Page 38 of The Blue Viking

“Yea, they do, Maire,” he told her, and the smoldering look in his eyes held promise for her future. Maire was almost certain he was giving her a silent pledge—or was it a warning?—that she, too, would be falling off a mountain. And soon. He would be as hell-bent on that task as a knight on a quest.

“This is the saga of Rurik the Greater,” Bolthor began.

A communal groaning sounded up and down the high table.

“Its title is ‘Viking Men and Randy Pigs.’” He beamed, and everyone went still with interest. Except Rurik.

“Don’t you dare compose a saga that attaches my name to pigs and sex,” Rurik ordered with a snarl. “Or you may very well find yourself beaten into a pulp of pig slop.”

Bolthor did not cower, but, to his credit, he seemed to be contemplating Rurik’s warning. Then he started his saga over again, “This is the story of Stigand the Berserk…”

With a deep-from-the-belly roar, Stigand stood, picked up Bolthor and raised him high overhead with big hands braced on his chest and groin—not a small feat, considering they were of equal giant size—then tossed him to the rushes below the dais. As Bolthor stood, laughing and unhurt, he adjusted his eye patch and brushed straw off his trews. He barely paid heed to Stigand, who was still storming, “You will not link me with pig sex, either, you lackwit skald. Why don’t you speak of wars and such noble enterprises, and leave good men alone?”

After everyone stopped laughing, Maire brought Rurik back to the issue they had been discussing before they’d been interrupted by Bolthor’s poetic efforts. “Back to that ecstasy drivel, if you’re envisioning me having fits for you, you’re more daft than I originally thought.”

He smiled at her. “Not only am I going to cause you to have ‘fits,’ you just might have multiple ‘fits.’ ”

That was an image that would not leave her the rest of the evening.

Another hour had passed, and the Campbell clan was still celebrating.

Maire yawned widely and wished she could be off to her bed. It had been a long day, topped off most recently with a lute performance by Inghinn, the sheepherder’s daughter, a bawdy song rendered by the twins, Vagn and Toste, a playing of the bagpipes by Murdoc that brought tears to the eyes of many in the hall, and two sagas delivered by Bolthor, one about the Battle of Brunanburh, where Maire’s father had died years ago, and one a hugely funny story about Rurik and a fake witch who’d put an eel skin up her gown to scare him into believing she had a tail. Had Rurik really made a fortune at one time selling wood crosses and holy water to ward off witches?

Banging on the table with her cup for attention, Maire announced, “ ’Tis time to end the feast. I know that tomorrow is the Sabbath, and your workload is not so great, but some of us are falling asleep on our feet.”

“Nay, nay, nay!” the crowd yelled in disagreement. “One more entertainment.”

Maire slumped to her seat in surrender. She was outnumbered by a clan that had been too long deprived of merriment. Ah, well! Let them have one more performance then.

People were looking here and there to discover who would provide the next talent exhibition, but no one volunteered. Someone from the back of the hall shouted, “How about one of our lady’s witchly feats? A lévitation, perchance?”

Maire’s shoulders, which had been slumped with exhaustion, went immediately straight. “Nay, I will not be part of your entertainment. That’s not what witches do.” Actually, lévitations were one of the few witchly rituals she was able to perform on occasion.

“Ye made Lacklan’s bull rise in the air when it kept tryin’ ta mate with Fenella’s cow, and we were all watchin’ then,” the same man called out. It was Dougal, the blacksmith.

“Nay! Find someone else. I am too tired.”

Rurik stood up beside her and looped an arm over her shoulder, as if in companionship, but there was naught companionable about the twinkling blue eyes of the rogue. She shrugged his arm off, then listened with amazement while he told the crowd, “Have pity on your lady and let her be off to bed. Can you not see that she has been up since dawn and must needs he down on her bed furs?”

Maire owned no bed furs. The only bed furs on her bed were Rurik’s. And, belatedly, she noted that he’d never once mentioned sleep when referring to her going to her bedchamber. She slanted a look at him, and he had the nerve to wink at her.

Her clan members seemed to have pity on her then, and were making tsk-ing sounds of sympathy. Even Dougal had the grace to duck his head shamefacedly.

Maire said a foul word under her breath, one she almost never used unless provoked mightily. She was provoked mightily now. With another expletive, this one directed at the smirking toad at her side, she stomped to the end of the dais and down the short set of stairs. “Bring me that suckling pig,” she ordered the cook, who was standing in the kitchen doorway, off to the side of the great hall. And to Stigand, she said, “Don’t you dare go berserk on me again. It’s not your pet, for the love of heaven.”

Soon the platter with the roast pig, which had not yet been carved, thanks to Stigand’s wild over-reaction, sat on a small table in front of her. The Vikings had come down off the dais and her clansmen gathered behind her, all of them forming a large circle.

Before she started, she shot Rurik a glare.

He shot her a grin.

The lout!

Maire stood facing east, with her legs slightly apart, just as Cailleach had taught her. Closing her eyes, she inhaled deeply and tried to feel as one with the earth and all its energies. With her eyes still closed, she let all of nature’s colors fill her… in her head, out to her fingertips, down to her toes. When she felt that her body was centered enough, with her feet firmly planted on the rush-covered floor, she opened her heavy eyelids and raised her staff high above her head in both extended arms. Addressing the suckling pig, she chanted all the ritual words in their original Gaelic, then ordered, “Puse! Rise now!” Nothing happened.

This time, she repeated the Gaelic chant, then lowered her staff, pointed it at the pig, and ordered, “Rise!”

Again, nothing happened.