Page 48 of The Outlaw Viking

“For a time. Until I heal completely.”

“And then?”

“Mayhap I will visit my cousin Haakon. He is king of Norway now and can always use good soldiers at his back whilst his brother Eric Bloodaxe covets the throne. Or perchance I will become one of the Byzantine emperor’s Varangian guards. Nay, better yet, I may join Selik in sending a few more Saxons to their graves.”

Rain gasped. “Tykir! Not you, too?”

He dismissed her concern with a wave of his hand, then added with a twinkle in his mischievous brown eyes, “On the other hand, I would not mind visiting your land. If the women there are as intriguing as you and your mother, I could no doubt be convinced to give up fighting for a spell.”

Now that was a mind-boggling prospect—Tykir spreading his Norse charms among modern, liberated women. In fact, Rain had a few friends who would gobble up the studly Viking in a flash. Or vice versa.

But she knew from her earlier conversations with Tykir that he did not believe she came from the future, just some distant land. “No, you can’t go to my country, Tykir. Unfortunately, I don’t have any directions for traveling back.”

“Then how did you get here? Nay, do not tell me. I fear you will say that you flew here on angel wings.”

Rain smiled and reached over to jab him playfully in the ribs. “Ubbi has been babbling again, I see.”

“Like a brook.” Tykir returned her smile with brotherly warmth.

They rode into the deserted courtyard, and Selik helped Tykir down from his horse, handing him a makeshift wooden staff to use as a cane. Selik gave orders for the care of the horses and sent some men out to hunt game and scavenge feed for the animals.

When they entered the great hall of the keep, Rain knew that she and the captives had their work cut out for them. Bats hung from the high rafters, sharing quarters with a number of birds’ nests. The rushes on the stone floor were so filthy that the straw stuck together in flat clumps. She shuddered under the overwhelming smell of mildew and decay.

While she would have much preferred to eat and sleep outdoors, she had seen the look of anguish on Tykir’s face at the sad state of his ancestral home. And actually, it was her heritage as well. Rain had to do what she could to help him.

She decided that the kitchen and sleeping quarters would have to come first. She accompanied Blanche through the closed corridor connecting the hall with the separate cooking facilities after ordering Bertha and Eadifu to bring all the mattresses and sleeping pallets out to the kitchen courtyard for cleaning.

The former inhabitants had stripped the kitchen bone-bare. Not a pot or ladle or chair or scrap of food had been left by the servants when they abandoned the castle. Only a large wooden trestle table remained in the center of the massive kitchen, and a dozen bars of hard soap on the shelf of the scullery. The table had probably been too large for thieves to take or it would be gone, too. And from Rain’s experience with these tenth-century people, soap was not a highly prized commodity.

Rain spent a grueling, backbreaking two hours scrubbing the floor and table and dusting the cobwebs from the walls and ceiling, while Blanche brought in the cooking utensils and supplies they’d carried with them from Brunanburh. They soon had the kitchen in reasonably clean condition and the last of their venison roasting over the hearth fire.

She went out to the kitchen courtyard to check on Bertha and Eadifu, who were boiling the few bed linens they’d found, along with everyone’s dirty clothing, in large cauldrons of soapy water.

“Yer doin’ that all wrong,” Bertha complained as Eadifu lifted a sopping garment from the soapy water with a long stick, dumped it carelessly in a cauldron of clean water, creating a six-foot-wide puddle of mud around the pot, then hung it soaking wet from a nearby bush. “Ye must needs wring the bloody tunic, ye stupid lackwit. Do ye think we have a sennight ta dry the buggers?”

“Stick the buggers up yer arse, ye old shrew,” Eadifu retorted. “I got better things ta do with me time.” She looked over to the edge of the courtyard where a soldier waited, a lewd glint in his eyes and a horrific bulge in his pants.

Bertha noticed Rain’s presence and enlisted her aid. “Mistress, tell the bawd ta keep her legs planted on the ground next ta me, ’stead of up in the air. ’Tis too much work fer me ta do here meself.”

“Eadifu,” Rain warned icily, “if you dare to leave this courtyard before all the laundry is done, I swear I will have you chained in the dungeon.” Did they have dungeons here? she wondered idly before going on. “And you will not eat for a week.” This was one slave Rain was beginning to think she wouldn’t mind selling herself.

Eadifu muttered something under her breath that sounded like “bloody bitch,” but she turned sullenly back to her work.

“And do your work properly, the way Bertha orders.”

Bertha beamed like a full moon at being placed in charge.

“Stop twitchin’ yer arse every time a man comes within a hide of yer foul scent,” she heard Bertha berate Eadifu as she headed for the kitchen.

“Yer jist upset cause ye got no arse worth twitchin’,” Eadifu snapped back.

Rain heard a loud splash and hoped Bertha had dumped the slut into the cauldron of cold water. So much for being a pacifist. When push came to shove, it appeared that her principles were open to some flexibility.

Later, after the makeshift dinner, Selik came into the kitchen and told her that he and Tykir and the men were going to a nearby pond to bathe.

“Unless you want me to wait, and we can go together,” he offered in a low, husky voice near her ear. The eagle-eyed Blanche watched with interest from across the room.

“No,” Rain answered quickly, her skin turning warm at just the memory of their last bathing session.