by Chris Blake
At the water’s edge, some ragged-looking villagers waved sticks and knives at the Vikings. The men wore dark blue and green kilts, with animal-skin cloaks draped round their shoulders. Like the Vikings, the Scots’ hair was long but it wasn’t nicely braided. It was a shaggy mess, as were their beards. The women wore simple, long dresses and scarves on their heads. They looked almost as fierce as the men.
Erik was standing on the beach, directing his men up towards the village. He shouted to them, “You have nothing to fear from these Scots!”
The Vikings answered with a noisy cheer. They waved their swords in the air. Tom’s arms and legs seemed to have turned to mush.
One of the Scots threw a spear at the invaders, as his fellow islanders let out a battle cry.
Erik bashed his sword hilt on his helmet. “Take no notice, lads!” he cried. “They can’t scare us – we’re Viking warriors, the toughest in the world!” He beckoned the stragglers, who were still rowing their boats towards the shore. “Come out of your boats fighting! I want everyone in this village dead by the end of the day.”
“AAARGH! Feel Thor’s hammer coming down on your heads!” Bjørn the Bone-crusher yelled, as he sprinted at the villagers.
Five or six Vikings followed behind him, waving their axes and swords in the air with big, hairy arms.
“Death to the Scots!” they cried.
Even from a distance, Tom could see how the villagers’ faces had paled. They still prodded their sticks and pitchforks at the Viking invaders, but he noticed they were stepping backwards up the path.
Isis covered her eyes. “I can’t bear to watch,” she said. She covered Cleo’s eyes with the edge of her cloak. “Don’t look, Fluffpot. You’ll get nightmares.”
Tom looked over at Magnus. He seemed to be rowing along the shore, rather than towards the land. His eyes were fixed nervously on the struggle between the Scots and the Viking crew. The clang of clashing metal was carried all the way down to the sea.
“What’s the matter?” Tom asked gently.
Magnus shook his head and trailed his oar in the shallow water.
“I don’t want to fight,” he said. “I’m so ashamed. I thought I’d be able to, but I suppose I’m just not that kind of a Viking.”
Tom sighed heavily. “Me, neither. The last thing I want to do is kill a bunch of poor Scottish villagers. They’ve done nothing wrong.”
“Well, we can’t just hang about here!” Isis said, grabbing an oar off Tom. “Even if we’re not a bunch of bloodthirsty lunatics, Erik and his men are. And they’ll kill us if they think we’re cowards. So we have to get on that island and see this thing through. DON’T WE?”
She mouthed the word, ‘amulet’ at Tom and jabbed her finger towards the shore. Then she started to row so haphazardly, that the boat and its occupants were soon dripping wet.
Realising she was right, Tom grabbed back the oar and started to row the boat to shore in earnest.
“Come on, Magnus. We’ll find a way to stay out of the battle,” he promised, as the boat pulled up on the beach.
Out of the corner of his eye, Tom could see that the villagers were fleeing into the hills in earnest. Their screams carried on the wind. Even the very young and the very old were running away from the Vikings as fast as they could.
“Get after them, men!” Erik cried, waving his axe. “Give them a Viking lesson they won’t forget.” His eyes were wild and his red hair looked like it was on fire. He seemed to be in some kind of battle frenzy.
No wonder the Vikings stomped all over Britain, Tom thought. I bet people died from heart attacks before these guys had even drawn blood.
Erik noticed Tom, Isis, Cleo and Magnus lagging behind.
“Get up to the village,” he shouted. “You can start looting!” He started issuing more orders. “Search every house. Be on the lookout for jewellery and gold. What you can carry, steal. Anything else, BURN!”
Erik punched the air and growled. Then he sprinted off after his other men, shouting, “Forward! Forward! Men of Thor!”
“We have to look as if we’re doing something,” Tom said to Magnus. “But no burning, OK?”
They trudged through the hillside to the village.
Magnus nodded. “Agreed. We’ll be OK if we stick together,” he said, mustering a half-smile.
The first house they came to was a wooden hut, rather than one of the stone cottages they had seen from the sea. The walls were buckled outwards and the roof was covered in chunks of grass and mud. The door hung crookedly on its hinges. Tom held his breath, hoping that a Scottish peasant wasn’t going to jump out and attack them with a pitchfork.
Luckily, the hut seemed to be empty. “I think we’ve walked into some kind of store cupboard,” Isis said, poking at a pile of nets and hooks. She held her nose. “It smells like the time I shoved a sardine into the High Priest’s headdress on a hot summer’s day.”
Tom could see nothing in the shadows but simple furniture and fishing equipment. In a corner was a thick pile of straw, half-covered with a dirty sheepskin.
“This is a poor fisherman’s home,” he said. “There’s nothing of value in here. Let’s go.”
Magnus nodded, turned on his heel and left the hut, ready to move on to the next house. But Isis carried on pushing things aside with her toes, or with her hand wrapped in her cloak.
“No, Tom. We should definitely still look. You never know, DO YOU?” She grabbed him and whispered loudly in his ear. “The amulet could be anywhere. So we have to look EVERYWHERE.”
Suddenly, there was a loud rustle, followed by a crackling noise.
“What was that?” Tom said, looking round the hut in fear and holding his sword out in front of him.
“Over there!” Isis said.
In a corner of the hut was a pile of ragged clothes, stacked high against the wall. The clothes twitched.
Tom reached forward and flicked the top layer of clothing on to the floor.
“AAAAAARRRGGGH!” shrieked two heads, popping out suddenly from underneath the pile of rags.
“AAAAARRRGGGH!” shouted Tom and Isis, scuttling several steps back towards the door.
Tom took a closer look at the heads, and realised they belonged to children.
He clapped a hand over Isis’s mouth. “Shh! We’re frightening them,” he said. Tom thought the boy looked about four, and the girl about two. The children suddenly burst into tears.
Oh no! thought Tom. He had no idea what to do. Thinking fast, he started singing ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’.
The children stopped crying and giggled.
“Look, the kiddies are cute,” said Isis impatiently. “But we’re not here to baby sit. We need to find that amulet.”
“I’ve got an idea!” Tom said brightly. “Let’s just pretend to loot this house. We’ll look for the amulet while we’re doing it.”
For the next ten minutes, Tom and Isis stayed in the safety of the fisherman’s hut, searching through everything. They made as much noise as possible, throwing things about, so that anybody passing would think they were happily looting.
The children seemed to think it was a game, and ran round the hut kicking the furniture and knocking things down. Tom didn’t have the heart to tell them that their village was actually under siege.
Before long, Tom heard the sound of “HOORAH! HOORAH!” carrying on the wind. He groaned. He was pretty sure he knew whose voice it was.
“Erik!” he and Isis said at the same time.
“Stay here and hide,” Tom whispered to the children.
Tom and Isis walked out of the hut. Magnus came over to them.
“Phew!” said Isis, wiping her brow. “Looting sure is a tiring business.”
Tom played along. “I’ve never pillaged so much before in my life.”
“I want anything made of metal,” Erik shouted. “Remember! Gold, bronze or iron. It can all be melted down once we’re home. Anything shiny - jewels, resin, polished bone.”
Tom scoured the village for another house they could pretend to loot until the horrible business was over.
“Hey! Look at Geir! He’s clutching at his stomach,” Tom said, pointing to the grey-haired warrior. The old Viking was bent double over a large, dark-red stain on his clothing.
Geir came stumbling towards them. His face had turned a deathly white. His eyes were scrunched up in pain.
“What happened to you?” Magnus asked, as he ran to meet his crewmate.
Geir collapsed into his arms.
“T-took a pitch fork to the belly,” he stuttered.
Blood seeped from between his fingers as he clutched at his wound.
Magnus turned to Tom with a frightened look in his eyes. “We’ve got to find somewhere comfortable for him.”
“Take him to the fisherman’s hut!” Tom suggested. “Me and Isis can get some water.”
Magnus nodded. As he led Geir into the fisherman’s hut, Tom and Isis picked up a bronze bucket that somebody had filled with loot. They emptied the valuables on to the grass and dashed over to a well that was in the middle of the village. When they had filled the bucket, they ran back to Magnus with the sloshing contents.
“Boo!” cried the two toddlers, popping up from under the sheepskin.
“Who are they?” Magnus asked in surprise.
“They’re just kids – I told them to hide here,” Tom explained.
“Well, tell them to run away,” warned Magnus. “Erik will be here any minute. He’s going round the houses, inspecting them.”
Magnus took the cleanest cloth he could find from the clothes pile and soaked it in water. He squeezed some drops into Geir’s mouth.
“I’m going to V-Valhalla, you know,” Geir said in a croaky voice. He grabbed Magnus’s arm. “Make sure they give me a good Viking send-off.”
“Don’t talk such rubbish. You’re going to be fine,” Magnus said, pressing the wet cloth to Geir’s wound.
Tom could hear Erik slamming doors as he inspected a nearby house. He knew there was no time to lose.
Tom kneeled down in front of the two little kids. “We’re going to play a new game now, OK?”
They looked at him with wide eyes.
“Put these sheepskins over you. Pretend you’re lambs. When I say ‘Go!’ I want you to run as fast as you can up into the hills so the Big Bad Wolf can’t get you. Understand?”
They nodded eagerly. Tom led them to the door and waited.
Moments later, the door was smashed open against the wall.
“What’s going on in here?!” Erik stood in the doorway with his hands on his hips.
“Go!” hissed Tom, pushing out the two children.
“What in Thor’s name was that?” Erik boomed.
“Just some sheep!” Tom lied. “Those Scots keep their animals in the house with them!”
Erik spat on the floor. “Disgusting!” he said, shaking his head. He looked round the hut. “What are you doing wasting your time in here? There’s nothing worth looting in this dump.”
“We’re tending to Geir,” Isis explained. “He’s badly wounded.”
Erik’s red eyebrows shot up to his hairline. “If Geir dies, at least he fought like a warrior.” He pointed a finger at the door. “Get out there and start looting.”
Reluctantly, Tom, Isis and Magnus joined the rest of the Vikings, who were running from house to house, smashing everything in their path, hoping to find more treasure.
“At least most of the villagers managed to get away,” Tom whispered to Isis.
Isis nodded and whispered back, “The Egyptians were strict rulers. My father didn’t manage to build pyramids by being a cuddly kitten,” she said. “But he would never let his men run around looting and pillaging. This is just terrible.”
“TERRIBLE? What’s terrible?” Erik bellowed suddenly.
Isis jumped. Her eyes darted to and fro, as though she was choosing the right words to say. “I was just saying, er, that the Scots’ belongings are a pile of terrible rubbish.” She kicked over a stool for emphasis.
When Erik had stomped off again, Tom said, “We’d better pretend to loot. If we don’t, we’ll end up salted in a barrel and served up for dinner on their journey home.”
Tom and Isis ran in and out of houses grabbing random items, doing their best to look like they were looting. In fact, what they were really doing was looking for the amulet. But before they had a chance to search every house, Erik appeared in the doorway of the village church.
“Get yourselves in here, lads!” he shouted. He lifted a beautifully carved Celtic cross above his head and smashed it into smithereens on the ground. “There are statues here that need pounding to rubble.” He started to jump up and down on the broken pieces of cross.
“That’s terrible!” gasped Tom. He couldn’t believe that the Vikings, who had their own gods, could be so disrespectful of other people’s beliefs.
Isis blinked hard and flicked her plaits dramatically. “Are you going to stand up to that?” She pointed at Erik.
Tom looked at the giant Viking, who was pounding his axe on the broken stones until they were dust. Erik was in such a bloodthirsty frenzy, Tom felt certain that if he approached him, Erik would crush him to dust too! He swallowed hard. “OK. Maybe not.”
Dusk sucked the light out of the sky and left shadows all about. The village smelled of burned wood, briny sea air, and sorrow. Even the gulls returning to their nests glided along in silence. The Vikings had invaded a lively little fishing village and had left behind a ghost town.
Mercifully, Tom noted that the looting seemed to have come to an end. As the Viking crew gathered round the well and drank from its water, Erik trudged out of the fisherman’s hut. All eyes were on him.
“How is he? Does Geir live?” Magnus asked.
Erik turned solemnly to the crew and removed his helmet. “Geir has died. His battle wounds were beyond our healing powers.”
Everybody looked at their boots and muttered words of sadness and grief.
But Erik clambered on top of the well and stood up. “Don’t be downhearted, lads! Geir has gone to Valhalla.” He slapped his thighs and shouted, “HOORAH!”
Suddenly, everyone seemed cheered by this. “HOORAH! HOORAH! HOORAH!” they yelled with delight. “Geir is fighting and feasting with the gods!”
“Be on the shore at dawn, lads,” Erik said, tugging at his long red hair. “We’ll give Geir a hero’s burial!”
Ear-splitting cheering almost knocked Tom off his feet.
He looked at Isis. “Why on earth are they so happy?” he asked. “Aren’t funerals supposed to be sad?” Tom felt sorry for Geir – the old man had been kind to him, and he felt sad that the warrior had passed away in such pain.
Isis shrugged. “Not in Egypt. We have the Afterlife to look forward to.”
“So how’s that working out for you?” Tom asked.
Isis stuck out her tongue at him.
Magnus beamed at them. “We’re pleased because Geir is going to heroes’ heaven. He’ll be put on a boat loaded with treasure, and then set on fire so he can go to Valhalla. Death doesn’t get better than that!”
Amidst the frenzied celebrations, Tom pulled Isis and Cleo aside. “You know what this means, don’t you?” he asked Isis.
Isis’s eyes shone in the dusky light. “Yes, I remember! The riddle said, Their souls for Valhalla yearn!”
“Exactly,” Tom said, clutching his cloak close against the early evening cold – or was it just a chill of excitement? “The riddle mentioned a flaming arrow trained on a boat. That must be what Magnus was talking about.”
“And the last line was about being, sure that jewel won’t burn.” Isis snatched up Cleo and held her close. “Oh, Fluffpot. We’re almost there! We’ll be in the Afterlife soon!”
Tom, Isis and Magnus spent the night in a cottage hidden from view. They snuggled into a pile of straw and sheepskins and had a good night’s sleep. The sun was just a smudgy streak of
pink on the grey horizon when they made their way down to the beach.
The entire crew of the Viking longship was gathered for the funeral. They listened with grave, hard faces to the prayers that Erik said. The waves crashed against the rocks further along the coast, but the bay itself was calm. The sand was covered in a beautiful layer of glittering morning frost.
“...And lo! His forefathers are calling Geir to join them, bidding him to take his place in the halls of Valhalla, where forever the brave do live,” Erik said in a serious voice, dipping his chin on to his chest.
Tom and Isis snuck forwards to get a clearer view of Geir’s funeral boat. The warrior’s body had been laid in the middle and he was dressed in a clean tunic, leather trousers, a beaver-skin cloak and his helmet. In one hand, he held a sword. In the other, over his chest, he held a shield.
“What’s all that stuff in the boat with him?” Isis asked.
Tom squinted hard in the gloomy dawn light. He could see daggers in their leather sheaths, an axe, some shining armour and plates of fruit, meat and bread that had been plundered from the Scottish village.
“It’s everything he’ll need in the next life,” Magnus said.
“Oh, good,” Isis said. “It’s important to be prepared for the Afterlife.” She whispered to Tom, “Although I was buried with much nicer things than that.”
“Yes, but at least Geir hasn’t had his guts removed and shoved into jars,” Tom said.
Isis tutted. “It didn’t do me any harm!” she said.
Suddenly, something dazzling and bright caught Tom’s eye.
“Hey!” he said to Isis. “I think there’s jewellery too. Let’s get a closer look.”
Creeping forward, Tom and Isis spotted a necklace, hanging from the tip of a sword. Set into the centre of it was...
“The pink amulet!” Isis said, turning to Tom with excitement.
When Erik had finished chanting Viking prayers and poetry, the men started to push the boat towards the gently lapping sea. They heaved and grunted and harrumphed, scrabbling to keep their footing in the damp sand. Finally, rolling the vessel over logs they had found in the woods, the boat made contact with the beginning of water that stretched up the beach. “Farewell, Geir!” the men shouted.