Thorfinn and the Rotten Scots

by David MacPhail

  For Ross – D.M.

  To Barney, the wildest of wild cats ever – R.M.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

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  CHAPTER 1

  It was the Dark Age in Scotland, when men were big and hairy, and women were also big and hairy, and EVERYONE was scared of the Vikings.

  Where the Highlands met the Lowlands, the mountains and forests gave way to rolling hills, farms – and lots of towns. Rich towns. Just the kind of towns Vikings loved to plunder.

  One day, a young Viking boy strolled out of the deep dark woods, a speckled pigeon perched on his shoulder. He walked up to the gates of the nearest town.

  The guards on the walls bristled with weapons.

  “Who goes there?” they growled.

  A well-meaning grin spread across the boy’s face. He took off his helmet and saluted them. “Good day, dear sirs. How pleased I am to meet you. My name is Thorfinn the Very-Very-Nice-Indeed. And this…” he stroked the bird’s head, “…is my pigeon, Percy. We’re calling today on behalf of the Vikings.”

  ***

  Meanwhile, back in the woods, the rest of the Viking raiders waited.

  And waited…

  “RRR! Where is he?” cried Erik the Ear-Masher. He had a giant beard, a face like a mangled turnip, and only one eye.

  “You’re always spoiling for a fight, aren’t you?” roared Harald the Skull-Splitter, whose beard was bigger and bushier than Erik’s, a sure sign he was the chief.

  “We should never have sent your son to deliver terms,” growled Erik. “Him and that daft bird.”

  Erik’s son, Olaf, roared in agreement, “He never does it right.” Olaf’s face looked like a potato that had been forced through a mangle. “The Viking way!”

  (The ‘Viking way’ just meant lopping someone’s head off with a huge axe.)

  “Hear, hear!” cried the men.

  Olaf was on a roll now. “He’s an embarrassment! He makes friends wherever he goes. We Vikings HATE friends!”

  “YEAAAHHHH!” cried the mob.

  “DOWN WITH FRIENDS!” Olaf climbed up a nearby tree so everyone could see him. “Who needs ’em? We want enemies, not friends! Death to all friends!”

  “YYYEEEEAAAHHHH!”

  “Oh, except my pal Sven the Head-Crusher from the next village,” said one of the men.

  “Oh, yes, and Yorgar the Elk-Herder. He’s a good laugh,” said another.

  “And Yoren the Monk-Slinger. He’s good at wrestling.”

  “Alright! Alright! But why don’t we just charge?” cried Olaf.

  “Yesss!!” they all agreed.

  Oswald, the village wise man and Thorfinn’s friend, interrupted them: “SHUUSSH!” He had an incredibly loud and whiny voice. He sounded like a sheep with asthma. “Thorfinn might have a good reason for not coming back.”

  “YEH!” Now Velda piped up. She was also Thorfinn’s friend, a small girl with a very large helmet and an even larger axe. Girls weren’t usually allowed on Viking voyages, but she had proved herself as one of the village’s best axe throwers. “Don’t forget, he has saved you many times. If it hadn’t been for Thorfinn you’d all be elk fodder, the lot of you!”

  “Rubbish!” cried Erik the Ear-Masher. “He’s probably down there baking scones with them!”

  “Yeah! Or drinking tea!” yelled Olaf.

  “Yeah! Or playing scrabble!” added Erik.

  “So what are we waiting for?” cried Olaf.

  The Vikings were about to break cover and charge, when Harald himself erupted:

  “SHUT UUUUUUUUUPPP!”

  He whipped out his sword and sliced the nearest tree in half. “YAAAAHH!”

  The tree crashed to the ground and the men leapt back in fear.

  “We will give Thorfinn another hour. Then, if he’s still not back, we charge. Is that clear?” demanded Harald.

  ***

  Which is why, as dusk fell an hour later, a heavily armed band of Vikings stormed out of the woods to attack the town.

  “Slaughter them!” they shouted.

  “Make mincemeat of them!”

  “Turn them into burgers!”

  “Sausages!”

  “Mash!”

  “My tummy’s rumbling.”

  “Did I mention I was hungry?”

  “SHUT UP, you bunch of useless dogs!” cried Harald. “Let’s show these lily-livered town-dwellers some of your Viking wrath!”

  CHAPTER 2

  “RAAAAARRR!” the Vikings yelled as they charged towards the town, then stopped dead in their tracks. The town gates were wide open and the streets were deserted.

  “Where is everyone?” asked Erik the Ear-Masher.

  The group wandered along the main street towards the sound of music, singing and dancing, which was coming from the town square.

  A door burst open. Harald’s men raised their swords, expecting a surprise attack, but it was just an old woman carrying a baby.

  “Oh, there you are,” she said, without the slightest hint of fear. “Thorfinn said you’d be coming.”

  “My son, Thorfinn?” asked Harald.

  “Yes, such a lovely boy, and look, you’ve come dressed up as well. How lovely. Here, hold this…” She thrust the baby into Harald’s arms. “Come on, lads.” She led them over to a large table stacked with food. “Help yourselves!” The Vikings’ eyes lit up as she handed out pieces of pie, slices of cake and wedges of cheese. Then she started doling out flagons of ale from a large barrel.

  The men sheathed their weapons. They’d hardly eaten for three days, and they accepted the food and ale eagerly.

  “Mmmm, nice cake,” said one of them.

  The baby smiled at Harald, and he found himself smiling back.

  “Coochee-coochee-cooo!” he said, before he shook himself out of it and plonked the baby back into the woman’s arms. “Wait, where’s Thorfinn?”

  “Follow me,” she said, and led them down the street towards the music.

  In the square, a large party was taking place. The townspeople were dressed in their finest clothes, and the buildings were festooned with flags and bunting. The tables were piled high with food, and there was more ale splashing about than the Vikings had ever seen.

  Harald and his men felt slightly embarrassed as they trooped in, dirty, smelly and steaming with sweat, but to their surprise everyone cheered. People were slapping their backs and thrusting pie and ale into their already-full-of-pie-and-ale hands.

  “Very good!” said the townspeople. “They’re hilarious! Yes, very realistic!”

  Harald’s band stood in the midst of the applauding crowd. No Viking would admit it, but they were a tiny bit scared.

  “No one we’ve attacked has cheered us before,” said one of them.

  “Don’t they realise we’re ruthless barbarians?” said Erik. “What’s wrong with these people?”

  Just then Harald caught sight of Thorfinn. He was sitting on a barrel at the very centre of the party, with his pigeon perched on his shoulder. The townspeople were listening to him eagerly.

  “Go on, Thorfinn, tell us another of your braw riddles.”

  “Very well,” said Thorfinn.

  “I am lighter than what I am made of.

&nb
sp; More of me is hidden than you can see.

  I am the curse of the sailor.

  What am I?”

  The people clapped. “Very good, very good.”

  “Oh, that is an interesting one,” said the wise man Oswald, hobbling up to join Thorfinn.

  Velda was the only one who didn’t seem impressed. “I hate riddles. They’re boring. And too easy.”

  “So, what’s the answer then, smarty pants?” asked Oswald.

  Velda sighed. “Simple. What floaty things do we have to watch out for when we’re sailing in the northern sea?”

  Oswald cried out, “ICEBERGS!”

  “Correct!” said Thorfinn, at which point Oswald broke into a kind of dance. Nowadays we would call it a moonwalk but no one had walked on the moon back then. Let’s call it a cakewalk instead.

  Harald barged through the crowd, glaring at his son.

  “Father, dear, how pleased I am to see you,” said Thorfinn. “I told my new friends here all about you and the others.”

  “Yes, we can see that,” replied Harald. He had an incredibly twitchy eye when he got angry. Mostly it twitched at his enemies, but now it was twitching at Thorfinn.

  Harald turned to his men, only to find they had vanished. Some had been whisked off to dance with the townswomen. Others had joined a conga line, which was snaking its way round the square. Even Erik and Olaf had wandered off to watch an arm-wrestling competition.

  A short, podgy man stepped forward and grinned from ear to ear. “Ach, Mr Skull-Splitter, it’s yerself! Thorfinn told us aw about ye.”

  Harald was about to whip out his sword and chop the man’s head off, when the man grabbed his hand and began shaking it up and down.

  “I’m the Mayor here. Ye know, when Thorfinn first turned up at oor gates we were terrified. We thought the real Vikings had come tae burn doon our toon. Then he started talking… and aw, what a polite wee laddie. It was only then that we realised – you weren’t the real Vikings at aw, just a friendly group of entertainers. Whit a great idea, though, pretending to be Vikings. I mean, we Scots, we love a good laugh better than anybody.”

  A steward walked past carrying a giant platter of roast goat. Harald caught a whiff and his stomach rumbled. It was without doubt his number one favourite meat in the world.

  “Mmmm.”

  Harald shook the man’s hand firmly.

  CHAPTER 3

  It wasn’t until later…

  Much later…

  I mean MUCH, MUCH later…

  After the Vikings had been fed and water and slept in comfy feather beds for the night. After a large breakfast of roast meats, honeyed gammon and glazed venison. After Harald had his portrait painted shaking hands with the Mayor…

  In fact, it wasn’t until they were marching up the hill away from the town, with their new friends lined up on the walls shouting “BYE-EEE”, that it finally hit Harald.

  “What was all that about?” he cried, grabbing Thorfinn’s shoulder.

  “I thought it went swimmingly, Father. Oh, dear me, did I do anything wrong?” replied Thorfinn.

  “Swimmingly?!” cried Erik the Ear-Masher, as Harald walked away with his head in his hands. “We should be up to our eyes in loot. Look at me!” Erik was wearing a garland round his neck and had roses in his hair. Some small girl had painted his fingernails pink while he was sleeping. “This is NOT what a Viking should look like.”

  Oswald jabbed Erik with his walking stick. “Thanks to Thorfinn, you all have full bellies, you’ve slept in comfy beds and you drank an entire river’s worth of ale.”

  “Bah!” Erik replied. “We can’t have this milksop child and his pet bird going ahead of us at every town we hit. He’s supposed to be a spy, not a party entertainer!”

  “They thought we were a bunch of Viking impersonators!” said one man tearfully.

  “We’ll end up going back to Norway with nothing!” said another.

  “Why do we always have to take him on our voyages?” asked Olaf.

  Velda stood right in front of Erik and Olaf, her arms folded angrily, glaring up at them from under the lip of her helmet. “You know fine well why. Thorfinn is the cleverest of us all. We need him!”

  Erik ignored her and appealed to his chief, Harald. “We came here to burn, loot and pillage, not to have our fingernails painted.”

  Thorfinn scratched his head. “I don’t understand. Why would you want to come on holiday just to burn, loot and pillage?”

  “How many times do we have to tell you? This is NOT a holiday!” cried Erik. He tore off his garland, ripped the flowers out of his hair and started scrubbing away at his nails, except the pink varnish wouldn’t come off. “BAHH!”

  Harald took his second-in-command aside. They stood on top of one of the first foothills of the Highlands, looking down over rolling fields and a string of peaceful little towns stretching into the distance.

  “Do you see that?” said Harald quietly. “There’s rich plunder to be had in these Lowlands.”

  “Yes. But Thorfinn—”

  “Leave my son to me. I have a plan to keep Thorfinn out of our way.”

  CHAPTER 4

  The Vikings stopped at the next forest for a break. Thorfinn was busy feeding his pigeon. Harald knelt down on one knee beside him and placed his hand on his son’s shoulder. “Now, then, Thorfinn. I have a special job for you.”

  “How wonderful! I do love the word ‘special’, don’t you?”

  “Yes…”

  “Also the word ‘blancmange’.”

  “Yes, OK…”

  “And the word ‘jamboree’. That’s a jolly one, isn’t it?”

  “THORFINN!” Harald bit his lip before starting again in his slowest, calmest voice. “We will camp in these woods tonight. I want you, Velda and Oswald to go ahead and make a shelter for us. Do you understand?”

  “Oh, goodie! I do love setting up camp. It’s my favourite part of the holiday.”

  “It’s NOT a holid—” Harald bit his lip even harder. He wondered, as he had many times, if his dear son was a few oars short of a longship. Why couldn’t he have a normal Viking child, who liked burning stuff down and having burping competitions?

  But Thorfinn was so eager, it was impossible to be angry with him for long.

  “I’ll do a great job, I promise. I’ll find the perfect spot and we can tell cosy bedtime stories, and we’ll need a stream for washing-up, and…”

  His kind, well-meaning face was enough to melt the hardest of hearts, even a Viking chief’s.

  Harald sighed. “Yes, I know you’ll do a good job. That’s why I chose you.” He lifted his son up in an enormous bear hug, before heading off after the other Vikings.

  “He just wants to keep us out of the way while they do some proper Viking pillaging,” Velda said quietly to Oswald. “It’s not fair. Why don’t I get to go off and do the fun stuff?”

  “I’m quite happy. I can have a nice sit down,” said Oswald. “My bunions are killing me.”

  As he joined the other Vikings, Harald turned and called back, “Don’t worry if we’re not back for a while.” He glanced at Erik, who grinned. “We’re off to… er… scout the area.”

  ***

  Velda sulked while Thorfinn whistled merrily on their hunt for a good campsite. Percy took to the air and followed them, swooping from branch to branch.

  “Oh, my bunions!” cried Oswald. “Take my mind off them, Thorfinn. Tell me another one of your riddles.”

  “Oh, please no!” moaned Velda.

  “Very well. Try this one,” said Thorfinn.

  “Two fathers and two sons are out hunting.

  They each catch one wood pigeon to take home.

  However, when they arrive they only have three wood pigeons.

  How can this be?”

  “Oh dear, that is a tough one,” said Oswald, thinking.

  “OK, I have one too,” cried Velda. “What’s this sharp, bony thing at the end of my leg?” She held up her foot
, then swung it back as if she was about to let loose a massive kick. “And how sore is it going to be when I boot you both up the backside? Now let’s stop wasting time and get on with our mission.”

  ***

  At last, they found an excellent spot: flat and sheltered and near a river.

  Velda went off to collect wood, while Thorfinn rushed to set up the camp. Oswald fell flat on his back and threw his arms out, shouting, “Ohh, my poor tootsies!”

  Within half an hour Thorfinn had rigged up a large tent, made a fire and built a roasting spit, from which he hung a kettle.

  They sat warming their feet by the fire and drinking tea. Percy flew down and perched on Thorfinn’s shoulder.

  “Ahh! What an excellent holiday this is,” said Thorfinn.

  “It is NOT a hol—” Velda began then sighed. “Oh, what’s the point?”

  Suddenly, their definitely-NOT-a-holiday was interrupted by a WHOOSH of air past their ears. An arrow embedded itself into a nearby tree:

  CHAPTER 5

  Percy squawked and took to the air just as a group of fierce-looking men emerged from the bushes. They had long braided hair, thick beards, and wore reddish-coloured tartan kilts. One of them was pointing a bow and arrow at Thorfinn and his friends.

  The man at the front was huge and muscly with a thick mane of red hair.

  “I am Ranald MacRanald, chieftain of Clan MacRanald, otherwise known as The Red Wolf.

  Who are you?” he growled.

  Oswald spoke first, jabbing a finger at the man with the bow. “You could have had my eye out with that thing, young man!”

  “Fire another one at the auld codger!” said Ranald.

  The bowman let loose a second arrow, which parted Oswald’s hair.

  “OHH, you’re going to be sorry you did that,” said Velda. “SOOO sorry.” She whipped out her axe.

  “Oh yes, little girl,” said Ranald, knocking the axe from her hands with his huge sword. “And why’s that?”

  Velda stood her ground. “We’re Vikings, and you don’t mess with us.”