“Like ugly women being more likely to take a manroot down the throat?” Jamie inquired with a decided mischievous gleam in his Scottish eyes.
“That and other things,” Bolthor said, surprising Thork. Usually, Bolthor was not so inclined to lewd talk, lest it be accidentally so. Like his not realizing it was lewd to talk about his woman’s parts in front of one and all.
Brokk’s jaw had dropped nigh to his navel.
Thork decided the conversation had gone way too far off track. “Take care, all of you. There are consequences to spilling your seed in any handy vessel. Do you want your sons . . . or daughters . . . raised by a hird of barmy women?”
“Barmy, for sure,” Jostein interjected. “Do you know they’ve given themselves titles for everything? Each and every one of them is a mistress of something or other.”
Jamie’s eyes lit up. “I like the idea of that. Mistress of kissing. Mistress of fondling. Mistress of the tup. Mistress of the mouth swiving. Mistress of the best sex this side of the Highlands.”
“Lackwit!” Jostein replied. “Not that kind of mistress. They are mistress of weapons. Mistress of the hunt. Mistress of gardening. Mistress of hog swilling. Mistress of the scullery. Dozens and dozens of titles. Every one of these women has a specific job and title, and they each claim to be equal. As if feeding chickens and swordplay require the same measure of talent!”
“Good gods!” Thork said.
“Now that you mention it, Lilli said something about being mistress of indoor stewardship, whatever that means.”
“Just so I do not get seduced by mistress of the privy,” Alrek said as he slapped a hand on his knee with glee at his rare venture into the land of mirth. He missed his knee and spilled ale all over the crotch and thighs of his braies.
Several of the men shivered with distaste at the idea of a privy mistress. Some even held their noses with distaste.
“I still say one of the titles might be mistress of sex, especially mistress of sexual perversions,” Jamie insisted.
Jostein reached over and swatted him on the side of the head. “Dreamer!”
Jamie just grinned, taking no offense.
“Back to the subject of our being studs for their wicked ends.” Thork tried to get back on track. “Will you risk never knowing if you have a child, let alone never seeing him or her?” Thork couldn’t believe that he of the wild reputation was giving lectures on proper behavior.
Alrek, who had been responsible for his younger orphaned brothers and sisters from the time he was a mere twelve years old, clearly valued family. “They will not get my seed.”
“What will you do when one of the wenches has your cock in her hands and her thighs spread wide?” Thork asked.
Alrek’s face bloomed with color under his sun-bronzed skin. “I will think of a winter storm on the high seas with ice crusting the oars and wind whipping at the sails. That should cause any cock to wilt.”
They all laughed.
“I realize that many men fornicate freely without regard for any children they might beget, but my father always taught me to take care that I do not spill my seed in fertile fields, lest I plan on caring for the harvest for many years thereafter.” Forget lectures. Now I am quoting my father . . . after all these years of trying to put distance betwixt us.
“What makes you think we would be unable to return for any child of ours?” Finn asked Thork distractedly while cleaning under his fingernails with the point of his small knife.
“Do you know where we are?” Thork addressed his question first to Finn, then to the rest of the men.
They all shook their heads, as understanding came to them.
“There isn’t a chance in Muspell that they won’t do everything in their power to keep this location secret,” Jostein concluded for them all.
“That is our first goal then. To discover exactly where we are,” Thork directed. “We need a plan. As fighting men, we were taught from the time we got our first swords not to rush into battle. Study the enemy. Their strengths and weaknesses. What we can gain . . . or lose. What weapons we need to breach their fortifications. How to infiltrate their ranks.” Thork knew that planning was not always a possibility, but it would seem they had more than enough time here to take care in how to proceed. “And what are our goals once we pinpoint where we are?”
“Escape, of course,” Alrek said.
“Revenge,” Finn added.
“Plunder,” Henry further added.
“I think we should take them all captive and sell them in the slave marts,” Jostein suggested.
“Wise words and worth considering,” Thork said.
“Why not just lop off all their heads?” This from Bolthor, who had at one time been known as Bolthor the Berserker. The old man claimed to have long lost count of the number of enemy heads he’d lopped off with his far-famed battle-axe, Head Splitter.
“A bit messy,” Finn remarked. As vain and prissy as Finn could be at times, he’d shed more than his share of sword dew in battle, but he preferred clean kills.
“That would be a lot of heads,” Jamie also observed, though not with distaste.
“Eeew!” Brokk said, before catching himself. The youthling, whose skin had paled at the mention of beheading, was not blooded enough in warfare to become inured to the gross aspects of fighting.
“The eight of us might be able to overtake the women,” Jamie said. “Make them the captives.”
Not a bad idea, and they all pondered the possibilities.
“But would they then reveal all their secrets, once they are our thralls?” Thork asked.
“They will if we lop off a few heads,” Bolthor said.
“Women!” Jostein exclaimed. “They are stubborn enough to resist, even with that threat. They appear excessively proud of this bond betwixt them. Besides, if a woman does not want to tell you something, she will not.”
Once again, Thork wondered about the history between Jostein and his wife.
“We are not lopping off any heads,” Thork declared then. Unless we absolutely have to.
“People in my homeland are adept at various torture methods.” This from Henry, who hadn’t been in his Asian “homeland” ever, as far as Thork knew. “Tickling the bottom of the feet. Water dunking. Hanging face first over a cliff.”
Everyone stared at Henry. Then Jamie laughed. “The only time I am tickling some lassie’s feet is if I am flat on my back and she is bare-arsed naked on all fours facing my feet whilst tickling my balls with her tongue.”
They all had to think a moment to see the picture in their fool heads.
“Did you ever really do that?” Finn asked Jamie.
“Yea, except for my tickling her feet part,” Jamie replied with a grin. “When a wench is licking your balls, ’tis hard to think of anything, least of all whether she wants her toes diddled.”
Thork shook his head at Jamie. ’Twas hard betimes to know when he spoke the truth or jested. As Vikings, they preferred to believe outrageous claims when it came to bedsport.
“Speaking of licking . . . have you ever heard of self-licking?” Alrek asked. “Boris the Braggart says he can lick his own cock.”
The others hooted with laughter.
“ ’Tis true.” Alrek’s face was high with color at being doubted. “I saw him demonstrate it once at a Yule feast in Holgaland.”
“You must have been drukkinn,” Bolthor said.
Alrek ducked his head sheepishly.
But then Henry told them, “I can do it.”
They all turned to stare with incredulity at the Asian Viking.
“Must be because you are so short,” Jostein observed, though there was disbelief in his voice.
“Or my staff is so long.” Henry waggled his eyebrows at Jostein.
“Good gods!” Thork muttered. How had their conversation gone so far astray? Again! Time to get more organized in their planning. “Forget licking. We need the women to get us out of this place. Even if we discern our
whereabouts, we cannot row a longship ourselves, and I doubt they would be willing to do the job for us, even under the lash. What we will do with them afterwards can be decided later. First of all, we must be careful and study our surroundings, discover any escape routes. Mayhap we can flag down a ship.”
“But we must be sly in our explorations,” Jostein advised.
“Pretend we are accepting of our capture,” Jamie added.
Thork nodded. “And be careful what we drink or eat, lest we find ourselves in an herb sleep again whilst the women do what they will with our bodies.”
That remark prompted silence as the men pondered what the women might do with their bodies whilst asleep.
“Can a man have sex with a woman whilst asleep?” Brokk wanted to know.
“Have you ne’er had sex dreams where you awakened with damp braies?” Bolthor asked Brokk.
The boy blushed his answer.
“Oh, this is just wonderful!” Jostein said with disgust. “Not only must we worry about what we do whilst awake, but now we must worry about what we do when asleep.”
“Um, one thing . . .” Brokk hesitated, and his blush deepened. “Didst say there are ways to swive a wench and not plant your seed in her womb?”
Thork wondered if Brokk was an untried youthling, or had he breached a woman’s portal already? Twelve was not an unheard of age for a first tup. He had been twelve himself when first the dairy maid—
“Yea, Thork, do tell,” Finn urged with a wink.
Thork had to think a minute to recall what Finn referred to. Ah, the spilling of seed to prevent child begetting. He did in fact explain. Briefly. To his amazement, the other men listened as intently as Brokk. Did not all adult men know this? Did not even the Christian Bible mention Onan and the spilling of seed?
“I have heard of using pig’s intestines,” Jamie told them, “though my countrymen much prefer to use those for haggis.”
“Halved lemons are said to work.” This from Jostein, who’d probably never seen a lemon in his life.
“There are potions,” suggested Henry.
After all Thork’s talk, that’s all the men could think about. Sex.
This was proven true when Bolthor announced a new saga: “When Vikings Plow Fallow Fields.”
With a groan, Thork put his face on the table in front of him, and pounded his forehead three times. Then he pounded a fourth time, just for emphasis.
Bolthor cleared his throat and began, “This is the saga of Thork the Great . . .”
Chapter Six
The question was: Who could be more devious? . . .
Medana called for a council of the Thrudr leadership—eight in all, including herself—to discuss the course of action for releasing the “captives.”
There was Gudron, of course, mistress of military, who had many women serving under her, such as mistress of swordplay, mistress of archery, mistress of weapon sharpening, and mistress of weapon storage.
And Elida, mistress of threads, who had workers in charge of shearing sheep, spinning yarn, weaving cloth, making clothing and blankets.
Solveig, mistress of shipwrighting, and her workers handled anything related to shipbuilding and repair. Somehow, with her rudimentary skills passed on by her father, they’d managed to maintain the small longship Medana and her friends had left Stormgard in, renamed Pirate Lady, and now they were trying to build one themselves. A very slow process.
Lilli, mistress of indoor stewardship, and her staff handled everything indoors, from cooking to laundry to cleaning of halls and sleeping chamber.
Bergdis, mistress of buildings and woodworking, had at least a dozen women helping her build and maintain the longhouses and animal shelter, not to mention making furniture and wood eating supplies, bowls and spoons and such. It was a learned craft that had some laughingly ludicrous results in the beginning, like lopsided roofs and spoons that gave splinters to the tongue. They were all learning.
Liv, mistress of healing, came from a long line of healers, some might say witches. She somehow kept track in her head of all the recipes for curing various illnesses and she’d trained others on gathering proper herbs and roots to constantly replenish their stores.
And finally, Freyja, who had been with Medana from the beginning, at one time her nursemaid, now mistress of hunt and fish. Tales of Freyja’s early efforts to feed them would be the fodder of sagas told around winter hearths for years to come. If Medana ever had to eat hedgehog again in this lifetime it would be too soon. And fish. Always fish, before they’d learned to hunt and trap. Once a few years back, a whale had the misfortune to run aground on Small Island during a storm, and the women had food stores for a whole season.
Medana glanced around at her council members with fondness. The ties that bound them were long and sturdy.
She would have called an assembly for a full Thing, a governing assembly, but some of her guards needed to keep an eye on the sly men who, after two days here, were exploring too much of the island for her comfort and asking too many questions. The women had to work hard to distract the men’s attention from the spill pond during the times of low tide when its change of depth would be obvious. Luckily, the tidal move most important to them fell late at night now, but that would not always be the case. It was a constant worry.
The devious knaves pretended to accept their “visit” here as “guests” with resigned patience until the women could return them to Hedeby, at the women’s convenience. Hah! Medana had yet to meet a patient Norseman. They were up to something that boded ill for the women and their island.
Plus, the men were being nice. Something foul was definitely afoot.
If there was anything she’d learned, to her detriment, it was never to trust a Viking with a wicked smile.
And all eight of the Norsemen had wicked smiling down to an art. One, in particular.
“We need to let them go. It is only fair,” Medana said right off as they sat about a table at one end of the “great hall,” which was really not so great. Just the main room of their biggest longhouse.
The protests were unanimous:
“Nay!” Gudron growled at Medana. A growl from Gudron was naught to be dismissed easily, she being the size of a Viking warrior, with all the learned fighting skills.
“Not yet!” pleaded Lilli, a slight woman of more than thirty years who had told Medana on more than one occasion that she feared her childbearing years were waning. “My eggs will soon need a cane,” Lilli moaned.
“What are you . . . a laying hen now?” Medana asked with a laugh.
“Bok, bok!” Lilli responded, and she wasn’t smiling.
“Every hen needs a rooster once in a while,” Solveig chimed in, lining herself up on Lilli’s side.
“Lilli, you know better than most what irksome creatures roosters can be,” Medana said. “Strutting about as if they own the whole chicken coop. Pecking and crowing.”
“I can put up with a strut if it lands a babe in my womb,” Lilli asserted, her green-eyed stare one of defiance, or was it pleading?
Just then, a loud bellowing could be heard. Through the open double doors across the hall from them they could see that the bull, aptly named Swively, was preparing to swive one of their five cows. Again. Helga, no doubt. Odin’s eyeballs! Within a month, all their cows would be heavy with calves or walking bowlegged, or both.
But it wasn’t Swively and Helga that held the women’s interest so much as it was the man watching the bovine activity. It was Thork leaning against the split rail fence, one boot propped on a lower rung which caused his braies to tauten over his buttocks. And a very fine pair of buttocks, Medana had to admit.
Lilli summed up all the women’s thoughts when she said, “Cock-a-doodle-doo!”
Following a long bout of giggling and ribald remarks, Medana called the meeting back to order by reminding the women, “We need to get rid of the men. The longer they remain here, the greater our problems.”
“Another sennight at leas
t, for Asgard’s sake!” requested Elida, whose well-oiled hands were wrapped in strips of linen today to soften the calluses from her recent archery attempts. So she can handle the fine wool in the weaving shed . . . or handle something else? Medana wondered. If it was the latter, she’d best try a different hand treatment. She smelled like fish oil.
“I’m having my monthly flow. They cannot leave yet!” This from Liv the Healer, who was, no doubt, responsible for Elida’s fishy smell.
“I need time to lose this belly flab. How will I attract a man with belly flab?” complained Bergdis, whose body was mostly hard-muscled from all that rowing, leastways on top. The bottom was a different matter altogether. Sitting on sea chests so long tended to give a woman’s bottom and belly a bit of a spread.
“Watching that bull tup Helga, over and over and over, is turning my womanparts to mush,” Solveig remarked.
“You jest!” Gudron exclaimed. “Didst see how fast Swively does his business. In, out, and he’s done. Just like a man! All over in the blink of an eye. The poor cows barely have a chance to peak themselves.” Gudron paused thoughtfully. “Cows do peak, do they not, Siobhan? You were raised on a farmstead. You should know.”
“They seem to welcome the attention, or mayhap they endure the rut knowing it will lead to a baby cow.” Lilli shrugged, as if it was of no matter. “Even so, my womanparts are throbbing, like a heartbeat.”
“Mine tingle.” Solveig pointed downward, as if they didn’t know which womanparts she referred to.
“I tingle and throb,” Elida said proudly, as if that were a circumstance to be desired. “So I need a man more than you do.”
Solveig fisted her hands, as if she wanted to throttle Elida. “I tingle and throb and weep woman-dew.”
“Hah!” Siobhan interjected. “I tingle and throb and weep woman-dew and have sex dreams that give me little sleep.”
“It has been two sennights since the beginning of my last cycle, and everyone knows that is a woman’s most fertile period, give or take a few days. Therefore, I should go first.” When everyone turned to Solveig to learn where she had gained such information, she explained, “In the brothels, harlots need to know the best ways not to conceive.”