Sandra Hill - [Vikings I 04]

by The Bewitched Viking

  They cannot see at all.

  This is the tale of

  The dumb Viking.”

  On the morning of the second day they arrived at Trondelag and Anlaf’s castle.

  At least a hundred longships of all sizes, including the large knarrs, or trading vessels, were lined up along the docks or anchored a short distance out to sea. Alinor was walking along the quayside, waiting for Tykir to return from paying his respects to the king. Then he would put her on an England-bound vessel with Rurik before making sail himself for the Baltics. He wanted to waste no more time, since the winds were good today.

  Even Bolthor’s one good eye had seemed to well up with emotion. “We will see each other again, Lady Alinor,” Bolthor had said gruffly before going off to perform some ship chores. “I feel certain of that.”

  Alinor didn’t share that certainty, but Bolthor’s final words had brought a slight smile to her face.

  “There once was a lady from Graycote.

  On her many sheep she did dote.

  Then came a Viking on his boat.

  And with love she was smote.

  But to him she did not quote.

  Thus he had no vote.

  Now on a ship she will float.

  Back to her own lonely moat.

  Over this sad tale, no one will gloat.

  Thus the skald wrote.”

  “It rhymes,” had been the only words she’d been able to come up with. But Bolthor had taken that as a compliment, saying, “Yea, those are the best kind.”

  While Tykir had gone inside the castle, she chose to stay outside, wanting no repetition of the witchcraft charges levied against her. Besides, Tykir had not invited her to accompany him. Was he ashamed of his relationship with her, which had no doubt spread through the Viking gossip chain? Or was he protecting her sensibilities against any mean-spirited besmirching of her reputation?

  “Pssst! Pssst!”

  Alinor turned this way and that before she recognized that it was King Anlaf’s older sister, Gudny, who was standing behind some barrels of salted herring, trying to get her attention. Jerking her head sharply, she indicated that Alinor should join her in hiding.

  “What?” she asked, looking up at the woman, who was tall as a man, wide-shouldered, thick-boned, and buxom as a ship’s prow.

  “I need a love potion,” Gudny said furtively, shoving a few coins into Alinor’s hand.

  Alinor tried to give the money back. “I have no knowledge of love potions.”

  “Yea, you must. Witches know things we mortals do not.”

  “But I’m not—”

  “I’m desperate,” Gudny moaned. “Dost know what it is like to live on my brother’s sufferance? He makes my life miserable. And everybody laughs at me…to think I could not keep the attention of a husband, especially one as worthless as Alfrigg. But I want him back. There’s a ship going to the Irish lands that I could board, if only I was carrying a love potion with me to ensure that he will return with me.” Gudny exhaled loudly after that long-winded exhortation, then added, “Please?”

  Alinor racked her brain for advice she could give the poor woman. For a certainty, she knew how Gudny felt living under her brother’s thumb. Suddenly, she inquired, “Have you tried bells?”

  Gudny swiped at her tears and brightened. “Bells?”

  And Alinor explained a most unusual costume that Gudny could make for herself to entice her wayward husband home. Alfrigg was either going to be overcome with lust or surprise when he saw the big woman adorned like a harem houri.

  Alinor was still smiling over that picture long after a wildly thankful Gudny had left her. That’s when Signe, King Anlaf’s daughter, approached her.

  “Uh, Lady Alinor, um…” Signe began awkwardly. “I was…uh…speaking with Gudny, and…”

  Uh-oh! “Signe, you’re young and beautiful and you’ve only been married a few months. Surely you don’t need a love potion.”

  “But I do,” Signe wailed. “I saw Torgunn talking with a Rus slave trader this morn. And ogling a young Slav girl, he was. I suspicion he is going to take her as a bed slave.”

  The pig! Alinor thought. In the end, she suggested, hesitantly, “Have you tried feathers?”

  When she was done giving her brief explanation, Signe was staring at her with such admiration you’d have thought Alinor had invented gold…or sex. “I don’t know if we have any peacock feathers about. Dost think goose feathers would suffice?”

  “I daresay any kind would do,” Alinor said on a laugh. “’Tis the texture, not the looks of the feather that matter.”

  “Ooooh!” Signe cooed and shoved a piece of gold into Alinor’s hand.

  A number of other women showed up next, but Alinor put up a halting hand. Enough was enough. “I am not a witch!” she’d asserted firmly, and they’d gone off grumbling.

  “Have you gained a witch following now, Alinor? A coven, mayhap?” Adam asked, coming up to embrace her in leavetaking.

  “Don’t even hint at such a thing.”

  “What is the cause of your sudden popularity then?”

  “You do not want to know,” she said with a smile.

  “Well, I am off then.” He gave her another fierce hug.

  “Godspeed,” she answered. “Someday I will expect to hear news of your great fame. The Healing Knight. It has a good sound to it, does it not?”

  He smiled warmly down at her. “Alinor, I hate to see you traveling back to Britain alone. Is that really what you want?”

  “We’ve had this conversation afore. I have no choice.”

  “But you love the oaf…I mean, Tykir…though why I cannot say, he is such a homely beast, unlike me who—”

  He ducked when she tried to swat him on the side of the head for his devilment.

  “You do love Tykir, don’t you?”

  She exhaled loudly. “Yea, I probably do, but—”

  “Have you told him?”

  “Of course not! Never would I embarrass him or myself so.”

  “Embarrass?” Adam frowned with confusion. “He loves you. You love him. You are going to Britain alone. He is going to the Baltic alone. What is wrong with this picture?”

  “Tykir does not love me. Oh, I concede that he has formed a fondness for me. Mayhap that’s the best any woman could hope for with him…but he does not love me. That I would know.”

  “Just as he would know, without the telling, that you love him?”

  “I don’t want to discuss this any longer with you, Adam. It’s over. Painful as it is, I have resigned myself to the fate God has given me.”

  He shrugged hopelessly, then tried a different tack. “Come with me, then.”

  Her mouth dropped open in surprise. “With you? To the Arab lands? Why?”

  “My lady, how you insult me!”

  “Hah! Your conceit is much too great for you to take offense at my refusal of your overblown charms.”

  “Was it my charms you thought I was offering?”

  She blushed.

  “Nay, I just thought you might like to come along as a fellow adventurer. A friend. Think of all the exiting new places and people you would meet. Think about—”

  “What? Do my ears play me false?” Tykir asked in a voice reeking with consternation. “What are you up to, Adam, that you would invite the Lady Alinor to accompany you?” Then he turned to Alinor. “And you, what a fickle lady you have become, that you would go from my bed to Adam’s with nary a second thought.”

  She and Adam both gasped at Tykir’s misunderstanding of the situation…and at the vehemence of his wounded pride.

  “If you are going anywhere with any man afore returning to your homeland, you may as well come with me to the Baltic,” Tykir said and stomped off.

  She and Adam exchanged a stunned look at Tykir’s uncalled-for reaction, followed by the less-than-complimentary offer. Not that she was about to refuse. No matter how ungracious the invitation, Alinor was not so lackwitted as to fail to realize she
’d been given a reprieve. A temporary reprieve, but a reprieve just the same.

  Adam smiled widely and bragged, “I am so good!”

  She smiled back and gave her thanks where thanks were due. Certainly not to Adam. Thank you, God.

  Alinor was once again alone, momentarily.

  Bolthor was on one of Tykir’s ships, helping him rearrange the goods in the six longships he would be taking to the Baltic. These last-minute changes were necessary to accommodate the special Saracen horse, Fierce One, that Anlaf had gifted to Tykir, previously, along with some mares the king wanted him to sell in Hedeby on his way back.

  The air was cool, but the sun was warm on her face as she leaned against a narrow tree near the docks. Tykir gave a silent signal to her that they would be a little bit longer and soon was gone from sight on one of the far boats.

  Suddenly, she was grabbed from behind. Alinor squirmed and tried to see who it was, but she was being held firmly with one hand clamped over her mouth and another wrapped round her waist from behind. Lifting her off the ground, the person proceeded to edge backwards toward the forest and a number of outbuildings. Her eyes darted this way and that, but no one seemed to be looking her way. She squirmed and flailed, to no avail.

  Was it a jest someone was playing on her?

  Nay. The only person she could think of who would do that would be Adam, who was gone, or Rurik, who was working alongside Tykir and Bolthor.

  Was it King Anlaf’s way of getting back at her? Nay. Alinor knew that Anlaf would enact his revenge in public, not in a clandestine manner.

  Her questions were soon answered when she was dragged into an empty woodshed where Egbert and Hebert stood with a half-dozen ruthless-looking men of various nationalities. Mercenaries, she would wager. A few looked to be Vikings, and a sorry lot they were, hard-eyed and scruffy in attire, though Norsemen just the same; probably Viking outlaws.

  “Are you two mad?” She pulled out of the grasp of her captor and, storming at Egbert and Hebert, stood in front of some large object lying on the far side of the woodshed. “To come into Norse country…surely you have lost your senses!”

  “You ungrateful bitch!” Egbert’s face turned purple with rage, and he raised his hand to strike her across the face…a familiar ploy of his.

  “Nay, Egbert,” Hebert cautioned, putting up a hand to halt his brother’s arm. “We can have no visible marks on Alinor if our plan is to work.”

  Egbert paused, saw the wisdom of Hebert’s words and kicked her in the shin. It was a sharp, brutal blow that caused her to stumble backward and almost fall. She was saved by the burly chest of her captor, who still stood behind her.

  “What is this all about?” she asked, trying to hide the pain in her wobbly voice. “Surely a mere woman like me is not worth all this trouble.”

  “Actually, you are,” Egbert informed her icily. “’Twould seem that news of your witchcraft has spread throughout Britain. And, surprisingly, there are some men who see value in that. Do you really have a tail, Alinor?”

  “Mayhap these smitten men think you can perform some magic in the bed linens,” Hebert added with a lascivious snicker.

  “In essence, your bride-price has gone up substantially, tail or no tail,” Egbert announced. “Methinks that your being leman to a Viking jarl—yea, news of that disgrace traveled, too—will add even more coins to the marriage purse.” He shook his head with wonder, studying her. “I cannot see the attraction myself, but apparently you must have some talent that would hold the interest of a fierce Viking. There are a few Saxon noblemen who consider that a challenge…to taste what has been thawed by a heathen barbarian.” He shivered with distaste at the thought.

  Demented! My brothers have gone from bumbling idiots to full-blown demented bumbling idiots. “Tykir will never allow you to do this to me,” she asserted, though she was not so sure he wouldn’t consider himself well rid of her. Nay, that was not true. Tykir was a man who set high standards for the treatment of women…even one who was a mere leman…or former leman.

  “Yea, he will,” Egbert declared, puffing out his chest and smirking with some secret satisfaction. “He will when you convince him that you come with us of your own choice.”

  She snorted with disbelief. “And why would I do that?”

  “Because of this,” both brothers said at the same time, and stepped aside to reveal the pile of clothing that lay on the bare ground behind them. Nay, it was not a pile of clothing, Alinor realized. It was…

  “Oh, my God! What have you done?” Alinor rushed forward and dropped to her knees before the tortured, mutilated body of a young boy. At first she did not recognize him, so swollen was his face with bruises and his eye half out of the socket. One leg lay askew, having been broken midcalf and left unset. The chest area of his tunic was sliced and bloody. Then, horror filled Alinor as she realized that it was Karl, the young boy who had been serving customers at Tykir’s stall in Hedeby.

  She looked up at her brothers through teary eyes. “Why?”

  “The lackwit wouldn’t tell us, at first, how to find your Viking lover,” Egbert complained sulkily.

  “You fools! He probably didn’t know. He’s not a Viking.”

  “And he was insolent, the whelp was. Called us the devil’s get, he did,” Hebert added defensively. “How were we to know how much information he withheld without the torture?”

  Tears streamed down Alinor’s face as she studied the boy, not sure where to start, and whether she would do more harm handling him. “Hurry. Get a healer to come at once. Tell Father Caedmon inside the castle that his presence is required.”

  “There is no need of a healer. The boy died this morn.” There was disgust in Egbert’s voice, not remorse.

  Hebert motioned the six mercenaries to the doorway and whispered some orders to them. They left with haste, and Hebert came back to her.

  “I always thought you two were fools, and I sometimes thought you cruel, but I never thought you evil. This is an utterly evil act.” She motioned to the lifeless body before her.

  “We didn’t do it,” they exclaimed at once.

  “Dost think the mercenaries you paid are at fault? Nay, you are the ones who will suffer eternal damnation for this ruthless act.”

  “Be that as it may,” Egbert said. “We do not have much time. Will you come with us voluntarily, or will we order the same treatment for Thorksson?”

  “Tykir? Are you threatening to do the same to Tykir?” She laughed mirthlessly. “You two dimwits are in the middle of Norse lands, a hairsbreadth from a castle housing hundreds of soldiers, and you threaten a high-placed Norseman? You truly are mad.”

  Hebert grabbed Alinor by the upper arm and pinched hard. “Watch your tongue, sister, or you may follow the same fate, eventually.”

  “Nay, we would not attack your lover in his own lands. We have given orders to the six mercenaries Hebert just dispatched,” Egbert informed her with relish. “If either of us disappears, or is captured, or has any harm done to him, there are five hundred marks of silver awaiting the delivery of Tykir’s tortured body, or his head, to my chamberlain in Wessex.”

  “And what makes you think Tykir couldn’t defend himself?”

  “Oh, I daresay he could defend himself in a fair fight, even if the odds were against him…as they were when he attacked us outside the Norse palace in Jorvik last fall,” Hebert said.

  Apparently, Hebert had forgotten who had attacked whom, but that was not the important issue. He was right: Tykir was not immune to a devious, backstabbing attack. Still…

  “I could scream now, and you two would be dead within minutes.”

  “Ah, ’tis true, ’tis true,” Egbert agreed, smiling maliciously. He had one front tooth missing, whether from the rot or some misbegotten escapade, she did not know…probably the latter. “But where are the six mercenaries, my dear? Already they have blended with the hundreds of men hereabouts. They may have even left on one of the departing ships. Could you identif
y them, for certain?”

  Alinor’s shoulders slumped. She hadn’t paid them heed once she’d seen her brothers, and then the poor boy.

  Could she take the chance of Tykir being harmed?

  Should she trust in his greater strength and intelligence to handle the situation?

  Would strength and intelligence matter when dealing with blackguards?

  In the end, Alinor had no choice.

  “What do you want me to do?

  “There she is!” Tykir breathed a sigh of relief. Finally, he’d found Alinor.

  She was walking toward him, easy as can be, as if he hadn’t been worried sick about her whereabouts when he’d discovered her missing a short time earlier. Too many people still considered her a witch and would relish naught more than a witch burning.

  But wait. Who were those two men flanking her? Two red-haired men. Oh, holy Thor! It was the dimwit twins.

  He put up a hand to signal his men to hold their weapons till he could discern what devilment Egbert and Hebert were up to now. He could handle the two no-brains himself, if need be. And if they’d done even the slightest thing to harm Alinor, he would wring their scrawny necks like the chickens they were.

  “Alinor,” he said with barely controlled patience, “I have been searching for you.” He ignored her brothers as he spoke.

  Alinor licked her lips nervously. “You know my brothers, Egbert and Hebert.”

  “I know them.” His greeting was rude, but he did not care. Something was amiss, and he had no patience for niceties when directness was called for.

  “I need to speak with you, Tykir, alone.” Alinor’s chin was lifted high with determination. Or was she trying not to weep? God, he was going to kill those brothers of hers if they’d done anything to harm her.