Page 26 of The Bewitched Viking

She frowned.

“All fit for a queen of your renowned beauty.”

She preened.

“I will bring them by for your inspection later tonight.”

Queen Gunnhild nodded, then turned to Alinor and gave her a quick, dismissing assessment. With an air of boredom, she inquired insolently, “You are the witch, I presume?”

Alinor started to nod but caught herself. God’s teeth! She was beginning to think of herself as the witch now, too.

“Yea, she is the witch I am taking back to Norway,” Tykir answered for her. He held up his hand to demonstrate that she was his prisoner.

“There is much I would like to discuss with you,” Gunnhild said enigmatically to Alinor. Before she could say more, Egbert and Hebert interrupted, pushing themselves in front of Alinor.

“Nay, she is not a witch,” Egbert asserted. “She is our sister, the betrothed of Lord Cedric here, the cousin of the king of all Britain, a gentle-bred lady who should not be handed over to this…this heathen.”

King Eric raised an eyebrow at the word heathen, asking without words whether they put him in the same category. Then he homed in on another part of what Egbert had said. “Dost claim that Edred is king of all Britain?”

Egbert realized his mistake immediately. “All Britain, except for Northumbria,” he corrected himself.

“Are you really cousin to King Edred?” Gunnhild queried Alinor.

“Thrice-removed,” Tykir pointed out.

Alinor glared at him for speaking on her behalf, but he just grinned at her.

“We demand that you hand our sister back to us, and pay wergild for the soldiers sorely wounded by you and your barbarians this afternoon,” Hebert said. “Is that not so, Earl Oswulf?”

The Saxon nobleman, adviser to King Edred, had been standing quietly in the background. He gave his assent with a curt nod of his head.

“Nay!” Tykir said.

After that, the king heard both sides of the argument. In the end, he offered, “We could call for a Thing in a sennight or so to decide the issue.” Alinor knew from what Tykir had told her previously that a Thing was the governing body for Norsemen, similar to the Witan in Britain.

“I can’t wait that long,” Tykir roared. “Already I am a month late in getting my trading goods to Hedeby. ’Tis a two-week journey to Norway in good weather. With autumn advanced now, another sennight of malingering could mean my being unable to return to my homestead for winter. That I cannot accept.”

The king addressed Oswulf then. “Is the witch worth drawing swords? Mayhap a full-fledged battle?”

Oswulf’s face went pale, and his beady eyes scanned the great hall, noticing the many Norse fighting men. “Not at the present,” he conceded. “But I will have to report back to King Edred your refusal to intercede on behalf of Egbert and Hebert. I guarantee he will not be pleased.”

“So be it,” King Eric said, clearly unafraid of a fight.

Egbert, Hebert and Cedric, muttering curses and vows of revenge, were being led away by an angry Earl Oswulf. For now, her fate was decided, a stunned Alinor realized. She was still the captive of the troll. Everyone would continue to think of her as a witch, including the king, who’d just listened to some hushed message from Rurik and was gazing speculatively at her buttocks.

Gunnhild came forward to give a parting kiss to Eadyth, and then to Alinor, much to her astonishment. Even more surprising was Gunnhild’s words in Alinor’s ears, “Do not mind my husband looking for your tail. He has been searching for mine nigh on twenty years now, and he still has not found it.” With a chuckle, she turned away and walked regally back to her seat at the high table.

As they returned to their benches, Alinor noticed, to her chagrin, that a great number of people were glancing at her backside. Apparently the word had spread since her passage up to the dais a short time ago. She was certain she had Rurik to thank for that. One of these days, she would like to twist Rurik’s tongue into a knot…a blue knot to match his face design.

Just then, when Alinor thought things could not have gotten worse, they did.

Beast, who’d been sleeping at their table the whole time they were away talking with the king and queen, sat up with sudden alertness, his black ears standing up like sentinels. With an ominous growl, then a bark, he watched the open doorway on the other side of the great hall. A wild barking ensued, followed by a familiar bleating. Beauty came galloping across the great hall, her broken neck chain trailing after her, with David and Bathsheba following close behind, and after that a half dozen more baaing sheep. A stunned silence overcame the entire great hall, in a rippling fashion, as the interlopers trotted by. Soon Beauty and Beast were reunited, with much licking of faces and sniffing of intimate body parts.

It was a scene right out of Alinor’s worst nightmare.

She pushed aside the manchet trencher of congealing sliced boar and pressed her forehead to the table. Laughter started low, then crescendoed as the Norse assemblage roared their mirth at the antics of Alinor’s minions.

Bolthor mentioned something about a new saga, “Tykir the Great and the Nude Witch,” immediately followed by, “Tykir the Great and the Lustful Dogs.”