Leif Frond and the Viking Games (4 page)

“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

N
ow, 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 her. 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.

“I…” he said in a strangled sort of voice. “I… um…” And suddenly he was gone, racing for the latrines.

“Granny!” I hissed.

“Someone must have shared their cup with him,” she whispered back defensively. “What, do you think I'd give it to him deliberately?”

There was a pause as the crowd exchanged puzzled glances.

“Um… there seems to be a lot of that going around,” said my father wearily.

“I'm happy to wrestle someone else, sir,” said Manni politely.

“That's very decent of you,” said my father. “But apparently there have been a number of disqualifications and we, um, we appear to have run out of competitors.”

The Widow had already stepped forward to congratulate
her
contestant on being the winner by default, when…

“Not quite!” shrilled Granny.

“What?” said my father. He looked pained, as if he were getting a headache.

“You're not quite out of contestants,” said Granny.

I looked about, relieved. Who had shown up? Was it Brand? Or Haki? Not either of the twins, I hoped. They were both useless at wrestling. Who was she talking about?

“Just give me a moment to strip him down, and he's all yours,” called Granny. And then, for no reason that I could see, she grabbed me by the sleeve and dragged me away in the direction of the Hall.

“Wha… what?!”

“It's you or nobody,” she grunted. “Now get your shirt off.”

I could not believe what was happening. I tried to pull away.

“What about Haki? Or the twins? Or – ”

“Haven't you been paying attention? Haki's sprained his wrist, Brand's wrenched his shoulder, and the twins have been disqualified for trying to nobble some of the Hildefjord wrestlers before the event.” Granny snorted. “I wouldn't mind them having a go, if they'd been any good at it. But they weren't. So, undress yourself
now
– or I'll do it for you!” she said, as we arrived in the Hall.

Reluctantly, I started to pull my shirt over my head, thinking all the while,
Manni is going to massacre me. My entire body's about as thick as one of his arms. Why does my granny hate me all of a sudden
? Then, as I emerged,it got worse. She had a pot of something horrible and stinky in her hands, and a strange gleam in her eyes.

“What's that smell?
Hey
!” I squealed.

“Stop wriggling,” my granny scolded, as she rubbed great globs of the foul-smelling stuff onto me. “It's my best quality goose-fat ache ointment.”

“But I'm not sore!” I cried, trying to squirm out of her bony grip.

“You will be,” she muttered, not letting go at all. “You will be.”

And then, after checking that I was entirely basted in ointment, she herded me outside, and back to the wrestling ring.

Have I mentioned I'm not exactly fully-grown yet? That might not give you a completely clear picture. Think shoulders of a ferret, arms of a plucked chicken and the overall physique of a rat in a lean year, and you'll understand that stripping me down to my shorts is not the way to see me at my best. But, there I was in the wrestling ring,
being
seen by everyone I have ever known and quite a few strangers besides.

It was a nightmare in the daytime.

Basically, I could barely move for embarrassment, and it could have all ended right then and there, if it hadn't been for my granny's stick, which has quite a sharp pointy end, and which she unexpectedly poked my bottom with.

I lunged forward with a sort of stifled war cry. Manni assumed I was attacking and grabbed at me – and I scooted straight out of his hands and across to the other side of the ring.