The Extremely Epic Viking Tale of Yondersaay

by Aoife Lennon-Ritchie

  Scathe sighed. “Fine. We’ll do it one more time.” He made a flamboyant turn, his robes flaring behind him. He fixed Ruairi with a big smile. “We have to do the silly magic thingy again just one more time. Bear with us. Won’t take a minute.”

  “But—” Ruairi said.

  “But what?” Scathe said, not making eye contact.

  “But you just said you were going to kill me anyway,” Ruairi said.

  “Nonsense,” Scathe said, half turning away from Ruairi.

  “You did!” Ruairi said. “You said I am the mighty lord master, blah de blah de blah. I will show no mercy, fish to the sea, wahahahahaha, extinguishing an extinguishing thing; then you said I was for the chop!”

  “I was joking,” Scathe said.

  “Didn’t sound like you were joking.”

  “I won’t kill you. I promise.”

  “That’s what you said last time,” Ruairi said. “I must be honest. I’m not entirely sure I believe you.”

  “Please?” Scathe said.

  “Since you asked so nicely,” Ruairi said.

  “Really?” Scathe said.

  “No! Of course not!” Ruairi said. “Look, what’s that?” Ruairi gestured up at the sky. Everyone whirled around to look.

  “What am I looking at?” Scathe asked. “What are you seeing that I’m not seeing?”

  While their backs were turned, Ruairi grabbed the remains of the first potion from the portable lab and chucked it in Isdrab’s face. Isdrab’s shriek’s of “Oh, that is heinous, oh my goodness,” captured everyone’s attention for a crucial few seconds. Ruairi took off across the ice.

  He ran as fast as he could and did not stop. He was wearing sneakers, so he could grip the ice and run without fear of slipping. He knew he had only to get a reasonable distance from the leather-shoe wearing Viking henchmen dotted about the ice to have an unassailable head start. Ruairi glanced backwards as he ran and saw Scathe drop his eyes and notice that Ruairi was not in his place on his stool.

  Right or Left

  “Which way do we go? Right or left?” Dani looked back into the tunnel and asked Granny, who was coming up behind her. They had crawled a long way in the dark and were slowing with fatigue.

  “I can’t remember. Let me sit and think for a minute,” Granny said, breathing heavily. She took a steak and kidney pie out of her sock and bit into it. She looked first at the tunnel that went right and then at the tunnel that went left. “Left!” Granny said finally, handing half the steak and kidney pie to Dani.

  “Left. Are you sure?”

  Granny didn’t look sure, but she perked up and confidently said, “Yes, left!”

  Dani led the way again, taking the left fork in the tunnel, remembering to drop a little pink and then a violet and then a lemon and then a pale blue flower behind her every few paces.

  “There’s light! Up ahead,” Dani said. “You were right, Granny; we’ve reached the end of the tunnel.”

  “Well done, Dani, my dear. Well done for leading us so excellently. Nearly there now, nearly there.”

  Dani rounded a sharp bend in the tunnel. After spending so long in the darkness, she was instantly blinded by a blast of sunlight. She groped her way forward and pushed out, feeling the icy twirl of the winter’s breeze.

  Granny squeezed out next to her. Filthy and sore from all the digging, they let the breeze caress their relaxing limbs.

  Then they heard a voice say, “Ooh, lookie here! I do believe we literally have an ace in the hole. No, wait. Two aces in the hole!”

  Granny and Dani recognized Scathe’s voice at once and immediately made to dart back underground. They weren’t quick enough; the Turbot cousins grabbed them and pulled them all the way out of the tunnel.

  Scathe clapped his hands together, threw his head back, and emitted a loud, cackling laugh.

  “Chilling laugh, sir!” Asgrim said.

  “Wonderful,” Scathe said, throwing back his head and cackling again. Scathe then turned to the other side of the ice field and shouted, “If you do not come back here this instant, I will literally chop this girl and this woman into a thousand pieces and throw them off the cliff into the sea.”

  “Can I do some chopping? I haven’t done any chopping all day,” Hamish put in quietly from the back.

  “Later, like I keep telling you! If there’s time before the sacrifice …”

  The escaping Ruairi stopped abruptly. He was close to the edge of the ice, mere inches from a hidden dip. He looked back and was horrified to see Dani and Granny struggling against the smug-looking Turbot cousins. He turned back to the gathering on the terrace. He was terrified for his sister and his great-great-great-grandmother. He took a step toward the crowd but caught his big sister’s gaze and halted. He stopped, he looked at her. She was pointing at the strips of fluorescent material on her winter coat, and he instantly knew what she meant.

  “Mum! What would Mum tell me to do?” And Ruairi knew that Dani was urging him to “keep safe and run away!”

  He understood. He knew that that was what he absolutely should do. Scathe was not to be trusted. Ruairi would be no use to Dani and Granny if he was imprisoned with them, or worse, sacrificed at sundown. But it seemed so cowardly to run off and leave two of the people he loved most in the world to the most despicable person he had ever met. Ruairi wished he was relying on Dani rather than the other way around.

  He took a moment, stilled his mind, and thought, “If I run, I can get help. If I stay, I am useless.” He repeated this thought over and over, but Ruairi couldn’t move. He couldn’t leave them. He was cold and he was scared and he couldn’t move. Ruairi looked up and caught his big sister’s gaze again. Dani smiled at him; it was so good to see her. She rolled her eyes, and Ruairi beamed back at her. He would have laughed, but he was afraid he would cry instead.

  With a weak smile at his sister and his granny, Ruairi straightened his back and turned it on them. He walked purposefully toward the edge of the mountain, jumped off the edge, and was gone.

  “That was unexpected!” Scathe said.

  “What do we do now, sir?” Asgrim asked. “We can’t really perform the sacrifice if there’s no one to sacrifice.”

  “Thanks for pointing that out, genius!” Scathe shrieked. He let out a roar of fury, then spun around and came within inches of his two prisoners. With a quiet menace, he said, “Take the two of them to the dungeon until I figure out what’s to be done.” Scathe turned to two of the five twins and said, “You two! After the Red King!”

  The two men ran across the ice after Ruairi, slipping a bit and falling a lot in their leather and wool foot coverings.

  Scathe circled Dani and Granny. Isdrab tiptoed over and spoke in Scathe’s ear. “You’re not worried about them being in the same place as, you know, the other prisoner?”

  “The old man is so out of it he doesn’t even know who he is,” Scathe said, “and so there is literally no chance they’ll have the remotest clue that the stinking, emaciated, blubbering, drooling idiot in chains is Odin, father of all the Vikings.”

  Dani and Granny glanced at each other and looked away again.

  “If you’re sure,” Isdrab said to Scathe.

  “Are you questioning me?”

  “Yes.” Isdrab said. Scathe turned on him and gave him an injurious look. “I mean, no. No! I wouldn’t dream of questioning you,” Isdrab corrected.

  “I will literally eat your spleen for breakfast if you cross me,” Scathe said, raising one eyebrow.

  “I have no doubt. I beg your forgiveness, my lord,” Isdrab said, bowing low.

  “With a spoon,” Scathe said as Isdrab went to take the prisoners to the dungeon. “Wait! I have changed my mind,” Scathe announced, pointing a finger in the air. “And not because of what you just said right now,” he added, more quietly. “Take the prisoners to the longship!” he screeched.

  “The longship now, is it?” Isdrab said.

 
“To be sacrificed,” Scathe said maliciously. “If Mohammed won’t go to the mountain, then the mountain, and in this case, of course, I mean, the Red King, will come to Mohammed.”

  “What?” Granny and Dani looked quizzically at Scathe.

  “The mountain … and Mohammed! You’ve never heard that before?” Scathe asked Dani and Granny, who both shook their heads vigorously. “You’re not getting it?”

  Granny and Dani looked at each other, shrugged, and shook their heads again.

  “The sacrifice!” Scathe said, throwing his hands in the air and letting out a big sigh. “If the Red King won’t go to the sacrifice, then we’ll make him go to the sacrifice.” Scathe ran through what he’d just said again in his head, moving his lips as he did so.

  Asgrim leaned forward and said, “Sounded better the other way, with Mohammed and what have you.”

  “Anyway, the point is,” Scathe went on, “we’ll just sacrifice you instead, and if he turns up to save you, we’ll kill you and him. And if he doesn’t turn up to save you, then we’ll kill you and then hunt him down and then kill him.” Scathe gave a withering smile, turned to his men, and shouted, once more, with a great deal of joyous feeling this time, “Take the prisoners to the longship!”

  The Great Sacrificial Yuletide Festival

  The sun was already beginning its evening turn toward the west, the sky was darkening, and day was coming to a close. News had spread that the Red King of Denmark had come to Yondersaay and that there would be a genuine, real-life sacrifice at the Great Yuletide Sacrificial Festival this year. The islanders were fizzing with excitement. And who could blame them? Yondersaanians loved a good entrail examination ceremony and subsequent sacrifice as much as the next Viking. Once the oracle had confirmed the Red King’s identity, the sacrificial rites would be performed.

  Every person on the island was helping to prepare. After their morning walk down the High Street to the harbour, they cooked, practiced dances, and organized skits and other amusements all day. Chickens, quails, and turkeys had been slaughtered, plucked, and roasted. Casks of mead had been carted to the shore. Now, a pig was rotating on a spit, whole salmons were being grilled on beachside fires, potatoes were baking on hot stones, and cauldrons of stews and soups were seasoned and stirred.

  Groups of Vikings sped about lighting hundreds of torches and sticking them into the sand. The men and women drank mead while they waited for proceedings to begin. People sang and danced, and all were in very high spirits.

  Children were chasing each other along the beach. A tiny blue car was burning brightly, and some Vikings were dancing around it. The car alarm, no longer piercing, gave a final whinny and fizzled to silence.

  At the center of the hubbub, the pyre piled high, a longship resting atop it, awaiting ceremonial torching. The dragon’s head at the prow of the longship rose haughtily into the air and bore a ferocious gaze down on the assembled Vikings. The deck bowed out from the dragon’s neck and tightened into a tail at the stern. The mast towered over the scene - at its base was a tidy pile of kindling.

  On the beach in front of the funeral pyre, beneath the gaze of the dragon’s prow, was a wooden platform. Square in the middle, making it sag, was a grand golden throne. It had a sumptuous, purple velvet downdle on the seat. The feet of the throne curved into claws as they dug into the planks, and the legs and arms were encrusted with jewels. Evidently, a porta-throne was not grand enough for this particular occasion.

  The crowd hushed on their benches and chairs as a group of heavily armed and very tough-looking Vikings—Hamish Hjorvarth and two of the five twins—stood aside to reveal Silas Scathe. The effect was somewhat diminished by the fact that, in the minutes beforehand, Scathe was plainly seen checking his appearance in various mirrors and frantically applying pomade to some stray hairs. The crowd, however, had been coached by Asgrim and Isdrab. They oohed and ahed as the jarl ascended the platform.

  Behind another group of burly men, much more successfully hidden from the crowd and tied up securely but attempting to get away nonetheless, were a defiant, red-haired, puffy-coated girl and a resistant great-great-great-grandmother.

  The Oracle Pronounces

  The jarl sauntered to the golden throne in the middle of the platform. Spinning himself around to face the crowd, allowing his flouncy jewel-encrusted robes to billow out dramatically, he slowly, regally, sat down.

  Almost immediately, he stood up again. “Welcome to Yondersaay’s Annual Great Sacrificial Yuletide Festival! This year, we have an added reason to celebrate our annual feast. We have a real, live sacrifice to look forward to as part of the festivities. With your help, wonderful Yondersaanians, I, Jarl Silas Scathe, at last, after many years of constant, literally twenty-four-seven, full-on, unending effort, have trapped the insidious, the evil, the conniving. Red King of Denmark!”

  The crowd whooped and applauded.

  “You are all aware, of course, of the legend of the Red King of Denmark—that one day this arrogant young sovereign would come to the island to take Odin’s treasure as his own—”

  A decaying old man at the front put up his hand. “That’s not the version I’m familiar with, your jarlship,” the old man said in a surprisingly loud voice. “I was under the impression he was supposed to be a rather decent sort—”

  Two of the five twins, in full Viking combat gear now, appeared, lightning-quick, one on either side of the old man. The one on the left discreetly pressed a blade into the old man’s side. The one on the right glared menacingly at him.

  The jarl stopped and looked at the old man. “Are you sure?” he beseeched in a sickly sweet voice. “Is that really what you remember?”

  “Em, no! Now that I think about it, no,” the old man said.

  “Indeed!” the jarl continued. He gestured to the rest of his men who slowly and subtly dispersed themselves within the crowd, ready to intimidate should the jarl be challenged again. “As we all know, the island has been bereft of Odin’s benevolent presence for many a year. It is my belief that when we sacrifice the Red King tonight, the gods will be appeased and Odin will return.” Scathe dropped his voice to a whisper and mumbled, “We have the tiny formality of establishing the boy’s identity.” Scathe brought his voice back to full volume. “Then he will be sacrificed by the final rays of the sun!”

  The jarl looked into the crowd. He knew that they loved a good sacrifice, but he wanted to make very sure they were all on his side. “But don’t take my word for it. Ladies and gentlemen, this afternoon we welcome Yondersaay’s most revered inhabitant, the amanuensis of the gods, the interpreter of divine will, the one, the only … oracle!

  The crowd went bananas. They hushed as the oracle approached the platform. In her ceremonial garbs, she looked quite imposing. She had clearly combed her hair for the occasion. She hadn’t washed it, mind, but it wasn’t sticking out in matted clumps. And with the breeze traveling in a westerly direction, and the crowd being east of her, they didn’t get the full force of the smell. The fact that she mumbled constantly to herself only added to her mystique. The intermittent picking of things off her scalp and flicking them off—not so much.

  Once she was on the platform, Jarl Scathe lifted the oracle’s right arm into the air and paraded her around the stage so that all gathered could get a good look at her. It was clear to Granny and Dani that the poor woman was trying very hard to be cool. She seemed to be making an attempt at haughty and uninterested, but that all fell apart when the crowds got to their feet to welcome her with applause—she guffawed so loudly in delight at all the attention that for a moment it looked like she was having a seizure. The crowd recoiled in horror. She got hold of her senses, just in time, pointed to the heavens, and muttered things like “… the gods … communing … messages … I am vessel …” and other incoherent rubbish.

  The jarl continued. “Our sacred oracle will perform the ancient rites; she will commune with the Viking gods, and they will tell her two thin
gs.” The jarl raised his robed arms majestically as he spoke. “One: is the boy who roams among us the Red King, the true Boy King of Denmark?” Scathe’s voice crescendoed. “And two: will sacrificing him return our beloved Odin to our midst?”

  The crowd erupted into whoops and cheers and drank heartily of their mead.

  “You may have noticed,” the jarl said more softly, lowering his arms, “that the copper-haired, silver-eyed boy of the legends is not actually, at this moment in time, just right at the present minute, here on the stage. He is literally right here though. He is among us. And he will come forward in due course.”

  The people looked about them trying to spot the Red King in the crowd.

  “Fear not. His presence is not required at this juncture. We are here to perform the identification rites, and the oracle has the power and the connection with the gods to summon the information forth. With or without the ginger brat.”

  The oracle stepped to the front of the stage as the crowd applauded. First, she made a big show with a stick-type thing with feathers on the end, mumbling to herself the entire time. She motioned for a large, flat rock to be positioned in front of her and placed lots of implements, including stones and bones of various shapes and sizes, in a line beside it.

  She motioned for a big bucket to be brought to the stage. The oracle ceremoniously lowered the top of the bucket so that the gathered masses could see that inside were her pre-sacrificed bloody guts. This got a good reaction. She paused to let the picture sink in.

  The oracle reached both arms deep into the bucket. She paused and muttered. Alas, she paused just that wee bit too long—strands of her combed hair came loose and tumbled into the bucket. The crowd let out a collective “Eww.” Unperturbed, the oracle lifted her immersed arms high above her head. Her hair flicked back at the same time and splattered blood and guts all over everyone in the front row. She held her arms aloft—bloody to her elbows—and in her hands, she clutched an oozing mixture of innards. She splattered the entrails across the flat surface of the rock and bent to examine them.