Page 1 of The Blue Viking

Prologue

Kaupang, the Northland, A.D. 935

“Pig boy! Pig boy! Runt of the litter!”

Rurik’s head jerked up with alarm on recognizing the band of youths in the market square shouting taunts at him. “Thor’s toenails!” he muttered, and began to run for his life … as fast as his skinny, eight-year-old legs would carry him.

Normally, Rurik would have relished the sounds and aromas of the busy trading town. Roast mutton turning on a spit. Oat cakes dripping with honey. Mulled ale sizzling around a hot poker. The clang, clang, clang of the sword maker’s anvil. The brays and bleats and neighs and moos and cackles and quacks of various animals. The importuning pleas of the vendors, cajoling passersby to sample their wares.

The ruffians chased after him, as he knew they would, tossing insults like sharp burrs on a north wind. Some of them stuck … if not to his skin, to his oversensitive soul.

“Come back ’ere, you bloody bugger.”

“Wha’ he needs is a good dunk in an icy fjord to wipe off that hog stink.”

“Do ya think the starvling suckles on the sow’s teat? Mayhap that’s why he’s so ugly. Ha, ha, ha!”

“Oink, oink, oink!”

Even as he puffed loudly, his arms pumping wildly to match his strides, Rurik’s eyes watered at their biting words.

Why do they hate me so?

It mattered not that they were Norse, as he was.

It mattered not that he had only seen eight winters, and they more than eleven.

It mattered not that he was small and frail of frame, while they were strapping youthlings.

Oh, it was true he smelled, from lack of bathing and from living amongst the pigs, but his pursuers were not so fragrant themselves. For a certainty, none of them, himself included, had bathed since last spring.

But what had he ever done to them that warranted such viciousness? They were as poor and ill-dressed and mistreated as he was.

Could it be that some people enjoy meanness for its own sake?

Mus’ be.

The first to catch up with him was Ivar, the blacksmith’s son… the meanest of the lot. Rurik was just beyond the stall of Gudrod the Tanner. Phew! Talk about malodors! Right now, the leather worker was spreading chicken dung on a stretched animal skin—an ancient method for curing hides. Ivar lunged forward, knocking him to the ground.

“Hey, now!” Gudrod yelled. “Get out of here, you scurvy whelps. Ye’ll ruin me bizness.”

Without a sideways glance at the merchant, Ivar stood and dragged Rurik by the back of his filthy tunic to a nearby wooded area. There, in the ice-crusted snow, he began to pummel Rurik in earnest, marking each of his blows with comments such as, “That’ll teach you ta run from yer betters.” Alas, Rurik was much smaller, and all that he could do was hold his hands over his face protectively.

Ivar’s other friends soon caught up and added then-jeers and punches to Rurik’s battering. Rolling on the snowy ground, they proceeded to wallop him mercilessly.

Suddenly, another voice was heard. “I thought I told you bloody bastards to leave the halfling alone. Some folks’re so thickheaded they don’ know when their arses are gonna be kicked from here to Hedeby and back.”

An ominous silence followed as Rurik’s attackers realized that Stigand had arrived. His “protector.” The band of malcontents stood as one and began to back away, but not before Stigand grabbed hold of Ivar, their leader. Stigand was only ten years old, but he was big … very big … for his age. And stonyhearted. More so even than Ivar and his spiteful friends. With his left hand, Stigand lifted Ivar off the ground by grasping his neck. Then he swung his right fist in a wide arc into Ivar’s quaking face. Even before the blood started spurting, there was the sound of cranching bone. Ivar’s nose had surely been broken… perchance even his jaw, too. Stigand landed several other jabs as well, before releasing the now sobbing Ivar to run off after his cowardly companions.

Stigand held out a hand to help Rurik to his feet. Shaking his head with dismay at Rurik, Stigand remarked, “You are pitiful.”

“I know,” Rurik said, brushing off his tattered braies which now had a few more rips. But he smiled his thanks at his only friend in the world.

A short time later, he and Stigand sat with their backs propped against the pigsty wall. Stigand was playing with a small pig he had named Thumb-Biter. It was the only time Rurik saw any softness on Stigand’s face … when he hugged and caressed the undersized piglet that had been rejected by its mother. A true runt of the litter when it had been born, it was now flourishing under Stigand’s special care.

Rurik’s stomach growled with hunger.

Stigand glanced over at him and grinned. “Best you grab a hunk of manchet bread afore the old hag comes home.”