My Fair Viking

  Tyra was taking advantage of the lull in weather by examining one of her longships, Wild Serpent, which was raised up on sawhorses. She had sent workmen soon after dawn to begin preparing it for a journey. Breanne was helping her, reluctantly, by setting her carpenters to sanding down the rough edges on the rails. Vana was checking the sails for any tears; she was not so reluctant. Oh, Vana would be sad to see Tyra go, but she would be more glad to finally wed Rafn.

  "Are you going somewhere, Tyra?"

  She glanced up to see Adam standing before her. He was wearing one of those Arab robes, which might have appeared silly on one of her Viking soldiers, but on him looked as if he'd been born to the Eastern culture.

  "I thought you were seeing patients."

  "Are you going somewhere, Tyra?" he repeated.

  "You know I am. Go away, Adam. I have work to do if I am to leave by Friggsday."

  "Friggsday? You are leaving on Friday? That's only three days from now."

  "That is right. Now go away."

  "Are you not even going to wait to see how your father fares?"

  She shook her head and continued to run her hand over the hull, looking for cracks or leak holes. "Viking women may gain a divorce from their husbands by merely stating their desire afore witnesses. The same is true of a daughter or son separating from parents. Once I perform the ritual, I will be off."

  "To Byzantium?"

  She nodded, then raised her chin haughtily. "Lesser woman though I may be in your opinion, I at least choose my own life path. And I embrace it wholeheartedly. You, on the other hand, keep running from your fate. I pity you, Saxon."

  Now it was Adam who raised his chin haughtily.

  "There is one more thing that must be settled. Alrek wants to come with me, to travel to far lands. I would not deprive him of that adventure, except for one thing."

  He arched his brows at her.

  "Only the gods can fathom why, but Alrek wants you to take Tunni and Kristin and Besji with you… to give them a home."

  "Nay!" he nearly shouted, turned abruptly, and practically ran away.

  "I want all of you here to bear witness for me."

  Tyra stood at the side of her father's bed as she made the pronouncement to Adam, Father Efrid, Rafn, Rashid, Tykir, Alinor, Bolthor, and her four sisters… all of whom she'd called to meet her here for the formal ritual. Today was the day she would renounce her bloodlines. Today was the day she would become a homeless wanderer. Today was the day she would finally take control of her life.

  The royal bedchamber was large, with a central hearth and a massive bedstead against one wall. The room was hot, due to the blazing fire, and smoky, though there was the usual smoke hole in the roof. It reeked oddly of venison and horseradish.

  "Do not act in haste," Adam cautioned her.

  She cast him a fierce glower and gritted out, "Mind your own business, Saxon cur." Then she began, "In the way of the Ancients whose laws we obey, I, Tyra Thorvaldsson, do hereby—"

  "To leave your homeland forever… oh, Tyra, are you sure about this?" Alinor interrupted anxiously.

  "Tyra knows what she is about. 'Tis the only way," Rafn said, taking the hand of Vana, whose hair was looking particularly white today in the gloomy bedchamber. He and Vana moved up next to Tyra, as if to show whose side they were on. But, really, there were no sides here. She was doing, finally, what must be done to ensure her sisters' futures.

  Everyone's eyes were growing misty… whether from emotion or the increased smokiness in the room, it was hard to tell. Alrek must have brought up green wood for the fire today.

  "With all due respect, m'lady warrior, the country rooster does not crow in town." It was Rashid offering his opinion now.

  "Huh?" Tyra said. Was he classifying her as a country bumpkin, unable to live in a city like Byzantium? How many insults should one woman be subjected to before she started lopping off heads… or tongues?

  "Shut up, Rashid," Adam said.

  "Shut up, Adam," Tyra said.

  "Would everyone shut up! You're making the hole in my head hurt."

  Tyra looked right and left to see who had spoken. The other occupants of the room were doing the same. Then all eyes moved to the unmoving figure in the bed.

  "Father, was that you?" Tyra asked, taking one of his hands in hers… a hand which remained lifeless.

  Adam pushed her aside with a rude swing of his hips, almost knocking her over. She was about to protest, vehemently, but she restrained herself when she saw that Adam was reacting as a healer. He was listening to her father's heart rate and lifting his eyelids. Under his breath, he murmured to Rashid, who had joined him and was helping to remove the head wrapping to examine the wound, "I have been suspicious for days now. Is it possible the king is not really unconscious?"

  Rashid shrugged and took the soiled wrappings from him, handing him some clean ones.

  "Looks deader'n a door hinge to me," Bolthor mused.

  "Mayhap he is dead and 'twas his ghost speaking," Ingrith whispered in a voice of awe.

  "I was saving some of my best dried flowers for his funeral." Drifa confessed.

  "You could always stick a bouquet in the hole in his head," Rafn quipped.

  "Rafn!" Vana chided and pinched him in the ribs.

  Rafn just grinned at her.

  "I was thinking that if father lives, he could put a jewel in the hole," Breanne said with a bite of sarcasm. "You know how much he likes to adorn his hair with beads and ornaments. He is ever so vain about his hair."

  Suddenly Alinor punched Tykir in the arm. "You lout! You did that, didn't you?"

  "Did what?" Tykir was rubbing his upper arm with great drama.

  "Projected your voice to make it appear as if the king had spoken. Like you did that time with the sheep at Dragonstead. For shame! Making jest on such a serious occasion." She punched him again.

  All of Tyra's sisters were listening raptly to the interchange between Tykir and Alinor. No doubt they saw them as an example of longtime lovebirds.

  "For shame, Alinor! That you would make such false charges against me… your beloved husband. And you know why I pretended to be a ram speaking to you at Dragonstead. Dost recall the message?" He waggled his eyebrows at her.

  Alinor giggled in response. "Willst thou never grow up, Tykir?"

  "I hope not… and you should, too. Forever young, that is us." He waggled his eyebrows some more. "I at least have some decorum. You never heard me mention finger-pleasuring."

  Every person in the bedchamber let loose an interested exclamation of "Finger-pleasuring?" except Tykir, who was beaming brightly, and Adam and Tyra, who were turning red with embarrassment, and the king, who continued to lie motionless.

  "How could you, Adam? How could you? Did you have to tell everyone?" Tyra addressed Adam in a mortified whisper.

  "Me? I said naught."

  Tyra, even without a hole in her head, was developing the world's biggest headache. For a certainty, it felt as if her brain was leaking out.

  "What exactly is finger-pleasuring?" Vana wanted to know.

  Rafn whispered something in her ear.

  Vana squealed with incredulity before she clamped a hand over her mouth. Tyra could tell she was smiling behind the hand.

  Tyra groaned.

  Adam groaned. Then he immediately seemed to pull himself together as he straightened and went over to a chest where he proceeded to wash his hands from the water in a pottery bowl and dry them on a linen cloth. When he was done, he declared, "It would be best for my patient if all of you would leave his sick chamber."

  "How is he?" Tyra asked quickly.

  He gave her a long look, as if to say it was about time she gave concern to her father.

  "He is fine," he said, addressing everyone in the room. "Methinks he will awaken soon." In an undertone, Tyra thought he added, "if he hasn't already."

  "That is wonderful news," Tyra said. "It will gladden my heart to leave the Norse lands knowing my father will r
ecover."

  "Can you not wait another day?" Adam's question was asked with little inflection in his voice. To Tyra, that meant he did not care one way or another.

  She shook her head. " 'Tis time for the ritual." Everyone stepped back to give her room. She stood at her father's side and began once again. "I, Tyra, daughter of Thorvald Ivarsson, do hereby renounce—"

  "Nay!" a booming voice pronounced.

  It was the king. With a snarl of disgust, he sat bolt upright in his bed. "Have you all gone barmy?" he snarled, and tried to disentangle himself from the furs that had covered him. "Must I do everything myself… even coming back from the dead?" He leaned wearily against the pillowed headboard.

  "Father!" Tyra and all her sisters exclaimed and converged on his bed to give him hugs and kisses.

  "Leave off! Leave off!" he protested. "You will smother me."

  "Step back," Adam ordered. "Let me examine the king."

  As he leaned over the old man, she heard her father ask, "And who be you? Ye have the look of a bloody Saxon about you?"

  "I am Adam the Healer. And, yea, a Saxon. The very one your daughter Tyra kidnapped to come save you."

  "That you did. That you did," the king acknowledged. "And my thanks you have in abundance."

  "Father, now that you are on the road to recovery… do not take this personally… you have been a good father… most times, least ways… but I want to renounce our blood ties, and—"

  He muttered something like, "when snow falls in Valhalla!"

  Tyra sighed. "You owe me this favor in return for bringing the physician."

  Her father raised his hand in a halting fashion. "Not now Tyra. You will not bedevil me with this nonsense the moment I escape the raven's fate."

  "It is not fair, I tell you. You cannot keep putting me off. You cannot put my sisters off." It was unlike Tyra to argue with her father, especially in these circumstances. But she needed to act, and soon.

  "I will handle it, daughter. Trust me, dearling. Just this once. One more day will make no difference, will it? I promise this situation will be resolved, and soon." Her father's voice was weakening, and she recognized that she was not helping matters by forcing an answer now.

  "One more day. That is all," she agreed.

  Her father nodded, though he muttered under his breath, "Obstinate, unbiddable girl!

  "I would ask you all to take leave of me so that I may rest," he said then. But first he turned again to Adam. "Ask any boon of me and it is yours."

  Adam thought for a long moment, then said, "Transport home. I ask for one longship to take me home… now… afore winter…"

  The king nodded. "It is done. And a fair request it is, too."

  Tyra's heart sank. Unreasonably. Whether she left first for Byzantium, or he left first for Britain, the result would be the same. Separation… and soon.

  "… and I insist that the captain of that longship—" there was a long pause—"be your daughter Tyra."

  A stunned silence filled the room before Tyra gasped and said, "Nay! You cannot ask that, you… you…"

  "Loathsome lout?" Alinor offered with a grin.

  "Yea, you loathsome lout!" Tyra said to Adam, who remained grim-faced, waiting for the king's answer.

  "Good strategy," Tykir congratulated Adam, clapping him on the shoulder.

  "Methinks this calls for a saga," Bolthor announced. "How about, 'How the Lady Warrior Got Caught in Her Own Snare'?"

  "I give you this word of caution, my lady warrior," Rashid said. "She who rides the tiger should be careful how she dismounts."

  "That is the most nonsensical proverb you have spouted thus far," Tyra told Rashid.

  "It means that you have been tempting me as if I were a castle cat, when in fact I am a tiger," Adam explained to her. He added a tigerish growl and a wink to make his point.

  The growl and the wink touched Tyra in the most sensual way… well, actually, in the most sensual place.

  "You are clearly some sort of disgusting male creature," Tyra informed Adam, clicking her tongue with disgust.

  "Faults are thick where love is thin," Rashid opined.

  "Shut your teeth, Rashid," Adam said cheerily.

  "I still want to know what finger-pleasuring is," Breanne said.

  "Me, too. Me, too," chimed in Ingrith and Drifa.

  "Enough!" the king roared.

  When there was silence in the room, he addressed Adam. "Your request is granted. She who kidnapped you shall return you to your home."

  Tyra put her face in her hands and moaned. As she heard everyone leaving the bedchamber and calling out their good wishes to her father, she wondered how her life had reached such a chaotic state, and how it could get any worse.

  She soon found out.

  When she opened her eyes, she realized that her father had fallen back asleep… a relaxed slumber, by the sound of his even breathing… and she saw that Adam remained in the bedchamber.

  Meeting her eyes directly, he said simply, "Tonight."

  Tyra required no further explanation. Adam had healed her father. Now she must fulfill the pact she'd made with him.

  One night. His bed furs. Naked.

  She answered him with the same simplicity, "Tonight."

  But what she thought was, May the gods help me. Tonight.

  "Come with me," Adam told Alrek.

  "Me?" Alrek almost swallowed his teeth on hearing Adam address him directly. He'd been moping about the courtyard, shuffling his boots in the dirt. He'd heard about Adam's imminent departure for Britain, and it was finally sinking in that he and his siblings would not be going with him.

  Now that he had finished treating patients for the day and had checked on Dagma and then the king, Adam had strapped on a belted sheath to hold his sword. Then he'd gone searching for Alrek.

  Adam took Alrek by the upper arm and led him out of the main courtyard toward the blacksmith building. "I have something to show you."

  Usually, that kind of statement would have brought forth elation in the youthling, so desperate was he for attention, but he just nodded forlornly now.

  They stepped into the exceedingly hot building where Bjorn was working on a sword over a blazing fire. A young thrall kept the flames high by working a bellows from the side.

  The sword Bjorn was working on was not a large one, but it was finely worked. Using the damascening method, he twisted together iron and steel rods of different textures and shades and then forged them into a single blade. Intermixed with the twisting and pounding was frequent heating and quenching to harden the metal. The result was a beautiful flame pattern ingrained in the surface of the blade.

  When he was done, Bjorn handed the sword to Adam and muttered under his breath, "I still think ye are demented. He will kill himself… that he will."

  Walking out of the smidiy, Adam handed the sword to Alrek and said, "This is for you."

  "Me?" Alrek's eyes went huge with wonderment. Alrek took the short sword by the hilt and almost tripped forward, not being prepared for its weight.

  Adam winced at Alrek's first near-accident with the weapon. He could just hear people telling him, "I told you so. I told you so."

  "Why?"

  "It's a gift."

  "No one ever gave me nuthin', 'ceptin' the king, and that was a job."

  "Well, I am giving you something, but there is a price attached."

  Alrek was staring at his new sword adoringly. "Whatever you say."

  "You know that I am going away soon, and I am not… cannot take you with me."

  The boy immediately stiffened at that reminder. "I do not see why—"

  Adam put up a halting hand. "You should be able to live as a boy, but God… the gods… have dealt you a different fate. That means you must continue to be the head of your family. Being the head of the family also means protecting those under your shield. That is why I'm giving you the sword. That is why I will practice with you as much as possible till it is time for me to leave. Having your very
own weapon means being responsible, Alrek. You must learn to be more careful. A sword can be your friend or your foe. Make it your friend. Do you understand?"

  Alrek nodded, but Adam wasn't sure how much the youthling understood. Well, he would once Adam was done instructing him. Some people believed that they were helping children by keeping all dangerous objects out of their path, but he was of the opinion that people—even little people—must learn to deal with the dangers that surrounded them.

  'Twas as Rashid always said, "Do not stand in a place of danger and pray for miracles." Well, Alrek kept looking to him for a miracle. Adam chose instead to provide Alrek with his own means to a miracle. But, bloody hell, he hoped the boy didn't kill himself first.

  By the time dusk rolled over the Norse mountains, Adam and Alrek were both feeling proud of the youthling's accomplishments. He was not yet a skilled swordsman, but he had made progress. And the two of them had only a dozen or so nicks on their arms to show for the effort. Alrek promised to practice with him early the next morning and again in the late afternoon. Adam would speak to Rafn about tutoring the boy after he left.

  It was the best he could do.

  As they trudged back toward the keep and the sweat house where they planned to heat up their aching muscles, Alrek turned to him and said, "A man's sword should have a name, should it not?"

  "Absolutely."

  "I know what mine will be."

  "Now, Alrek, remember what I said about so many of your problems being the result of acting before thinking. Stop, think, act. That is to be your motto."

  "I do not need to think about this. The name of my sword shall be…"

  Adam just knew he was not going to like this.

  "… Miracle-Maker."

  From a distance, Tyra had been watching Adam and Alrek practicing swordplay at the far end of the exercise field. For three hours, Adam had worked patiently with the accident-prone youthling. He would have cuts up one arm and down the other to show for his efforts.