Viking Boy by Tony Bradman Page B

agreed to serve you.”
    “Even so…” Gunnar said uncertainly. “How can I fight Skuli?”
    “I can teach you to be a warrior,” Father said. “I always took you hunting with me from the time you learned to walk, so I know you can use a spear. And I showed you something of how to use a sword and shield, if only in games…”
    “There are others here who can help you too,” said Odin. “Great warriors who sit in Valhalla with little to do, waiting for Ragnarok and wishing they were still alive in the mortal world. When you have learned what you need, you can go back with Rurik and Thorkel and Viglaf and his crew and they can deal with everyone other than Skuli. You would never have met them either if it hadn’t been for your journey.”
    “But all that will take too long, won’t it?” said Gunnar.
    “Don’t worry,” said Father. “Your mother is safe for the time being. Skuli pressed her hard to begin with, but she held him off. He said he would give her a year and a day – then marry her whether she liked it or not.”
    Gunnar looked at him and Odin. Could they really turn him into a warrior in such a short time? They clearly believed it was possible, but Gunnar’s heart was still full of doubt. If only he could be sure. If only he could know the future! Then he remembered he was at the top of Yggdrasil, and sitting at the foot of the tree were three beings who had already decided what was to happen.
    “All right,” he said. “But first I want to ask the Norns about my fate.”
    “You might not like the answer they give you,” said Odin, frowning. He and Father exchanged a look, and Father shrugged as if to say it was fine with him.
    “I’ll deal with that if I have to,” said Gunnar.
    “Very well,” said Odin. “Close your eyes, Gunnar…”
    * * *
    Gunnar did as he was told, and when he opened them he was standing before a vast, endless tangle of knotted fibres that pulsed – and he knew that he was looking at the web woven by the Norns. A light flared near by, and Gunnar saw three hunched figures in ragged black cloaks, their skin pale and wrinkled, their mouths toothless and drooling, their hair like nests of snakes. One sat at a huge spindle, new threads spooling off it into the hands of the second, who swiftly wove them into the web, and the third wielded a giant pair of shears.
    “Spin and weave, spin and weave,” said the first.
    “Into a line of silver thread,” said the second.
    “Then with a little snip … you’re dead, dead, dead!” said the third, cutting through several threads at once. The three of them cackled, and Gunnar heard ghostly voices, the spirits of the newly dead wailing softly in the darkness. He wondered who they had been and how they had died. Then all three Norns turned to stare at him, their hands still spinning and weaving and cutting ceaselessly.
    “Well, well, well,” said the first. “Who have we here?”
    “It’s the boy,” said the second. “Our chosen one!”
    “Watching him suffer was so much …
FUN
!” said the third.
    “I’m glad you enjoyed it,” he said, returning their gaze. “I came here to ask you a question, but now I have more than one. Why did you choose to make me suffer? And what will my fate be, and that of Skuli?”
    “If not you, who else?” said the first, shrugging.
    “Too happy, far too blessed!” said the second.
    “Definitely in need of a test,” said the third, and the cackling began again.
    Gunnar sighed. Was that it? He had been too happy, too blessed in his life and parents, so they had decided to take it all away from him? Perhaps it was best never to be happy, then. You couldn’t miss what you didn’t have. But even as the thought came to him he realized that was no way to live his life.
    “You didn’t answer my other questions,” he said.
    “Should we tell him of his fate?” said the first.
    “Of course we should!” said the second. “And we won’t lie.”
    “One of you will live,” said