The Extremely Epic Viking Tale of Yondersaay (29 page)

“Someone,” Isdrab said, glancing accusingly at the twin who was looking sheepishly around him and whistling, “thought that two times a half a teaspoon was a quarter of a teaspoon, and of course that’s not correct at all. Two times half a—”

“I know how much two times half a teaspoon is,” Scathe put in impatiently. “It’s …” He paused.

“A teaspoon,” Isdrab said.

“I know that. I
know that!
”
Scathe said. “What are you doing about it?”

“We’re brewing up a new batch with the correct quantities right now,” Isdrab the Scientific said, “and, well, if it’s not too much bother, we’ll have to do the wee ceremony just one more time.”

“But it doesn’t matter,” Scathe said, “the copper-haired king has already told me where the treasure is.”

“I think it best to make double sure in these cases, sir. You never know. You have come very close many times before only to be disappointed,” Isdrab said. “There might be some side effect to this whole spell thing that we don’t know about, or there might be some detail that we’re overlooking. We’re so close, my liege. I’d feel a lot better if we just did the ceremony quickly once more. It’ll only take a minute. Just in case.”

Scathe sighed. “Fine. We’ll do it one more time.” He made a flamboyant turn, his robes flaring behind him. He fixed Ruairi with a big smile. “We have to do the silly magic thingy again just one more time. Bear with us. Won’t take a minute.”

“But—” Ruairi said.

“But what?” Scathe said, not making eye contact.

“But you just said you were going to kill me anyway,” Ruairi said.

“Nonsense,” Scathe said, half turning away from Ruairi.

“You
did
!” Ruairi said. “You said I am the mighty lord master, blah de blah de blah. I will show no mercy, fish to the sea, wahahahahaha, extinguishing an extinguishing thing; then you said I was for the chop!”

“I was joking,” Scathe said.

“Didn’t sound like you were joking.”

“I won’t kill you. I promise.”

“That’s what you said last time,” Ruairi said. “I must be honest. I’m not entirely sure I believe you.”

“Please?” Scathe said.

“Since you asked so nicely,” Ruairi said.

“Really?” Scathe said.

“
No
! Of course not!” Ruairi said. “Look, what’s that?” Ruairi gestured up at the sky. Everyone whirled around to look.

“What am I looking at?” Scathe asked. “What are you seeing that I’m not seeing?”

While their backs were turned, Ruairi grabbed the remains of the first potion from the portable lab and chucked it in Isdrab’s face. Isdrab’s shriek’s of “Oh, that is
heinous,
oh my
goodness,”
captured everyone’s attention for a crucial few seconds. Ruairi took off across the ice.

He ran as fast as he could and did not stop. He was wearing sneakers, so he could grip the ice and run without fear of slipping. He knew he had only to get a reasonable distance from the leather-shoe wearing Viking henchmen dotted about the ice to have an unassailable head start. Ruairi glanced backwards as he ran and saw Scathe drop his eyes and notice that Ruairi was not in his place on his stool.

“Which way do we go? Right or left?” Dani looked back into the tunnel and asked Granny, who was coming up behind her. They had crawled a long way in the dark and were slowing with fatigue.

“I can’t remember. Let me sit and think for a minute,” Granny said, breathing heavily. She took a steak and kidney pie out of her sock and bit into it. She looked first at the tunnel that went right and then at the tunnel that went left. “Left!” Granny said finally, handing half the steak and kidney pie to Dani.

“Left. Are you sure?”

Granny didn’t look sure, but she perked up and confidently said, “Yes, left!”

Dani led the way again, taking the left fork in the tunnel, remembering to drop a little pink and then a violet and then a lemon and then a pale blue flower behind her every few paces.

“There’s light! Up ahead,” Dani said. “You were right, Granny; we’ve reached the end of the tunnel.”

“Well done, Dani, my dear. Well done for leading us so excellently. Nearly there now, nearly there.”

Dani rounded a sharp bend in the tunnel. After spending so long in the darkness, she was instantly blinded by a blast of sunlight. She groped her way forward and pushed out, feeling the icy twirl of the winter’s breeze.

Granny squeezed out next to her. Filthy and sore from all the digging, they let the breeze caress their relaxing limbs.

Then they heard a voice say, “Ooh, lookie here! I do believe we literally have an ace in the hole. No, wait.
Two
aces in the hole!”

Granny and Dani recognized Scathe’s voice at once and immediately made to dart back underground. They weren’t quick enough; the Turbot cousins grabbed them and pulled them all the way out of the tunnel.

Scathe clapped his hands together, threw his head back, and emitted a loud, cackling laugh.

“Chilling laugh, sir!” Asgrim said.

“Wonderful,” Scathe said, throwing back his head and cackling again. Scathe then turned to the other side of the ice field and shouted, “If you do not come back here this instant, I will literally chop this girl and this woman into a thousand pieces and throw them off the cliff into the sea.”

“Can I do some chopping? I haven’t done any chopping all day,” Hamish put in quietly from the back.

“Later, like I keep telling you! If there’s time before the sacrifice …”

The escaping Ruairi stopped abruptly. He was close to the edge of the ice, mere inches from a hidden dip. He looked back and was horrified to see Dani and Granny struggling against the smug-looking Turbot cousins. He turned back to the gathering on the terrace. He was terrified for his sister and his great-great-great-grandmother. He took a step toward the crowd but caught his big sister’s gaze and halted. He stopped, he looked at her. She was pointing at the strips of fluorescent material on her winter coat, and he instantly knew what she meant.

“Mum! What would Mum tell me to do?” And Ruairi knew that Dani was urging him to “
keep safe and
run away
!”

He understood. He knew that that was what he absolutely should do. Scathe was not to be trusted. Ruairi would be no use to Dani and Granny if he was imprisoned with them, or worse, sacrificed at sundown. But it seemed so cowardly to run off and leave two of the people he loved most in the world to the most despicable person he had ever met. Ruairi wished he was relying on Dani rather than the other way around.

He took a moment, stilled his mind, and thought, “If I run, I can get help. If I stay, I am useless.” He repeated this thought over and over, but Ruairi couldn’t move. He couldn’t leave them. He was cold and he was scared and he couldn’t move. Ruairi looked up and caught his big sister’s gaze again. Dani smiled at him; it was so good to see her. She rolled her eyes, and Ruairi beamed back at her. He would have laughed, but he was afraid he would cry instead.

With a weak smile at his sister and his granny, Ruairi straightened his back and turned it on them. He walked purposefully toward the edge of the mountain, jumped off the edge, and was gone.

“That was unexpected!” Scathe said.

“What do we do now, sir?” Asgrim asked. “We can’t really perform the sacrifice if there’s no one to sacrifice.”

“
Thanks for pointing that out, genius
!” Scathe shrieked. He let out a roar of fury, then spun around and came within inches of his two prisoners. With a quiet menace, he said, “Take the two of them to the dungeon until I figure out what’s to be done.” Scathe turned to two of the five twins and said, “You two! After the Red King!”

The two men ran across the ice after Ruairi, slipping a bit and falling a lot in their leather and wool foot coverings.

Scathe circled Dani and Granny. Isdrab tiptoed over and spoke in Scathe’s ear. “You’re not worried about them being in the same place as, you know, the
other
prisoner?”

“The old man is so out of it he doesn’t even know who he is,” Scathe said, “and so there is literally no chance they’ll have the remotest clue that the stinking, emaciated, blubbering, drooling idiot in chains is Odin, father of all the Vikings.”

Dani and Granny glanced at each other and looked away again.

“If you’re sure,” Isdrab said to Scathe.

“Are you questioning me?”

“Yes.” Isdrab said. Scathe turned on him and gave him an injurious look. “I mean, no. No! I wouldn’t
dream
of questioning you,” Isdrab corrected.

“I will literally eat your spleen for breakfast if you cross me,” Scathe said, raising one eyebrow.

“I have no doubt. I beg your forgiveness, my lord,” Isdrab said, bowing low.

“With a
spoon
,” Scathe said as Isdrab went to take the prisoners to the dungeon. “Wait! I have changed my mind,” Scathe announced, pointing a finger in the air. “And not because of what you just said right now,” he added, more quietly. “
Take the prisoners to the longship
!” he screeched.

“The longship now, is it?” Isdrab said.

“To be sacrificed,” Scathe said maliciously. “If Mohammed won’t go to the mountain, then the mountain, and in this case, of course, I mean, the Red King, will come to Mohammed.”

“
What
?” Granny and Dani looked quizzically at Scathe.

“The mountain … and Mohammed! You’ve never heard that before?” Scathe asked Dani and Granny, who both shook their heads vigorously. “You’re not getting it?”

Granny and Dani looked at each other, shrugged, and shook their heads again.

“The sacrifice!” Scathe said, throwing his hands in the air and letting out a big sigh. “If the Red King won’t go to the sacrifice, then we’ll make him go to the sacrifice.” Scathe ran through what he’d just said again in his head, moving his lips as he did so.

Asgrim leaned forward and said, “Sounded better the other way, with Mohammed and what have you.”

“Anyway, the point is,” Scathe went on, “we’ll just sacrifice you instead, and if he turns up to save you, we’ll kill you and him. And if he doesn’t turn up to save you, then we’ll kill you and then hunt him down and then kill him.” Scathe gave a withering smile, turned to his men, and shouted, once more, with a great deal of joyous feeling this time, “
Take the prisoners to the longship
!”

The sun was already beginning its evening turn toward the west, the sky was darkening, and day was coming to a close. News had spread that the Red King of Denmark had come to Yondersaay and that there would be a genuine, real-life sacrifice at the Great Yuletide Sacrificial Festival this year. The islanders were fizzing with excitement. And who could blame them? Yondersaanians loved a good entrail examination ceremony and subsequent sacrifice as much as the next Viking. Once the oracle had confirmed the Red King’s identity, the sacrificial rites would be performed.

Every person on the island was helping to prepare. After their morning walk down the High Street to the harbour, they cooked, practiced dances, and organized skits and other amusements all day. Chickens, quails, and turkeys had been slaughtered, plucked, and roasted. Casks of mead had been carted to the shore. Now, a pig was rotating on a spit, whole salmons were being grilled on beachside fires, potatoes were baking on hot stones, and cauldrons of stews and soups were seasoned and stirred.

Groups of Vikings sped about lighting hundreds of torches and sticking them into the sand. The men and women drank mead while they waited for proceedings to begin. People sang and danced, and all were in very high spirits.

Children were chasing each other along the beach. A tiny blue car was burning brightly, and some Vikings were dancing around it. The car alarm, no longer piercing, gave a final whinny and fizzled to silence.

At the center of the hubbub, the pyre piled high, a longship resting atop it, awaiting ceremonial torching. The dragon’s head at the prow of the longship rose haughtily into the air and bore a ferocious gaze down on the assembled Vikings. The deck bowed out from the dragon’s neck and tightened into a tail at the stern. The mast towered over the scene - at its base was a tidy pile of kindling.