Page 116 of The Bewitched Viking

Tykir was about to tell Bolthor how awful his poem was and to snarl at him, as he had at Adam, to stay out of his life. But Bolthor stared at him with such obvious need for encouragement that Tykir found himself saying, “That was excellent, Bolthor. I really think you are improving.”

“Thank you.” Bolthor’s good eye seemed to fill with tears of appreciation. “I was afeared you would not like it. Even laugh.” Then he confessed, “I could not think of a rhyme for arse at the end. In truth, I have a terrible time with rhyming, which is surely a failing in a good skald.”

Adam commented, “I think you are a good skald,” and Tykir could have kissed the young lout.

At the same time, if he hadn’t thought it before, Tykir did now. I am going mad.

Tykir rode his horse a good part of the morning till he and his steed were both exhausted, sweeping low with a specially designed basket scoop to rake the sands for loose amber. Then he plagued his amber workers in their sheds along the shores as they sorted and polished the raw amber.

Some days they brought in hunks of amber as big as a man’s head, especially after a storm had churned up the ocean’s bottom, but most often they were small pieces. It was luck that determined their hauls for the day, not the workers’ misdeeds, and he had no right to take his mood out on them.

Adam and Bolthor had kept up with him in the amber harvesting, in fact, relishing the outdoor exercise as they galloped along the foam of the low tide. But finally, the two confronted him at the end of the day.

“Tykir, this has to stop,” Adam declared. They were seated at a table in his lodging, sipping at huge goblets of ale. “You are driving yourself too hard, not to mention your workers. Have you looked in a mirror lately? You have dark shadows under your eyes. Your face and frame are becoming gaunt.”

“Since when have you cared about my appearance?”

“I care about you,” Adam said gravely.

“And so do I,” Bolthor added gruffly.

“I do not want you to care,” Tykir roared, slamming his fist on the table, then softened his voice. “I do not want anyone to care.”

“Be that as it may, Bolthor and I have been talking, and we think you should go to Northumbria and bring Alinor back.”

Tykir gaped at them. “Bring her back? To where?”

Adam and Bolthor shrugged.

“Here,” Adam offered.

“Or Dragonstead,” Bolthor recommended.

“Anywhere you are,” Adam and Bolthor urged as one.

“And if she does not want to come? Are you suggesting I take her captive again?”

“The idea has merit,” was Adam’s opinion. “Have I told you about the sheik who captured—”

“A hundred times, at least,” Tykir said dryly.

“Nay, I do not think kidnapping would be necessary this time,” Bolthor opined.

“I am not going after Alinor,” Tykir asserted firmly. “She made her decision, and it was final.” Besides, the heart-pain he endured now would be naught compared to how he would feel if she rejected him again. ’Twas time to reinforce his old defenses. A man could not be hurt if he did not care. Everyone leaves…eventually. It was a fact of his life.

“But she didn’t have all the facts,” Adam argued. “If you—”

Tykir put up a hand, barring further debate. “I will not go after Alinor, but you are correct. I cannot go on this way. I have made a decision.”

Both men looked at him expectantly.

“I am going back to Dragonstead.”

Two sennights later, in mid-May, Tykir was arriving back at Dragonstead.

It was the right decision to have come back, Tykir realized as he gazed about him at the verdant paradise that was his home. Home, he repeated to himself. Yea, that’s what it was. He’d been denying it for years, denying himself the pleasure of it in its best seasons. Alinor had been correct in that, at least. He’d been a fool to stay away from Dragonstead.

As his longship turned a bend in the fjord, the valley and lake in all their springtime splendor came into full view. And something else, too.