Sandra Hill - [Vikings I 04] (4 page)

“Yea. Nay.” He tapped his chin thoughtfully. “Mayhap.”

She cocked her head, trying to understand how a seemingly intelligent man—well, leastways, not a drooling lackbrain—could give credence to dark magic.

“You must needs understand that the Norse lands are harsh and wild, especially the far north of Norway where I live. ’Tis vastly different from Britain, even up here in Northumbria,” he explained. “There are times during the summer when there is continuous daylight, and times during the winter when there is continuous darkness. In a land where darkness is a fact of life for long periods of time, ’tis easy to appreciate how my people have a superstitious bent. Out of the deep forest, down from the mountains, up from rivers and fjords they believe that the magical creatures come: the
hulders,
the
nisser,
the
fosse-grimmer
, the
nøkker.
Witches are naught, compared to this. Oh, I forgot. There are also the elves, the dwarfs and the trolls.” He waggled his eyebrows playfully at the last word. “These are not all bad beasties, though. Some of them are quite playful, spurred by our god of mischief, Loki.

“Further, I wouldst tell you a tale of King Harald Fairhair. An intense loathing for wizards and magic did my grandsire have, despite the fact that one of his sons, Ragnvald Rettlebone of Hadeland, practiced such. In the end, he ordered his other son, Eric Bloodaxe, to kill his own son. Eric did not only that, but killed eighty other wizards as well, for good measure.

“So, yea, I believe in the black arts.”

“Humph!” It was all nonsense, as far as Alinor was concerned. But then a sudden thought occurred to her. This
fierce warrior could fight off her brothers with a swat of his hand, if he so chose. What if she went to the Norse lands with him, for a short time, just till her brothers gave up on their latest matrimonial efforts? Wouldn’t that be a way of solving both their problems—the Viking would fulfill his promise to deliver a “witch” to remove the curse, and she would escape a fourth wedding?

“Unhand me, Viking,” she said then, looking down to her arm, still pinioned to the chair by his long-fingered grasp. “I would hear more of your mission. Exactly how long would it be afore you could return me to Northumbria?”

“My duty ends once I present you to King Anlaf.”

She tilted her head in puzzlement.

“After the curse is removed, I’m fairly certain Anlaf would send you home with an armed escort, but by then the winter ice would have set in, I predict. So, I would guess you could be home by Easter.”

Fairly certain?
Then his other words snagged her attention. “Easter? Easter? That’s six months from now. I can’t be gone for that long. What of the winter weaving? And the spring lambing? And the first shearing? I have more than a hundred sheep to care for here at Graycote.” She gave him a fulminating glower, then concluded, “’Tis impossible.”

“You have no choice, my lady.”

Well, we shall see about that. I don’t want to take drastic measures, but I will if you force my back to the wall, Viking.
“Tell me again. Exactly which high Viking personage am I accused of cursing?”

“Are there so many?”

Are there so many?
Alinor repeated snidely in her head. “No, there are not. I cannot remember even one.” She paused as a quick flash of memory came to her. “Except
…oh, surely you do not refer to that Viking assault on St. Beatrice’s Abbey last year?”

He nodded. “’Twas King Anlaf of Norway.”

Her forehead furrowed with confusion. “I thought Haakon the Good was king of Norway.”

“Well, yea, my uncle Haakon is the all-king of Norway, but there are many minor kings. My cousin Anlaf is the chieftain or low-king of a region in Trondelag.”

“Your uncle…your cousin? Kings?” she sputtered.

“At last! Now you understand.”

“Understand? Why, that brute—
your cousin
—was about to rape Sister Mary Esme.”

He shrugged. “And you put a curse on him.”

“I did?”

“And waved the magic veil?”

“Which magic veil?”

“The Virgin’s Veil. And, by the by, do not forget to bring the blue veil with you. Anlaf will want to see it when you remove the curse.”

Alinor crossed her eyes with frustration. “That blue veil was
my
headrail, and I was not waving it. It fell off my head in the tussle to get the barbarian off of Sister Mary Esme.”

“You jest.”

“And another thing, I may have cursed the man, but I did not put a curse on him. There is a difference.”

“Dost thou try to befuddle me with words?”

That wouldn’t take much.

“Did you or did you not proclaim, ‘By the Virgin’s Veil, may your manpart fall off if you do this evil thing’?”

There was a long, speaking silence during which Alinor let his words sink in. Her face heated with embarrassment, then, as she asked, with awe, “And did his manpart fall off?”

“Nay, it just took a right turn.”

“It?”

“His manroot.”

“It did
what?
Oh, I can barely credit what you say. His manpart took a right turn?” Alinor choked with laughter.

“It’s not funny,” he protested, slapping her heartily on the back to stop her choking.

“Oh, yea, it is. But please,” she said, wiping at her tears with the edge of her headrail, “please do not tell me that you and that cloddish king think I would touch his…
root
.”

Tykir waved a hand airily. “I know not of witchly rites for straightening a man’s lance. Touch it or touch it not, for all I care. Just remove the spell.”

“And if I cannot do so?”

“There are laws held sacred at the Things—our governing bodies—where witches can be stoned or drowned. If they are bad witches, that is.” He slitted his eyes to study her for a moment. “By the by, are you a good witch or a bad witch?”

“Aaarrrgh!”

“It matters not, actually. I misdoubt that Anlaf would wait for a Thing to be called if you cannot remove the curse.”

“Oh?”

“Anlaf will, no doubt, just lop off your head.”

“You don’t have to watch me every blessed minute.”

“Do I not?”

“A big, fearsome warrior like you! What have you to fear from a harmless little female like me?”

You were not harmless from the day you came squalling from the womb, I wager. Seems to me, I’ve heard that red hair and a shrewish temper go hand in hand. Or was that
just something Bolthor put in one of his sagas? Enough! I waste my thoughts on nonsense.

“’Tis good you noticed my impressive stature,” he said.

Thor’s toenails! The nonsense in my head is spewing out my mouth now.

“How could I not? You block the entire door.”

He was leaning his shoulder, casually, against the open door frame of the Lady Alinor’s bedchamber, his arms folded across his chest. Block was a good choice of word on her part because he suspected she would bolt in an instant if he were not acting as the barrier to her freedom.

He tapped one booted foot with impatience as the wench…rather, the witch…or the lady…arranged a neat pile on her high bed of the garments she intended to take on her journey to Trondelag. Worst of all, there were
four
blue headrails, and none of them looked magical, or, for that matter, old enough to be the Blessed Virgin relic.

I swear, if she folds that gunna into one more perfect square and smoothes out every single wrinkle, I am going to stuff her belongings in my saddlebags and be done with it. Mayhap I will stuff her scrawny body in there, too, all neatly folded into squarish parts.

Clearly, she was employing a delaying tactic, but for what purpose he could not yet fathom. She appeared to be an intelligent woman…or as intelligent as any woman could be. She had to know her fate was sealed; she would be delivered to King Anlaf, willing or unwilling.

Still Tykir held his temper in check. A good soldier knew to wait for just the right moment to pounce. Lady Alinor didn’t deceive him. The witch was up to some mischief. He saw the evidence in the nervous fluttering of her fingertips, and this was a woman not prone to flightiness. She had given in too quickly, in the end, to his demand
that she accompany him to the Norse lands. Being a mite stubborn himself on occasion, Tykir recognized a fellow mule. He grinned to himself at that mental picture, and how the missish Lady Alinor would hate that he put her in that animal category.

She cast him a sideways glance through narrowed, speculative eyes. “Wouldst consider a
danegeld?”

“Aha! You think to bribe me now? With what? Mutton?”

She bristled at his ridicule of her precious sheep. On the way back to the keep, he’d noted with amusement that she had names for each of the bleating animals.

“Perchance I could gather together a few coin,” she offered. The furtive cast in her eyes told him clearly that she hid something. Hmmm. Now that he thought on it, the number of sheep and cattle he’d seen on the fells, along with the well-cultivated fields, bespoke a more prosperous estate than exhibited in Graycote’s austere keep or in Lady Alinor’s jewelless attire. Mayhap she hoarded her gold. But for what purpose?

Really, it was no matter to him whether she was wealthy as a Baghdad sultan or poor as a landless cotter.

He shook his head. “I promised Anlaf a witch, and a witch he shall have.”

“All for the sake of a horse?” she scoffed.

He’d told her moments ago about all the trouble he’d gone to since the king’s emissary had come to him in Birka, including Anlaf’s wily inducements to seal the mission. Her scoffing tone irritated him. Whether he’d been barmy or not to take on this mission was his concern, and whether he did so out of boredom or for a fine stallion did not merit her criticism.

“Do not forget the slave girl,” he pointed out in a deliberate attempt to rattle her composure. “The one with
the bells.” For some reason, he’d mentioned the horse and the jingling Samirah, but he hadn’t told her about Adam. The less people who knew the better, especially his sister Rain and her husband, Selik. They would go off in a rage if they discovered Anlaf’s perfidy regarding their adopted son. In fact, their rage might cause a whole bloody war over an incident that Tykir could handle by simply delivering a witch.

Her upper lip curled with contempt. “Men are the same everywhere, are they not? It does not matter if they be Norseman or Englishman, men are led by the tail betwixt their legs.”

Tykir was startled by her blunt words and realized that she was referring to his slave girl comment. He was not accustomed to such crudity from a lady, but he forced his face to remain expressionless. “My lady, you exceed yourself. You would do best not to earn my scorn. Speaking of tails, how much trouble does yours cause?”

“I…am…not…a…witch,” she repeated, a refrain that was becoming tiresome to him.

“I would think it could pose problems when you attend your needs in the garderobe,” he said, as if she had not even spoken. He’d already noticed that she hated it when he ignored her words. “Or riding a horse. Oh, oh, I thought of something…”

“Now, there is a rare event.”

He frowned at her impertinent interruption. “I am loath to ask, but…do you have a mood tail?”

He could tell she did not want to ask but could not help herself. “A mood tail?”

“You know…does it wag of its own volition when you are in a happy mood, like a puppy? And droop when you are in a despondent mood, like when the blood curdles in your witchly cauldron?”

“I find no humor in your foolery.” She bit her bottom lip with frustration. There was something appealing about the woman when her feathers were ruffled, but he just could not see past those hideous freckles. And even though a crisp wimple covered her bright red hair, he knew it was there underneath, just waiting to spring forth. Moreover, she had no breasts to speak of, as far as he could tell. His preferences did not necessarily lean toward the buxom, but flatter than two eggs on a hot rock held little enticement, either.

“Keep your eyes in their sockets, Viking,” she admonished.

Aha! Another feather ruffled.
He liked ruffling her. So he added, “Oh, Holy Thor! How could I have forgotten the most important thing? What do you do with your tail when you spread your legs for the bed sport?”

She gasped, then quickly masked her shock with a bland face. “Since I have been a widow for a year and more, bedsport is hardly something I engage in. Have you all-knowing Vikings found a way to engage in bed sport without a mate?” She batted her eyelashes at him as if she was serious, while in fact she mocked him. “Verily, there was not all that much mating even when I had a mate…not that I ever complained about that.”

“Oh, lady, that is exactly the kind of provocative remark you should not make to a Viking.”

He grinned at her lasciviously.

She glared at him.

“So, do not distract me with tempting propositions. We must be on our way.”

“Tem-tempting,” she sputtered.

“By the by, Rurik and Bolthor and I were wondering if you ever dance naked in the forest.”

“Dance…dance…oh, you are the most ill-bred, in
sufferable, loathsome, lecherous lout I have ever encountered in all my life. And believe me, I have met more than a few.”

“Well, yea, but enough compliments for now. We have no time for man-woman banter.”

She drew herself up with affront. “Turn aside whilst I gather my undergarments. ’Tis not meet that you should ogle my intimate apparel.”

“Ogle? Me?” Tykir stiffened. “Lady, despite my mention of temptation, do not delude yourself. Your intimate apparel holds no allure for me. Nor do your intimate
parts.
Your virtue will not be forfeit in my company, I assure you.”

Just then, Bolthor approached from the corridor. “I have gathered provisions from the kitchen, and Rurik says the horses are ready.”

Tykir looked toward Lady Alinor, eyebrows arched in question of her readiness.

A flush of panic swept her features, causing the freckles to stand out even more. However, before he could assure her of her safety—leastways till they got to Anlaf’s court—a loud rumbling came from Tykir’s gut, followed by a most painful cramping. At the same time, bile rose without warning into his throat.