Page 22 of The Bewitched Viking

“Well, if you are going to take risks by engaging in eye contact with a witch, you must exercise every precaution.” Before anyone realized what he was about, Rurik stood, dropping his lap companion unceremoniously to the floor. She shrieked with outrage before scurrying off indignantly.

Annoyed at the interruption, Beast shifted in the rushes at his master’s feet, growled, then immediately went back to sleep.

Still standing, Rurik pulled a vial out of a flap in his tunic and commenced to sprinkle holy water all over Tykir. Except that he was feeling the effects of about a tun of mead, and the water came out in a splash, instead of a sprinkle, all over Tykir’s meticulously groomed hair and forehead.

“Blód hel, Rurik! I’m not bewitched…well, I probably am bewitched…but not because of some dark spell.” He stood abruptly, forcing Alinor to stand as well, and shook his head like a shaggy dog, thus causing her and everyone else around them to be anointed as well.

“What do you mean?” Rurik asked. “Bewitched, you say, but not by the witch’s spell?”

Yea, I truly am in Viking hell. Or a Viking madhouse.

“I saw the Lady Alinor…naked,” Tykir confessed, as if that was any explanation at all.

Everyone gawked at Tykir in shock, not the least of all Alinor. Quickly regaining her wits, she swung her free arm in a fist to land on the lackbrain’s chest. It was like hitting a stone wall. The man didn’t even flinch.

“What?” He put his free hand up in surrender.

“You’re not supposed to tell people that.”

“I’m not?”

“Most definitely not.”

“You can look at my nude body if you like,” he offered magnanimously. “Then we will be even.”

“You are drunk,” she accused.

“Nay, I am not.”

“Well, what does that signify?” Rurik wanted to know. “Seeing a nude witch…I have seen such, as you well know.”

As one, everyone stared at his blue face marking in sympathy, including Bolthor, who’d just come up and sat next to Alinor. He’d been off with the Nubian slave girl, for the fourth time that evening, by Alinor’s count.

“That design appears to be made by woad, much like the Scottish warriors adorn themselves with in battle,” Eadyth remarked, “but I have never known it to stay permanently.”

“’Tis not just woad. The dye had essence of zephline mixed with it, I warrant,” Alinor observed, flicking at some crumbs on the table in front of her.

“You…you know how to remove this mark?” Rurik sputtered incredulously. “You are a witch, then.”

“Nay, I’m not a witch. I am a shepherdess and weaver, with a talent for dying fabrics. In truth, I make the best wool fabric in all Northumbria.”

Eirik let out a whoop of laughter.

Eadyth jabbed him with her elbow. “Behave yourself, husband.”

“My wife has spouted similar such modest claims on occasion,” Eirik elaborated.

Eadyth clucked her disapproval at Eirik and explained to Alinor, “I make the best mead and honey in all Northumbria.”

Rurik cared not about wool or mead or honey, however. “Can you remove the mark, witch?” he demanded impatiently of Alinor.

“Mayhap I can, and mayhap I cannot.”

“Mayhap I can lop off your head, and mayhap I cannot,” was Rurik’s response as he made a low, primitive sound of outrage. He would have jumped over Tykir, to decapitate her no doubt, if her rope-mate had not raised a hand in caution.

Grumbling with frustration, Rurik stopped a passing house carl and took another jug of ale from his tray. “And you find attraction in this bitch…I mean, witch?” He took a long draw, from the jug, then swiped the back of his hand over his mouth.

“I never said I was attracted,” Tykir protested.