Page 27 of The Bewitched Viking

“Oooh, Bolthor, I forgot what a wonderful skald you are,” Eadyth enthused. “Please, wouldst thou honor us with a saga?”

Everyone at the table turned a shade of green, repressing the need to groan. Bolthor, however, looked as if he’d been handed the Holy Grail.

“Hear one and all, this is the saga of Tykir the Great,” Bolthor began. “In the year of our Lord nine fifty-two, in the land of the Midnight Sun, there was a king with a crooked cock. Anlaf was his name. And he was mightier…” On and on Bolthor went, and for the first time Alinor wished she really was a witch. Her first act would be to fly away.

“Never fear, sweetling,” Tykir whispered in her ear. She could tell that he was barely stifling a laugh. “I will take you away from all this soon enough.”

That was what Alinor was afraid of.

Chapter Five

Five days later…

“It wasn’t my fault,” Alinor contended. “I tell you, I’m not a witch.”

“You fed the seagulls. The seagulls died. The evidence speaks for itself.” Tykir exhaled loudly with exasperation. “Never have I seen birds fall from the sky like snowflakes afore. ’Twas…well, magical. You are a witch, and that is that.”

He turned his back on her and was about to stomp away. How the man managed to keep his balance aboard ship, Alinor couldn’t figure out. They’d been five days into their voyage, and she still didn’t have her sea legs. Nor her sea stomach, for that matter. No wonder she’d been unable to digest that horrid gammelost…old cheese…which the Vikings favored on their sea journeys, along with the even more unpalatable salted cod known as lutefisk. Hard bread and an occasional apple were the mainstay of her diet these days.

“Wait a minute,” she called out, and stood, about to follow after Tykir. “I’m not done explaining—”

He pivoted abruptly and shoved her in the chest, forcing her to sit back down on the large wooden storage box under a tented area in the center of the ship. The look on his face was so mean and vicious that she recoiled. She could scarce remember the softer glances he’d been casting her way back at the Norse castle—not that she wanted such—because all the brute had been doing these past five days was glaring at her.

“Sit!” he ordered. “Did I not just tell you to sit? Did I not warn you about moving from this spot? Did I not say that my men are threatening mutiny if you pull one more witchly trick? Did I not say I would lop off your head and feed you to the sharks if you opened your mouth one more time?”

“Did I not? Did I not? Did I not?” Alinor murmured.

“Are you mimicking me?” he growled.

“No, I’m saying my prayers,” she snapped back.

“Prayers? Hah! ’Tis likely more of your incantations.”

“Oh, that’s unfair. I wasn’t performing some dark rites when we were in the midst of that storm yestereve. I was wailing with fear. I’ve never been on a ship afore. How was I to know that we weren’t going to sink to the bottom of the North Sea? How was I to know that bulge water was normal? How was I—”

“Bilge,” he said.

“What?”

“It’s bilge water, not bulge water.”

“Oh, for the love of Mary! Bilge, bulge, barge…it matters not to me. I was standing in water ankle-deep. I still have mold on my shoes.”

Tykir leaned down and pointed a forefinger at her. “You did a chant and the storm stopped.”

She pointed a forefinger back at him. “Chant? I was moaning, ‘Oh, oh, oh, please, God, oh, oh, oh, oh!’”

He made a harrumphing sound of disbelief. “My men are already sore mad at you. Because of you, we are six sennights late in returning to Norway. They have homes and families to attend to afore the ice comes and the fjords freeze over. One more delay could mean our being stuck in Anlaf’s court for the winter months. Worse yet, in Hedeby, where we must stop first to unload the last of my market goods.”

It was true. Autumn was on the wane and winter fast approaching. Even with the sun shining brightly overhead, the air was brisk and chilly to the bone. She was wrapped in one of Tykir’s thick wool cloaks, lined with fur, but the cold air still whipped through her. Some of the men rowed naked to the waist when the sun was high, but mostly they were garbed for the cold.

And it was true, as well, that the Norse sailors—big, brave warriors that they were—feared her greatly. All of them wore handmade wooden crosses on leather thongs around their necks, and they were seen to sprinkle themselves with holy water on occasion. Rurik must have purchased a barrel of it from the good monks at the abbey in Jorvik.

Worst of all, when the men weren’t sneaking peeks at her bottom—they still harbored this silly superstition about a witch’s tail—the men were scowling at her, forcing her to keep a distance. Part of that was due to mere coincidences that seemed to crop up over and over in her vicinity. “’Twas not my fault that the milk curdled in the vat the first night out. Or that the wine barrel had a loose stave causing the precious cargo to seep out overnight. Or that Rurik’s dog Beast has been crying without end, ever since you sent Beauty and the sheep back to Graycote. Coincidences! That’s all!”

She knew he was still angry over her refusing his request to slaughter one of her sheep over the bow of his vessel as a pagan sacrifice to the sea people for weatherluck and good voyage. She’d informed him in no uncertain terms that all her sheep were valuable, but the curly-horned ram was nigh priceless, coming from Córdoba, a land that rarely allowed that species to leave its boundaries, except as royal gifts. How her third husband managed to obtain one of the rare beasts she had no idea, but it had almost been worth putting up with the marriage to gain her prized ram.

Tykir hadn’t even smiled when she’d jested with him, “Besides, sacrificing my sheep would not bring you luck. They are Christian sheep, you see.”