Leif Frond and the Viking Games by Joan Lennon Page B

coastal villages all over the known world.
    But what was it doing at our Midsummer Games? All around me, people were asking each other the very same question, and nobody seemed to have the answer.
    â€œExcuse me one moment,” I said to the Widow Brownhilde.
    And then I ran.

CHAPTER TWO
    Champion of the Waves
    T here are pillaging-and-burning Vikings, and there are trading-and-fishing-and-farming Vikings. My family are the second kind, though most of my big brothers aren’t completely happy about it. Even Karl, my nicest brother – well, he hasn’t said anything, but I’ve watched how his eyes light up when the travelling bards come and recite the sagas, stories of adventure on the high seas, glorious battles and daring raids, and I know just how he feels.
    My father says, “Sagas about death and destruction are all fine and good, but you can’t trade with somebody if you’ve just slaughtered them.”
    You have to admit, he has a point.
    But if my father is a trading-fishing-farming Viking, you only had to take one look at that longship to know that the people sailing in it
weren’t
.
    By the time I’d fetched my father back to the beach, the strangers were already dragging their ship up the shingle. Every last one of them had muscles trying to explode out of their skin and exotic scars and enough beard hair between them to blanket a mountain. But they were titchy compared to their leader.
    He
was gigantic, and he strode up our beach as if he owned it. He towered over even my father. He was wearing rich clothes and a fur cloak – even though it was the middle of the summer – and he had the most magnificent ash blond beard I have ever seen. (I could see he thought it was pretty magnificent too, because he kept stroking it as if it were a cat.)
    â€œWelcome to Frondfell,” said my father. “And welcome to the Midsummer Games.” There’s no one on earth my father can’t deal with (other than the Widow of course and, well, my granny) so I think it must have been the race to the beach that made his voice sound a little odd just then.
    â€œMidsummer Games! Excellent!” the stranger bellowed. “Exactly what I need.”
    And then he just stood there, looking majestic and stroking his beard, surrounded by a sea of whispering, fidgeting folk, all in their festival finery, all bright-eyed and keyed-up.
    â€œWho
is
he?” I hissed to my brother Karl.
    â€œThat’s Harald Blogfeld!” Karl whispered back in a voice of deep awe.
    â€œWho?”
    â€œYou don’t know who Harald Blogfeld is?” Karl turned and stared down at me in amazement. “The Champion of the Waves? The Scourge of the Seas? The Viking’s Viking? I heard he’s the most successful raider there’s ever been. I heard he attacks more villages in a season than anybody else!”
    â€œI
heard he’s a nutter,” said Thorhalla (my troll-sister), as she pushed by with a mead jug and a drinking horn, knocking me over as she went with a sly elbow.
    â€œShhh!” hissed Karl, horrified in case someone might have overheard what she’d said, but Thorhalla just tossed her braids at him. She went right up to the great man as if he were just another guest in a busy hostess’s day, and poured him a welcoming drink. She didn’t tremble or curtsey or anything. She’s pretty hard-boiled, Thorhalla. Maybe it’s the troll in her. Maybe if
I
had some troll blood in me, I’d be utterly fearless too. Of course, I’d also be utterly obnoxious, and champions are
never
obnoxious. Still, it would come in handy, not being scared of anything… they would call me Leif the Unafraid… Leif the –
    â€œLeif! Stop muttering! Harald Blogfeld is about to speak!” Karl nudged me in the ribsso hard I fell over (again). He didn’t meananything by it, though – he’s just really,really strong. And he helped me up