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Edited on Wed Mar-30-05 09:22 PM by Ready4Change
His men began grumbling as they wandered up this river, down that one. All the fjords began to look the same. Not only were they not finding any villages to plunder, their own provisions had run out and it was becoming clear they did not know how to reach home.
That is when they reached the lake of unusual color. In the fading sun they fearfully thought it might be filled with blood. Olaf, to prove his bravery to his faltering men, dipped a hand in the water and sipped.
"Hah!" laughed Olaf "Tis sweet, as nectar!"
His men celebrated their good fortune, quenching their thirst and filling any empty container that would hold fluid. Their only regret was that the lake nectar was so cold that it had not fermented into wine.
As the sun set Olaf noted a glow coming from over a nearby hill. "Truly," thought Olaf, "the gods are looking on us with favor, for perhaps that light is a village." He gathered all his most fierce warriors into a raiding party and left Fat Sigmund, the carpenter, the watch over the ship.
They pulled the boat ashore and sloughed through the mud to more solid higher ground. Then, like wolves, they crept through the woods and hills towards the distant lights.
When they neared them the sight they found filled their veins with ice. Gathered about a gigantic, roaring fire were 3 huge giants. They were talking in strange, gutteral voices.
There was no way Olaf and his men could fight directly against giants. However, they might have wealth, and perhaps they could be tricked. Olaf motioned for his men to stay back, then creapt forward to see what he could learn.
He managed to hide behind a rock mere feet away from one of the giants. He quickly learned they he could barly understand them, because their voices sounded strange because they all seemed to lack teeth. They talked as they moved and stirred pots on their fires.
"Do you remember eathing meath?"
"Oh yeth, ethpethially man fleth!"
"Don'th reminth me! I am tho thired of thethe sweeth fith!"
"And thith sweeth wather! Ackk!"
"Oh, if only thom men would thail up tho we could eath them!"
Olaf realized that these must be poor giants, to be so stuck in a place where all they could eat was sweet enough to rot out their teath. He also realized he and his men were in terrible trouble. Stealthily he returned to his men.
"We must away without attracting attention. Quietly, follow me."
But he had not reckoned on the clumsiness of Eric the Club Fingered. As he turned around his dagger caught on a thorn bush, was pulled out of its sheath and fell on a rock with a clear metallic clang.
For a moment everyone, vikings and giants were silent. Then one giant spoke. "Didth you hear thath?"
"Yeth" exclaimed another "Men!"
All the vikings broke into a panicked run. Behind them, the giants rose from the their fire. The vikings wouldn't have had a chance except that the woods were like thick bushes to the giants, hindering their every move, while the vikings could scurry like mice between the trunks.
As they neared the lake shore they called out "Sigmund! Fat Sigmund! Ready the ship! We must leave! Make Haste!" When they arrived they found a panicked Sigmund pushing frantically at the dragon masted prow of their ship. It was stuck in the mud! All the vikings pushed, and it barely moved!
The giants could be heard getting closer, smashing trees aside in their hunger.
Olaf knew time was running out. "The ship is too heavy! We must empty all the barrels of lake nectar so we can push it off the mud!" His men scrambled to follow his order. Pots and barrels were thrown overboard. Skins filled with nectar in hopes it would ferment were dumped as well. Soon the ship lifted and they could slide it back onto the lake.
No sooner were their oars biting the lakes surface than the giants heads appeared over the treetops.
"There they are! Thop Them! Thop Them!" But the viking ship, powered by it's frightened oarsmen, skipped like a stone across the water. The giants hurled trees like spears, their branches whistling with the wind of their passage. But Olaf at the helm steered so as to dodge each, and soon the giants dissapeared behind a mountain cliff and the Vikings were safe.
But oh how they wept! "We have nothing to prove what we have seen!" And it was true. Not a single vessel remained which held the sweet nectar of the lake. And the river, despite flowing from that lake, was somehow magically clean of its taste.
And then they noticed Fat Sigmund laughing.
"Hahah! Fear not, for while you creapt like children through the woods I put myself to work with a net along the shore. Behold!" and he drew aside a sail he had lain over the empty hold of the ship. And there, gleaming darkly in the moonlight, were the flanks of hundreds of little fish.
But the vikings cried aloud yet more! "Fingerlings! We can get fingerlings any where. Still we have nought to prove our adventure!"
But still amidst their cries Sigmund was laughing. Suspisciously Olaf reached into the hold, pulled out one of the little fish, and bit it's head off. Then he too began to laugh.
"Tis sweet, sweeter than the waters of its birth! Sigmund caught us all the proof we need!"
And thus they returned, and proved their adventure. But since it was mere candy rather than gold, all their names were forgotten, and only the fish remain today.
The end.
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