Thorfinn and the Raging Raiders

  For Daniel – D.M.

  To Viking Isobel, the Fish Gobbler – R.M.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  Copyright

  CHAPTER 1

  Breakfast time in any Viking house was a messy business, but in the house of Harald the Skull-Splitter, the famous Viking chief, it was complete chaos. It was a bit like a chimpanzees’ tea party. The big daddy of all chimpanzees’ tea parties, in fact, where the chimpanzees were three times bigger and seven times more quarrelsome.

  The house was a whirlwind of flying furniture, flying food and flying fists. Harald’s three eldest sons were having a wrestling match in the middle of the kitchen floor.

  The eldest was Wilfred the Spleen-Mincer, who’d just got back from a gap year invading Russia.

  Next there was Sven the Head-Crusher, who’d been away at Viking university. His special subjects were kidnapping and ransom.

  And finally Hagar the Brain-Eater, who’d spent the last year tracking and hunting polar bears in the frozen north because, as he put it, “One of them looked at me funny.”

  “Take that, chicken brain!” cried Wilfred, hoisting a heavy sideboard into the air and launching it in Sven’s direction.

  “RRRAAAAARRR!” roared Sven as he dodged the sideboard, snatched a fallen vase from the floor and smashed it over Hagar’s head.

  “GRRRRR!” growled Hagar, shaking bits of vase out of his hair before grabbing a chair in both hands and breaking it over Wilfred’s back.

  The three boys looked a lot like their father, except Harald’s beard was bigger and bushier, of course. He’d won the award for Viking Beard of the Year four times in a row.

  “Ha! That’s my boys,” said Harald, beaming proudly and beating his mighty fist on the table.

  Beside Harald, at the centre of this whirlwind, sat his youngest son, whose Viking name was rather different from the others: Thorfinn the Very-Very-Nice-Indeed.

  Thorfinn stood up, a kind smile spreading across his face, and raised his helmet to his father.

  “Good morning to you, dear Dad.” He was the exact opposite of Harald’s other sons. He was the nicest, most polite Viking who had ever lived.

  Thorfinn sat back down and admired his carefully placed eggcup, knife, spoon and neatly folded napkin. He calmly cut his toast into soldiers and sipped pinecone tea, totally unruffled by the chaos going on around him. In fact he was humming. “Hmm, hmm, hmm… hmm. Dum-de-dum…”

  Thorfinn’s pet pigeon, Percy, a lovely speckled bird, was perched on the table beside him, cheerfully pecking up a few leftover crumbs.

  The three older boys grappled with each other in the middle of the floor and crashed into the breakfast table, catapulting Thorfinn’s egg across the kitchen.

  SPLATTT!

  “ENNOUGHH!” screamed another voice, the fearsome, high-pitched cry of a Viking woman.

  CHAPTER 2

  Thorfinn’s mother, Freya, emerged from the tangle of bodies with one brother in a headlock, one in an earlock, and the other sandwiched between her knees. Her long blonde hair cascaded over a set of piercing green eyes.

  “This is the fourth time this week you lot have wrecked this kitchen. Now sit down and eat your breakfast nicely, like Thorfinn.”

  The three brothers suddenly looked sheepish, and they meekly sat down at the table.

  Thorfinn raised his helmet again and saluted them. “Good morning, Wilfred. Good morning, Sven. Good morning, Hagar. And what a lovely day it is!”

  Thorfinn’s brothers just growled at him.

  “By Thor, that was a good contest!” cried Harald in his deep, booming voice. Then he started dishing out fighting tips to his three eldest sons. “Sven, you need to get tighter on your opponent. Hagar, you must work on your sidestep. Wilfred, you’re too slow in attack.”

  Freya doled out bowls of steaming hot porridge to each of them. Thorfinn savoured every mouthful then dabbed at the side of his mouth with a napkin.

  Wilfred, Sven and Hagar slurped the porridge down in one go, chucked their bowls onto the floor behind them and burped:

  They were long, mighty burps that ran together, sounding like the call of a giant sea monster.

  Freya groaned angrily. “I am SICK of clearing up after you layabouts. It’s not my job, you know, just because I’m your mother. The only one who helps is Thorfinn.”

  “Mother is right,” said Thorfinn. “We should all take turns at doing the housework. I can draw up a rota if you like.”

  Thorfinn’s brothers burst into peals of laughter, as did Harald. Great, thundering, thigh-slapping laughter that shook the dust off the rafters.

  “HA! Housework!” bellowed Sven.

  “What will you think up next?” said Hagar, walloping Thorfinn on the shoulders.

  “You and that daft pigeon!” said Wilfred, shaking his head.

  “Ah, don’t laugh at Thorfinn,” replied Harald. “Remember, Thorfinn is the cleverest of us all. He and his pigeon have saved this village many times. But then again… HOUSEWORK?! Vikings don’t do housework!”

  Once he’d finished laughing, Harald spat what remained of his food onto the floor and leapt to his feet. “Right, if you lads want to see some REAL wrestling, follow me!”

  “HUZZAH!” cried Thorfinn’s brothers, and Harald led them charging through the house, kicking down the front door in the usual Viking way.

  BLAM!

  CHAPTER 3

  “Grrr… that’s the sixth front door they’ve wrecked this month!” Thorfinn’s mother yanked open a drawer full of woodworking tools and strapped on a pair of goggles. “My work is NEVER done!” She sighed, and dragged a workbench out of the cupboard.

  “Please, dear Mother, allow me to me help,” said Thorfinn.

  But she wasn’t listening. She was too busy taking her frustration out on a piece of wood. She was sawing so hard, she was engulfed in a cloud of sawdust.

  After they’d finished repairing the front door, tidying the kitchen and cleaning up the breakfast dishes, Freya slumped down at the kitchen table. Thorfinn made her a cup of pinecone tea and Percy dragged over a biscuit in his beak.

  “I’m so fed up, Thorfinn,” she said. “What would I do without your help?”

  “My brothers are very excitable, aren’t they? But their hearts are in the right place.”

  “You are always so forgiving, dear Thorfinn. But I really am fed up. Since the three of them came home, the house has been chaos. Last night, Wilfred and Hagar dressed up as bears and had a battle in the living room. There are bite marks all over the place and I’m sure one of them actually ate the sheepskin rug. And Sven kidnapped nextdoor’s cow and locked it in the barn. He said it was his homework.”

  She flicked open a copy of the local news parchment, The Daily Hatchet. There was an advert on the back page along with a map of Iceland:

  “That looks wonderful, Mother. You should go,” said Thorfinn.

  “I’d love to go on holiday, but who would look after this place?” she said.

  “I’d be very happy to look after things while you’re away,” said Thorfinn.

  Freya smiled. “Thank you, Thorfinn, but it wouldn’t be fair to l
eave all this to you. You’re the youngest and littlest in the family. Besides, they should be able to look after themselves.”

  “If you say so, Mother, but you deserve a nice relaxing break. If you change your mind, I will do all I can to help.” Thorfinn tapped his shoulder and Percy hopped onto it. He picked up his school bag and lifted his helmet. “I bid you good day, dear Mother.”

  “And good day to you, my darling boy.” She kissed him on the cheek then turned and dragged a giant basket of fresh laundry into the kitchen. She pulled out an enormous pair of elk-skin underpants, which, judging by their size, belonged either to Harald or to a large-buttocked rhinoceros.

  CHAPTER 4

  Thorfinn’s best friend, Velda, was waiting for him outside. “Good morning, Mrs Skull-Splitter!” she called in to Freya, who was too busy to reply.

  Velda was as fearsome as she was skinny, and her enormous helmet wobbled around on her tiny head. Normally she carried a giant axe, but today she was practising her swing with a polo stick, because they had an elk-polo match later that morning.

  “What’s wrong, Thorfinn?” she asked, as they headed out of the village of Indgar, through the forest and up the hill, with Percy fluttering from branch to branch above. “Don’t tell me your brothers wrecked the house again?”

  “I’m afraid they did, old pal.”

  “I bet your mum’s pretty angry. I don’t know how she puts up with it.”

  “I’ve never seen her so fed up,” said Thorfinn. “I’m not sure what to do.”

  “Hmmm…” Velda drummed her fingers on her chin. “I could wallop them – your brothers, I mean – with my polo stick. Do you want me to wallop them for you?”

  “Many thanks for the offer,” replied Thorfinn. “I always appreciate your advice. But I’m not sure walloping them is the answer.”

  Velda shrugged. “It always works for me.” She swung her polo stick and belted a rock into the sky.

  “Perhaps Oswald will know what to do,” said Thorfinn.

  ***

  Oswald was an incredibly old man with an incredibly long beard and an incredibly loud and whiny voice. He was the village wise man and he lived in a hut in the woods.

  Oswald ran the village school, which had just two pupils – Thorfinn and Velda. For most Vikings, school was simply a way of ruining a perfectly good day’s sword fighting, spear fighting, fist fighting or any other sort of fighting.

  Velda would also rather be out fighting. She only went to school because Thorfinn’s father had made her promise to keep Thorfinn out of trouble; that, and Oswald’s free homemade pancakes.

  “Now then,” said Oswald, pouring out pinecone tea, “we’re studying geography today.”

  Velda groaned. “I HATE geography!”

  “You say that about every subject we do, which is a great pity,” said Oswald, “because you can learn a lot at school. This, for example…” Oswald pulled out a string with a small metal fish dangling on the end. An ‘N’ was carved into its nose, an ‘S’ on its tail, and an ‘E’ and a ‘W’ on each side. “Do you know what this is?”

  Thorfinn’s eyes brightened. “It’s a compass, isn’t it?”

  “It is indeed,” said Oswald. “It’s magnetic, so the fish’s nose always points north.”

  “So what?” said Velda. “North is cold, south is hot, west is the sea, and the east is not – what else is there to know?”

  “Ah, but say, for example, your longship is stuck in fog in the middle of the sea. The compass tells you exactly which direction is which.”

  “My father had a compass,” said Velda. Her shoulders slumped. “Fat lot of good it did him.”

  Velda’s father, Gunga the Navigator, was one of the worst navigators in Viking history. He had set off one day in search of the New World and had never been seen again.

  Oswald raised his eyebrows and handed the fish to Thorfinn. “There, that’s for you to practise with. And this…” He plucked a small brown cylinder from his robe and passed it to Thorfinn too. “This is a spyglass. If you look at things through it, they appear closer than they are, which can be useful at sea.”

  “How interesting! Thanks, old friend,” said Thorfinn. “And do you have any suggestions for how I can help my mother, now that my brothers are home?”

  “Hmmm…” Oswald scratched his head for a moment. He was so deep in thought, he dropped the pancake he’d been holding on the floor and trod on it. The jam and cream splurged out from under his sandal. He didn’t even notice. “The lot of Viking mothers is a tricky one. They’re expected to be as tough as men – to wrestle with elks and tame wolves. Yet at the same time they must care for their children, look after their husbands, hunt and cook the food, clean the house, make the clothes—”

  “All the rubbish stuff!” declared Velda through a mouthful of pancake. “It’s not fair! Why are women expected to do all that?” She turned to Thorfinn, fuming. “Are you sure you don’t want me to wallop your brothers?”

  Thorfinn politely shook his head. “I quite agree with you, though: it isn’t fair. We should share the household tasks. It shouldn’t all be down to poor Mother.”

  “You’ll have a problem persuading your father and brothers,” said Oswald. “If you ask a Viking man to do housework he’ll laugh at you – if you’re lucky. He might also lop your head off.”

  “I did ask,” said Thorfinn. “And they did laugh.”

  “Pretty please can I wallop them?” said Velda.

  “No, dear pal,” said Thorfinn. “I’ll find another way. Come on, we’ll be late for our elk-polo match.”

  “Hmmm…” said Oswald, rubbing his chin again. He looked around. “Now, where did I put that pancake of mine?”

  CHAPTER 5

  Elk polo was by far the most popular sport in Indgar village, and there was a big match at least once a month.

  Indgar’s polo pitch was on a meadow just above the village. Practically the entire population was at the match that afternoon, crammed into big stands around the sides of the pitch – except those poor people, like Thorfinn’s mum, who were too busy tidying up the other Vikings’ mess.

  The crowd erupted as the two teams, one in red and one in blue, rode out onto the pitch. Most of the crowd were waving blue flags.

  “COME ON YE BLUUUUUES!” they chanted.

  Thorfinn’s team, the reds, mostly consisted of children and the elderly. Thorfinn led them out, riding his favourite elk, Marjory. Marjory didn’t like getting her feet wet, so she tiptoed round all the muddy puddles, which made it look like she was doing a funny dance.

  “That’a girl, Marjory,” said Thorfinn, patting her neck.

  This brought gales of laughter from the crowd. “Look at Thorfinn! Him and his daft elk are doing the foxtrot!”

  Velda followed Thorfinn, riding her elk, Thunder. Thunder was red-eyed, ferocious and frothing at the mouth. As was Velda.

  “GRRRRR… I can’t wait to get stuck into them!” she yelled.

  Next came Oswald, who was half asleep on an equally elderly and dozy elk called Gladys.

  The blue team, however, included some of the meanest and biggest Vikings of Indgar. Some of them were even larger than the elks they were riding.

  They were like a team of bellowing bulls.

  They were led by Harald’s second in command, Erik the Ear-Masher, who was almost as wild and ferocious as the village chief himself. He glared at Thorfinn with wicked glee. “It’s payback time for all that horrible politeness!”

  Behind him rode his son, Olaf, a large boy with a face like a mangled turnip. He was rubbing his hands together. “Oh boy, justice at last!”

  Harald watched from the sidelines, along with Thorfinn’s three brothers.

  “Ach! This is going to be rubbish!” said Sven.

  “The blue team will rip Thorfinn’s team apart,” said Wilfred. “It will be the shortest match ever.”

  “We’ll be picking up pieces of Thorfinn from the grass,” laughed Hagar. The three brothers w
aved their blue flags in the air.

  “COME ON YE BLUES!”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure,” said Harald, snatching up a red flag and waving it. “Thorfinn’s clever, and he’s fast.”

  The whistle blew and the game kicked off.

  “COME ON THE REDS!” Velda screamed like a Valkyrie, and charged into battle.

  CHAPTER 6

  Have you ever seen a mouse tackle a pride of lions? That’s exactly what it was like watching Velda playing elk polo. She leapt onto the back of one of the enormous blues and wrestled the reins from him. Then she steered his panicking elk towards another two blue players. She jumped off just before they collided and rolled to her feet.

  “Hmm,” said Thorfinn. “I’m not sure the rules allow such a move.”

  The blue team’s entire front row collapsed in a huge pile, like a set of elk-and-Viking dominoes.

  “There’s nothing in the rule book that says I can’t jump on top of another player,” yelled Velda.

  “Hmm… fair point,” said Thorfinn.

  Velda’s unusual tactic of wiping out the blue team’s forwards caused a huge fist fight, with Velda at its centre. The Vikings loved nothing more than a good old punch-up. The Viking spectators poured out of the stands, some of them to get a better look, some of them to join in. Before long everyone was involved. The pitch turned into one giant scrum of flying fists, flying bodies, flying polo sticks and even flying elks.

  Everyone, that is, except Oswald and Gladys, who were now fast asleep, and Thorfinn, Marjory and Percy, who sat on the sidelines watching.