Sandra Hill - [Vikings I 04] (6 page)

“I take exception to your hasty retreat, Lady Alinor. Do you not favor my company?” Tykir teased.

“About as much as I favor the company of slime-bellied snakes.” She tried to squirm free, pounding his back with her bound fists, missing half the time because she was blinded by her hair hanging down to the backs of his thighs. He chuckled at her antics and clamped a large paw over her posterior.

That stilled her…for a moment. “You brute…you animal…you…you…
Viking
”

“Tykir, tell us true,” she heard Rurik call out with an ominous snicker, “does she have a tail?”

He rubbed her entire bottom, side to side, even the crease, before announcing, “Nay, there is no tail, but methinks I will have to examine the situation more thoroughly…in private…without these cumbersome garments.”

More male laughter followed, with ribald remarks on exactly how he might proceed in that regard.

If the blood were not rushing to Alinor’s head, she would have told him what she thought of his outrageous suggestion and his comrade’s crudity. Instead, she took a good bite out of his shoulder and would not let go.

His howl of pain rang through the courtyard just before his knees buckled at the surprising attack. He tripped for
ward, causing Alinor to go with him. She landed on her back, her bound hands raised overhead, her legs spread wide, with the hem of her gunna hiked knee-high and the Viking troll on top of her, with his face planted in her midsection…laughing.

“How…dare…you?” she sputtered, not sure if she was more outraged by his position atop her or by his laughter. She lowered her bound hands and grasped a hunk of hair, forcing his head off her stomach so she could address the lout directly.

His nose was still bleeding. A bruise above his right eye was beginning to swell and turn the socket black and blue. Whiskers shadowed his face, though she knew he’d shaved just that morn before they broke camp outside Jorvik. His blond hair stood up on end where she still grasped it.

Despite all that, the insufferable man was godly handsome.

She released his hair as if it had suddenly caught fire. Hearing a chuckle, she peered up and noticed all the faces staring down at them…some in wonder, like the Lady Eadyth and her husband Eirik; some in amusement, like Rurik and the Viking soldiers; some in contemplation, like Bolthor, who was mumbling something about sagas and poems and witchly tales…or was it tails?

Alinor groaned, then groaned again as Tykir raised himself on his elbows, still laughing, and adjusted his body over hers.

His laughter stopped immediately.

Alinor’s eyes went huge with amazement at the hard object prodding betwixt her legs. It was unlike any of the limp threads she’d experienced in her three mates. More like the whole bloody spindle.

Tykir groaned, too, but his was a decidedly masculine sound.

“My lord, are you in pain?” Bolthor asked.

Tykir shook his head. He appeared unable to speak.

“Dost thou have a wound?” Lord Eirik inquired solicitously. “Shall we send for the healer from the hospitium? Or our sister Rain?”

Tykir continued to shake his head, harder now.

“Is it the witch?”

Tykir nodded.

“A witch?
A witch?
” Lady Eadyth squealed with horror.

“Yea, the witch with the Virgin’s Veil,” Bolthor told Lady Eadyth. “Lady Alinor is a witch.”

Eirik let out a snort of disbelief. “There is no such thing.”

“Hah! You would not say such if you were King Anlaf,” Rurik interjected.

“King Anlaf? Our cousin Anlaf?” Lord Eirik seemed genuinely puzzled. “What has he to do with witchcraft?”

“This witch,” Rurik said, pointing to Alinor, “has put a spell on King Anlaf.”

“A spell?” Lord Eirik asked dumbly.

“Yea, a spell that made his manroot take a right turn,” Rurik explained.

Lord Eirik and Lady Eadyth exchanged a look, then burst out laughing, as did all the Viking soldiers and lookers-on who’d gathered at the outlandish scene. The only ones not participating in the mirth were Rurik and Bolthor, who were chagrined at the lack of belief in their tale.

Alinor and Tykir were not laughing either.

Tykir held her gaze the whole time, and finally he whispered in a low, seductive voice, as he insinuated himself more intimately against the cradle of her hips, “I am bewitched.”

Rurik must have overheard because he commented, “Oh-ho! She must be a witch then, for never would you be attracted to such a pig-ugly wench.”

“Rurik! For shame!” Lady Eadyth chastised.

Alinor was barely aware of all the conversations swirling around her. All she could do was gaze back at Tykir, unable to break eye contact. New, unbelievable sensations swept her body. They were horrible, horrible, horrible. And so wonderful she could scarcely breathe.

I am the one bewitched,
she admitted to herself then. And this time when she prayed silently, the well-known Anglo-Saxon prayer took on a new format: “Oh, Lord, from the
passion
of a Northman, please protect me.”

“I still say we should ride to Selik and Rain’s estate and tell them of Adam’s plight,” Eirik said once again. He’d been saying the same, in one form or another, over the past hour.

“Nay,” Tykir insisted. “You know they would over-react and demand to come with me. They have enough to worry about with the orphanage, Rain’s hospitium and their four children, not to mention her being with child again. Besides, Adam will be safe at Anlaf’s court till I arrive…just restricted a bit.”

They both smiled at the image of Adam being restricted. Ever since he’d been a wild youthling, rescued from the Jorvik streets with his sister Adela, no one had been able to hold Adam down. Tykir looked forward to seeing just how Anlaf had managed to confine the man who’d traveled to many foreign lands, despite his young years, in his quest to become a healer, like Rain.

Tykir was sitting with his brother on the stone steps of the king’s personal steam house within the palace gardens, now brown and dormant with the coming of winter. A
young male house servant lifted a heavy wooden bucket of water and tossed it onto the white-hot rocks, causing more steam to issue forth. Soon, they would wash off their perspiration in the icy waters of the adjoining bathhouse, where female thralls would assist them in shaving off the day’s whiskers and donning clean garments.

Vikings did like their personal comforts, cleanliness being one of them. It was why so many females in so many lands fell at their feet and into their bed furs, in Tykir’s opinion. Oh, he and his fellow Norsemen liked to boast of their great looks and superior talents in the bedding, but he suspected that ofttimes it just boiled down to their smelling a mite less than other men.

“But why involve the witch?”

Tykir shrugged. “He asked for a witch in exchange for Adam. At the time, it seemed the expedient thing to do, since I was coming to Northumbria anyhow. You know I could have gained Adam’s release, but it would have involved much coin or fighting. If I’d known then of the excessive delays I would encounter, I never would have bothered.”

“But to kidnap a lady of high station, Tykir? Really, ’tis pushing the bounds of propriety, even for you.”

“A
witch
of high station,” he corrected and took a long sip of mead from the goblet next to him. “And since when have I ever claimed to be proper?”

“Eadyth will try her best at matchmaking, you know.”

“With a witch?” Tykir hooted.

Eirik shrugged. “Well, can you blame her? All her best efforts with every other kind of female have come to naught.”

Just then, one of the female thralls walked in, carrying a pile of linen towels. She was blond and buxom, and Tykir wasn’t certain, but he thought he knew her. In truth,
he might have bedded her once or twice in the past. The woman did a little curtsy and gazed at him shyly.

He winked.

She blushed.

Eirik made a grunting sound of disgust. “I think you should come back to Ravenshire with us for the winter.”

Tykir shook his head, but his attention was on the woman who was bending over to pick up some items of dirty clothing he and Eirik had tossed on the ground. Her backside was in the air. Yea, Tykir recognized the woman now.

“Why not?”

“Why not what?” He turned back to his brother, who was grinning in a knowing fashion and shaking his head at his obvious distraction. “Oh…you mean, why not return to Northumbria? I might have if I’d gathered the witch sennights ago, as I’d planned. Now, there will be no time left, even if I make haste, to get to Hedeby, then Anlaf’s court, then home for the winter.”

Eirik pressed a hand to his thigh with concern. “Ah, Tykir! Is the leg bothering you overmuch?”

“Just in the winter. ’Tis why I prefer to be snug in my own homestead. Then, too, I want to go to the Baltic lands come spring for the first amber harvest of the season.”

“I worry about you, Tykir. I have not always been there when you needed me. I would make up for past mistakes.”

“Do not concern yourself over me, brother,” he said, rising up stark naked before the servant girl, who still lingered. Without saying a word, he lifted the vixen into his arms and carried her, screeching with delight, into the bathhouse, where cleanliness was not his main intent…leastways, not right away.

Just before the door closed after him, Eirik remarked,
“We haven’t finished our talk. What will you do with the witch?”

Tykir gave a two-word answer, coarse and explicit.

But he didn’t mean it.

Really.

“Tykir is really not a bad sort at all,” Eadyth insisted as she poured a pail of clean water over Alinor’s soap-lathered hair. The unruly strands hung down to her waist when unbound.

Eadyth had insisted that Alinor call her by her given name several hours past, when they’d left the company of the men back at the palace, excepting Bolthor, who stood guard downstairs. Tykir, his brother and the other men had spoken of a visit to the bathhouse at the palace, where they would steam off the dirt and grime of “battle.” And regale each other with overblown tales of conquest in the little skirmish they’d just ended.

“In fact, Tykir is one of the most charming men I’ve ever met. And that includes my husband, Eirik, who can be most…ah, persuasive, when he wants to be.” Eadyth flashed Alinor a secretive smile, as if Alinor would understand perfectly. Hah! No man had ever exerted himself to be charming to Alinor. Certainly not her three aged husbands, who’d believed they were doing her a favor by marrying her.

As to that other assertion…Alinor snorted her opinion of Tykir being proclaimed the most charming man in Eadyth’s acquaintance. Eadyth must live in a nunnery. “He is a troll,” Alinor contended as she parted the wet swaths of her hair to peer up at the woman with disbelief.

Undaunted, Eadyth countered, “Well, of course. All men are trolls betimes.”

Alinor couldn’t be concerned about Tykir or the Vikings
or even her captivity right now. She was taking too much pleasure in her first bath in over a week. Sitting in a copper tub, she sighed at the joy of mere soap and water. They were in the second-floor bedchamber of Gyda, an elderly Viking widow who was a longtime friend of the Thorksson family. As Alinor bathed, Gyda sat in a straight-backed chair, working a hand loom and listening intently to Eadyth’s palace gossip.

“I can scarce believe that Eric Bloodaxe is king once again,” Gyda commented, her fingers weaving the various colored threads into an intricate Norse pattern. “He is like a pesky fly that keeps coming back, no matter how often swatted away. I have no love of the Saxons, of course,” she said, casting an apologetic glance at Alinor, “but he has been a thorn in the side of King Edred off and on for years now. I wish he would either leave or manage to stay in power here in Northumbria.”

“King Eric is uncle to my husband and Tykir, but a more ruthless man I have never met,” Eadyth explained to Alinor, who was lathering up her hair again.

“Even when they were babes, their father, Thork, could not acknowledge them for fear Eric would come after them,” Gyda added. “That is why they lived with me and my Olaf for many years of their youth, apart from their beloved father, who went off Jomsviking to protect them. Orphans, they were, for all purposes, even with living kin.”

Alinor paused her hair washing. “I don’t understand. How could the father’s abandonment protect the sons?”

“Ah! You do not know how Eric Bloodaxe got his name then,” Eadyth declared and glanced toward Gyda. Both women shook their heads in disgust. “King Harald Fairhair, one of the most powerful rulers in Norway, was the father of dozens of sons and daughters alike by his
numerous wives and mistresses. He practiced the
more danico.
Eric was ruthless from an early age in his pursuit of his father’s crown. ’Tis a fact that many of his brothers died under his blade to feed that ambition. Thus the name Eric Bloodaxe.”

“And Tykir and Eirik’s father—Thork, methinks you called him—how did he fit into the picture?” Alinor asked.

“Thork never had any interest in a kingship, and he was illegitimate, besides. But though Eric’s blood was legitimate, he was hated by the Norse people for his cruelty,” Eadyth said. “There was the unfounded fear on Eric’s part that while Thork disdained a crown, his sons might not.”

“And so Thork pretended at first that he had no sons, abandoning the babes to the care of others. They were forbidden to call him father, and never did he give them a warm word or gesture of affection. Then later, when word got out that they were indeed his sons, he was forced to pretend an indifference.” Gyda clicked her tongue as her eyes clouded over with unpleasant memories. “And his overprotection was warranted. There was a time…I remember it well…when an evil Viking villain, Ivar the Terrible, chopped off Eirik’s little finger and sent it to Ravenshire in a parchment, all to lure Thork to his death. Which was the final result, in the end. Death. Both Thork’s and my husband’s, Olaf.”

Eadyth reached over and patted Gyda’s quaking shoulders.

“And how about their mothers?” Alinor was attempting to break the grimness that had overtaken their conversation.