Leif Frond and the Viking Games Read online

  Some days you’d be better off never even getting out of bed.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Leif’s Secret

  “Just here, ma’am. This is the best place to see the first event. Right by the archery target. They’ll be unveiling it any minute now.” I was babbling, but I couldn’t seem to stop. “You know, of course you do, how the Artificers of each settlement try to outdo the others in making the most spectacular archery target imaginable – and Queue the Frondfell Artificer is truly exceptional. Probably the best in the world. I just know you’ll be impressed.”

  It was the wrong thing to say.

  You wouldn’t have thought it was possible for the Widow’s bosom to get any larger, but she really did seem to expand with indignation. She was furious.

  “Have you forgotten the amazing archery target the Hildefjord Artificers created only lastsummer?” she spluttered. (How could I have? It was shaped like a giant mead cup that was supposed to fountain up spectacularly with thewinning shot. But every time one of the contestants hit it anywhere, it started to leak. Spectators kept running out onto the field to fill their own cups. It was all a bit of a disaster.) Then she deflated herself a little, and gave me a smile that made my blood run cold.“ Still I think it’s sweet that you’re so young and yet so loyal. Such a dear little fellow.”

  Great Thor’s Ankles! I cried silently. She’s going to do it again!

  All the signs were there, but before she could actually execute her fiendish plan of once more hugging me, a loud trumpeting drifted across the fields, announcing that the first of the Games was about to begin.

  Saved by the horn!

  I gulped, and ran to fetch my bow.

  Now, as I said before, I had a lot on my mind trying to keep the grown-ups under control, but right at that moment there was something else troubling me.

  I don’t know how to say this to make it sound good or even remotely heroic. That’s probably because there is no way to make it sound anything but weaselly.

  I was planning to cheat.

  It’s like this. The Midsummer Games had been looming large in everyone’s minds – especially this year when it was being held hereat Frondfell. My sisters were fussing about food;Granny was telling everybody exactly what would go wrong if they didn’t do things her way; my brothers were all training like mad; Queue the Artificer was very busy and being close-mouthed about his archery target-building plans. (I asked him once why he was called Queue. “Why do you think?” he snorted. “It’s because I’m so good, people have to queue up to see me!” And it’s true. He really is very, very good.) And I… I was desperate to qualify to compete for the very first time – and there was only one way I could see to make it happen. After a lot of arguing inside myhead I made up my mind. I went to Queue’sworkshop and after humming and hawing for ages, I came right out with it.

  I asked him to make me a Magic Bow.

  At first, Queue just looked at me for a long moment. Then, without saying a word, he went into the back of the workshop, where the shadows are mysterious and deep, and he brought back a bow.

  “There you are,” he said. “I just finished making it last week.”

  I couldn’t believe it. I took the bow, feeling all tingly and awed.

  “How does the magic work?” I whispered.

  Queue held up a finger. “You must never ask questions about a Magic Bow,” he rumbled. “Now go away and learn how to use it.”

  “Thank you! Thank you!” I called over my shoulder.

  I’d been practising like crazy ever since last year’s Games, but now I redoubled my efforts. At first it didn’t seem as if the Magic Bow made any difference at all, but then, gradually, I started to get better. And better. Until I was good enough to hit the test target and convince my father I was ready to compete. He looked so proud. I almost blurted it all out, all about my Magic Bow, all about being a cheater, but in the end, I didn’t. And now…

  Now here I was, lining up with the other contestants, clutching my Magic Bow so tightly my knuckles showed white. Everything seemed unnaturally bright and clear and shiny – the sky, the grass, the spectators lining the field in their festival clothes. I could see my granny rushing about with cups of mead for the contestants, which was odd since she usually left that sort of leg work to my sisters (who usually passed it on to me). I thought she might have taken a break to cheer for me, this being my first Games and all, but there was no time left to worry about that now. My father gave the signal to Queue. There was a dramatic pause, and then our Artificer pulled away the sheet with a flourish and the Frondfell archery target was revealed.

  Everyone gasped. It was stupendous.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Fate’s Arrow

  It was a monstrous demon boar.

  If you looked really closely, you could see that it actually was a wooden frame,bulked out with bales of straw and cunninglycovered with cloth painted to look like roughhide and curved tusks and tiny piggy red eyes. But I’m willing to bet there wasn’t a single archer there who thought about it that way. It was as if we’d fallen into the middle of a great saga. Here we stood – a line of champions – and there was the beast that must be slain.

  The first archer notched his arrow.

  “I will aim for the throat, for that is the way to kill a demon boar!” he cried. The crowd muttered agreement. But when his arrow pierced the boar in the throat, nothing happened.

  “Everyone knows you must aim for the heart,” cried the next, “however small that might be.” The crowd agreed with that too. But the monster’s heart must have been smaller than my sister Thorhalla’s, for though many arrows clustered in the target’s chest, none of them seemed able to find it.

  “I will pierce its hump!”

  “I will shoot its tusk!”

  They all thought they knew best. But none of the arrows had any effect. The winning shot was supposed to make something happen. Artificers up and down the coast put huge effort into building targets every year – the competition to create the newest and most spectacular was fierce – but the answer to where the winning arrow needed to go was always a deep secret.

  When it was my brother Karl’s turn, he didn’t boast or shout about what he was going to do. He just walked up to the mark, drew hisbow, aimed, and let fly.

  Everyone spontaneously cheered. Karl’s arrow was clearly visible. It had flown straight and true – and had pierced the boar target’s tiny eye!

  It was an amazing shot and yet – there was still no sign of any reaction from the beast of straw.

  There were murmurs all around.

  “If anything could kill a monster it’d be an arrow to the eye.”

  “No one can beat a shot like that!”

  “This isn’t as much fun as the Hildefjord archery target – I think the thing’s broken.”

  I hope Queue didn’t hear that, I thought to myself and then I looked around and realised with horror that there was only one person left to shoot…

  Me. The cheater with the Magic Bow.

  I didn’t know what to do. My stomach was trying to crawl up into my throat and I kept waiting for someone in the crowd to shout out, “Hey! Look at that! That boy’s cheating – he’s got a Magic Bow!” And then they’d boo. And throw things. Viking crowds like throwing things. Squishy vegetables and elderly fruit for preference. (Well, rocks and knives for preference, but not at a festival.) Getting pelted with old apples and over-ripe cabbage – what kind of Fate was that for a champion?

  And that was when it hit me – not a turnip, but the answer. Fate! I’d been playing fast and loose with the rules, taking them into my own hands, and now it was time for me to hand them back.

  I would leave it all up to Fate.

  Suddenly my nervousness left me and I almost smiled. I pointed the bow in the general vicinity of the target, pulled back the string, and shut my eyes.

  Whush – Sproingg!

  “Look!” cried the crowd, so of course I opened my eyes again.<
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  It was an astonishing sight.

  There was my arrow, in plain view, stuck right in the monster boar’s bottom. And, where all other arrows had failed to set off the target’s mechanism, mine had, against all the odds, succeeded.

  There was a grating and a grinding and a shuddering, and the boar began to twitch and jerk. Slowly, terrifyingly, it raised its head and then, so suddenly it made everybody jump, it spat flame from its mouth. Right up into the sky, a great torch of fire and smoke. And my shot had set it off – not only my bow, but my arrow must have been magic as well!

  And the crowd roared. Even the spectators nearest the target who were now thoroughly covered in soot – including the Widow Brownhilde – choked and cheered. But not all ofthe contestants were happy. Archers with far greater skill than mine had hit the target in farmore difficult and, let’s face it, more heroic places.

  “My arrow pierced its heart,” muttered one.

  “My arrow pierced it straight through the throat,” grumbled another.

  “Have you ever tried to shoot a boar’s tusk?” complained a third.

  Queue came trotting up, breathless and soot-stained and grinning like mad. He was immediately bombarded with protests from the unsuccessful competitors.

  “You can’t kill a boar by sticking an arrow in its bottom,” one cried.

  “Maybe not, but you can probably get him angry enough to spit flames.” Queue replied. He was looking very pleased with himself.

  “You never told us that was what we were after!” protested another red-faced archer.

  “Everybody thought we were supposed to kill the thing,” spluttered a third.

  “Well, he’s not looking too well now, wouldn’t you agree?” said Queue cheerfully. That got a laugh from the crowd – and he was absolutely right. While they had been arguing, the entire straw construction had caught fire. The target was now a mass of flame and, as we all watched, it toppled slowly over onto its side.

  “Looks dead to me,” said Queue.

  “I… you’re right, but… um…” stuttered myfather. His job as host of the Frondfell Midsummer Games was proving exceptionally difficult.

  But Blogfeld, the Scourge of the Seas, couldn’t stop laughing. He seemed to be having a wonderful time.

  “That young fellow is the only one among you who got to the bottom of it all!” he hooted in his ocean-going voice. “Get it? The bottom? Get it?”

  “But still… it was hardly the best shot,” murmured my father.

  “You’re right. I can’t argue with that. I’d say the eye-shooter wins this one. But I insist we give the young fellow some credit anyway! And of course your Artificer – that was a spectacular display! I wonder how he did it?”

  Well, nobody was going to argue out loud with Harald Blogfeld. (That didn’t mean there weren’t grumblers, because there always are. And it didn’t mean the whole thing wouldn’t be relived and torn apart and put back together a dozen different ways before the next Midsummer Games, because that always happened too.)

  So the decision was announced that Karl’s had been the winning shot. And you know, I was relieved. I hadn’t won fair and square, and noamount of smoke and fire could make it otherwise. We could still hear Blogfeld, though,chortling and repeating, “He got to the bottomof it, didn’t he, that boy? The bottom!”

  “Ooo, I do love a man with a sense of humour!” my granny cackled suddenly. (You never hear my granny coming – she’s just all of a sudden there, at your elbow.) She had another cup of mead in her hands, but she wouldn’t let me have any. “No, you can’t have this – it’s for that awful – I mean that lovely woman Brownhilde. Where is she?”

  My heart sank. “Granny, what’s in that cup?”

  “What, this cup? Why, it’s a mead cup, you silly boy. It’s got mead in it – you know, honey and water and, er, things.”

  “What kind of things?” I said sternly.

  “Just… a little medicine. It’s special. I’ve been giving it to as many of our guests as I can. Especially the ones from Hildefjord. It’s gone down really well.”

  “What kind of medicine?”

  “Well, let’s just say, there’ll be a lot of visitors to the latrines for the next few hours. I guess they’ll be getting to the bottom of things as well!” And she snuffled and snorted at her own joke for a ridiculously long time. I waited until she finally stopped.

  “Granny,” I said.

  “Yes?”

  “Give me the cup.”

  I thought for a moment she was going to argue, but then she just shrugged and handed it over. I poured the contents out onto the grass. “And you’re not to make any more,” I added.

  “Can’t anyway,” she said. “No more of the special ingredient left.” There wasn’t a traceof remorse in her voice. But I couldn’t reallyscold her. Not when I was holding my own guiltysecret right there in my hand.

  Without another word, I left my granny. I walked over to Queue and held out the bow he’d given me.

  “Here,” I said. “Please take back your Magic Bow. I was wrong to have asked for it in the first place.”

  But the Artificer didn’t take it back. “That bow isn’t magic, you silly boy,” he said gruffly.

  I stared. “But you told me… You said…”

  Queue shrugged. He was looking a little embarrassed, which was unusual for him. “Look, it was your first Games. I told you what I thought would calm you down. Nobody shoots their best when they’re all fussed and twitchy.”

  “But… but…” I spluttered. “I was the one who hit the right place. On the target. I was the one who made the boar flame.”

  “That wasn’t magic,” grunted Queue.

  “Well, what was it then?” I squeaked.

  “That? Oh, that was just Fate!” And with a nod, the Artificer turned on his heel and walked away.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Rough and the (Very) Smooth

  Now, the thing about Viking Games is – they can get a bit rough. Well, actually, they can get very rough. And the roughest event of all is the wrestling. In a normal match you can confidently expect damage to be done to one or both of the contestants. And with the prize of a place in Blogfeld’s ship for the season dangling before them, the young men obviously thought this wasn’t the day to start being delicate with each other. That (and Granny’s laxative-lacedmead) was having a big impact on the number of casualties.

  My sisters were up to their eyeballs in wounded contestants and it was only by shifting ground constantly that I managed to avoid having to help them dust the losers down and patch them up. I hadn’t time for anything like that – I had to keep my eyes on the unofficial contestants.

  Where were they all? As I skirted the edge of the wrestling ring I could see my father, with Blogfeld beside him. And powering up the hill towards them both, I could also see the Widow. (She’d obviously been making use of our bathhouse to wash off the worst of the soot from Queue’s target, and she was still dripping round the edges.) There was a predatory gleam in her eyes as she parted the crowd the way the prow of a ship parts the waves.

  I had to head her off.

  Have you ever had one of those nightmares where you want to run but your legs go all treacle-y? This was exactly like that. I tried my hardest to push past all the people but I couldn’t get them to let me through. I poked and pinched and elbowed and got precisely nowhere. It was only when I dropped to my hands and knees and started crawling through the crowd that I made some headway.

  Unfortunately it was while I was doing that, down on all fours, that my path and the Widow’s converged.

  It was like a mighty oak toppling over in the forest, only with added screeching.

  I watched, helpless, terrified the Widow would crush the life out of any poor soul she landed on. Even my father wouldn’t have been able to withstand the equivalent of half a mountain falling on top of him. But there was one man there that day who could – and luckily for the Widow, that was the man who caught h
er. Harald Blogfeld gave a great grunt and his knees buckled with the effort of breaking her fall, but he didn’t let her hit the ground.

  “Oh. Oh! Thank you, kind sir,” simpered the Widow as he hauled her upright again.

  “Nnnn… nurgle… er…” The Champion of the Waves seemed oddly tongue-tied, but that was probably because he’d just had all the breath forcibly knocked out of him.

  I staggered to my feet, grabbed my father by the arm and dragged him away from the giant couple.

  “Thanks, lad!” murmured my father. “Now just see what your granny’s up to, would you? You know what she’s like about the wrestling!”

  I did know.

  She wasn’t hard to find. There she was, as I’d expected, right at the front. Granny is always in the front row at wrestling matches. The fact is, she’s not so much interested in wrestling as she is in commenting on how the contestants look in just their shorts. As each pair of young men came into the ring she got louder and louder.

  “Would you just look at those muscles?! Ooo, come on gorgeous give us a ripple! My, he does strip off nicely, doesn’t he? His father had a lovely body too, as I remember…”

  I kept trying to shush her but it didn’t work. Everyone else roared with laughter, which, of course, only encouraged her. It was just entertainment to them, but I’m related! The more I shushed, the more outrageous she got.

  You’d almost think she enjoyed embarrassing me.

  The match everyone was looking forward to most was the one between my brother Karl and Hildefjord’s best contestant, Manni. In spite of the fact that he came from the Widow’s settlement, Manni was a really nice person – and an excellent wrestler. They were scheduled last, as a sort of star event.

  Manni rippled his muscles at my brother and called out with a broad smile. “Don’t look so scared – I promise I won’t hurt you… much.”

  “Brave words, little man.” Karl grinned back at him. “Brave…”

  But just then a peculiar expression came over my brother’s face. He turned pale. Then he turned red.