Page 70 of The Bewitched Viking

“Then you are a bigger fool than I thought.” With those words, he walked off and signaled his men to begin rowing.

A short time later, Adam walked up and sat down beside Alinor. “Why are you frowning so?” Adam asked. “I would think you would be jubilant. You won.”

“I did no such thing. This wasn’t a contest. And no matter what Tykir says, it wasn’t my fault, either.”

Adam laughed. “He is a mite perturbed with you.”

“That’s an understatement. It’s why I was frowning. I don’t understand these gifts he gave me. Oh, he spouted some nonsense about their being my first installment in paying him back a huge debt. But I’ve examined them and…” She handed them to Adam, and he opened the largest one first. It was a silk-lined shallow box containing dozens of feathers of all sizes, colors and textures. “Aren’t they magnificent?” she commented.

He nodded, deep in thought, and opened the next flat chest. This one contained ten flagons of various scented oils. “He has commented on the rose-scented hair cream that his sister-by-marriage, Lady Eadyth, gave to me, but I am deeply touched that he would grace me with these.”

Adam was beginning to grin enigmatically.

“Why are you smirking?”

“I am beginning to understand the method of payment Tykir plans to exact from you.” He opened the next box, which held the oddest objects, short lengths of velvet ropes…four of them. “Yea, I am beginning to understand.”

A very small box held a magnificent amber cabochon, about the size of a bird’s egg. “This is beautiful but has no backing to be used as a brooch, and no metal loop through which a neck chain could be run.”

“It’s a belly button stone,” Adam said with a chuckle.

“A what?”

“It’s a special gem, favored by many of the hour is in sultans’ harems. The woman wears naught but this stone in the navel.”

It took a moment for comprehension to dawn. When it did, she gasped. “He’s mad if he thinks I would…well, suffice it to say, he’s mad.” She turned the gem this way and that, trying to picture it in place. Finally, she put it away, making a tsk-ing sound of disapproval. “Is the man perverted?”

“Probably.” Adam winked at her and reached for the last box.

“Oh, that one’s a mistake,” she said, trying to pull it back. “Tykir must have meant it for Samirah.”

He opened it, and out spilled the most scandalous garment, made of near transparent red silk scarves, edged with tiny jingling bells. “Nay, you are mistaken, Lady Alinor. He intends it for you. I am certain of that.”

She stared at him, aghast.

“Lady Alinor, I predict this is going to be the most interesting winter of your life.”

Chapter Eleven

They arrived at Dragonstead two days later as snow began to fall in a steady blanketing of puffy flakes.

Alinor and all the other seafarers were exhausted, frozen to the bone and barely able to find their land legs as they disembarked from the ice-crusted longships. The trip had been harrowing, to say the least. Hard rowing through one fjord after another…some narrow, and so shallow the vessels risked being landlocked, and others as wide as a river.

The weather had varied from rain to bitter winds, but was always intensely cold. They did not even camp for the night; it was dark a large portion of the day anyhow. Instead, they stopped for breaks at six-hour intervals whereby cold food was served—including the horrid gammelost—and bodily functions could be relieved in nearby bushes. All the time they were attempting to outrun the onslaught of full winter, which was apparently a disaster to be avoided when on the open waterways of the region known as the Land of the Midnight Sun.

What a harsh land, this northern section of Norway! Of course, she was seeing it for the first time under the worst of circumstances, but it was a mountainous, primitive terrain, more suited to wild beasts than men.

Alinor hadn’t spoken with Tykir since he’d handed her the “gifts.” He’d kept to the other longship most of the time, but she could see even from a distance that he was nigh crippled with pain. And Tykir wasn’t the only one suffering. Many of the seamen were afflicted with the usual wintertime ailment of sneezing and running noses and eyes. Of course, they blamed it all on her witchly presence. Few had been convinced by Tykir’s defense of her at Anlaf’s court.

She intended to make them all a good, rich chicken broth once they reached Dragonstead…a guaranteed cure for the winter chills. And she would force it down their stubborn throats if they resisted it as witch’s brew…yea, she would. She was sick to death of stubborn, superstitious men.

But now they’d come home for the winter. The timing was fortunate in that they’d arrived during one of the few hours of daylight. Many of the seamen were met by family members waiting for them on the wharves of Dragonstead. One by one, and in small groups, those men who did not reside in the main keep made for their homes in the nearby village.

Finally, the chaos of unloading the goods was completed, and Alinor stepped onto the wooden planks of the dock, getting her first good view of Dragonstead.

Then she gasped.

Dragonstead was situated in a bowl-shaped valley known as the Valley of the Dragons. Adam had told her earlier that the name came from an old legend that millions of years ago this valley had served as a dragon’s nest. Now, there was a small lake forming the base of the bowl and dense, tree-lined mountains surrounding it. The lake was formed from melted snow and rain run-off from the mountains, which flowed into the fjord by which they’d entered. A small timber and stone “castle,” in the Frankish rather than the Norse style, sat perched on the lip of one side, overlooking the lake. Viking longhouses making up the Dragonstead village were scattered in clusters around the bowl.