Page 21 of The Blue Viking

Jostein fair beamed with self-importance over the task he was being assigned. “I could depart right now,” he said, overanxious to fulfill Rurik’s wishes. “It should be only a three-day trip each way. I could be back within a sennight.”

Rurik patted him on the shoulder. “Tomorrow will be soon enough.”

Maire walked up to them then. She was still annoyed with him over being confined to the keep, and Bolthor wasn’t too happy either. A short time ago, he’d grumbled that he’d never known a woman to visit the privy as often as Maire did. He was even considering the creation of a special saga about it, “The Mystery of What Women Do for So Long in a Privy.” He’d immediately quashed that idea when Maire had overheard and whalloped him over the head with a halibut that the cook had just given her to examine for dinner fare.

But now, it appeared that the annoying wench had another matter on her mind. Unfortunately, he was the target of her scowls now. Fortunately, she had no fish in hand, although she was carrying a long stick, which he suspected was her witch’s staff. No doubt, she could turn a rake into a fish with one swish of that long wand. Best he keep a safe distance from her.

“Well, now that we’ve gotten rid of the cage, there’s only one thing left to do. Why are you edging away from me like that?”

He inclined his head in question at her first comment, but refused to answer her second. He was no half brain. Leastways, not usually.

“The snakes.”

“Huh?” He glanced across the bailey toward the area where her cage had hung. Then he gulped. The snakes. He’d forgotten. In the space of that gulp, all his comrades vanished, suddenly called away to the wall rebuilding project. Rurik had a strong distaste for the slimy creatures, probably stemming back to his early days at the farmstead where huge black snakes hung about the sties, seeking the warmth of the pigs’ bodies, he supposed. Apparently, his men had a disliking for snakes, as well.

Resolutely, he walked over to the woven mat and flipped it up with the tip of a boot, tossing it to the side. There had to be at least five dozen snakes down in the pit, many of them of enormous size. He had no idea if they were poisonous or not. In truth, it hardly mattered. Bile rose to his throat.

“Shall I go get a shepherd’s crook for you to lift the beasties out?” Maire asked.

He jumped, not having realized that she’d followed him and was peering over his shoulder.

“Nay, I do not want a shepherd’s crook,” he said, mimicking her voice. If she thought he was going to lift each of those disgusting “beasties” out one at a time, she was more demented than he already thought. “Don’t you have a witch’s curse handy that would strike them dead, or better yet, make them disappear?”

She pondered a moment. “Not handy.”

He bared his upper teeth with revulsion. He was a fighting man … a strategist. What would he do if he were in the midst of battle? “Methinks I could go to the scullery and get a large kettle of oil from the cook.”

Maire inquired of him, sarcastically, “Dost intend to drown them in oil?”

That was exactly what he had been contemplating. He cast her a fulminating glower, which should have made her cower. Instead, she grinned at him.

“Be careful, wench, lest I toss you into the oil pit as well to keep the reptiles company.”

“Hah!” she said, but then she added, “Don’t worry about it. I’ll take care of the snakes myself.”

There were some times in life when it was wise for a warrior to blunder onward, even when he knew the consequences. Other times, ’twas best to retreat. Rurik chosen the latter course. “If you insist,” he conceded.

She favored him with a glance that was not complimentary.

After several of the Campbell men removed the snakes with long-handled crooks and pronged sticks and carried them off into the distance in covered woven baskets, Rurik breathed a sigh of relief. And he didn’t even feel guilty that on this occasion he’d failed to impress Maire by his knight-in-shining-armor talents. He reminded himself that he did not have a chivalrous bone in his body. And he definitely was not a knight.

Still, he was not totally without noble sentiments.

He resolved that mayhap he would impress her next time.

But it would not be with snakes.

* * *

“Does this appear familiar?” Rurik asked her. He was pointing to a clump of woodbine.

“Umm. I don’t think that’s it.”

Grabbing for the low-hanging limb of an oak tree, he swung back and forth, his feet two boot-lengths off the ground. “How about this?”

“Nay,” she said. But what she thought was, Look at those muscles in his forearms. Holy Saints! I feel warm just looking at him. And who knew that a man could have such wide shoulders and then such a narrow waist. Is it a characteristic of all Vikings, or just him?

“And this?” He’d dropped to the ground and picked up several acorns. Then some nearby pinecones, followed by the unripened berries on a mulberry bush.