Vulgar the Viking and the Rock Cake Raiders

by Odin Redbeard

  “Yes, well … I’m an amazing man,” said the king. “So, anyway, we set sail—”

  “Weren’t all your crew dead?” asked Vulgar.

  “Er, yes, I set sail—”

  “I would’ve eaten the seagulls,” said Knut suddenly. Everyone in the hall turned to look at him.

  “What?” asked King Olaf, looking flustered. “What seagulls?”

  “The ones whose blood you were drinking,” Knut said with a shrug. “I’d have probably just eaten them, instead of the bogies.”

  “Or taken it in turns?” suggested Vulgar. “Seagull, bogey, seagull, bogey?”

  Olaf looked from Vulgar to Knut and back again. His mouth was hanging open, but no words came out.

  “Or I’d have waited until a seagull caught a fish, then I’d have eaten that,” said Knut. “Seagulls are quite good at catching fish.”

  “Tell us how you beat the army! Did they all attack you at once or one at a time?” asked Vulgar, who cared more about the fighting than the food. He was getting excited just at the thought of the battle. “Did you chop their knees off? I’d have chopped their knees off, even though my mum says that’s not playing fair.”

  “Vikings don’t play fair,” Knut reminded him.

  “Exactly!” cried Vulgar. He fixed his gaze on King Olaf. “Have you chopped anyone’s knees off? Tell us what it’s like!”

  “Well, yes, I chopped off the, er, sea monster’s knees,” said King Olaf. He looked a lot less confident now, and his face was turning the same shade of red as his beard.

  “But you said you fought him with your bare hands,” said Vulgar, frowning.

  “And you said it was a sea serpent,” said Knut. “They don’t have knees.”

  “What colour was its blood?” asked Vulgar.

  “Er, yes, well, I’d love to tell you,” mumbled the king. “But I’ve just remembered that I have to go … somewhere else. Right now.”

  “But what about History Day?” asked Vulgar.

  “Come back next year,” replied Olaf, waddling towards the front of the hall.

  “Bye for now!” the king called as he squeezed his huge bulk through the doors. For a few minutes, no one moved. Then Harrumpf banged his stick on the floor and bellowed, “Right you lot, no ’angin about in ’ere. The basket-weavin’ workshop is startin’ now.”

  One by one, the children got to their feet and followed him out. None of them were quite sure why King Olaf had gone running off, but they were all agreed on one thing: History Day had been a big let-down.

  Or rather, they were almost all agreed.

  “That. Was. Brilliant!” cried Vulgar. He hadn’t moved from his spot on the floor. Besides him and Knut, there were only a handful of children left in the hall. “That’s what proper Vikings are about – sea serpents and battles.”

  “And bogies,” Knut reminded him.

  “Yeah! And bogies,” said Vulgar, grinning.

  Knut sniffed. “It was a bit shorter than I expected,” he said. “Not really ‘History Day’. More like ‘History Five Minutes’.”

  “But what a five minutes!” said Vulgar, sighing happily.

  “What do you want to do now?” asked Knut.

  “Well, I’m not doing basket-weaving,” said Vulgar.

  “I’ve got my pocket money. We could go buy some cakes from Ivar the Baker,” suggested Knut.

  Vulgar jumped to his feet. “Buy cakes?” he scoffed. “Buy cakes?! Vikings don’t buy cakes – we pillage them!”

  Knut didn’t look convinced. “Can you pillage a cake?”

  “You can pillage anything if you try hard enough,” Vulgar told him. He was hopping from foot to foot. “Ivar’s shop is on the other side of the fishpond,” he said. “We should sail across it in our longboat, pillage the cakes, then sail back here and eat them.”

  “Um, we don’t have a longboat,” Knut reminded him.

  “Loki’s kneecaps!” cursed Vulgar, punching his fist against his palm. “You’re right.”

  He thought for a moment, then clicked his fingers. “But wait! We’re in the Great Hall. They keep all the building supplies in the cellar. Nails. Wood. Things like that. I bet there’s even cloth for a sail. We can build our own longboat!”

  Kunt’s face turned several shades paler. “The cellar?” he whispered. “I heard there are trolls down there.”

  Vulgar grinned. Grabbing Knut by the arm, he darted past the few remaining children, ducked into a corner, and creaked open the thick wooden door that led to the cellar steps. “If there are trolls,” he said, “they’d better stay out of our way!”

  The stone stairs leading down into the Great Hall’s cellar were dark and narrow. What little light snuck in through the open door soon faded as the two boys crept down the steps.

  “Are you s-s-sure about this?” asked Knut, sticking close to Vulgar as they finally reached the bottom.

  “It’s just the door,” said Vulgar. “Stop being scared, Vikings don’t get—”

  “Ssssh!” hissed Knut. “Listen!”

  Vulgar stopped talking, and that was when he heard it. The slow clop-clop-clop of footsteps on the stairs behind them. Something was with them in the cellar. Something was moving in the shadows.

  And whatever it was, it was getting closer.

  “It’s a troll!” screamed Knut. “Or a dragon! Or … or a dragon troll!”

  “Shut up!” hissed Vulgar, clamping a hand over Knut’s mouth. He was too late, though. Whatever was coming down the stairs had heard them, and now it was moving faster, clomping down the steps, closer and closer and—

  “Hello,” said a voice from somewhere right behind them. This time both boys screamed, before Vulgar recognised the voice.

  “Freya?” he groaned. “What are you doing here?”

  A candle spluttered to life, and lit up the princess’s face. “I would ask you the same thing,” she said, “but I know exactly what you’re doing here. I heard you talking upstairs.”

  Vulgar shot Knut a nervous glance. “What did you hear, exactly?”

  A sly smile spread across Freya’s face. “Everything,” she said. “The pond. The cakes. Building your own longboat. I heard it all, and I’m going to tell your mum you skipped basket-weaving. Unless…”

  “Unless what?” demanded Vulgar.

  “Unless you let me play, too,” she replied.

  Vulgar looked horrified. “Play?” he said. “Play? We’re not playing, we’re looting!”

  “And pillaging,” Knut reminded him.

  “Yeah, and pillaging,” agreed Vulgar. “We’re proper looting and proper pillaging, like proper Vikings do. It’s not a game!”

  “Look,” snapped Freya, bringing her face close to his. “If you don’t let me join in, I’ll tell my father what you’re up to, and that you tied my hair to the pillar. You’ll be thrown in the dungeon. What do you think of that?”

  “But girls can’t be Viking warriors,” said Vulgar weakly. He didn’t really fancy the dungeons much. He’d heard there was a machine down there that ripped your beard out, one hair at a time. Vulgar didn’t have a beard, but he still didn’t like the sound of it.

  “They can now,” sniffed Freya, and she pushed past them into the cellar.

  “Well, you showed her,” said Knut, trying his best not to laugh. “Some Viking warrior, being pushed around by a girl.”

  “Yeah, well at least I don’t scream like one,” replied Vulgar, before he stomped after Freya.

  It took a few minutes to light the torches around the cellar, but just a few seconds to realise that building a longboat was going to be more difficult than they had thought.

  Vulgar had expected to find enough supplies for a whole fleet of ships. It turned out that he had been wrong.

  “So,” he said, “tell me again what we’ve got.”

  Knut looked down at the items laid out on the floor before him. He took a deep breath. “One barrel, full of ale; three planks of wood, all broken; a big rock; another rock
, not quite so big as the other one; something green and squidgy.” He bent down and gave it a sniff. “I think it might have been cheese, but I’m not sure. And two oars, different sizes. That’s the lot.”

  “Building a longboat out of this stuff isn’t going to be easy,” said Vulgar.

  “Building anything out of this stuff isn’t going to be easy,” corrected Freya. She sighed. “This is a complete waste of time.”

  “Where’s your Viking spirit?” cried Vulgar. He stared accusingly at the princess. “When your dad was lost at sea, did he give up? No! He made do with what he had. He ate bogies and drank seagulls’ blood! And that’s what we’re going to do.”

  “What, eat bogies?” asked Knut, with a frown.

  “I’ll do no such thing,” gasped Freya. “Princesses do not eat bogies.”

  “No, I mean we’re going to make do with what we’ve got,” explained Vulgar. “See, look at this!”

  With a heave, Vulgar tipped the barrel over. Gallons of ale sloshed out on to the floor. When it was empty, he hoisted the barrel back up and peered inside. “I bet we could fit in there,” he said. “And it’s watertight, too.”

  “How do you know?” asked Knut.

  “Well, if it can keep beer in, it can keep water out,” said Vulgar. He looked around the cellar. The rocks would be no help, and the squidgy green stuff was no good. He couldn’t think of any uses for the broken planks, either, so that left only the oars.

  He grabbed the longest oar and propped it up inside the barrel, so the flat end was raised towards the ceiling. “This could be our mast. We can tie my cloak on for a sail!”

  “We’re hardly going to sail very far like that, are we?” scoffed Freya.

  “We won’t have to,” said Vulgar. He could see his whole plan coming together now. “We’ve still got one oar, so we can row across the pond.”

  Freya pulled a face, and Vulgar thought she was about to object. He was surprised when she said, “It might work. I suppose.”

  “Of course it’ll work!” cried Vulgar.

  Over the next ten minutes, Vulgar shouted enthusiastic instructions to the other two, using everything he knew about constructing a longboat. Which was precisely nothing.

  “Doesn’t it need, like, a dragon’s head at the front?” asked Knut, halfway through putting the boat together.

  Vulgar immediately set to work on one of the broken planks, carving it into the shape of the scariest face he could think of.

  “Here, that looks quite like your mum,” said Knut, when the carving was finished.

  “Yeah,” said Vulgar, hooking the terrifying figurehead on to the side of the barrel. “I know!”

  At last, it was finished. Vulgar and the others stepped back to admire their handiwork.

  “It’s not really a longboat, is it?” said Freya.

  “More a shortboat,” agreed Knut.

  “Well, more like a barrel with a stick in it,” continued the princess.

  “It’s perfect!” Vulgar told them. “Grab an end and help me carry it up to the pond.” He rubbed his hands together in anticipation as his crew followed his orders. His very first Viking adventure was about to set sail!

  SPLASH!

  The barrel-boat bobbed violently as the three would-be pillagers dropped it into the pond. For a moment, it looked like it might sink straight to the bottom, but it rose up again just before water started sloshing in over the sides.

  The children leaned over the little wooden dock by the side of the pond and peered down at their vessel.

  “It’s heavier than it looks,” said Vulgar, rubbing his aching arms.

  “I bet even real longboats aren’t that heavy,” agreed Freya. “I bet it’s your mum’s big face that made it weigh so much.”

  “Hey, leave my mum’s face out of it!” Vulgar warned her. “It’ll scare away any sea monsters we meet.”

  “Pond monsters,” Knut reminded him.

  “Same thing,” shrugged Vulgar. “Ponds are where sea monsters go on holiday.”

  With a well-timed jump, Vulgar landed inside the barrel.

  “What happened to ladies first?” Freya asked him.

  “I keep telling you, you don’t get lady Vikings, so I’m just going to pretend you’re a boy.”

  “Don’t you dare,” snarled Freya.

  She hopped into the barrel next to Vulgar. It spun wildly and, for a moment, they forgot their argument and raised their arms above their heads, laughing as the barrel twirled them round and round.

  “Come on, Knut,” urged Vulgar, when the spinning slowed to a stop. “Hurry up.”

  Vulgar couldn’t wait to set sail. Ivar’s rock cakes were legendary, and they were just across the water. Not only did they taste delicious but they could knock a man out from twenty paces, if you threw them hard enough. This, for Vulgar, was the sign of a truly great cake.

  “Here I come!” cried Knut.

  There was a loud thud, and Knut landed in the barrel, head first. His legs kicked wildly in thin air for a moment before he managed to turn himself the right way up.

  It was a tight squeeze with all of them in there, and the barrel was very low in the water. Freya was saying, “It’s a good job there’s no one else coming with us,” when a dog hit her squarely in the face.

  “There you are, Grunt,” laughed Vulgar, as his dog licked Freya’s face then squeezed into the tiny gap between Vulgar’s feet. “Right, Knut, get rowing!”

  Knut grumbled as Vulgar pushed the oar into his hand. “Don’t see why I have to row.”

  “Because I’m the captain,” Vulgar told him. Knut pushed the oar into the water and paddled. The barrel turned in a complete circle.

  “No, I’m the captain,” said Freya. Knut dipped the oar into the water on the opposite side of the barrel, and it began to spin the other way.

  “You don’t get girl captains!”

  “Yes, but you’re pretending I’m a boy, and this boy says he’s captain. Because, might I remind you, this boy is a princess!”

  Knut paddled left, then paddled right. The barrel moved in a reasonably straight line.

  “Boys can’t be princesses!”

  “But boys can be captains,” said Freya.

  Vulgar frowned. He had a horrible feeling he was walking into a trap. “Well, yeah…”

  “Good. Then I’ll be captain,” said Freya, and she crossed her arms to signal that the argument was over. “Start rowing, Knut,” she commanded, before she realised that he already had, and that they were almost at the opposite shore.

  “What’s the plan, captain?” asked Knut. He was careful not to look at anyone when he said it.

  “Me and Freya jump ashore, loot and plunder some cakes…” began Vulgar.

  “And pillage,” Knut reminded him.

  “Oh, yeah, and pillage,” agreed Vulgar. “We loot, plunder and pillage the cakes, get back to the longboat…”

  “Shortboat,” corrected Knut.

  “Barrel,” said Freya.

  “Whatever,” sighed Vulgar. “We get back here, where you’ll be waiting to row us back, and Thor’s your uncle – mission complete.”

  “That’s a stupid plan,” snorted Freya. “It’s so obvious. You’ll be caught right away.”

  The barrel bumped against the shore. Freya and Vulgar leapt out. Knut and Grunt stayed behind. “You need a distraction,” said the princess.

  “Like what?”

  Freya’s scream was so high-pitched it could have made a troll’s head burst.

  Startled, Vulgar looked along the shoreline to where a row of rickety wooden huts stood. People came rushing outside to find out what the fuss was all about.

  At the far end of the row of huts, a fat man with a bald head and a pasty white face appeared in a doorway. Vulgar recognised Ivar right away. The big baker waddled in the direction of Freya’s screams.

  “What are you doing? Ivar’s coming over!” whispered Vulgar.

  “That’s the point,” Freya told him, pau
sing to catch her breath. “Now hurry up, I can’t stand here screaming all day.”

  As Freya let out another screech, Vulgar slipped around the back of the huts and hurried along to the end of the row. The aroma of baking drifted from Ivar’s hut, drawing Vulgar inside. The young Viking’s eyes lit up when he spotted a tray of rock cakes cooling on the table.

  The cakes were warm, but not so warm that Vulgar couldn’t hold them. He grabbed two in each hand and shoved them down his seal-skin shorts. He snatched another four, and crammed them up inside his leather tunic. Another two went into his boots, and the last one he tucked beneath his horned helmet.

  Vulgar looked down at the empty tray and grinned proudly. “Looted, plundered and pillaged,” he said, then he turned to the door.

  A hulking shape stood in the doorway. In one hand it held a rolling pin. “Well, well, well,” growled Ivar, stepping inside the hut. He hit the rolling pin against the palm of his other hand menacingly. “What have we got here?”

  Vulgar thought fast. There was only one door in and out of the baker’s shop, and Ivar was standing in front of it, blocking his escape. If Vulgar had a broadsword, he could have scared the baker off, but he didn’t have a broadsword. He didn’t even have a narrowsword. In fact, he didn’t have any weapons at all.

  Except…

  Quick as a flash, Vulgar lifted his helmet and grabbed the rock cake. Ivar’s broad face pulled into a scowl.

  “Where did you get that?” he demanded. “Give it to me, right now.”

  “Well … OK,” said Vulgar, taking aim. “You asked for it!”

  THONK!

  The heavy cake hit Ivar right between the eyes. The baker staggered backwards towards the door, his face suddenly red with fury.