Kitabı oku: «Viking Raiders»

Title Page

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1: Scary Movie

Chapter 2: Erik the Red

Chapter 3: Joining the Crew

Chapter 4: Setting Sail

Chapter 5: Storm at Sea

Chapter 6: Spelling it Out

Chapter 7: Land Ahoy!

Chapter 8: Looting and Pillaging

Chapter 9: Valhalla Bound

Chapter 10: Viking Funeral

Chapter 11: Back to the Film

Who were the Mightiest Vikings?

Weapons

Viking Raiders Timeline

Time Hunters Timeline

Fantastic Facts

The Hunt Continues…

Copyright

About the Publisher

Five thousand years ago

Princess Isis and her pet cat, Cleo, stood outside the towering carved gates to the Afterlife. It had been rotten luck to fall off a pyramid and die at only ten years of age, but Isis wasn’t worried – the Afterlife was meant to be great. People were dying to go there, after all! Her mummy’s wrappings were so uncomfortable she couldn’t wait a second longer to get in, get her body back and wear normal clothes again.

“Oi, Aaanuuubis, Anubidooby!” Isis shouted impatiently. “When you’re ready, you old dog!”

Cleo started to claw Isis’s shoulder. Then she yowled, jumping from Isis’s arms and cowering behind her legs.

“Calm down, fluffpot,” Isis said, bending to stroke her pet. “He can’t exactly woof me to death!” The princess laughed, but froze when she stood up. Now she understood what Cleo had been trying to tell her.

Looming up in front of her was the enormous jackal-headed god of the Underworld himself, Anubis. He was so tall that Isis’s neck hurt to look up at him. He glared down his long snout at her with angry red eyes. There was nothing pet-like about him. Isis gulped.

“‘WHEN YOU’RE READY, YOU OLD DOG?’” Anubis growled. “‘ANUBIDOOBY?’”

Isis gave the god of the Underworld a winning smile and held out five shining amulets. She had been buried with them so she could give them to Anubis to gain entry to the Afterlife. There was a sixth amulet too – a gorgeous green one. But Isis had hidden it under her arm. Green was her favourite colour, and surely Anubis didn’t need all six.

Except the god didn’t seem to agree. His fur bristled in rage. “FIVE? Where is the sixth?” he demanded.

Isis shook her head. “I was only given five,” she said innocently.

To her horror, Anubis grabbed the green amulet from its hiding place. “You little LIAR!” he bellowed.

Thunder started to rumble. The ground shook. Anubis snatched all six amulets and tossed them into the air. With a loud crack and a flash of lightning, they vanished.

“You hid them from me!” he boomed. “Now I have hidden them from you – in the most dangerous places throughout time.”

Isis’s bandaged shoulders drooped in despair. “So I c-c-can’t come into the Afterlife then?”

“Not until you have found each and every one. But first, you will have to get out of this…” Anubis clicked his fingers. A life-sized pottery statue of the goddess Isis, whom Isis was named after, appeared before him.

Isis felt herself being sucked into the statue, along with Cleo. “What are you doing to me?” she yelled.

“You can only escape if somebody breaks the statue,” Anubis said. “So you’ll have plenty of time to think about whether trying to trick the trickster god himself was a good idea!”

The walls of the statue closed around Isis, trapping her and Cleo inside. The sound of Anubis’s evil laughter would be the last sound they would hear for a long, long time…

“I want to go to the cinema too!” Isis said to Tom over the breakfast table. “Please take me with you!”

Her pet cat, Cleopatra, who was sunbathing on the kitchen windowsill, mewed in agreement.

Tom stared at the mummified princess in disbelief. She was sitting on the edge of the table, right next to Dad, and had helped herself to a slice of his toast. Loose strands from her bandages drifted down into his porridge. Luckily, Isis was invisible to everyone except Tom. But even if Dad had been able to see or hear her, he was in a world of his own, reading Archaeologist Weekly.

No, he simply shovelled the porridge, now flavoured with five-thousand-year-old bits of Egyptian mummy, into his mouth.

“Mmm,” Dad said. “Crunchy.”

Tom suddenly lost his appetite. He jumped up from his chair and dropped his half-eaten cereal bowl in the sink with a clatter. Returning to the table, he took Isis by her crumbly arm and pulled her into the hall.

“Hey! I’ve not finished breakfast yet!” Isis grumbled.

“You don’t need to eat breakfast – you’re dead!” Tom said, letting go of Isis’s bandaged arm. “And you can’t come to the cinema with me because I know what you’re like – you’ll mess about and distract me.”

Ever since he’d accidentally smashed a statue in his dad’s museum, setting the Ancient Egyptian princess free, Tom had been stuck with Isis and her pet cat. And he’d continue being stuck with her until they found the six amulets that Anubus, the god of the Underworld, had scattered throughout the most dangerous times in history. So far they’d found two, but there were four more to collect.

“If you weren’t such a troublemaker, we wouldn’t be in this mess,” Tom added, reminding Isis that their task was her punishment for cheekily trying to steal one of the amulets from Anubis.

“You’ve never had so much fun in your life!” Isis scoffed. “All these adventures! Since you met me, you’ve trained as a gladiator in Ancient Rome and met King Arthur! What do you offer me in return? Chess? History books? A GAME OF FOOTBALL?!” She started to make snoring noises.

“You’re only saying that because you’re rubbish at football,” Tom said. He glanced into the kitchen and saw that Mum was busy wiping the worktops and Dad had his nose in his magazine.

Isis waggled her foot at him. “It’s not easy kicking a ball when you’re wrapped in bandages.”

Tom breathed out heavily in frustration. “Do you even know what a cinema is?”

he asked.

Isis shook her head sheepishly.

Tom explained that it was a place where stories were told along with moving pictures. “Everything on the screen is about ten times its normal size and the best bit is that it’s really, really loud,” he finished.

“Oh, I love stories,” Isis said, clapping her hands in glee. “The priests in Egypt wrote the most amazing ones, with beautiful pictures on papyrus scrolls. They used to read them to me when I was little. Sometimes, because I was so beautiful…”

Tom spluttered, but Isis ignored him.

“… they wrote me into the stories too!”

Tom hesitated. If he took Isis to the cinema, at least she wouldn’t be able to cause mischief at home. He sighed. “All right, then. You can come with me.”

Isis shuffled stiffly over to the front door and called out to Cleo. “Come on, Fluffpot! We’re going to the cinema!”

Inside the cinema, the screen flickered brightly as the characters in the film blew up an old building containing fireworks. Kaboom! Rockets fizzed up into the nightsky before exploding in a shower of colourful sparks.

As Isis cowered behind a row of seats Cleo yowled and clambered on to Tom’s lap.

“Take cover, Fluffpot!” Isis cried to her cat. “The world is ending!”

Tom chuckled. “It’s OK, you know,” he said, reaching into a giant tub of popcorn. He put a fistful of the sticky kernels intohis mouth. “It’s not real. The pictures can’t hurt you.”

Isis held her hands over where her ears would be. “What about the noise?” The explosions were quite loud.

“You’ll get used to it,” Tom told her.

“Are they gods?” Isis asked, pointing to the characters on the screen.

“They’re just actors,” Tom explained. He thrust his tub of popcorn towards Isis. “Here, try some of this. And be quiet because you’re ruining the film for me.”

Isis sat back on her seat nervously. She plunged a hand into the tub and stuffed some popcorn through a hole in the bandages that covered her face. “Mmm, this tastes great,” she said, jaws creaking as she chomped away.

“Leave some for me!” Tom said.

Somebody’s dad in the row behind leaned forward and tapped Tom on the shoulder.

“Hey! Keep it down, son. I didn’t pay to listen to you talking to yourself for an hour.”

Tom slumped down in his seat. He was glad that, in the dark of the cinema, nobody could see his cheeks glow.

Isis giggled and kept hold of the popcorn tub. “You heard the man,” she said. “Stop ruining the film for everyone!”

Tom looked longingly at his popcorn.

“Can I have some, please?” he whispered, checking that the man behind wasn’t listening.

Isis ignored him. The yellowy bandages on her face glowed white as she stared up at the flickering light of the screen. Isis started to laugh as the hero of the film said something funny.

Tom could tell she was utterly absorbed in the thrilling story. “Isis!” he hissed, giving her a good poke with his elbow.

“Shh!” she hissed. “This is a good bit.”

Tom’s stomach growled. “I bought that popcorn for me. Give it back, will you?”

He was just about to snatch the tub out of her hands when their row of seats started to rumble and shake. Tom looked up at the film. Was it part of the action? Were the special effects really that convincing?

“Look!” Isis suddenly yelped. “Anubis!”

There, looming above, staring down at them through angry red eyes, was the Egyptian god of the Underworld himself.

“Enjoying the show?” Anubis boomed.

His voice bounced round the cinema. He stood with his fist on his hip, baring his sharp teeth and twitching the pointy ears on top of his jackal’s head.

Tom gulped. It was as though Anubis had stepped right out of the screen. But everyone else in the cinema was still laughing and saying ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’, as though they could only see the film they had come to watch.

“Why did you have to turn up now?” Isis said hotly, throwing a handful of popcorn in Anubis’s direction. “Get out of the way! You’re blocking my view.”

Several people looked round and tutted loudly, as the popcorn rained down on them.

Anubis growled. “You know why I’m here, you cheeky girl,” he boomed, making the curtains at the side of the giant screen flap. “It’s time for your next quest.”

“Not yet. I want to see how the story ends!” Isis shouted.

The ground started to shake violently. Tom was sure their entire row of seats had started to edge forward.

“You will do as I say, Isis Amun-Ra, or you will never enter the Afterlife,” Anubis roared. “You are leaving to find your next amulet RIGHT NOW!!”