Leif Frond and the Viking Games (2 page)

“Eh? Is someone speaking to me?” she trumpeted. “I'm hearing voices!”

I sighed. “Down here, ma'am.”

She still peered about for a moment before she realised I was, in fact, in front of her, partially obscured by the major outcropping that was her bosom. I stepped out from under its shadow.

“Ah, there you are! Yes, boy? What do you want?”

“I have come to greet you, gracious lady, and offer you welcome to Frondfell. And escort you to a place for your people to put up your tents. And… and…” I stumbled to a halt. The Widow had bent over and was staring at me fixedly from scarily close quarters.

“I know those eyes,” she muttered. Then, quick as a gannet, she grabbed my chin and tilted my head back and forth so hard I thought it might unscrew and come away in her hands. “You're Hallfred's boy, aren't you?”

I tried to nod. “Yes, ma'am. Hallfred Frond is my father.”

It was a terrible mistake. The moment thewords were out of my mouth, the Widow Brownhilde squealed with delight and then…

…she hugged me.

It was without a doubt the most appalling experience of my life.

She lifted me off the ground. It was like being smothered and, because she had big gold knobbly brooches on her dress, knobbled to death at the same time. It was horribly hot and… squirmy and… horrible and…

I don't want to talk about it.

Then, finally, just as I thought I was going to pass out from lack of air, the Widow dropped me. She was glaring at someone, and the look on her face could have soured milk that was still inside a cow.

The Widow had spotted Granny.

I don't know exactly where the bad blood between my granny and the Widow started.Nobody would tell me. As far as I can guess, one of them said something to the other one, and that one said something back, but it was all so awful that it can't be repeated to someone of tender years (by which they mean
me
).

There they stood, two tough-as-iron ladies, eyeballing each other. You'd be hard pressed to pick a clear favourite between them. The Widow had weight and reach but Granny – well, Granny had
cunning
.

It was going to be a long, long day.

But then something
else
happened, something which distracted me and Granny and the Widow and everyone else on the beach as well. Did I say that the Widow's was the last ship to arrive? We'd all thought so, but we were wrong. Quite unexpectedly,
another
ship now came into view. And what a ship! It was magnificent, with an enormous red-and-white striped sail and a snarling dragon's head on its high prow and an array of battle-battered shields over more oarlocks than you could count. This was no ordinary boat. This was a raider – long, lean and fast, the kind of ship that strikes fear into coastal villages all over the known world.

But what was it doing at our Midsummer Games? All around me, people were asking each other the very same question, and nobody seemed to have the answer.

“Excuse me one moment,” I said to the Widow Brownhilde.

And then I ran.

CHAPTER TWO

Champion of the Waves

T
here are pillaging-and-burning Vikings, and there are trading-and-fishing-and-farming Vikings. My family are the second kind, though most of my big brothers aren't completely happy about it. Even Karl, my nicest brother – well, he hasn't said anything, but I've watched how his eyes light up when the travelling bards come and recite the sagas, stories of adventure on the high seas, glorious battles and daring raids, and I know just how he feels.

My father says, “Sagas about death and destruction are all fine and good, but you can't trade with somebody if you've just slaughtered them.”

You have to admit, he has a point.

But if my father is a trading-fishing-farming Viking, you only had to take one look at that longship to know that the people sailing in it
weren't
.

By the time I'd fetched my father back to the beach, the strangers were already dragging their ship up the shingle. Every last one of them had muscles trying to explode out of their skin and exotic scars and enough beard hair between them to blanket a mountain. But they were titchy compared to their leader.

He
was gigantic, and he strode up our beach as if he owned it. He towered over even my father. He was wearing rich clothes and a fur cloak – even though it was the middle of the summer – and he had the most magnificent ash blond beard I have ever seen. (I could see he thought it was pretty magnificent too, because he kept stroking it as if it were a cat.)

“Welcome to Frondfell,” said my father. “And welcome to the Midsummer Games.” There's no one on earth my father can't deal with (other than the Widow of course and, well, my granny) so I think it must have been the race to the beach that made his voice sound a little odd just then.

“Midsummer Games! Excellent!” the stranger bellowed. “Exactly what I need.”

And then he just stood there, looking majestic and stroking his beard, surrounded by a sea of whispering, fidgeting folk, all in their festival finery, all bright-eyed and keyed-up.

“Who
is
he?” I hissed to my brother Karl.

“That's Harald Blogfeld!” Karl whispered back in a voice of deep awe.

“Who?”

“You don't know who Harald Blogfeld is?” Karl turned and stared down at me in amazement. “The Champion of the Waves? The Scourge of the Seas? The Viking's Viking? I heard he's the most successful raider there's ever been. I heard he attacks more villages in a season than anybody else!”

“I
heard he's a nutter,” said Thorhalla (my troll-sister), as she pushed by with a mead jug and a drinking horn, knocking me over as she went with a sly elbow.

“Shhh!” hissed Karl, horrified in case someone might have overheard what she'd said, but Thorhalla just tossed her braids at him. She went right up to the great man as if he were just another guest in a busy hostess's day, and poured him a welcoming drink. She didn't tremble or curtsey or anything. She's pretty hard-boiled, Thorhalla. Maybe it's the troll in her. Maybe if
I
had some troll blood in me, I'd be utterly fearless too. Of course, I'd also be utterly obnoxious, and champions are
never
obnoxious. Still, it would come in handy, not being scared of anything… they would call me Leif the Unafraid… Leif the –

“Leif! Stop muttering! Harald Blogfeld is about to speak!” Karl nudged me in the ribsso hard I fell over (again). He didn't meananything by it, though – he's just really,really strong. And he helped me up afterwards.

Blogfeld was looking us all over with a calculating gleam in his eyes. “Well, you can count yourselves lucky this day, good folk,” he boomed. (I could see people in the front rows swaying back at the force of the blast.) “Because I find myself in an unusual position. Here I am, all set to launch yet another astonishingly successful raiding season, scourging the seas, terrorizing the waves, when what do you know – I discover I'm a champion short! Yesterday, one of my best men broke his leg in a wrestling match with a bear.”

“He wrestled a bear?” exclaimed my father.

Blogfeld shrugged. “It was a dare – what else could he do?”

Wrestle a bear
?! I yipped inside my head. And yet, how could anyone who considered themselves a proper champion
not
accept a challenge like that? I've never actually met a bear close up, let alone approached one in a wrestling frame of mind, but if someone had
dared
me… as the man said, what else could I possibly do? I just hoped that nobody would ever think of setting me that particular test.

Blogfeld was still speaking. “Of course, my man begged me to let him come along anyway, despite the fact that he kept falling over in agony every time he tried to stand up, but I had to say no. There is no room for wussiness of any sort on my ship. Instead, I stopped off here, and what do I find?”

He paused, but none of us knew the answer to that. What
had
he found?

“The perfect recruiting ground,” he explained. “A Midsummer Games! What could be better?”

There was a rustle of excitement in the crowd.

“I'm going to find the best, strongest, fiercest, bravest champion from among all the contestants from all the settlements gathered here today and offer him my bear-wrestler's place.”

Suddenly every man in the crowd was standing up taller, chests puffed out, shoulders straightened.

“But how, you may wonder, will I know which of you is the best, strongest, fiercest and bravest?” Blogfeld went on. “Wonder no more – all I have to do is watch the Games and award the place to the one I think is the Overall Champion. Oh, and don't worry – my own men won't be competing. Well, I mean, just look at them! It would hardly be fair, would it?”

We all looked at them and their muscles and their scars. We all absolutely agreed.

“Enough talk – let the Games begin!” concluded the Scourge of the Seas and, with that, he and his men strode up the beach, driving through the crowd like an axe through butter.

I turned to speak to Karl, but he was staring after Blogfeld with a goopy expression on his face – and then, so suddenly it made me yelp, he grabbed my arm.

“He's got to choose me!” he exclaimed, and his eyes were all crazy-looking. “Whatever it takes. I've got to win. I've
got
to!”

Then I yelped again because another, bony hand had grabbed my
other
arm.

It was my granny. She peered over me at Karl and said (very loudly), “Well, there's nothing to worry about there, lad. In fact, I'll just go and get your sleeping furs rolled up and ready to go, shall I?”

But then the ground trembled slightly and there was the Widow Brownhilde towering over Granny.

“Oh, you sweet, tiny, deluded little old lady!” the Widow half-simpered, half-snarled. “There's no need for you to hurry off and do any such thing. I'm sure your boy – Curly, is that his name? –is really quite good. Strong. Brave. Thoroughly lovely. But he won't have a chance of being chosen for a
man's
job like this one.” Granny's lips thinned dangerously, but the Widow paid no attention. “It'll be someonefrom
my
settlement who'll be winning here today, rest assured.”

“One of
your
lads?” snorted my granny, starting to go purple in the face. “From Hildefjord? Don't make me laugh.”

Thor's Hangnail
! I gulped.
This is going to get ugly
!

“Oh, look, now I've upset you,” continued the Widow. “And I'm sure it's very bad for someone as really incredibly feeble and old as you to get over-excited. So, never you mind. I'm sure Cutey will do very nicely indeed.”

“His name's Karl,” hissed Granny.

“Of course, dear,” said the Widow as she turned away. “Whatever you say.”

“Karl – grab Granny!” I hissed and, fortunately, my brother managed to catch our grandmother just as she launched herself at Brownhilde's back in a creaky but determined tackle. Karl had no difficulty in holding on to her, though her little feet were peddling furiously in mid-air, and I wouldn't like to say what words she was mouthing at our guest.