Page 93 of The Blue Viking

“Yea, it is a proud feeling,” Rurik admitted, “and at the same time humbling.”

“I could be his foster father,” Stigand suggested hopefully.

Rurik gaped at him. Who would have thought the burly berserker could blush, or that he would entertain such a thought?

“Nay, I will be Jamie’s foster father,” Bolthor countered.

“Nay, me,” Toste said.

“Nay, me,” Vagn piped in.

Rurik put two hands in the air, as if in surrender. And he laughed for the first time in hours. “You can all be the boy’s foster fathers,” he conceded.

There was some grumbling, but finally agreement.

“This is the saga of Rurik the Greater,” Bolthor began.

“Do not think of starting on me now, skald.”

But Bolthor just spoke over him, and for once, truer words were never spoken.

Betimes a man goes all through life,

Happy without family or wife,

But fate sticks out her big toe,

And down does the man go.

Then the man learns that being alone

Is not the place for a man grown,

Especially if his seed takes root,

And into this world comes a precious offshoot.

When that babe is a boy,

Oh, the wonderous joy!

For then discovers the man

What it is to be a real man…

A father.

They all nodded, deep in thought, probably wondering what Rurik would do now.

If only he knew!

Rurik awakened about dawn in the stables on a bundle of straw he’d raked together. To his surprise, he’d actually slept, despite the turmoil of the night before … perchance in reaction to a long, eventful day that had begun in battle. How could so much have happened in one day?

But something had awakened him, he realized, even before he opened his eyes. There was someone in the stable beside him.

Was it Maire?

Was he ready to face the wily witch and all the problems aswirl betwixt them?