Page 2 of The Blue Viking

Rurik nodded. “I’m in fer one of her beatin’s, fer sure, once she sees I been fightin’ again.”

“I’d hardly call what you do fightin’,” Stigand observed drolly.

“Jus’ stayin’ alive. Jus’ stayin alive,” Rurik answered with a sigh. “That’s my kind of fightin’ … fer now, leastways.”

“Well, you won’t be alive fer long if that bitch Hervor catches you. Poor little ungrateful orphan boy.” That last was a mimicking of the phrase the old hag liked to use with them afore their beatings with a birch switch.

Both boys grinned at each other.

Rurik and Stigand were among the dozen “orphans” who had been rescued… if it could be called that… by Ottar the pig farmsteader. Ottar was not so bad, and his intentions were pure. Unfortunately, his wife, Hervor, was not so good-hearted. Also, unfortunately, Ottar was gone from home much of the time. While he was away, all of the orphan boys were worked nigh to death and whipped for the least infraction.

Stigand had been “rescued” after running away several years ago from his birth-home where he’d suffered horrible abuses from his father and older brothers. Hard to believe that anything could be worse than the beatings that Hervor levied, but even at Rurik’s young age, he could see that it was so. The blankness that came into Stigand’s eyes on occasion bespoke some unspeakable pain.

Rurik’s story was entirely different. In some of the harsh northern climes, there were still Viking people who abandoned newborn babes deemed too frail to survive … like Rurik’s father, a noble Norse jarl who demanded perfection in his offspring.

Vikings were not the only ones to practice such cruelty to children. In the Saxon lands, and many other Christian kingdoms, the most socially accepted method for getting rid of unwanted children, whether they were illegitimate or imperfect, was to donate them to a local monastery, where life often became hell for the orphan. On the surface it would appear as if these acts were great sacrifices made by loving parents to God, but, in fact, they were a respectable method of cutting off the weakest limbs of a family tree.

Rurik had been born early, small of size and ailing. After one look at him, his father had forced the mid-wives to lay his naked body out in the freezing snow. It was there Ottar had found him. His mother had died soon after the birthing of childbed fever.

Sometimes Rurik saw his father in the market town, riding his fine horse, laughing with his comrades. Never did he glance Rurik’s way, though he was surely aware of his existence. Once, when Rurik was five and had learned of his birth, he made the trek up the hills to his father’s grand stead. What a sight he must have been! Half-frozen, snot-nosed, wearing his beggarly garments. He’d been turned away rudely at the gate by none other than his own father, who told him never to return. “No runtling such as you is a get of my blood,” he’d added. As far as his father was concerned, he was dead.

“Someday, I’m gonna be so big and strong that no one will be able to beat me,” Rurik promised himself aloud, wiping at tears that welled in his eyes.

“Could be possible.” Stigand was still petting his piglet, which kept nipping at his big thumb, rooting for food. “Some lads do not get their full growth till they are twelve and more. Besides that, you can build muscle with hard work, that I know for certain.”

“What? I do not work hard enough here on the pigstead? From dawn till dark?”

Stigand elbowed Rurik playfully, which caused Rurik to wince. Ivar must have bruised a rib or two.

“ ’Tis another kind of muscle-building work I speak of,” Stigand explained. At Rurik’s frown of puzzlement, he added, “ ’Tis the kind of exercise fighting men engage in. Never fear. I can teach you.”

Rurik blinked at his friend, grateful for that small glimmer of hope … which gave him courage to hope for more. “It’s not just my size,” he went on. “When I am a grown man, no one will be able to mock my looks, either, for I intend to be so handsome all the maids will swoon.”

“Tall and strong and beauteous?” Stigand began to laugh uproariously, he and Thumb-Biter rolling on the ground with glee. Apparently, some dreams were based in reality, and some dreams were just… well, dreams.

But dreams were all that Rurik had.

Chapter One

Scotland, A.D. 955

“Do witches fall in love?”

“Aaarrgh!” Rurik groaned at the halfwit query that had just been directed at him. He would have put his face in his hands if they were not so filthy from his having fallen ignominiously into a peat bog a short while ago. Distastefully picking pieces of musty moss from his wet sleeve, he glared at Jostein, who had asked the barmy question, then snarled, “How in bloody hell would I know if witches fall in love? I’m a Viking, not an expert in the dark arts.”

“Yea, but you have lain with a witch. One would think you have firsthand knowledge of such things,” declared Bolthor the Giant. Bolthor was Rurik’s very own personal skald, for the love of Odin! He’d been shoved off on him at the inception of this three-year trip to hell… Scotland, that is … by his good friend, Tykir Thorksson … well, mayhap not such a good friend, if he’d tricked him into taking with him the world’s worst poet.

Rurik would have glared at Bolthor, too, if he were not the size of a warhorse. Bolthor—a fierce fighting man—did not take kindly to glares. He was oversensitive by half.

Jostein, on the other hand, turned red in the face and neck and ears at having earned Rurik’s disfavor, and Rurik immediately regretted his hasty words. It was not Jostein’s fault Rurik was in such an ill temper. Rurik was well aware that the boy, who had seen only fifteen winters, thought he walked on water. Foolish youthling!

“Well, I was just thinking,” Jostein stammered, “that mayhap your problem stems from the witch being in love with you.”

The problem Jostein referred to was the jagged blue mark running down the center of Rurik’s face … the selfsame mark that was at the heart of his three-year quest to find the damnable witch who’d put it there…. Actually five years if one counted those first two years when he’d only searched half-heartedly and spent the winters in Norway and Iceland.

Just then he noticed the reddish-brown stains on his hands and clothing. ’Twas from the tannin in the bogs. Holy Thor! If he was not careful, he would carry not only the blue mark, but red ones, as well. Could his life get any worse than this? Rubbing his hands briskly on the legs of his braies, he grumbled aloud, “Since when do wenches show their love by marking a man for fife?”

“Couldst be that you hurt the witch’s feelings?” Bolthor offered. Bolthor thought he knew a lot about feelings … being a poet and all. “Mayhap Jostein’s thinking is not so lackbrained. Mayhap the witch was in love with you, and you hurt her feelings, and she put the mark on you for revenge. What think you of that notion?”