Sandra Hill - [Vikings I 05] (2 page)

Rurik would have glared at Bolthor, too, if he were not the size of a warhorse. Bolthor—a fierce fighting man—did not take kindly to glares. He was oversensitive by half.

Jostein, on the other hand, turned red in the face and neck and ears at having earned Rurik’s disfavor, and Rurik immediately regretted his hasty words. It was not Jostein’s fault Rurik was in such an ill temper. Rurik was well aware that the boy, who had seen only fifteen winters, thought he walked on water.
Foolish youthling!

“Well, I was just thinking,” Jostein stammered, “that mayhap your problem stems from the witch being in love with you.”

The
problem
Jostein referred to was the jagged blue mark running down the center of Rurik’s face … the selfsame mark that was at the heart of his three-year quest to find the damnable witch who’d put it there…. Actually five years if one counted those first two years when he’d only searched half-heartedly and spent the winters in Norway and Iceland.

Just then he noticed the reddish-brown stains on his hands and clothing. ’Twas from the tannin in the bogs. Holy Thor! If he was not careful, he would carry not only the blue mark, but red ones, as well. Could his life get any worse than this? Rubbing his hands briskly on the legs of his braies, he grumbled aloud, “Since when do wenches show their love by marking a man for fife?”

“Couldst be that you hurt the witch’s feelings?” Bolthor offered. Bolthor thought he knew a lot about feelings … being a poet and all. “Mayhap Jostein’s thinking is not so lackbrained. Mayhap the witch was in love with you, and you hurt her feelings, and she put the mark on you for revenge. What think you of that notion?”

“A fool’s bolt is soon shot,” Rurik mumbled under his breath.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Bolthor wanted to know.

“Not a thing,” Rurik replied with a sigh. “I was just thinking about Scotsmen,” he lied. But to himself, he translated,
Dumb people don’t mind sharing their opinions
. “Besides, methinks it matters not
why
Maire the Witch put the mark on me. I just want it removed so I can resume a normal life.”

“But—” Bolthor started.

Rurik put up a hand to halt further words on the subject, but Stigand the Berserk, another of his retainers, was already joining in. “The witch made a laughingstock of you. Everywhere you go, people smirk behind your back and make jokes about you.”

Rurik frowned. He did not need to hear this.

And, really, what could Stigand be thinking … to risk provoking him so? His trusted friend pushed all bounds by reminding him that people were making jest of him; he knew better than most what a sore point such mockery had always been with Rurik.

“You should let me lop off her head,” Stigand suggested gleefully. And he was serious.

Was that not like Stigand… ever the protector? Rurik could not help being touched at the fierce soldier’s
attempt to shield him from pain. But Rurik was quick to state, “You are not lopping off any more heads.” The bloodlust was always high in Stigand and had to be reined in constantly. He had a habit of decapitating his enemies with a single blow of his trusty battle-ax, appropriately named Blood-Lover. Throughout their three-year quest, they’d constantly had to restrain Stigand, lest a sheepherder or unwary wayfarer get in his path when he was in a dark mood. So intense were his berserk rages on occasion that Stigand actually growled like an animal and bit his own shield. In fact, just last sennight, he’d almost decapitated a Scottish princeling who’d winked repeatedly at him. Turned out the young nobleman was not a sodomite, but had suffered from a nervous tic since birth. “Leastways, do not think of lopping off Maire’s head till she has removed the mark.”

“I know, I know—” the twins, Vagn and Toste, said as one. ’Twas eerie the way the two grown men, identical in appearance right down to the clefts in their chins, would come out with the same thought.

Vagn spoke first. “I have an idea. Now, do not be offended when I tell you this, Rurik…”

Toste snickered as if he knew what his brother was about to say.

Rurik was sure he was going to be offended.

“You always had a certain word-fame for woman-luck, but perchance you have lost the knack,” Vagn elaborated, “and that is what caused the witch to mark you. ’Twas frustration, pure and simple.”

“The knack?” Rurik inquired, against his better judgment.

“Yea, the ability to bring a woman to pleasure,”
Vagn explained. “Wenches like the bedsport, too, you know. I certainly have that knack.” Vagn puffed out his chest.

“Me, too,” chimed in Toste, Bolthor, Stigand… even Jostein in a squeaky, not-quite-man voice.

Rurik suspected that the twins were using his mission as an excuse to sample women all across Scotland. This was new carnal territory to explore.

How did I ever gather such a bizarre retinue?
Rurik thought.
Which god did I insult to bring on such misfortune?
But what he said was, “The only thing I know for a certainty is that witch-hunting is becoming one immense pain in the arse.” He was not exaggerating when he said that. Truly, a Viking should be on the high seas sailing a longship, not bouncing his rump on the back of a horse for days at a time. Portly Saxons, or dour Scotsmen, might not mind the constant jostling, but Vikings, being physically fitter than the average man and having less fat on those nether regions, were better suited to other modes of transportation, in Rurik’s opinion. He had to grin at the egotism of that observation.

Mayhap, he should suggest that Bolthor create a saga about it.

On the other hand, mayhap not.

Based on past experience, it would have a title like “Viking Men With Hard Arses” or some such nonsense.

All five men fixed their gazes on him, and he realized that he had been chuckling to himself witlessly.

With a sigh of despair at his own disintegrating brain, he sank down onto a boulder. Picking up a small knife, he began to scrape peat moss and other
slimy substances—like mud mixed with twigs and grass—from his leather half boots, which had been made in Cordoba of the softest skins and cost three gold coins.

“This witch-hunting business is becoming bloody bothersome,” Rurik continued in a low grumble, but not before spitting out yet another clump of what tasted like soggy charcoal.

They all nodded vigorously in agreement.

Bolthor lumbered up and loomed over him, adjusting the black eye patch over the socket of one eye that had been lost in the Battle of Brunanburh many years before, when he was hardly older than Jostein. He squinted at him through his good eye, then put a palm over his mouth to hide his smile, as if there was humor in a grown man falling into a peat bog.

“You know, Rurik, the Scots poets have a practice of writing odes, unlike we Norsemen, who prefer a good saga. Dost think I could put together an ode or two just for practice? How about Ode to a Peat Bog’?”

Everyone guffawed with mirth, except Rurik.

“How about ‘Ode to a One-Eyed Dead Skald’?” Rurik inquired.

“It does not have the same ring to it,” Bolthor said.

I would like to give you a ring, you dumb dolt. More like a ringing in the ears from a sound whack aside the head with a broadsword
.

Then Bolthor added, more soberly, “Methinks ’tis time to put an end to this fruitless venture and admit defeat.”

“A Viking never admits defeat,” Rurik reminded him.

Bolthor shook his head in disagreement. “Vikings never admit that they admit defeat.” That was the kind of daft logic Bolthor came up with all the time.

“I say we behead every Scotsman and Scotswoman we come across,” Stigand interjected. “That will flush the witch out of her lair, I predict.”

Everyone looked at Stigand with horror. It was one thing to spill sword-dew in the midst of battle, but to kill innocent people… even if they were scurvy Scots? ’Twas unthinkable.

Vikings had their ethics, despite the English monk-historians in their scriptoriums, who liked to picture Norsemen as rapers and pillagers. Hah! Every good Viking knew that the Church amassed gold and silver in its chalices and whatnots just to tempt Norsemen. Besides, it was a well-known fact that Vikings invigorated the races of all those Christian countries they conquered. And didn’t they embrace Christianity itself … even if it was only a token embrace?

But, back to Stigand. Rurik knew about the horrors that Stigand had suffered in his youth… horrors that had caused his mind to split. But what had happened to him over the years to make the adult man so hard?

Fortunately, Rurik did not have to respond to Stigand’s suggestion because one of the twins, Toste, spoke up. “I have grown accustomed to the blue mark on your face, Rurik. Really, ’tis not so bad. If that is the only reason for continuing this quest… well, perchance you should reconsider.”

“The wenches seem to have no problem with it, either,” Vagn added. “Yestereve that farmsteader’s daughter picked you for swiving above all of us, and I’ll have you know that I am renowned for my good
looks. Godly handsome is how the wenches describe me.”

“I did not swive—” Rurik started to demur, then gave up, throwing his hands in the air with disgust. But then he added drolly, “I thought it was your knack the women coveted.”

“That, too,” Vagn said with a grin.

“I’m more handsome than you are.” Toste challenged his brother.

“Nay, I am more handsome than all of you,” Bolthor proclaimed, which was so ridiculous it did not even bear comment.

“I think Rurik is the most handsome,” Jostein piped up. Jostein was suffering a severe case of hero worship and had been since Rurik rescued him when he was ten years old from a Saracen slave trader with a proclivity for male children.

“Bugger all of you,” Stigand said with a mild roar. “I am the most handsome and anyone who disagrees can taste the flavor of my blade.” He rubbed a callused forefinger along the sharp edge of Blood-Lover for emphasis.

No one disagreed with Stigand, though he resembled a wild boar. Mayhap he
was
a handsome fellow, but who could tell how he really looked under his unruly beard and mustache? He had not shaved in the past few years.

“I have three more months left,” Rurik told them with a weary sigh. “Theta gave me two years to have the blue mark removed afore she would wed me. And that time does not end till autumn … three months from now. I do not intend to give up till then.”

“Three months! Twelve more sennights!” Vagn
griped. “It might as well be a year. Remember one thing, Rurik. Friends are like lute strings; they must not be strung too tight, and we all in your troop are overstrung, believe you me.”

“Lute strings? Lute strings?” Rurik sputtered.

“Precisely,” Vagn said. “I am sick to death of moors and Highlands and Lowlands … and quarrelsome Scotsmen.”

Stigand tilted his head to the side, as if thinking hard. “I rather like the quarrelsome Scotsmen. They give me an excuse to hone my fighting skills.” He ducked his head sheepishly and added, “They remind me a bit of us Vikings.”

Everyone gawked at him as if he had gone senseless … which he probably had, long ago … after his first hundred or so kills. Perhaps even long before that.

“ ’Tis true,” Stigand insisted. “They are proud, and independent, and good fighters. And they hate the Saxons the same as we do. So, we have something in common.”

“They hate Vikings, too,” Rurik pointed out.

That contradiction went right over Stigand’s head. Seeing their lack of accord with him, Stigand continued, “Even their practice of constant reaving—stealing shamelessly from their neighbors—is not unlike us Men of the North who enjoy a-Viking on occasion.”

They all shook their heads at Stigand’s thinking, even though it had some validity to it.

“What I hate most about Scotland is the haggis,” Jostein said, gagging as he spoke. “I swear, ’tis a concoction the Scots devised to poison us Norsemen.
’Tis worse than
gammelost
, and that smelly cheese is very bad.”

Rurik nodded in agreement. Once he had been on a sea voyage in which their food stores had been reduced to
gammelost
. By the time their longship had finally arrived back in Norway, all the seamen’s breaths reeked like the back end of a goat.

“Well, I for one think Theta was being unfair to give you such an ultimatum. Methinks you should have tossed her into the bed furs then and there,” Toste opined. He was tipping a skin of mead to his mouth between words, which probably gave him the courage to speak to his leader so. “Without her maidenhead, her father would have had no choice but to force Theta to exchange vows with you.” He belched loudly at the end of his discourse.

“Her father is Anlaf of Lade, a most powerful Norse chieftain,” Rurik told Toste, as if he did not already know. “And Theta, even being a fifth daughter, is a most willful wench. She would not come to my bed furs without the vows, and I had no inclination to waste long hours seducing her to change her mind.”

In truth, Rurik had been thinking on that very subject of late. Sometimes, he wondered if he really wanted to wed the woman who’d made such demands on him. For a certainty, he was not in love with her… nor had he ever been with any woman. At the time, it had seemed the right thing to do. His good friends Eirik and Tykir Thorksson had settled happily into their own marriages. So, he’d purchased a large farmstead on a Norse-inhabited island in the Orkneys. Rurik had never had a real home of his own. He was
twenty-eight years old… well past the age for settling in and raising a family. What it all boiled down to was that he’d made a decision to wed simply because it had seemed the right thing to do.

After these long intermittent years of scouring the Scottish countryside for an elusive witch, Rurik had changed. For one thing, he’d become a sullen, brooding man. His sense of humor had nigh disappeared. He’d lost his dreams. Bloody hell, he could not even remember what they had been. Too much time for thinking and pondering was causing him to doubt all that he’d thought he wanted. Still, he felt the need to finish what he’d started … whether it be the capture of a Scottish witch, or marriage with a Norse princess.