Vulgar the Viking and the Rock Cake Raiders (3 page)

CHAPTER THREE

A TALL TALE

A hushed silence fell over the audience as they settled down to listen to King Olaf. Vulgar leaned forward and held his head up, not wanting to miss a single word of what was about to be said.

“BOGIES!” roared King Olaf, in a voice that made everyone in the front three rows jump. Vulgar blinked. He hadn’t been expecting bogies.

“That’s all I had to eat,” the king
continued. “Gooey, sticky bogies from the darkest corners of my royal nostrils.”

A murmur went through the crowd. Clearly it hadn’t been expecting bogies either.

“I’d been adrift at sea for months, my loyal crew either killed in battle or lost beneath the waves. My food supply was long gone, knocked overboard during a fight with a crazed sea serpent that
I eventually managed to slay with just these bare hands.”

King Olaf held his pudgy hands up for the audience to admire, before continuing. “Lesser men would have given up, gone mad from starvation and loneliness. Lesser men would have gone crying and wailing to the gods for help. But I am not a lesser man.”

“What did you do?” asked Vulgar, fascinated. Harrumf raised his stick and opened his mouth to scold Vulgar for interrupting, but King Olaf spoke before the old man got the chance.

“Excellent question, my boy,” said the king. “I knew I had to find food, and fast. So I climbed the mast and scanned the horizon. For days I stayed up there, drinking seagulls’ blood and eating bogies. And then one day, just like that, there it was.”

“There
what
was?” breathed Vulgar.

“Land, my boy. Land! An island, in fact. I set the sail and soon arrived on the coast. Their army was vast, but no match for a true Viking warrior like me. I defeated them, all five thousand soldiers. It wasn’t easy, mind you – took me almost an hour – but when the last man was beaten, I looted every single one of their huts.”  

“Did you pillage them as well?” asked Vulgar, bouncing up and down with excitement.

“You bet your broadsword I did!” said Olaf proudly. “I looted
and
pillaged them good and proper, took all their food back to my longship, and set sail for home.”

“And did you ransack them?”

“Yes. I looted and pillaged and ransacked all ten thousand of them,” said the king.

“I thought you said there were
five
thousand soldiers?” said Knut.

King Olaf frowned. “Um…”

“Where was the island?” asked Vulgar, desperate for every last detail.

King Olaf frowned a bit more. “Er … I … can’t remember.”

“You must remember!” said Vulgar. “Vikings never forget the places they’ve conquered.”

“What? I mean, yes, of course.” Olaf rubbed at his beard. “It’s … um … nowhere,” he said. “I, er, set it on fire and it sank into the sea, and, er, no one survived.”

“You sank a whole island?” gasped Vulgar. “That’s
amazing.
”

“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!”