Page 5 of A Tale of Two Vikings

“Rescue? Who needs rescuing?” She thought he might mention some injured monk or a Saxon soldier in need of care. Mother Wilfreda was a noted healer, and injured wayfarers often traveled to the abbey for her care. But, nay, Father Alaric had something entirely different, and totally unexpected, in mind.

“A Viking.”

Birds of a most unusual feather…

Toste lay on the cold ground of a Saxon battlefield waiting for the Valkyries to come take him to Valhalla. He hoped it would be soon, because his head felt as if a drum were beating inside his brain, about to explode.

With great effort, he lifted his heavy eyelids and gazed upward. What he saw scared him spitless, and he was not a man easily scared. He said something quite embarrassing then, for a Viking: “Eek!”

Five black crows stood in a circle about him—very large black crows. In fact, they were the height of humans and they cackled in the Saxon tongue. They must be the ravens of death. In the past, he had seen vultures hovering over battlefields waiting to feast on the mortal carrion, but he’d never seen them up close; nor had he ever imagined them being so big.

“He’s awfully big,” one of the crows said. “How will we carry him?”

And what is wrong with big?

“Mayhap we could drag him over to our cart.”

Birds have carts?

“Are you barmy? The man is half-dead. He would ne’er survive a dragging.”

Good thinking. No dragging.

“Each of us could take a limb and lift him. Yea, that’s the way.”

Take a limb? Oh, bloody hell! They’re going to dismember me and gnaw on my bones.

“That would no doubt kill him.”

For a certainty.

“He will probably die anyhow.”

A little optimism wouldn’t hurt, you know.

“He has nice hair. Not quite silver. Not quite gold.”

What does the color of my hair matter? Dead is dead.

“Tsk tsk tsk! Who cares what color his hair is! Look at the muscles in his shoulders and arms. He could probably pull a plow for us…if he survives.”

What? What have the ravens of death to do with plows?

“He’s a heathen,” still another of the crows whined. “Why should we save a heathen Viking?”

Well, actually, I’ve been baptized. You could call me a heathen Christian.

Another crow, obviously the head crow, swatted the whining crow about the head. “For shame! God shows His mercy to all men.”

God? Uh-oh. Mayhap I’m not going to Valhalla after all.

That thought was reinforced when the crows lifted him unceremoniously off the ground by his arms and legs. Pain shot from his splitting skull through his injured body—some Saxon bastard must have run a lance through my side, even after I fell from the head blow—all the way down to his frozen toes, and he surrendered to blissful unconsciousness. With luck, he would not wake up when the crows began to feast on his flesh.

Is well-dangled the same as well-hung?…

“Well!” Esme remarked as she gazed down at the fallen Viking, now reclining on a hard pallet in a guest cell at the abbey. A roaring fire at her back provided welcome warmth on this cold day. “Well, well, well!”

“Well, indeed!” concurred a flushed Sister Margaret, who swayed slightly on her feet, tipsy from sampling her own latest batch of mead after their grueling trip back from the battlefield. Margaret was the daughter of a famed Saxon ale maker, and she’d brought his recipe with her to the convent. In truth, if it weren’t for the profits earned from the mead enterprise—aptly labeled Margaret’s Mead—the abbey would have been forced to close long ago. Esme’s knack for growing vegetables in the abbey gardens also helped them subsist.