by Sandra Hill
Except for Egbert, Hebert and Cedric.
"Alinor!" Egbert cried out and hugged her warmly, which was an odd experience since she was bound to the grim-faced Tykir, who was forced to move with her. He didn't appear pleased to be in such close proximity to the man who'd tried to shoot him with an arrow earlier that afternoon. It was also an odd experience because Egbert had never hugged her a day in her life. He'd applied a birch rod on more than one occasion, but a hug? Never.
"You're safe!" Hebert added, taking his turn in hugging her. "We were so worried about you, dear sister."
Worried? Hah! Their only worry was that they might lose their bride money.
Egbert wore a huge bandage wrapped around his crown, presumably from an injury sustained that afternoon, and Hebert had a split lip. They'd probably wounded themselves rushing away from the fray.
Cedric waddled forward and seemed about to take her brothers' place in the embracing business, but Tykir soon put a stop to that with a halting hand. For one insane moment, she wondered if Tykir might be jealous. But then she took another glance at his furious face and decided otherwise.
"Tykir, Eirik," King Eric Bloodaxe greeted them. "We give you welcome. Have you had enough to eat and drink?"
Both men nodded to the king, who was dressed sumptuously in purple wool, from braies to belted tunic to over-mantle lined with white fur. He must have seen more than fifty years, if the gray streaks in the dark hair that lay about his shoulders under a thin gold crown were any indication.
He was clean-shaven, otherwise, and still handsome, in a cold-eyed way.
"Gunnhild, come forth and greet our guests," the king invited his queen.
Alinor gasped with appreciation at her first close-up view of the queen. An uncommonly beautiful woman, Gunnhild had to be of the same age as her king, but her skin was unlined, her thick blond hair untouched by gray. She wore an embroidered gown of the same purple fabric as the king's and a veritable fortune in jewelry, including gold and silver rings on every finger, wide rings that extended from knuckle to knuckle.
Her intelligent eyes took in Tykir's amber pendant and Eirik's dragon brooch in a greedy glance. "Have you brought me any fine amber trinkets this time, Tykir?" the queen asked.
"I have many a jewel for purchase," Tykir said.
She frowned.
"All fit for a queen of your renowned beauty."
She preened.
"I will bring them by for your inspection later tonight."
Queen Gunnhild nodded, then turned to Alinor and gave her a quick, dismissing assessment. With an air of boredom, she inquired insolently, "You are the witch, I presume?"
Alinor started to nod but caught herself. God's teeth! She was beginning to think of herself as the witch now, too.
"Yea, she is the witch I am taking back to Norway," Tykir answered for her. He held up his hand to demonstrate that she was his prisoner.
"There is much I would like to discuss with you," Gunnhild said enigmatically to Alinor. Before she could say more, Egbert and Hebert interrupted, pushing themselves in front of Alinor.
"Nay, she is not a witch," Egbert asserted. "She is our sister, the betrothed of Lord Cedric here, the cousin of the king of all Britain, a gentle-bred lady who should not be handed over to this... this heathen."
King Eric raised an eyebrow at the word heathen, asking without words whether they put him in the same category. Then he homed in on another part of what Egbert had said. "Dost claim that Edred is king of all Britain?" Egbert realized his mistake immediately. "All Britain, except for Northumbria," he corrected himself.
"Are you really cousin to King Edred?" Gunnhild queried Alinor.
"Thrice-removed," Tykir pointed out. Alinor glared at him for speaking on her behalf, but he just grinned at her.
"We demand that you hand our sister back to us, and pay wergild for the soldiers sorely wounded by you and your barbarians this afternoon," Hebert said. "Is that not so, Earl Oswulf?"
The Saxon nobleman, adviser to King Edred, had been standing quietly in the background. He gave his assent with a curt nod of his head.
"Nay!" Tykir said.
After that, the king heard both sides of the argument. In the end, he offered, "We could call for a Thing in a sennight or so to decide the issue." Alinor knew from what Tykir had told her previously that a Thing was the governing body for Norsemen, similar to the Witan in Britain.
"I can't wait that long," Tykir roared. "Already I am a month late in getting my trading goods to Hedeby. 'Tis a two-week journey to Norway in good weather. With autumn advanced now, another sennight of malingering could mean my being unable to return to my homestead for winter. That I cannot accept."
The king addressed Oswulf then. "Is the witch worth drawing swords? Mayhap a full-fledged battle?"
Oswulf's face went pale, and his beady eyes scanned the great hall, noticing the many Norse fighting men."Not at the present," he conceded. "But I will have to report back to King Edred your refusal to intercede on behalf of Egbert and Hebert. I guarantee he will not be pleased."
"So be it," King Eric said, clearly unafraid of a fight.
Egbert, Hebert and Cedric, muttering curses and vows of revenge, were being led away by an angry Earl Oswulf. For now, her fate was decided, a stunned Alinor realized. She was still the captive of the troll. Everyone would continue to think of her as a witch, including the king, who'd just listened to some hushed message from Rurik and was gazing speculatively at her buttocks.
Gunnhild came forward to give a parting kiss to Eadyth, and then to Alinor, much to her astonishment. Even more surprising was Gunnhild's words in Alinor's ears, "Do not mind my husband looking for your tail. He has been searching for mine nigh on twenty years now, and he still has not found it." With a chuckle, she turned away and walked regally back to her seat at the high table.
As they returned to their benches, Alinor noticed, to her chagrin, that a great number of people were glancing at her backside. Apparently the word had spread since her passage up to the dais a short time ago. She was certain she had Rurik to thank for that. One of these days, she would like to twist Rurik's tongue into a knot... a blue knot to match his face design.
Just then, when Alinor thought things could not have gotten worse, they did.
Beast, who'd been sleeping at their table the whole time they were away talking with the king and queen, sat up with sudden alertness, his black ears standing up like sentinels. With an ominous growl, then a bark, he watched the open doorway on the other side of the great hall. A wild barking ensued, followed by a familiar bleating. Beauty came galloping across the great hall, her broken neck chain trailing after her, with David and Bathsheba following close behind, and after that a half dozen more baaing sheep. A stunned silence overcame the entire great hall, in a rippling fashion, as the interlopers trotted by. Soon Beauty and Beast were reunited, with much licking of faces and sniffing of intimate body parts.
It was a scene right out of Alinor's worst nightmare.
She pushed aside the manchet trencher of congealing sliced boar and pressed her forehead to the table. Laughter started low, then crescendoed as the Norse assemblage roared their mirth at the antics of Alinor's minions.
Bolthor mentioned something about a new saga, "Tykir the Great and the Nude Witch," immediately followed by, "Tykir the Great and the Lustful Dogs."
"Oooh, Bolthor, I forgot what a wonderful skald you are," Eadyth enthused. "Please, wouldst thou honor us with a saga?"
Everyone at the table turned a shade of green, repressing the need to groan. Bolthor, however, looked as if he'd been handed the Holy Grail.
"Hear one and all, this is the saga of Tykir the Great," Bolthor began. "In the year of our Lord nine fifty-two, in the land of the Midnight Sun, there was a king with a crooked cock. Anlaf was his name. And he was mightier... " On and on Bolthor went, and for the first time Alinor wished she really was a witch. Her first act would be to fly away.
"Never fear, sweetling
," Tykir whispered in her ear. She could tell that he was barely stifling a laugh. "I will take you away from all this soon enough."
That was what Alinor was afraid of.
Chapter Five
Five days later...
"It wasn't my fault," Alinor contended. "I tell you, I'm not a witch."
"You fed the seagulls. The seagulls died. The evidence speaks for itself." Tykir exhaled loudly with exasperation. "Never have I seen birds fall from the sky like snowflakes afore. Twas... well, magical. You are a witch, and that is that."
He turned his back on her and was about to stomp away. How the man managed to keep his balance aboard ship, Alinor couldn't figure out. They'd been five days into their voyage, and she still didn't have her sea legs. Nor her sea stomach, for that matter. No wonder she'd been unable to digest that horrid gammelost... old cheese... which the Vikings favored on their sea journeys, along with the even more unpalatable salted cod known as lutefisk. Hard bread and an occasional apple were the mainstay of her diet these days.
"Wait a minute," she called out, and stood, about to follow after Tykir. "I'm not done explaining—"
He pivoted abruptly and shoved her in the chest, forcing her to sit back down on the large wooden storage box under a tented area in the center of the ship. The look on his face was so mean and vicious that she recoiled. She could scarce remember the softer glances he'd been casting her way back at the Norse castle—not that she wanted such—because all the brute had been doing these past five days was glaring at her.
"Sit!" he ordered. "Did I not just tell you to sit? Did I not warn you about moving from this spot? Did I not say that my men are threatening mutiny if you pull one more witchly trick? Did I not say I would lop off your head and feed you to the sharks if you opened your mouth one more time?"
"Did I not? Did I not? Did I not?" Alinor murmured.
"Are you mimicking me?" he growled.
"No, I'm saying my prayers," she snapped back.
"Prayers? Hah! 'Tis likely more of your incantations."
"Oh, that's unfair. I wasn't performing some dark rites when we were in the midst of that storm yestereve. I was wailing with fear. I've never been on a ship afore. How was I to know that we weren't going to sink to the bottom of the North Sea? How was I to know that bulge water was normal? How was I—"
"Bilge," he said.
"What?"
"It's bilge water, not bulge water."
"Oh, for the love of Mary! Bilge, bulge, barge... it matters not to me. I was standing in water ankle-deep. I still have mold on my shoes."
Tykir leaned down and pointed a forefinger at her, "You did a chant and the storm stopped."
She pointed a forefinger back at him. "Chant? I was moaning, 'Oh, oh, oh, please, God, oh, oh, oh, oh!' "
He made a harrumphing sound of disbelief. "My men are already sore mad at you. Because of you, we are sin sennights late in returning to Norway. They have homes and families to attend to afore the ice comes and the fjords freeze over. One more delay could mean our being stuck in Anlaf's court for the winter months. Worse yet, in Hedeby, where we must stop first to unload the last of my market goods."
It was true. Autumn was on the wane and winter fast approaching. Even with the sun shining brightly overhead, the air was brisk and chilly to the bone. She was wrapped in one of Tykir's thick wool cloaks, lined with fur, but the cold air still whipped through her. Some of the men rowed naked to the waist when the sun was high, but mostly they were garbed for the cold.
And it was true, as well, that the Norse sailors—big, brave warriors that they were—feared her greatly. All of them wore handmade wooden crosses on leather thongs around their necks, and they were seen to sprinkle themselves with holy water on occasion. Rurik must have purchased a barrel of it from the good monks at the abbey of Jorvik.
Worst of all, when the men weren't sneaking peeks at her bottom—they still harbored this silly superstition about a witch's tail—the men were scowling at her, forcing her to keep a distance. Part of that was due to mere coincidences that seemed to crop up over and over in her vicinity. " 'Twas not my fault that the milk curdled in the vat the first night out. Or that the wine barrel had a loose stave causing the precious cargo to seep out overnight. Or that Rurik's dog Beast has been crying without end, ever since you sent Beauty and the sheep back to Graycote. Coincidences! That's all!"
She knew he was still angry over her refusing his request to slaughter one of her sheep over the bow of his vessel as a pagan sacrifice to the sea people for weather-luck and good voyage. She'd informed him in no uncertain terms that all her sheep were valuable, but the curly-horned ram was nigh priceless, coming from Cordoba, a land that rarely allowed that species to leave its boundaries, except as royal gifts. How her third husband managed to obtain one of the rare beasts she had no idea, but it had almost been worth putting up with the marriage to gain her prized ram.
Tykir hadn't even smiled when she'd jested with him, "Besides, sacrificing my sheep would not bring you luck. They are Christian sheep, you see."
"You have an answer for everything, my lady. But the fact is, my men believe you are a witch."
"Of course they do. They are encouraged by Rurik's rancor and Bolthor's skaldic imagination, not to mention your constant grumbling. And speaking of men, who knew there would be so many of them? 'Tis not proper that a lady should travel, unchaperoned, in the company of so many men."
"Didst think that Rurik, Bolthor and I would row the ships ourselves?" he answered with undue sarcasm.
"Mayhap I should have known a great number of sailors would be required... to man one vessel. But how was I to know the number of ships you own?" The longship on which she traveled now, Swift Dragon, was one of a fleet of seven dragonships, each manned by more than sixty Viking warriors. The other ships were Fierce Dragon, Bold Dragon, Brave Dragon, Savage Dragon, Mad Dragon and Deadly Dragon, all of them owned by Tykir. Apparently, it was necessary to travel in convoy to fight off pirate ships, which lurked off the coasts of the northern market towns.
"Didst think I was a pauper?"
"Nay. I know you for what you are. A troll." He bared his teeth in a gritted smile, and she knew she pushed him dangerously.
To her surprise, the number of ships and the treasure trove of market goods they carried bespoke great wealth on Tykir's part. It was a good thing her brothers didn't know about Tykir's affluence. They'd probably try to make a marriage pact with him. But, nay, he was too young for their devious designs. They would want an old man, soon to die. Besides, Tykir would never agree to wed such as her.
Where are these horrible thoughts coming from? "Tykir," she began in a conciliatory tone, "I was standing at the prow of your ship, avoiding the sailors, as you told me to do. I was trying to eat the midday meal, as you told me to do. But I just could not stomach that revolting gammelost. So I fed crumbles of it to some passing seagulls. And before I knew it, there were dozens of the birds taking the bits of the smelly stuff right from my fingers." She sniffed first one hand, then the other. "I still stink."
"It is just old cheese."
"Old cheese?" she scoffed. "That cheese could walk by itself."
Despite his best efforts, a grin tugged at his lips. "Actually, there is a legend that says gammelost contributed to the victory of King Harald Fairhair, my grandfather, at the Battle of Hafrsfjord in 872," he disclosed with a sheepish smile. She arched a brow in question.
"The story goes that the king fed his warriors gammelost for the breaking of fast in the morn, prior to battle, thus transforming them into berserkers."
"See, it wasn't my fault. The seagulls just went berserk."
"I... don't... think... so," he said with a short laugh. "In any case, stay here and enjoy this beautiful day. We may not have another. Weather changes abruptly during this season."
He rolled his shoulders then, by pressing his elbows backward till they almost touched at his spine, then crossing his arms in front. Several times he did this,
as his men were wont to do on occasion, to remove the kinks that came with cramming so many bodies into such a small space.
The man was godly handsome, Alinor had to admit. Even now, wearing a salt-stained leather tunic over black braies, with a wide leather belt tucking in his waist, his body was the embodiment of manhood. His blondish brown hair was tied back into a queue, but its silken texture was still apparent. Women must make much ado over him.
Unaware, or uncaring, of her scrutiny, he stopped rolling his shoulders and leaned down to rub his upper thigh. Eadyth had told Alinor of Tykir's grave injury at the Battle of Brunanburh several years ago, where he'd almost lost his limb.
"Does your leg hurt?" she asked.
His head jerked up. "Which one has the running tongue? Bolthor or Rurik?"
"Eadyth."
He shook his head with disgust. "Yea, my old wound rears up on occasion."
"I have no sympathy for you. A man your age has no business riding across several countries in pursuit of a non-existent witch."
"A man my age?" he sputtered indignantly.
"Yea, do not pretend to be a youthling. You are just like all the other men approaching their middle years, trying to be younger than you are. Cavorting and fornicating till your heart, or other body parts, give out."
"Ca-cavorting?" He was doubled over with laughter at her words. "I am thirty-five years old. I am not yet in my dotage, I assure you, my lady."
"Be that as it may, I could prepare a potion for you that would help. Applied directly, it soothes on contact."
"Lady, your last potion put me on intimate terms with the garderobe. Thank you, but I will decline your offer." Taking a deep breath, he scanned his ship and those following in an arrow formation behind them. The pride on his face was unmistakable.
"You love this life, don't you?"
He turned to her with wariness. "Yea, I do. There is no better sight this side of Valhalla than a dragonship with her sail hauled up and the wind filling it. 'Cloaks of the wind,' we call our sails. A good longboat, a strong breeze and cloaks of the wind... surely these are gifts from the gods."