Sandra Hill - [Vikings I 05]

The Blue Viking

Sandra Hill

This book is dedicated to my mother-in-law, Ann Harper, who was born in Scotland and whose maiden name was Campbell. She is as generous and proud and full of wit as the Campbell clan depicted in this book. To her, family is so important… just like my Maire Campbell
.

Kaupang, the Northland, A.D. 935

“Pig boy! Pig boy! Runt of the litter!”

Rurik’s head jerked up with alarm on recognizing the band of youths in the market square shouting taunts at him. “Thor’s toenails!” he muttered, and began to run for his life … as fast as his skinny, eight-year-old legs would carry him.

Normally, Rurik would have relished the sounds and aromas of the busy trading town. Roast mutton turning on a spit. Oat cakes dripping with honey. Mulled ale sizzling around a hot poker. The clang, clang, clang of the sword maker’s anvil. The brays and bleats and neighs and moos and cackles and quacks of various animals. The importuning pleas of the vendors, cajoling passersby to sample their wares.

The ruffians chased after him, as he knew they
would, tossing insults like sharp burrs on a north wind. Some of them stuck … if not to his skin, to his oversensitive soul.

“Come back ’ere, you bloody bugger.”

“Wha’ he needs is a good dunk in an icy fjord to wipe off that hog stink.”

“Do ya think the starvling suckles on the sow’s teat? Mayhap that’s why he’s so ugly. Ha, ha, ha!”

“Oink, oink, oink!”

Even as he puffed loudly, his arms pumping wildly to match his strides, Rurik’s eyes watered at their biting words.

Why do they hate me so?

It mattered not that they were Norse, as he was.

It mattered not that he had only seen eight winters, and they more than eleven.

It mattered not that he was small and frail of frame, while they were strapping youthlings.

Oh, it was true he smelled, from lack of bathing and from living amongst the pigs, but his pursuers were not so fragrant themselves. For a certainty, none of them, himself included, had bathed since last spring.

But what had he ever done to them that warranted such viciousness? They were as poor and ill-dressed and mistreated as he was.

Could it be that some people enjoy meanness for its own sake?

Mus’ be
.

The first to catch up with him was Ivar, the blacksmith’s son… the meanest of the lot. Rurik was just beyond the stall of Gudrod the Tanner.
Phew! Talk about malodors!
Right now, the leather worker was
spreading chicken dung on a stretched animal skin—an ancient method for curing hides. Ivar lunged forward, knocking him to the ground.

“Hey, now!” Gudrod yelled. “Get out of here, you scurvy whelps. Ye’ll ruin me bizness.”

Without a sideways glance at the merchant, Ivar stood and dragged Rurik by the back of his filthy tunic to a nearby wooded area. There, in the ice-crusted snow, he began to pummel Rurik in earnest, marking each of his blows with comments such as, “That’ll teach you ta run from yer betters.” Alas, Rurik was much smaller, and all that he could do was hold his hands over his face protectively.

Ivar’s other friends soon caught up and added then-jeers and punches to Rurik’s battering. Rolling on the snowy ground, they proceeded to wallop him mercilessly.

Suddenly, another voice was heard. “I thought I told you bloody bastards to leave the halfling alone. Some folks’re so thickheaded they don’ know when their arses are gonna be kicked from here to Hedeby and back.”

An ominous silence followed as Rurik’s attackers realized that Stigand had arrived. His “protector.” The band of malcontents stood as one and began to back away, but not before Stigand grabbed hold of Ivar, their leader. Stigand was only ten years old, but he was big … very big … for his age. And stonyhearted. More so even than Ivar and his spiteful friends. With his left hand, Stigand lifted Ivar off the ground by grasping his neck. Then he swung his right fist in a wide arc into Ivar’s quaking face. Even before the blood started spurting, there was the sound of
cranching bone. Ivar’s nose had surely been broken… perchance even his jaw, too. Stigand landed several other jabs as well, before releasing the now sobbing Ivar to run off after his cowardly companions.

Stigand held out a hand to help Rurik to his feet. Shaking his head with dismay at Rurik, Stigand remarked, “You are pitiful.”

“I know,” Rurik said, brushing off his tattered braies which now had a few more rips. But he smiled his thanks at his only friend in the world.

A short time later, he and Stigand sat with their backs propped against the pigsty wall. Stigand was playing with a small pig he had named Thumb-Biter. It was the only time Rurik saw any softness on Stigand’s face … when he hugged and caressed the undersized piglet that had been rejected by its mother. A true runt of the litter when it had been born, it was now flourishing under Stigand’s special care.

Rurik’s stomach growled with hunger.

Stigand glanced over at him and grinned. “Best you grab a hunk of manchet bread afore the old hag comes home.”

Rurik nodded. “I’m in fer one of her beatin’s, fer sure, once she sees I been fightin’ again.”

“I’d hardly call what you do fightin’,” Stigand observed drolly.

“Jus’ stayin’ alive. Jus’ stayin alive,” Rurik answered with a sigh. “That’s my kind of fightin’ … fer now, leastways.”

“Well, you won’t be alive fer long if that bitch Hervor catches you.
Poor little ungrateful orphan boy.”
That last was a mimicking of the phrase the old
hag liked to use with them afore their beatings with a birch switch.

Both boys grinned at each other.

Rurik and Stigand were among the dozen “orphans” who had been rescued… if it could be called that… by Ottar the pig farmsteader. Ottar was not so bad, and his intentions were pure. Unfortunately, his wife, Hervor, was not so good-hearted. Also, unfortunately, Ottar was gone from home much of the time. While he was away, all of the orphan boys were worked nigh to death and whipped for the least infraction.

Stigand had been “rescued” after running away several years ago from his birth-home where he’d suffered horrible abuses from his father and older brothers. Hard to believe that anything could be worse than the beatings that Hervor levied, but even at Rurik’s young age, he could see that it was so. The blankness that came into Stigand’s eyes on occasion bespoke some unspeakable pain.

Rurik’s story was entirely different. In some of the harsh northern climes, there were still Viking people who abandoned newborn babes deemed too frail to survive … like Rurik’s father, a noble Norse jarl who demanded perfection in his offspring.

Vikings were not the only ones to practice such cruelty to children. In the Saxon lands, and many other Christian kingdoms, the most socially accepted method for getting rid of unwanted children, whether they were illegitimate or imperfect, was to donate them to a local monastery, where life often became hell for the orphan. On the surface it would appear as if these acts were great sacrifices made by loving parents
to God, but, in fact, they were a respectable method of cutting off the weakest limbs of a family tree.

Rurik had been born early, small of size and ailing. After one look at him, his father had forced the mid-wives to lay his naked body out in the freezing snow. It was there Ottar had found him. His mother had died soon after the birthing of childbed fever.

Sometimes Rurik saw his father in the market town, riding his fine horse, laughing with his comrades. Never did he glance Rurik’s way, though he was surely aware of his existence. Once, when Rurik was five and had learned of his birth, he made the trek up the hills to his father’s grand stead. What a sight he must have been! Half-frozen, snot-nosed, wearing his beggarly garments. He’d been turned away rudely at the gate by none other than his own father, who told him never to return. “No runtling such as you is a get of my blood,” he’d added. As far as his father was concerned, he was dead.

“Someday, I’m gonna be so big and strong that no one will be able to beat me,” Rurik promised himself aloud, wiping at tears that welled in his eyes.

“Could be possible.” Stigand was still petting his piglet, which kept nipping at his big thumb, rooting for food. “Some lads do not get their full growth till they are twelve and more. Besides that, you can build muscle with hard work, that I know for certain.”

“What? I do not work hard enough here on the pigstead? From dawn till dark?”

Stigand elbowed Rurik playfully, which caused Rurik to wince. Ivar must have bruised a rib or two.

“ ’Tis another kind of muscle-building work I
speak of,” Stigand explained. At Rurik’s frown of puzzlement, he added, “ ’Tis the kind of exercise fighting men engage in. Never fear. I can teach you.”

Rurik blinked at his friend, grateful for that small glimmer of hope … which gave him courage to hope for more. “It’s not just my size,” he went on. “When I am a grown man, no one will be able to mock my looks, either, for I intend to be so handsome all the maids will swoon.”

“Tall and strong
and
beauteous?” Stigand began to laugh uproariously, he and Thumb-Biter rolling on the ground with glee. Apparently, some dreams were based in reality, and some dreams were just… well, dreams.

But dreams were all that Rurik had.