Page 3 of The Bewitched Viking

“Hear one and all, this is the saga of Tykir the Great,” Bolthor began. It was the manner in which all of Bolthor’s sagas began. They didn’t get any better than that opening line, unfortunately.

Rurik’s lips curved upward with mirth. With a hand over his mouth, he murmured to Tykir under his breath, “Hver fugl synger med sitt nebb.”

“Humph!” Tykir said in reply. “Every bird may very well sing with its own voice, but Bolthor’s birdsong is the most unmelodious I have ever heard.”

Unaware of their opinions, Bolthor adjusted the black patch over his one eyeless socket and took a stylus into his huge hand. Squinting through his good eye, he began painstakingly to press runic symbols onto the wax tablet he had set on the table in front of him. ’Twas not the norm for skalds to write down the sagas, but Bolthor’s head was thick, and he often forgot the words to the tales he had composed.

“Methinks a good title for this one would be ‘Tykir and the Crooked Cock.’ Let me see, how shall I start? Hmmm.

“In the land of the Saxons,

An evil witch did fly.

To Anlaf’s proud duckling,

She set her evil eye.

Now, alas and alack,

His furry pet can no longer

Quack…

Nor with his mate

Fly straight.”

Bolthor paused. “How does it sound thus far?” he asked hopefully.

“Magnificent,” Tykir said, patting Bolthor on the shoulder. Horrible. Tykir barely stifled a grimace of distaste. I hope my brother Eirik never hears of this one. He will fall over laughing, almost as much as he did over the “Tykir and the Reluctant Maiden” saga Bolthor concocted last winter. Somehow, Bolthor’s overlong tales almost always end with me looking the fool. And best that Anlaf does not hear of Bolthor enhancing his wordfame by referring to his manpart as a duckling, or there will be sword dew spilled aplenty.

Tykir scratched his unshaven face and wondered idly if he smelled as bad as his companions. Vikings were renowned for their fastidious nature, unlike those piggish Saxon and Frankish men, who bathed but once a season. Lifting one arm, he sniffed under his armpit…and flinched.

“How do you spell duckling?” Bolthor whispered in an aside.

“C-O-C-K,” Tykir responded dryly. Let Bolthor figure how to translate the word into the futhark alphabet. That should take a goodly amount of time.

He turned to Bjold. “Proceed,” he directed him with a wave of his hand. “I doubt me I will like your report from King Anlaf, but spare me not even the smallest detail.”

When Bjold finished, at last, a good hour later, a sudden realization came to Tykir…one that drew a wide smile to his face, overshadowing the anger that lingered beneath the surface over Anlaf’s treatment of Adam. I am no longer bored.

He looked at Rurik, then Bolthor, before announcing, “It would seem we are going a-witching.”

North Yorkshire, six sennights later

“The Vikings are coming. The Vikings are coming.”

“Baaa. Baaa. Baaa. Baaa.”

“Bleat. Bleat. Bleat. Bleat.”

“Ruff ruff, ruff, ruff!”

“The Vikings are coming. The Vikings are coming.”

Whether it be her crying sheep or her barking sheepdog or her shrieking, sheeplike maid, Elswyth, who was approaching with the dire warning of yet another Northman sighting, Lady Alinor had more than enough problems for one day. A most unladylike phrase escaped her lips—something to do with an unmentionable exercise the Vikings, the sheep and the dog could do to themselves, or to each other, for all she cared. ’Twas an expression she’d heard her hesirs use on more than one occasion when they were ready to explode with ill-temper. And Alinor’s temper was very ill, and explosive, at the moment.

Hanging on to a tree root with one hand, Alinor was dangling into a shallow gully infested with briars, trying to extricate one of her ewes, Bathsheba, from the sharp thorns with the crook of her long staff. Her mangy sheepdog, inappropriately named Beauty, was yipping off in the distance as it attempted to steer a small flock of straying sheep back to the stone-fenced pastures of the lower dales.