A TALE OF TWO VIKINGS By Sandra Hill

“Methinks that Vagn envies my finesse. After all, I have a fine mustache and he does not. It’s all in the bristles, you know, and the wax.”

This is more information than I want or need. How did this conversation go so far afield… like into the midden?

She decided to let him down gently and tell him she was not really interested in him. But just then, Vagn came storming in.

“I thought I told you to stay away from Helga,” he shouted at Finn, fists raised.

“Try and make me,” Finn countered, raising his fists, too.

She jumped between the two just in time.

Vagn and Finn were of the same height and build, but to her way of thinking, Vagn was a much more handsome man. Today he wore dark brown braies tucked into low boots and a leather tunic belted at the waist. His long blond hair was tied back off his face—a face with high cheekbones, strong jaw and cleft chin. Eyes as clear as a summer sky glared at her icily. This was a man who needed no mustache to enhance his masculinity. He was man enough without adornments.

But handsome didn’t matter in her present situation. The man was interfering in her life.

“Who are you to make decisions concerning my life, Vagn? ‘Tis none of your affair whom I associate with.” She did not stop to consider the irony of the fact that she’d planned to get rid of Finn herself and was now defending her association with him.

“Hah! You made it my affair when you concocted that scandalous proposal.”

“What scandalous proposal?” Finn wanted to know.

“Yea, what scandalous proposal?” her father wanted to know. She hadn’t realized her father had entered the solar on the heels of Vagn. Her father had probably been drawn by the raised voices… as had a dozen or so soldiers and housecarls who were gaping at the spectacle.

She would have groaned if there were time, but she had to act quickly before Vagn did something rash, like tell her father she’d asked for his seed.

“I offered to make Vagn a cloak of bright red wool to match his eyes on a drukkinn night, embroidered along the edges with pink tongues. He considered the garment a scandal. Ha ha ha!”

Tongues? Vagn mouthed at her, then gave her a cold look, obviously trying to decide whether to embarrass her in front of one and all by telling the truth. “Notice that I am not amused, m’lady,” he said finally. Fortunately, though, his anger seemed to have dissolved.

Finn left the solar chuckling, and her father remarked to Vagn, “You do not think a tongue cloak is mirthsome?”

“Nay, I much prefer a cloak embroidered with… oh, let us say, candles,” he answered to the bewilderment of all who remained.

Except Helga.

Who discovered she was suddenly left alone in the solar with Vagn.

And he was not smiling at all.

Let’s make a deal…

“Sit down, Helga. We are going to talk.”

Her eyes darted right and left, as if she were considering a run for freedom. When she realized that he blocked any escape route and there was no one left in the room to help her, she sighed in surrender and perched herself atop a high stool. She made sure that a table separated them, though it would offer little protection if he chose to attack. But that would come later. For now, he sat on a high stool on his side of the table, tented his fingers before his mouth and pondered the troublesome wench.

How anyone could have called her homely was beyond him. Today Helga wore a plain blue gunna with a gold braid belt, covered by a sleeveless surcoat of a darker blue. Her golden blond hair was braided intricately into one thick braid that hung down to her waist. Her blue eyes were wide with embarrassment she tried to hide with fluttering brown lashes. Her lips, large and luscious, parted as if in invitation. If Helga only knew the power of those lips!

“I’m not afraid of you,” she said of a sudden.

“You should be.”

She raised her chin defiantly.