Vulgar the Viking and the Rock Cake Raiders Read Free Page B

You’ll be thrown in the dungeon. What do you think of that?”

    “But girls can’t be Viking warriors,” said Vulgar weakly. He didn’t really fancy the dungeons much. He’d heard there was a machine down there that ripped your beard out,one hair at a time. Vulgar didn’t have a beard, but he still didn’t like the sound of it.
    “They can now,” sniffed Freya, and she pushed past them into the cellar.
    “Well, you showed her,” said Knut, trying his best not to laugh. “Some Viking warrior, being pushed around by a girl.”
    “Yeah, well at least I don’t scream like one,” replied Vulgar, before he stomped after Freya.

    It took a few minutes to light the torches around the cellar, but just a few seconds to realise that building a longboat was going to be more difficult than they had thought.
    Vulgar had expected to find enough supplies for a whole fleet of ships. It turned out that he had been wrong.
    “So,” he said, “tell me again what we’ve got.”
    Knut looked down at the items laid out on the floor before him. He took a deep breath. “One barrel, full of ale; three planks of wood, all broken; a big rock; another rock, not quite so big as the other one; something green and squidgy.” He bent down and gave it a sniff. “I think it might have been cheese, but I’m not sure. And two oars, different sizes. That’s the lot.”
    “Building a longboat out of this stuff isn’t going to be easy,” said Vulgar.
    “Building anything out of this stuff isn’t going to be easy,” corrected Freya. She sighed. “This is a complete waste of time.”
    “Where’s your Viking spirit?” cried Vulgar. He stared accusingly at the princess. “When your dad was lost at sea, did he give up? No! He made do with what he had. He ate bogies and drank seagulls’ blood! And that’s what we’re going to do.”
    “What, eat bogies?” asked Knut, with a frown.
    “I’ll do no such thing,” gasped Freya. “Princesses do not eat bogies.”
    “No, I mean we’re going to make do with what we’ve got,” explained Vulgar. “See, look at this!”
    With a heave, Vulgar tipped the barrel over. Gallons of ale sloshed out on to the floor. When it was empty, he hoisted the barrel back up and peered inside. “I bet we could fit in there,” he said. “And it’s watertight, too.”
    “How do you know?” asked Knut.

    “Well, if it can keep beer in, it can keep water out,” said Vulgar. He looked around the cellar. The rocks would be no help, and the squidgy green stuff was no good. He couldn’t think of any uses for the broken planks, either, so that left only the oars.
    He grabbed the longest oar and propped it up inside the barrel, so the flatend was raised towards the ceiling. “This could be our mast. We can tie my cloak on for a sail!”
    “We’re hardly going to sail very far like that, are we?” scoffed Freya.
    “We won’t have to,” said Vulgar. He could see his whole plan coming together now. “We’ve still got one oar, so we can row across the pond.”
    Freya pulled a face, and Vulgar thought she was about to object. He was surprised when she said, “It might work. I suppose.”
    “Of course it’ll work!” cried Vulgar.
    Over the next ten minutes, Vulgar shouted enthusiastic instructions to the other two, using everything he knew about constructing a longboat. Which was precisely nothing.
    “Doesn’t it need, like, a dragon’s head at the front?” asked Knut, halfwaythrough putting the boat together.
    Vulgar immediately set to work on one of the broken planks, carving it into the shape of the scariest face he could think of.
    “Here, that looks quite like your mum,” said Knut, when the carving was finished.

    “Yeah,” said Vulgar, hooking the terrifying figurehead on to the side of the barrel. “I know!”
    At last, it was finished. Vulgar and the others stepped back to admire their handiwork.
    “It’s not really a long boat, is it?” said Freya.
    “More a shortboat,”