The Littlest Viking

by Sandi Toksvig

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One: Mist Over Pegwell Bay

  Chapter Two: From Bad to Verse

  Chapter Three: Troll Trouble

  Chapter Four: All’s Fair in War

  Chapter Five: The Great Little Dragon Ship

  About the Author

  Also by Sandi Toksvig

  Copyright

  About the Book

  A wonderfully funny tale from the award-winning writer and comedian Sandi Toksvig.

  When Amber, the littlest viking, set out from Scandinavia to seek her fortune, she must have lost her way! Now she’s in Pegwell Bay with no one but her pet squirrel for company. Katie, Gary and Joshua find her standed on the beach and decide to look after her. Now there’s a Viking living in their garden!

  Having a Viking in the family isn’t always easy. But when the garden is threatened by a nasty neighbour, Amber has some unusual – and hilarious – solutions to their problems. . .

  SANDI TOKSVIG

  Illustrated by Georgien Overwater

  To Jesse and Meg

  Chapter One

  Mist Over Pegwell Bay

  PEGWELL BAY HAD something you don’t see very much these days. It had a Viking ship. A huge Viking ship. Longer even than the longest bus. It was decorated with dozens of coloured shields along the sides and a great dragon head at the front staring out to sea.

  In Viking times, which were so long ago that even the oldest person you know probably won’t remember them, Norse warriors sailed the seas in splendid ships like the one at Pegwell Bay. It took fifty men to row one of these magnificent craft across the swelling waves, as the Vikings made their way from the burning deserts of Africa to the freezing waters of the Arctic Circle – all without the help of a map or a decent travel-sickness pill.

  Today, however, this particular Viking ship – the Hugit – wasn’t going anywhere. It had been put on concrete blocks by the council years ago as a tourist attraction and now it looked rather forlorn and defeated. As if it had been wheel clamped by a particularly keen traffic warden. On this cold winter afternoon, it wasn’t even attracting any tourists.

  The only person to show any interest in the ship was Joshua, who was six and didn’t have an opinion about the council yet. He was quite pleased that the ship stood still. It meant he could run around it with his plastic sword, shouting and banging his chest as if he’d just landed an advance party of Norsemen on the shore. His older brother and sister, Katie and Gary Lloyd, looked on from the top of the hill overlooking Pegwell Bay. Even standing in the shelter of the long-closed Eric the Red Sip ’n’ Snack Shack didn’t stop the cold wind from last night’s storm biting into their faces.

  ‘Do you know why there’re no moles living under the grass here?’ asked Gary, pushing his hands as far as possible into his coat pockets and wishing that he wasn’t too cool to wear gloves.

  ‘Because it’s winter and it’s too cold.’ Katie was the oldest and the most sensible.

  ‘No. Too much blood,’ said Gary darkly. ‘When the Vikings came and attacked Pegwell Bay there was such a battle here that blood and bones covered the entire field. It was soaked red as far as you could see, and since then no mole has ever dared poke its head up through the ground.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Gary, nobody ever fought anything here. It’s too boring. I bet the Vikings just came, took one look round and told the locals they could keep it. All we’ve got now is a Pitch and Putt course, and if the Vikings had been here in winter, even that would have been closed.’

  In front of the shack, the wind flapped a rickety wooden sign advertising BURGERS MADE WITH REAL NORSE MEAT. Anybody who’d ever tried one thought it was a spelling mistake. The wind whipped up the road lifting the light tarpaulin someone had placed over their car and written FOR SALE on.

  Joshua ran up to join Katie and Gary. ‘Let’s go down on the beach and see if we can find anything exciting,’ he shouted. ‘There might be washing-up.’

  ‘Washing-up? What d’you mean, shrimp?’ asked Gary. He was nine but very nearly ten and he felt that Joshua ought to be a little more in awe of him.

  ‘From the storm, last night.’

  Katie interpreted. ‘He means there might be things washed up on the shore after the storm.’

  Gary shook his head in disgust. ‘Washing-up! If I were a Viking I’d sail away from here.’

  ‘If you were a Viking, you’d have been dead a thousand years,’ replied Katie, and headed off to the beach.

  By Thor it was so cold. Nobody with any sense would have gone down to the beach that afternoon. On a fine day, a few keen dog-walkers might have been out on the seafront at this time of the year, or perhaps you’d have caught sight of Mr Patterson pacing up and down and looking out to sea. He ran the Pitch and Putt in the summer and was always at a loss as to what to do with his time during the winter. Today, however, even he had found something better to do and Pegwell Bay was completely and utterly deserted.

  Joshua ran on ahead, with Gary being more careful because he was wearing his new trainers and he liked to admire them as he walked. The beach itself was covered in flotsam washed up from the bad weather. Flotsam is a good word. It means anything that has ended up in the sea by accident and then washed ashore. Today that meant cans and bottles, old plastic bags and even the right leg from a shop window dummy.

  ‘Here’s something, here’s something,’ shouted Joshua, picking up a large yellow stone. Gary thought it unlikely Joshua had found anything interesting. It looked like any yellow stone. Joshua moved it to show his brother and sister but as he did so the strangest thing happened. The yellow colour of the stone began to turn blue.

  ‘Let me see that,’ said Gary. As he grabbed the stone from Joshua’s hand and turned it for a better view, the stone once again became yellow. Even Gary was impressed. He turned the stone again and again. Each time it turned blue, then yellow and then blue again.

  ‘Whatever can it be?’ asked Katie.

  Just then, as if in answer to her question, the children thought they heard something in the howling wind.

  ‘Det er min. Jeg skal brug de til min rejse.’

  Gary shook his head and listened again. Slowly the sounds became clearer. It was a voice, getting louder and louder.

  ‘Det er min. That’s mine. Jeg skal brug de til min rejse. I shall need it for my journey.’

  The children huddled together. They looked round, but there was no one there.

  ‘I need it for my journey,’ the voice called again.

  ‘Who’s that?’ whispered Joshua, wishing he’d remembered to go to the bathroom before they came out.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Katie hissed back.

  Now Joshua really did need to go to the loo. His big sister, Katie, normally knew everything but she didn’t know what the stone was and now she didn’t know who was speaking either.

  Gary looked around at the white cliff-face of the bay that circled round beyond them. Although he had been to the beach a hundred times he noticed for the first time what looked like the entrance to a small cave.

  ‘I think the voice is coming from that cave,’ said Gary, pointing.

  Joshua had started hopping from one foot to the other. ‘Why don’t we just go home for a while,’ he mumbled, ‘and come back some other day? I need to go—’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ interrupted Gary.

  The children made their way up to the sandy shore. Gary, who was enjoying being in charge for a change, had forgotten to step carefully so as not to mess up his trainers. Joshua shifted nervously from foot to foot, now desperate to pee, while Katie wished she wasn’t twelve and the oldest an
d could run home. As they drew near, the cave entrance looked dark and forbidding. Joshua began shaking. He’d heard that dragons liked to live in dark caves. Now even Gary stopped in his tracks. He had been as brave as he could, but he had also just remembered reading something about smugglers with guns hiding in caves.

  ‘Who’s there?’ he called out softly, so as not to wake anything that might be hiding inside.

  ‘I am Grettir, conqueror of trolls and ghosts!’ thundered a voice echoing in the cave. All three children would have run away there and then, but somehow their feet wouldn’t do as they were told. Even stranger, each one felt that they must have blinked for a moment, because at first no one was there, and then suddenly a small girl seemed to . . . well . . . fade into view. She stood in the cave entrance and looked at them. Gary, Katie and Joshua forgot all their manners and stared back. And Joshua even forgot that he needed to go to the loo.

  In front of them stood the strangest little girl they’d ever seen. She was no bigger than six-year-old Joshua but she wore the most peculiar clothes. She had a brown dress with woollen leggings, leather shoes that didn’t look like they’d come from the high street and a hood with a long streamer of material down her back. The dress was pulled in tight around her chubby waist with a leather belt in which she’d stuck a small sword. A miniature blue cloak hung from her shoulders and on her head she had a grey metal hat that looked like the upturned end of a large bullet. Two small blonde plaits stuck out below either side of her helmet, and around her neck she wore a leather chain with a small silver hammer hanging from it.

  ‘Say something, Katie,’ gulped Gary, pushing his sister forward.

  ‘Uh . . . you’re not from round here, are you?’ managed Katie in a high-pitched voice.

  ‘Maybe she’s from the grammar school,’ suggested Joshua, who knew that the grammar-school pupils wore a fancy uniform.

  The small girl scrunched up her face into the fiercest expression she could manage.

  ‘Beware, for I am the great god, Grettir, conqueror of trolls and ghosts,’ boomed the little girl in a surprisingly loud voice, which could have earned her a good living selling strawberries at Pegwell market.

  Joshua thought for a moment and then spoke. ‘Sorry to be rude but I don’t think you’re big enough to be a god.’

  The little girl eyed him suspiciously.

  ‘Alright,’ she boomed, slightly less confidently.

  ‘How about, ‘‘I am the witch Gullweig, mistress of evil magic’’?’

  The children all thought for a moment.

  ‘I still think you’re pushing it a bit,’ said Gary.

  The strange girl nodded. ‘So, you’re going to be tricky, eh? Let’s see . . . Would you believe I was a great Viking hero come from fighting hordes of giants in the east?’

  The children looked at each other and shook their heads: ‘No.’

  ‘Oh.’ The small girl ploughed on. ‘A little Viking hero come from fighting a few giants? . . . OK, one giant? . . . Alright. A small Viking, not a hero at all, come from home and got a bit lost really and . . . oh . . . oh . . .’ And with that, the little girl sat down and began to weep.

  ‘Now look what we’ve done,’ said Joshua. ‘We’ve made her cry.’ Joshua had more sympathy than the others with people who’d been made to cry, as it happened rather too often to him. He marched over and put his arm round the girl, while Gary, who hated crying, wandered away for a moment.

  ‘What’s your name?’ asked Joshua.

  ‘A-A-Amber,’ she stammered through her tears. ‘I am Amber, Ha . . . Ha . . . Hammer of the Nn . . . Nn . . . North.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’ asked Katie, approaching slowly.

  ‘I got lost in a storm and my boat was smashed up and I can’t get home and I’m hungry and I don’t know what to do . . .’ blurted out Amber, and she began weeping again.

  ‘What were you doing in a boat on your own?’ Katie knelt down next to Amber.

  ‘I wanted to go to Vineland and fight trolls with seven heads and find a great kingdom and win untold riches to bring back for m . . . m . . . Mother,’ Amber mumbled.

  ‘Vineland? I think she’s taken a bit of a wrong turning,’ said Joshua.

  Meanwhile Gary was poking around in front of the cave. He was astonished by what he found. Pulled against the wall was the world’s smallest Viking boat. Well, what was left of it. It had all the same fittings as Pegwell Bay’s Viking ship but all in miniature. Two little oars lay cracked and splintered next to a single red shield. The front of the boat had a whole chunk missing and several of the planks which had held it together lay broken. Amber stood up and came to look at the ruined boat.

  ‘It’s hopeless. I don’t think I can fix it.’ She sighed.

  Gary tried to shift the boat away from the wall to get a better look, but it was far too heavy.

  ‘Here, let me.’ Amber reached out with one hand and moved the entire vessel over.

  ‘How did you do that?’ asked Gary in complete amazement. ‘It weighs a ton.’

  ‘I may be little,’ said Amber, ‘but I was the strongest girl in our village. When I was on my father’s boat I could leap over the gunwale and bound from oar to oar as his men rowed. If I met a troll . . . which you know, I haven’t yet, but if I did, I could chop off its head with a single stroke of my sword and it would be no tougher than cutting through butter. I could do anything, ’cause I’m strong.’

  ‘I bet you miss your mum though,’ said Joshua.

  ‘Yes, yes . . . I do,’ admitted Amber, and she dissolved into tears once more. Gary patted her gently on the back and then coughed and moved his hand when he realized what he was doing.

  ‘Gary, Joshua, come here,’ said Katie, beckoning them away from the cave. ‘Now, we’ve got to be sensible about this. What do you think we should do?’

  ‘I still need to go to the . . .’ said Joshua.

  ‘Not that,’ replied Katie, getting irritated. ‘Who is she?’

  ‘Maybe she really is a Viking,’ said Gary slowly. ‘I mean, there’s the boat and everything. And her clothes look a bit, er, Vikingish . . .’

  ‘Well, Viking or not, we can’t leave her here. The tide will be in soon. We’ll just have to take her home.’

  The three Lloyd children lived with their mum in a rather run-down terrace. The houses had once been very fine indeed but were now in need of what the local estate agent called some ‘slight modernization’. The Lloyds lived in the end terrace, so their mum always said that their house was ‘actually semi-detached’. Most of the people in the row had lived there for a long time. Some of them were very nice, some were a bit strange, and some were very strange indeed.

  They were an odd sight walking home, the three children and a miniature Viking. Then Amber made things stranger still when she picked up the beached plastic leg from the shop window dummy and insisted on carrying it on her head saying, ‘It’s the very thing I shall need.’

  What was curious was that the little group passed several people on the way home and no one said a word. Actually no one even seemed to notice. The children were nearly home when they saw their next-door neighbour, old Mrs Marchmont, flicking her duster out on the balcony.

  ‘Quick, hide,’ shouted Gary, pushing a rather bewildered Amber down behind a stone wall.

  ‘Is it a troll?’ asked Amber, jumping back up, both excited and nervous at the prospect of finally meeting one. Instead of looking surprised, old Mrs Marchmont stared right at the spot where the small Viking was standing, said nothing and went back into the house.

  ‘She didn’t see you!’ exclaimed Gary, peeking up over the wall. He looked at Amber. ‘This is very odd.’

  ‘Oh nonsense, Gary,’ said Katie. ‘Mrs Marchmont didn’t see that tree when she borrowed Mum’s car either! Don’t you remember? All the same, we’d better be careful. We don’t want anyone to see Amber.’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Amber.

  ‘No pets,’ explained Katie. ‘Mrs Marchmont r
uns the Residents’ Association and she’s very clear about that. We’re not allowed to keep pets.’

  ‘A Viking isn’t a pet,’ said Joshua. ‘A pet’s a cat or a rabbit.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Gary leaned against the wall. ‘If she sees Amber she’ll have the council round and Mum won’t like that. We need to think.’

  Joshua, Katie, Gary and Amber went and sat in the bus shelter across from their front door.

  ‘I think I have made a very important journey,’ announced Amber after they’d all sat in silence for a while. ‘What was it like just before I arrived? Were there whirlwinds and flashes of lightning and fiery dragons flying through the air?’

  ‘I suppose it was a bit misty,’ said Gary.

  ‘And there was a funny noise this morning three doors up at Mrs Gray’s,’ added Joshua.

  ‘That’s her washing machine,’ said Katie knowledgeably. ‘She has endless trouble with the spin cycle.’

  ‘I came across the Gunningagap – the great void,’ continued Amber, ‘the abyss of emptiness, the Niflheim, the land of dark and freezing fog to journey here to . . .’

  ‘Pegwell Bay,’ said Joshua helpfully.

  ‘Pegwell Bay,’ repeated Amber. ‘Have I come to the end of the earth?’

  ‘No,’ said Katie. ‘It just feels like it in winter. Are you hungry?’

  Amber nodded. ‘I could devour an ox, eight salmon and three cups of mead in a single meal.’

  Katie went inside and got her a small cheese sandwich and half a packet of prawn-flavoured crisps. She struggled back to the shelter carrying the food, along with a large red bundle. ‘I found this,’ she said.

  ‘It’s our old play tent!’ exclaimed Joshua, excited at the prospect of a new game. ‘We could set it up in the garden.’

  Gary shook his head. ‘We can’t leave her in the garden. It’s freezing.’

  ‘She is a Viking,’ replied Joshua. ‘I think they must be used to the cold. Eric the Red was a Viking and he went to Greenland, which isn’t green but is very cold.’