Page 109 of The Viking’s Captive

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

TWO SENNIGHTS LATER, BIRKA

Humor is ageless … “What has a hole on the top and is full of mead?” one Stoneheim soldier asked another Stoneheim soldier.

“A barrel of mead?” a third soldier interjected innocently, though he had to know the answer.

“Nay, the drukkinn king of Stoneheim.”

“Ha, ha, ha!” the men sitting around the alehouse table laughed.

“Didst hear that the king tupped Bertha last night?” another soldier called out. Bertha, the alehouse whore, straightened up. “The only problem is, he tupped the wrong hole.”

“Ha, ha, ha!” More communal laughter.

“The king tupped himself,” the soldier explained to one man who hadn’t understood the jest.

These men must be demented to find humor in these endless hole-in-the-head jokes, Adam thought, but after a forced two-sennight stay in the trading town while the king recovered from a high fever, he and his friends were bordering on demented, too.

“You’d better be careful that Thorvald doesn’t overhear these jokes,” Adam warned. “He may not appreciate your laughing at him.”

“Nay, you are wrong there,” Bolthor spoke up. “Thorvald seems to enjoy the hole-in-the-head jests best of all. In fact, I have composed a saga about this very thing, ‘Viking Men with Humor.’”

Bolthor was already starting to perform before Adam had a chance to groan. Rashid, the traitor, was applauding.

“Viking men are fiercesome fighters

Skilled with sword and axe.

But off the battlefield some say

Their greatest talent is The ability to laugh at themselves.

No man or god is ever so great

That never does he trip.

If man cannot laugh at himself

He might as well be dead.”

There was stone silence in the ale room. Bolthor was a giant of a man … too big for them to taunt with laughter or ridicule.

Finally Adam said, “Very good, Bolthor,” though he gritted his teeth in saying so. Then he added, “I noticed that you had no rhyming words in that one.”

“How sharp-witted of you to notice, Adam! I like to mix my sagas … some rhyming, some not.”

“Excellent idea!” Tykir said.

Adam’s head swiveled toward Tykir so sharply he would probably have a crick in his neck tonight. “Excellent idea?” he mouthed silently.

Tykir just grinned.

“Someone ought to tell Bolthor the truth someday,” Adam grumbled.

“He who tells the truth should have one foot in the stirrup,” Rashid advised him.

“Sagas and proverbs! I think I have landed in hell and no one bothered to inform me.”