Page 1 of The Very Virile Viking

Chapter One

Autumn, the Norselands, A.D. 999

In days of old when men were… whatever…

Magnus Ericsson was a simple man.

He loved the smell of fresh-turned dirt after springtime plowing. He loved the feel of a soft woman under him in the bed furs… when engaged in another type of plowing. He loved the heft of a good sword in his fighting arm. He loved the low ride of a laden longship after a-viking in far distant lands. He loved the change of seasons on his well-ordered farmstead.

What he did not relish was the large number of whining, loud, bothersome, needful children who called him " Faðir." "Father, this… Father, that…" they blathered night and day, always wanting something from him. Ten in all! That was the size of his brood, despite the loss of a son and a daughter to normal childhood ills and mishaps. Holy Thor! The large number was embarrassing, not to mention unmanageable. He could not go to the garderobe without stepping on one or the other of them. Like rats, they were, or fleas.

And, of a certainty, he was not pleased with their mothers. Over the years there had been four wives, six concubines, numerous passing fancies, and at least one barley-faced maid. That latter could only be attributed to a fit of mead-head madness on his part, he was quick to tell any who dared ask. Not all of them had shared his bed furs at the same time, praise be to Odin, though some lackwits claimed it to be so, just because he'd practiced the more danico during some halfbrained periods of his life. He'd learned by now that one woman at a time was more than enough for any man to manage. All of his women, one by one, had had the temerity to die on him, desert him, or, ignominiously, divorce him, as his most recent wife, Inga, had done last summer at the Althing. Claimed she was tired of playing slave to all his babes, she did. Norsemen from here to Birka were still laughing about that happenstance.

He suspected as well that they were taking wagers on how many more whelps would land on the doorstep of his longhouse by year's end.

None, if he had his way.

It had not been so bad when his father, Jarl Eric Tryggvason, and his mother, Lady Asgar, had still been alive and living on the adjoining royal estate. Or when his brothers had been nearby. His mother had seemed to have better luck in arranging help for him. But his mother and father had both died this year, within months of each other. The healers said it was due to lung sickness brought on by an especially fierce winter, but he believed that it was heartsickness over his missing brothers, Geirolf and Jorund, whose ships had presumably sunk in distant waters beyond Iceland. He and his sister, Katla, were the only family left, and Katla, happily married to a Norse princeling these many years, lived in far-off Norsemandy, which some called Normandy.

There was much pressure on him to take over his father's jarldom, especially from his uncle, the high king of the Norselands, Olaf Tryggvason. But that would mean giving up his own lands and the farming he cherished. Further, he would knowingly be immersing himself in the political pressures that faced all the minor kingdoms in the Norselands as they squabbled for power. He was a farmer, at heart, not a man ambitious for power.

Besides, did he not have enough pressures within his own family?

That is a pointless question.

Where would his children fit into such a scenario?

Wherever they could squeeze in.

Would he have to take another wife?

For a certainty.

Did he want another wife?

Bloody hell, no!

But how long had it been since he'd lain with a woman?

Far too long! I am afraid to look at a woman these days, for fear my seed will fly into her womb.

Would the marriage bonds be worth the bother of another squawking woman following him about like a shadow? Or producing even more babies?

Bonds… that is an accurate description.

And would a woman of his choosing be willing to take on all his offspring?

Probably not. Nay, I should not wed again.

But the sex…

Aaarrgh!

The problem, as far as he could tell, always came back to the children and the burden of his virility. If he were free, he could make decisions based on his own wants, or needs, or the good of the people of Vestfold. But he had ten other individuals to consider.

Magnus had seen seven and thirty winters. Sometimes, when he was in a daze from too much youthling noise, or when he was suffering from the ale ache, he wondered how he had begotten so many children.

But, of course, he knew how.