Page 76 of The Blue Viking

“Humpfh!” was Rurik’s doubtful rejoinder.

“She likes you,” Jamie told him accusingly.

Uh-oh! Here comes the guilt maneuver. Women and children… that’s the route they always follow with men. Try to make a man feel guilty for the least little thing. “I rather doubt that,” he answered. Rose, meanwhile, continued to glare at him wiüi her usual attitude of superiority. She kept her distance, though, still not having forgiven him for the bath.

Without a pause for transition, the blathering boy moved on to a new subject. “Betcha I would make a good Viking.”

“I doubt that.”

“All that rapin’ and pillagin’ and stuff. Betcha I’d be the best damn raper and pillager in the world.”

Rurik had to laugh, not only at the boy’s imagination, but his continuing foul tongue, as well. “Do you even know what raping and pillaging are?”

“Well, nay, but they sound fun.”

“I hardly think your clan will want you to go off a-Viking. Best you stay here in the Highlands and do your clan things … like reaving and feuding.”

“I could go a-Viking with you during the seasons when I’m not reavin’ and feudin’.”

“Do you never stop talking?”

“That’s what my mother says all the time.”

“Wise woman,” Rurik muttered under his breath.

But Jamie heard and yelped with glee. “See? Yer smitten, too.”

They continued playing the game for several blessedly silent moments, but Rurik should have known it wouldn’t last.

“Tell me ’bout swiving.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“Swiving … what’s it feel like?”

Rurik grinned. “Good.”

“How good? Do ye mean plum pudding good, or horse racing good, or hard swimming good, or catchin’ a big trout good?”

“All of those.”

“Does your dinky have to be bigger than your little finger to swive?”

Dinky? Oh, for the love of a Valkyrie! A dinky! Rurik’s eyes almost bugged out of his head at the sight of the imp waggling his littlest finger at him. “Yea, it does,” he answered with as straight a face as he could manage.

“How much bigger?”

Aaarrgh! Rurik clenched his fists and reminded himself that he probably would have liked some older man to explain these things to him when he’d been a boy. “Much.”

“How big is yours?”

Rurik was beginning to pick up the rhythm of the halfling’s chatter and found himself chuckling. “Immense,” he replied, and hoped no one was eavesdropping on this boy-man talk.

“Can I see?”

“Nay, you cannot see, whelp.” Enough was enough. Rurik folded up the board game, declaring himself the winner, and stood.

He stretched his arms out widely and yawned. It was the time of day between daylight and dusk… that odd period that the Scots referred to as the gloaming. Soon Rurik would be off to the MacNabs, and their plan would sink or swim.