Page 64 of The Blue Viking

“Hah! Right now you are more like the High Laird of Stench. Methinks Bolthor should create a saga about you.”

As if on cue, Bolthor, somewhere in the distance, let loose with another, “Ahoooommm! Ahoooommm! Waaaraaaa!”

Still addressing the boy, Rurik sniffed in an exaggerated fashion and asked, “Have you been rolling in a sheep pen?” When Jamie merely gurgled in response, he added, “Yea, first a bath, then we will have a man-to-man talk and set some terms.”

“Rurik … please …,” Maire begged, genuine alarm ringing in her voice. Really, she protected the child overmuch if she thought contact with a Norseman would contaminate him in any way, but that was precisely how she acted. “We need to talk.” This last was said in a weaker voice of surrender.

“Yea, we do, when I get back,” Rurik was already stomping off toward the stairs, intending to dump the flailing child into the nearest loch. “Send Toste after me with clean garments for the whelp, along with soap, drying cloths, a comb, and scissors. And tell Toste to bring that damn cat with him, too. Rose is not smelling much like a rose these days and needs a good dunking, too, I be thinking.”

“Me? Touch that bloody cat? Have you seen the size of the monster’s claws?” Toste retorted. Rurik had forgotten he was still there.

But Maire homed in on something else. “Scissors?” she asked in puzzlement.

“Scissors?” The boy paled with dismay. “You dare cut me up, and me clansmen will cut you to pieces.”

Rurik laughed. “You misread me, boy. I intend to trim your grimy hair. A man who neglects his hair is a poor man, indeed.”

Rurik would bet that Maire and Toste were both gaping at his bit of absurd wisdom. Well, ’twas true. If a man did not care for his hair and his teeth, he might as well be a barbarian, in Rurik’s opinion.

“You’re a toad,” Jamie spat out with childish venom.

Rurik grinned. “It takes a frog to know a toad, little one.”

“I am not little,” Jamie proclaimed.

“Have some food prepared for our return, Maire,” Rurik requested over his shoulder, ignoring Jamie’s ludicrous statement. “I daresay that by the time this wee giant and I get back to the castle, Jamie and I will be famished.”

“I should take a bite outta yer arse,” Jamie snarled.

“Try it and we’ll have ‘Campbell Laird Haggis’ for dinner tonight. Or ‘Wee-Laird Stew.’ ”

“You don’ even know me; so, doona be sayin’ laird this or laird that,” Jamie huffed.

“Oh, I daresay we will get to know each other very well by the time I’m finished.” There was a deliberate, ominous ring to his words. “You might get to know me better than your own father.”

Even from the great hall, Rurik could hear Maire in the upper corridor moaning over and over, “Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Oh, my God!”

“Oh, my God!” Maire said as Rurik and Jamie returned to the great hall a full two hours later.

“Oh, my God!” Old John said, as well, gawking with amazement. “I shoulda known. I shoulda known.”

“Oh, my God!” Young John said, squinting through his one good eye as he spoke. Bolthor had fashioned an eye patch for him over his wounded one.

Murdoc lowered his bagpipes, Callum muttered, Rob twitched, Nessa set down a trencher of bannocks on the head table, but they all concurred with an, “Oh, my God!”

Even Stigand, Bolthor, Toste, and Vagn were incredulous. They exclaimed as one, “Bloody hell!”

Rurik had just walked into the hall from the courtyard door and was heading toward Maire and the high dais, where everyone was about to break fast with the morning meal. He was holding the hand of the surprisingly docile child next to him … a child whose hair had not been cut after all, but instead had two narrow braids on either side of his face intertwined with colored beads. Jamie’s face and body had been scrubbed clean and he glowed, both from the scrubbing and good health and from the sudden adulation he seemed to have developed for the huge Viking at his side, whom he kept gazing up at for approval. Above a pair of trews, her son wore a miniature pladd, fastened at one shoulder with a brass brooch in the form of intertwining wolves, which Rurik must have given or loaned to him.

Rurik looked as if he must have bathed again, too… if his wet hair was any indication. Or more likely he had fallen in the loch during the initial bathing confrontation with Jamie.

And—Blessed Saints!—was that Rose trailing behind them, almost presentable with her newly washed and brushed fur. Had Rurik really bathed a cat? Did he not know that felines did not favor dunking in a loch? They much preferred tongue lavings.

Tongue lavings? Now, those words brought to mind one of Rurik’s tantalizing areas of expertise. How can I think about such inconsequential exercises in the midst of this latest disaster?

Maire heard Bolthor mutter in a low voice, as if preparing the words to a saga he would develop later. “This is the saga of Rurik the Greater,” he began.

Onct was a Viking warrior,