by Terry Deary
“Safe,” she breathed.
“Good morning, slave girl,” Sigurd said from the darkness. “I thought you might come here,” he sniggered. “Well, I’ve caught you now. I’ll be a hero in the village.” The boy grabbed her roughly and pushed her back through the door. “Come along, slave girl. Time to go to Valhalla.”
Chapter Seven
The Boat
Sigurd pushed Fleece down the hill ahead of him. The hunters saw him and came towards them. There was no chance of escape now.
“Ha!” the boy cried. “It’s funny, isn’t it? I’m going to send you to your death just like my father sent your father to his death.”
“What?” Fleece said, and stopped.
The boy brought his face close to hers. “You didn’t know that, did you, slave girl? My father used to be one of Askold’s warriors. He raided England and attacked a farm. When your father tried to stop our warriors, my father struck him in the eye with his sword. Then he took his child for a slave. That was you. That’s why you’re our slave. You didn’t know, did you?”
“So my father is dead?”
“Probably,” Sigurd shrugged.
Fleece nodded, then trudged on to the village where the Vikings were waiting for her. The villagers cheered the smirking Sigurd and slapped him on the back.
“The boat is ready,” the poet said. “We’re just waiting for the girl. Bring her to the shore.” He led the way.
But, when they reached the sandy beach and the battered boat, they saw a man with a staff was waiting there. He wore a wide-brimmed hat and a blue cloak.
“Who’s that?” a woman asked. “It looks like Odin himself.”
Fleece knew it was the English stranger. Now they would kill him, too.
“Greetings,” the man said.
“Who are you?” the woman asked.
“You just told your friends – I am Odin himself,” the man replied.
“Odin? With the voice of an Englishman?” a warrior jeered.
“Yes, Odin has just one eye!” the woman went on.
The stranger raised a hand and lifted his hat. The villagers and warriors took a step back in surprise. The man’s scarred face showed he had just one eye. The Vikings fell to their knees and muttered prayers.
“Enough!” the stranger said. “I am Odin and I’ve come to take your chief to Valhalla myself. Push the boat out, and I will sail it over the oceans to the end of the world.”
“What about the slave girl?” Sigurd asked.
“She can come as my servant. I’ll take care of her. Lift her onto the boat.”
The Vikings hurried to obey, and the strongest of the warriors pushed the boat into the water.
The one-eyed man raised the sail and let the cold, easterly wind push them away from the shore. The Vikings watched, dumb, as the boat drifted over the horizon.
“I never thought I’d meet the great god Odin,” the poet said. “I must go and write a poem about it.”
“It is a great day for the village,” Sigurd said.
“It is,” his father agreed. “But … but I am sure I have seen that man before.”
“Where, Father?”
“I don’t know … perhaps in a dream, eh? It doesn’t matter. Let’s go home. Without a slave girl, you’ll have to do more work on the farm.”
“What?” Sigurd wailed. “I’m not working like a slave. I won’t. I refuse.”
“Then I’ll beat you until you do,” his father promised. “Come along.”
Chapter Eight
Home
“You’re not really Odin, are you?” Fleece said.
“No, I am just a shipwrecked Englishman. But I saw what was happening and I had to do something.”
“You risked your life,” the girl said.
The man shrugged. “We can’t let the Vikings scare us. We have to stand against them.”
The grey waters slapped the rotten hull as the ship ploughed through the waves.
“It will last till we get to England,” the man said. “And Askold’s food will feed us on the journey. I live by Jarrow on the River Tyne. It’s about a day’s sailing away. We can give Askold a proper burial at the monastery there.”
“What will happen to me?” Fleece asked. “Will I be your slave now?”
“No, no!” the man laughed. “You can be one of my family. I once had a daughter your age.”
“What happened to her?”
“She was captured by Viking raiders. Oh, I tried to stop them, but I was only carrying a wooden crook for the sheep. One of their warriors attacked me with a sword. I had no chance. He struck me in the eye. They thought I was dead. I recovered … but my daughter was gone.
My wife says they threw her into a ship before they left. Every summer since, I have sailed to Norway … I trade with the Vikings. But really I am looking for Hilda.”
“Is that my name?” Fleece said quietly.
The man turned his one eye slowly towards the girl. “Hilda?”
“I was stolen from England by my master in the village,” Fleece explained.
“The Vikings stole many children,” the man said.
“This morning, the farmer’s son told me that my master killed my father … struck him in the eye and left him for dead.”
The man gazed at her. His one eye filled with a tear. He clutched the girl to him. “Your mother will think it’s a miracle.”
“Perhaps it is,” Hilda said.
The two stood at the front of the ship and saw a dark smudge that was land ahead. Seagulls screeched over their heads as if to welcome them.
The man hugged his daughter closer. “We’re going home, Hilda. We’re going home.”
Epilogue
No one knows why the Vikings left their farms and turned into raiders around 750. Maybe the farms were too poor to feed them. Maybe they needed slaves to work on them and grow enough food. Maybe stealing from helpless monks and farmers was an easier life. Or maybe they just enjoyed the adventure of sailing across the seas and fighting.
The Vikings loved to hear tales of Odin and the great gods. They really believed that men who died in battle would have a better afterlife. Their greatest chiefs and warriors were buried with their weapons and some were even buried in their ships.
But there was one place in the Viking world that was really cruel. The land of Rus is the place we now call Russia. In Rus they had a savage custom. They would sacrifice a slave girl so their chief would have a servant in Valhalla. The story of Fleece is not true. But some poor girls really did suffer this horrible death.
The Vikings were great sailors and some were brave warriors. They fought hard to feed their families. But they could be the cruellest men in a cruel world.
First published 2010 by
A & C Black
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP
www.acblack.com
This electronic edition published in March 2012 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Text copyright © 2010 Terry Deary
Illustrations copyright © 2010 Helen Flook
The rights of Terry Deary and Helen Flook to be identified as the
author and illustrator of this work have been asserted by them in
accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
ISBN: 978 1 4081 9802 5
A CIP catalogue for this book is available from the British Library.
All rights reserved
You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages
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