Page 44 of The Bewitched Viking

“He had a choice. Adam is in no real peril. Anlaf wouldn’t risk enraging so many Northmen in high places by harming Adam, but neither will Anlaf release him till his malady is cured.”

“Well, why didn’t the troll just tell me all this?”

Rachelle waved a hand with dismissal. “Tykir is a man. Men do not deign to share their plans with women.”

“But he told you,” Alinor argued.

“Only because I badgered him to justify his conduct. And, actually, ’twas Bolthor who filled in most of the picture.”

“So, dost thou think there is any chance of Tykir being my guardian Viking—”

“Guardian Viking?” Rachelle choked out a laugh.

“—sent by God to champion my cause against my brothers?” Even Alinor had to smile at how foolish her words sounded.

“Who can say? Who can say? I do not believe Tykir will release you and jeopardize Adam. But mayhap God has a finger in this porridge. Yea, in reflecting on it, I am beginning to suspect you will play a pivotal role in the unraveling of this mess.”

“But there is the chance that Tykir will sacrifice me for Adam…that he will leave Trondelag with Adam, and me behind to handle my fate with my own devices, such as they are.”

“Yea, there is that chance.” Rachelle studied her for a moment. “Do you have…devices?”

Alinor laughed at that. So, even Rachelle was not altogether sure she was not a witch. “There are devices and there are devices,” she answered enigmatically. Suddenly, a marvelous plan occurred to Alinor. Stepping away from her newfound friend, she paced back and forth along the hearth. “Is it possible,” she asked Rachelle, “that Tykir might be convinced to set me up in business?”

“Hah! And what business might that be?” Rurik asked, coming through the doorway, bringing a gust of frosty wind with him. So tall was he that the roof beams of the low ceiling grazed his head, as they did for Tykir and Bolthor. “The witch business?”

Alinor glared at Rurik. Then, slowly, she let a slow grin slip across her lips. Her eyes dropped deliberately to the region of his precious manparts and, surreptitiously, so no one else would notice, she waggled her fingers.

“Did you see that? Did you see that?” Rurik raged. “The witch just put a spell on me.”

Tykir, who came in behind him, looked from Rurik, who was peering inside his braies, to her, and back again, then shrugged, seeing nothing amiss. “As to businesses, you’d best not be thinking I’d get involved with sheep, My lady of the Freckles,” Tykir remarked to her as he proceeded to the hearth fire, where he rubbed his hands briskly over the flames…and winked at a giggling Maida—the lecherous lout. “I had more than enough of those smelly creatures on the journey from Graycote to Jorvik.”

“My sheep do not smell,” Alinor said indignantly and brushed her gown aside with repugnance when Tykir stepped too close to her, giving her one of those lascivious I-can-see-you-naked looks.

Bolthor was the last to come in, along with Ottar and Karl, who washed their hands in a bucket on a bench near the door. “I have a thought for a new saga,” Bolthor began. Everyone rolled their eyes, but not so the giant could see. “How Tykir the Great Came to Be a Sheep Herder.”

Hours later, Tykir prepared to slip into his bed furs, where the Lady Alinor awaited him.

Well, “awaited” was not precisely the correct word.

He could practically hear the grinding of her teeth from halfway across the room.

Despite his softening toward Alinor in some regards, considering that she had tried to poison him with one of her potions, he did not trust her any farther than he could see her. As a result, he’d informed her an hour past that she would share his bed furs or be trussed up against one of the roof support beams, where she would, no doubt, turn into an icicle once the hearth fires died down—a uniquely speckled icicle, at that.

She’d raged, nagged, cajoled, then raged again, to no avail.

Finally, Rurik and Bolthor had gone out, griping mightily, to seek quieter sleep companions—well, mayhap not so quiet…most men, and they were no exception, relished a woman who was vocal in her bed-pleasures. And Viking men were known for their abilities to give women bed-pleasures. In any case, Rurik and Bolthor had contended that they would be unable to rest in this longhouse with their ears ringing from Alinor’s screeching voice.

Of course, Rurik had no choice but to depart anyway since Rachelle had slapped his face—not once, but twice—for suggesting she engage in some perverse activity with him.

Then, too, when she thought no one was looking, Alinor had taken to waggling her fingers in the oddest way at Rurik’s manparts, which made Rurik turn nigh green in the face.

Tykir thought he might go mad before he ever reached Trondelag.

Now Ottar and Karl snored lustily at the far end of the long house, near the front door. Rachelle had long since gone to her bench bed on the other side of the raised hearth with Thibaud, who was exhausted by an hour of wrestling on the rush-covered floors with Tykir, Rurik and Bolthor. Holy Thor, how the straw had flown!

Rachelle had just smiled at their rough antics. But Alinor had tsk-ed and tsk-ed, calling them all “naught but little boys” themselves…to which he and Rurik and Bolthor had grinned in agreement, and crossed their eyes at her…which just made Alinor tsk some more.

Now he banked the hearth fire and yawned, open-mouthed, as he approached his bed furs on the other side of the hearth, where Alinor lay on her back with the skins pulled up to her chin. He suddenly realized how bone-weary he was. It had been a very long day. Good thing he had not succumbed to Rurik and Bolthor’s exhortation that he accompany them to a bawdy house. He doubted he would be up to the bedsport tonight.