under Gerald’s leadership.
Strong fighting men would just draw her brothers’ attention.

“Look at it this way, you have no children here that demand your presence,” the Viking said.

Huh?
She’d been half-attending while the insensitive clod prattled on.

“You are free to leave your estate in the care of minions. Actually, you could consider this a pleasure trip to the Norse lands.” He folded his arms and puffed out his chest then, well pleased with himself for coming up with that ludicrous justification for his actions.

“A pleasure trip?” She could scarce keep her voice down to a low shriek. “Wouldst that be comparable to plucking out a person’s fingernails and calling it good grooming?”

“Probably,” he said unabashedly.

She thought a moment. “How do you know whether I have children?”

“Your castellan told me so.”

She was going to have a serious talk with Gerald about his loose tongue. In the meantime, if he could bring up children, then so could she. “What will
your
children think of you hauling an unwilling woman halfway ’round the world?”

His face turned a rosy shade of red under his deeply tanned skin. “I have no children…that I know of.”

She arched an eyebrow at his wording. “That you know of?”

“My family or lack of one is none of your affair,” he said icily and put up a hand to bar any further words. “I have been kind to you thus far, Lady Alinor. We can do this nicely, or not. It matters not to me.”

“But—”

“Gather your belongings, I beseech you. Or I will. One
way or another, we must be on our way if we are to make camp at Aynsley afore nightfall.”

“But—”

He refused to allow further argument. “Know this, my lady: I promised to deliver a witch to Anlaf, and a witch I will deliver.”

“I…am…
not
…a…witch,” she said in evenly spaced words, so the halfwit would understand.

“Prove…it,” he said, mimicking her pacing.

She bristled.
Say nothing, Alinor. Keep your wits about you. A clear head has gotten you out of worse situations than this.

“Everyone knows a witch has a tail,” the lout continued.

“Everyone?” she scoffed.

“Thus I’ve been told,” he said defensively. His wonderfully thick, brown lashes fluttered with uncertainty.

“By whom, pray tell?”

Tykir’s whisker-stubbled face reddened as he pointed ruefully to the side where the one-eyed giant, Bolthor—the world’s most unlikely skald—was imbibing great draughts of mead, mumbling something about, “Hear one and all, this is the saga of Tykir the Great, who met a flame-haired witch-shepherdess…”

“Tykir the Great?” Alinor asked, unable to stifle a chuckle.

Tykir shrugged sheepishly and shared a chuckle with her at his own expense. She liked that in a man—or woman—the ability to laugh at oneself.

“But you must recognize that this whole situation is absurd. I’m no more a witch than you’re a…a troll.” Her lips twitched with amusement at that remark. “On the other hand…”

“Why, you impudent wench! Are you implying that I’m a troll?” He squeezed her forearm as punishment, but not very hard. “In truth, I must needs be honest with you, I cannot help but admire your bravery, though it passes all bounds of recklessness. Has no one ever warned you about tweaking the wolf’s tail?”

“Don’t you mean the troll’s tail?” she asked cheekily.

He laughed. “Too bad you are not a more toothsome morsel. I might have enjoyed tasting your charms on the long journey back to Trondelag.”

His dancing eyes assessed her form in its clean gunna of fine forest-green wool, with a matching headrail. Her wild hair was tucked neatly under a white wimple, but she knew she held no appeal for him. It was the freckles, of course. They repelled most men, superstitious fools that they were. And if not superstitious, then overly concerned with the traditional standards of beauty, like milk-white skin. “Dost think I care if you find me lovely as a goddess or homely as a hedgehog? Three husbands have I buried. The next man, wedded spouse or not, who tries to sample my wares will do so over
his
dead body.”

The Viking’s mouth dropped open with surprise. Then he slapped his free hand on his knee with appreciation. “Thor’s blood! Your tongue does outrun your good sense. Don’t you know I could pull that talksome appendage from your mouth, slice it off with a mere flick of my sword and roast it for dinner?”

Now, that is an image I do not need planted in my head.
She decided to try a different tact. “Dost thou honestly believe in witchcraft?”