Otto paced around the class, snapping and roaring at every pupil in turn. Say what you liked about the big Viking, he was fair. He shouted at everyone equally.
“Get a move on!” he said, as Vulgar tried for the three hundredth time to get his fire lit. There was barely anything left of his stone now, and the blade of the sword was bent and blunt. He wiped the sweat from his forehead, and had another go.
The blade hit the side of the stone and a flash of orange filled Vulgar’s vision. He blinked, then looked down at the bundle of straw beside the stone, hoping to see it smouldering.
Nothing.
He sniffed. There was a burning smell, though. It was coming from somewhere close by. Somewhere very close by.
“Hey, Vulgar,” Knut called. “I think your hair is on fire.”
“What?” said Vulgar.
“Yep, definitely on fire.”
Vulgar looked up and saw smoke curling from his tufts of hair. A moment later, he felt his forehead begin to burn.
Vulgar dropped his sword and began slapping himself hard on the head. “Put it out! Put it out!” he yelped, then gasped as a bucket of freezing cold water was thrown into his face.
He turned, shivering, his teeth chattering together, and found Freya smiling at him. She had an empty bucket in her hand. “Wow,” she said. “Who knew being the school fire marshall could be so much fun?”
“T-t-towel,” Vulgar stammered. “G-give me a t-towel.”
“A towel?” boomed Otto. He shook his head. “You’ll dry in the air, boy. Towels are for wimps!”
By Wednesday, Vulgar wasn’t quite as excited about school. He still had the bruises from Monday and had only just warmed up from his soaking.
He was even less excited when he and Knut turned up to find the teacher’s table groaning under the weight of ... well, he wasn’t really sure what the things on the table were. Some of them were lumpy. Some of them were squidgy. Almost all of them were brown.
“Poo,” announced Otto. “When you’re in the wilderness, you can identify an animal by looking at its poo.”
“Looking at its poo?” Freya groaned.
“And smelling it,” Otto added.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” Knut said, clamping a hand over his mouth.
“Nonsense,” Otto roared. He clicked his fingers and pointed to Vulgar. “You,” he said. “Come up here and pick a poo.”
Vulgar stood up and slowly approached the table. His eyes went from brown lump to brown lump, trying to decide if any looked less disgusting than the rest. But they were all just as disgusting as each other. Juggling dried elk poo was one of Vulgar’s favourite pastimes, but this poo was soft and wet and fresh. Yuck.
“That one,” he said, picking a large smelly splodge at random.
“Right. And what animal do you think left that little present behind?” Otto asked.
Vulgar shrugged. He wrinkled his nose and peered down at the mound. It was easily the size of the loaf his mum had baked at breakfast, and smelled almost as bad. “Hedgehog?”
“Hedgehog?” Otto snorted. “Look at the size of it! It’s twice the size of a hedgehog, boy. Get your hand in and have a squidge around. See if you can find any clues.”
Vulgar hesitated. Then he heard the rest of the class gasp as he slid his hand into the sticky brown sludge.It felt unpleasantly warm. The smell that came from within it made his head spin.
There was a sound like someone choking, and Freya gave a sudden scream. All eyes looked to the princess. She was sitting at her desk looking horrified. Sick dribbled down her plaits and on to her dress.
Knut stood behind her, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. “Sorry,” he said, quietly. “I couldn’t hold that in any longer.”
Even though he was up to his wrist in poo, Vulgar giggled.
Otto shook his head. “All right,” he muttered. “Let’s leave the poo lesson for another day.”
Vulgar breathed a sigh of relief and pulled his hand free with a schlop. He held the hand out to Otto. “Now can I get a towel or something?”
“Didn’t you listen yesterday?” cried Otto. “Towels are for wimps!”
When Thursday came around, Vulgar was pretty fed up. He’d been excited about learning to be a real Viking, but none of it had quite worked out the way he’d hoped.
The smell of animal poo wouldn’t come off his hand. He’d even tried washing it – in actual water! No matter how hard he scrubbed, the smell hadn’t disappeared.He was beginning to worry it would never come off and he’d smell like his dad for ever.
Still, today was going to be better. Otto had said something about them building their own armour. That was more like it. Vulgar had a spring in his step that lasted all the way to school.
The excitement didn’t last once he’d arrived.
“Sewing?” he gasped. “Thor’s nostrils, you want us to sew stuff? Since when did Vikings sew stuff?”
Otto drew himself up to his full impressive height. “A true Viking always sews his own armour,” the teacher said. “How can you trust armour you haven’t made yourself?”
“But ... but ... sewing?”
“Freya has already put together a most impressive outfit,” Otto said.
Vulgar turned to find the princess modelling a suit of leather armour, complete with gloves, boots and even a little mask that attached to a horned helmet.
“Well, of course she has,” Vulgar muttered. “She’s a girl. Girls sew. Vikings don’t.”
“Oh, really?” growled Otto, bringing his huge bearded face down to Vulgar’s level. “For that you can stay behind after school and darn the holes in all my old socks.”
“What?” coughed Vulgar.
“And then after that,” said Otto, scowling, “you can start on my pants.”
Vulgar didn’t want to go to school on Friday. Between the bruises, the freezing water, the stinky poo and the stinkier pants, he’d had enough. He tried pretending to be sick, but then his mum brought out the big bottle of thick brown medicine she’d made from boiled tree roots. He’d take school over that medicine any day, and quickly made a full recovery.
In the end, he was glad he went. Otto said he was tired of seeing them all mess up the Viking lessons, and that they were going to do something easier. A true Viking, he explained, should always be able to tell stories around the campfire.
To demonstrate, he told them about the time he’d fended off an invading army using just his elbows and one foot.
Then he told them to write their own stories, which they would get a chance to share with the rest of the class at the end of the day.
Otto sat at his desk and sharpened his broadsword while the pupils started writing. Vulgar usually hated writing stories, but compared to the rest of the week, he found himself really enjoying it.
He wrote a story about a killer troll eating a teacher. It was very detailed, from the first hungry growls of the monster to the big happy burp it made at the end of the meal.
“Right, who wants to read their story out?” asked Otto when the end of the day arrived.
Vulgar stood up before anyone else had the chance. “Mine’s called The Flesh-Eating Troll,” he announced.
Otto cleared his throat. “Maybe someone else should go first.”
Vulgar ignored the suggestion, and launched into the story. “Once upon a time, there was a flesh-eating troll.”
“A troll?” said Otto. He swallowed.
“Yes, a big flesh-eating beast of a troll.”
“Flesh-eating... ?” Otto said. He was looking a bit pale.
“Yes, a real monster,” Vulgar continued. “With huge arms, and pointy teeth and—”
Otto swung with his sword and it clanged against a bell that was fixed to the wall. “School’s over,” he said quickly.
A cheer went up from the other pupils and they all jumped to their feet. Vulgar looked down at his story. “But I’d just started.”
Otto shrugged. “And now you’re finished.”
Vulgar frowned. He’d been looking forward to telling the story. “He’s in a big rush to get out of here,” Vulgar grumbled to Knut.
“Hey, cheer up,” said Knut. “It’s the weekend. Two whole days of no school.”
Vulgar smiled. That had cheered him up. He joined the rest of the class in rushing towards the door, but Otto stepped into their path.
“Before you go, I’ve got a treat for you,” he said. “Tomorrow we’re going to put everything we’ve learned this week into practice.”
Knut scratched his head. “What do you mean?”
A broad smile spread behind Otto’s wild beard. “We’re going on a school camping trip. Then we’ll see if any of you has what it takes to be a real Viking!”
“But tomorrow’s the weekend,” Vulgar objected.
“The weekend?” Otto snorted. He shook his head. “Weekends are for wimps!”
The next morning Vulgar bounded out of bed, looking forward to his usual Saturday routine of playing and relaxing. But then he remembered: the camping trip! Before Vulgar knew it he was saying goodbye to his mum and dad, and giving Grunt a farewell pat on the head.
“See you tomorrow, boy,” he said.
Grunt gave a sad woof in reply.
“Don’t worry, I’ll be back before you know it.” Vulgar pointed to a hill a few miles from the village. “See that mountain? That’s where we’re going,” he said. “Knut says there are trolls up there, like the one from my story. Maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll eat Otto.”
With a final pat for Grunt, Vulgar set off. Even though he’d had to give up the weekend, he was actually pretty excited about the trip. He was setting off into the wilderness like a proper Viking would. It was just what he’d always wanted.
The only problem was Otto. The thought of spending a whole two days in the company of Otto the Bone-Cruncher worried him. Proper Viking or not, the man was clearly a loony.
“Get a move on,” Otto roared, when all the children had arrived at school. Vulgar fell into step next to Knut. They took up position at the back of the line, as Otto led the class towards the foot of the hill.
Vulgar’s knapsack was bulging with stuff his mum had made him take. He had three changes of underwear, six pairs of socks and a toothbrush made from a whalebone.
Knut, on the other hand, was carrying nothing. Despite this, he still walked slower than Vulgar. Otto had not failed to notice this.
“Hurry up at the back,” shouted the teacher, and the boys reluctantly sped up.
The climb was hard work. By the end of the first hour, everyone’s legs were aching. No one dared complain, though, in case they brought the full wrath of Otto down upon themselves.
Otto himself seemed to be having the time of his life. He marched on ahead, pumping his arms, breathing in deeply through his nose.
“Look,” he said, pointing to the ground. “Animal tracks. Can anyone tell me what animal made those?”
“Fox?” suggested one of the pupils.
“Bear?” guessed another.
Otto shook his head. “Elephant,” he said.
Most of the pupils stared at him blankly. Some of them nodded, as if they’d known this all along.
“What’s an elephant?” asked Vulgar.
“You don’t know what an elephant is?” chuckled Otto. “An elephant, as everyone knows, is a ferocious creature with six legs, big claws and ... two mouths.”
Vulgar frowned. “Two mouths?”
“Yes,” said Otto firmly. “Eight legs, sharp claws, and two mouths.”
“You said they had six legs,” Vulgar said.
Otto narrowed his eyes. “They ... grow more,” he said. “When they get older. Now, let’s press on.”
He about-turned before Vulgar could ask any more questions and the group carried on up the hill. Vulgar looked down at the footprints in the mud as they passed. So those were elephant footprints, were they? Funny, he would’ve sworn they belonged to a dog.
They climbed on for another four hours, winding their way around the hill as they made for the summit.
“This is not fun,” wheezed Knut. “I’d rather be in class studying runes.”
Vulgar nodded. “I’d rather be anywhere.”
“How much further?” shouted Freya, who was somewhere near the middle of the group.
“Not far now,” bellowed Otto. A sigh of relief went around the pupils. “Another hour or so and we’ll be almost halfway.”
“Halfway!” gasped Vulgar. “We’ve been walking for ever!”
Otto must have heard him, because the teacher stopped suddenly, making the pupils directly behind him crash into his back. “Right,” he said, “let’s stop for a drink.”
Vulgar let out a happy yelp. There was a little stream near where they were walking. The water was crystal clear. Vulgar licked his dry lips. “A drink?” he said. “We can really stop for a drink?”
“Of course you can,” Otto nodded. “It’s important to stay hydrated.”
“Whoo-hoo!” cried Vulgar. He and Knut began racing towards the stream, but a sudden shout from Otto stopped them.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“The stream,” said Vulgar. “To get a drink.”
Otto’s eyebrows raised. “Who said anything about the stream? There’s dew on the grass. You can lick that off.”
Vulgar looked down at the grass. “You can’t be serious.”
“I’m always serious,” Otto told him. “If you’re thirsty, you can lick the wet grass.”
“But ... there’s a stream.”
“Ha!” laughed Otto, and the sound rolled down the hill. “That’s the easy way. Real Vikings never take the easy way. Real Vikings do things the hard way, and if there is no hard way they don’t do it at all. Streams are for—”
“Wimps,” Vulgar finished. “We get it.”
Knut and Vulgar exchanged a glance. Then, without another word, they both got down on their knees and began to lick the water off the grass.
“So,” said Knut between licks, “do you think Otto’s mad or what?”
“I hope so,” said Vulgar, scraping a bug off his tongue. “Because if this is what being a real Viking is all about, I don’t think I’ll bother!”
Once they’d all had a drink, Otto led them the rest of the way up the hill. They finally reached the top just as the sky was going dark, and set about building a shelter.
The whole class worked on the shelter, fetching sticks, binding them together and covering them with branches and bracken.
“Ta-daa!” said Vulgar, putting the last stick in place and stepping back to admire their handiwork. “I think that looks—”
There was a creaking of wood, and the entire shelter collapsed in on itself like a house of cards.
“—rubbish,” Vulgar sighed.
Freya took control of the second attempt. She stood at the side, bossing everyone around and prodding them with a stick if they moved too slowly. In no time the shelter had been rebuilt, and this time it stayed built.
“Dinner time,” Otto announced. He held up something small, dark and squidgy. “Slug surprise. We’ll cook them over the campfire.”
“We haven’t got a campfire,” Freya pointed out.
Otto stared at her. “Well, you’d better light one.”
Grumbling, Freya set about lighting a fire. The rest of the class lined up in front of Otto. He grinned as he handed each of them one fat slug.
“What’s the surprise part?” asked Freya.
“The surprise is they taste even worse than you expect,” Otto told her.
“Suppose we’d better go and get ours,” Knut said. Knut would eat pretty much anything, but even he didn’t look happy about the slug surprise.
“Don’t worry,” said Vulgar. He rummaged in his knapsack and pulled out some strips of dried reindeer meat. “I brought these. No slugs for us!”
Knut almost cheered, but Vulgar put a hand over his mouth. “Keep it down,” Vu
lgar warned. “We don’t want old Bone-Cruncher finding out.”
“Finding out what?” asked Freya, bobbing up beside them.
“Nothing,” said Vulgar, hiding the dried meat behind his back. “I thought you were lighting the fire?”
“I already have,” Freya said. “Is that food? Give me some.”
“No!” Vulgar hissed.
Freya raised a hand. “Sir,” she began, “Vulgar’s got—”
“Ssh! OK, fine. You can have some.” Vulgar thrust a strip of meat into Freya’s hands. “But don’t tell anyone else.”
A little while later, full of reindeer meat, Vulgar, Knut and Freya joined the others around the campfire.
Otto held out a bowl of squidgy grey goop. “Slug surprise?”
“No thanks,” said Vulgar. “We’re not going to eat anything.”
“Food’s for wimps,” said Knut, then he burped quietly.
Otto nodded approvingly. “Good boys. Now, who wants to tell us a campfire tale?”
“Me!” said Vulgar, jumping up. This was his chance to tell his troll story.
“Once upon a time, there was a flesh-eating troll. It lived high on a hillside, much like this one.”
The flames crackled higher and silence fell over the camp as everyone listened to Vulgar’s tale.
“Most of the time, the troll left people alone. If people didn’t bother him, then he didn’t bother them. But sometimes, on nights just like this, the townsfolk would head off into the hills. Camping.”
“Camping?” whispered Otto.
“Camping,” said Vulgar.
Otto’s eyes darted left and right into the gloom. “On ... on nights like this?”
Vulgar the Viking and the Spooky School Trip Page 2
