Leif Frond and the Viking Games (5 page)

“What?” both Manni and I exclaimed.

There was a moment of stunned silence in the crowd, and then…

“Bet he can't do
that
twice!” crowed someone.

“I'll take that bet!” yelled someone else – and then
he
gave me a shove, sending me right back at Manni with a flying leap.

And it happened again. As I slithered wildly out of his grip all I could see was the astonished look on his face. He'd never had an opponent like me before!

The crowd called out for more. Everyone was laughing – but they were cheering too. Before anybody else could ‘help', I dove back into the fray and slid wildly across Manni's chest as he tried to grab hold of me and completely failed. Granny's goose-fat ointment had turned me into something utterly ungrippable.

“It's like watching a big old bear trying to catch a salmon!” I heard someone say above the laughter and applause.

I'm an uncatchable fish
! I was starting to get excited. Could there possibly be some way of turning this whole embarrassing episode into something worthy of a real champion?

I turned for another go, and then I noticed that Manni had started to wheeze weirdly. He began to stagger. Was this my chance? I flung myself at him one more time, slid off at an angle, landed on my feet, and turned just in time to see him crash to the ground.

Abruptly, the crowd fell silent. Manni was shaking and twitching and making a strange noise. What had I done? Was he having a heart attack? I know the sagas talk about men makingtheir first kill when they're only young, but… but… Manni was
nice…

“Manni? Manni! Are you all right?” I rushed over to him, completely forgetting that this might well be a trick to get me within arm's reach. But there was nothing here that seemed like a ruse. He was breathing in great gulps, and there were tears streaming from his eyes, and he was clutching his stomach.

“Oh, Manni – I'm so sorry – I–”

Then my father hurried into the ring and pushed me to one side. He knelt down and began to examine my fallen opponent for broken bones or internal injury. My heart was twisting in my chest like a hooked eel. The crowd was completely silent. Then my father slowly stood up. He had a peculiar expression on his face.

I grabbed his arm – I needed to know. “Tell me – is he going to be all right? Have I…
killed
him?” I felt really, really awful – andthen I realised that things weren't quite the way they seemed.

Manni wasn't dying.

He was laughing.

He was rolling around on the ground, not in pain, but because he was crying, wheezing, hooting with hilarity. I had rendered my opponent helpless by being funnier than anything he'd ever come across in his whole life.

At that moment, I almost wished he
were
dying.

My father just stood there, looking from me to the still-giggling Manni and back to me again.

He didn't know what to do.

But the crowd did.

“The winner's Little Salmon!” they cried.

“Slippery Fish! Slippery Fish!”

“Best laugh I've had all year!”

It was too much for any grease-covered champion to face.

I turned tail, and ran.

CHAPTER SIX

Surprisingly Uplifting

B
ut not even embarrassment could keep me away from the final event of the Games.

The weightlifting.

The rules for Viking weightlifting are simple. There is a big boulder. There is a track. Each contestant picks up the big boulderand sees how far they can carry it along the track. Perfectly straightforward.

But in these Games,
nothing
was straightforward. First Wandering Nell, our eccentric escape-mad cow, came blundering over to see what all the commotion was about. She managed to leave several large steamy cowpats on the track while I was trying to get her to go away again, and guess who got to clean
that
up?

Then there were the very different smells of the feast drifting distractingly down from the Hall. Sometimes this is where you can start to lose the crowd. But today, with Blogfeld about and all theweird happenings, nobody was going to risk missing out on anything, even for first dibs on the roast meat.

So, as we gathered down by the stream I wasn't surprised to see that there was an especially good crowd of spectators. However I couldn't help noticing there was also a definite – and worrying – shortage of contestants.

“Where is everyone?” wondered my father anxiously. He was standing by the weightlifting boulder. All in a cluster beside him were the Widow, Harald Blogfeld and my granny. It was impossible to separate that lot! And my granny had another one of those pleased-with-herself looks all over her face.

Oh-oh,
I thought.

What on earth was she up to this time?

“Where
are
they?” my father repeated, peering about. “I really don't understand.”

Then my granny spoke up.

“Oh, I was supposed to tell you all – quite a number of the young men said to start without them,” she said in a clear, carrying voice. “They've all gone up the mountain for a while.”

My father wearily closed his eyes.

“Why?” he asked.

“Oh, because I'm almost certain I saw an enormous eagle,” my granny said innocently. “Circling over the Weirdly Crag. I told all the young men I met about it. I may have also mentioned how impressed we'd all be with the one who could catch such a bird to present to our honoured guest.” She leered up at Harald Blogfeld and I have a horrible feeling she may have winked. “I
know
you'd look ever so fine with an eagle on your fist,” she said sweetly.

She was right. Blogfeld
would
look amazing with a huge bird like that. Anyone would! For a moment I could see
myself
with such a mighty creature…

…its tearing talons clasped with an iron grip on the leather guard the champion wore on his great right forearm, its cruel beak ever ready to rip and rend, its glinting golden eye staring into his, searching for signs of fear or weakness, searching in vain…

And then common sense kicked in, and I had to admit that a bird like that would probably weigh as much as I do, and trying to attach one to my arm would immediately tip me over onto my face.

“Well then, I suppose we'll have to call it a day,” my father was saying. “If there is no one from any of the settlements willing to come forward and compete?”

It was a depressing end to our Games. We'd worked so hard to make them the best, and what with the special mead and the boar's bottom and the whole fiasco with me and the grease and then all the contestants disappearing on this wild-goose eagle chase, it had turned into a fizzle.

Then someone stepped up to the mark.

It was my granny.

“What are you doing
now
?” moaned my father.

“What does it look like? I'm entering the competition.”

“But… why?”

“Why, for the honour of Frondfell! Look, I see it this way. If there's only one competitor, that competitor wins, am I right? And since I'm the only one here, that means I win. Frondfell, the host settlement, wins. I don't see how anyone can argue with that.”

“But you… you haven't even picked up the boulder!” protested my father, a truly desperate note in his voice.

“Is that all?” said my granny. “Well, I'm happy to give it a go. How hard can it be?”

With one voice, my father and I groaned. With one voice, the crowd cheered! My granny, of course, listened to the crowd. She waved and grinned and then, first carefully laying down her stick, she spat on her hands, grabbed the boulder – which was not far off being as big as she was – and heaved.

Nothing happened.

My granny shifted her grip a little and heaved again.

And again nothing happened.

The crowd was willing her on, but my father had already stepped forward to put an end to it when the Widow Brownhilde did something truly amazing.

Very calmly, without any fuss, she walked over to where my granny was struggling with the boulder. She looked at her for a moment, then bent forward, wrapped her arms around Granny
and
the boulder and, astonishingly, picked them both up. Without even a grunt or a groan she carried her burden right to the end of the track and then even further, on to theedge of the stream and then…

…she
dropped them in
!

Well, you have never heard language like that! My granny came to the surface spluttering and swearing and sopping wet. She was mad, all right. But, like a cat or a hen, old people can look a whole lot smaller and more fragile when you drench them, and I think the Widow must have got a shock when she saw just how tiny my granny looked, standing there up to her hips in the chilly water. Whatever the reason, Brownhilde leaned over and held out a hand.

“Here – I'll help you,” she cried.

Big mistake,
I thought, seeing the look on my granny's face.
Big, big mistake.

I was right.

My granny looked at the hand that was being stretched out to her, and she looked at the way the Widow was a bit off balance, and she grabbed that hand with her bony old fingers and pulled.

The splash Brownhilde made as she hit the stream was colossal. When she rose up out of the water again it was like watching a breaching whale. Fearing she might be feeling rather lethal, my father rushed forward to rescue my granny and Harald Blogfeld went to rescue the Widow, and somehow they both managed to fall into the stream as well. And then all the spectators got involved, trying to rescue
them
, and then each other, and by the time the feast bell was rung, there were more soaking wet guests than dry ones, and everybody had great big grins plastered all over their faces.

The Viking Games had ended not with a bang, but with a splash, and we all headed with a good will towards the Hall and the feast.

CHAPTER SEVEN

But Who Won?