Viking Raiders. Chris Blake

attention away from Isis, in case she annoyed him again. “So where are you and your men off to?”

      Erik set his helmet straight on his head. As he did so, Tom caught a whiff of sweat and damp.

      “We’re about to go on a little expedition,” Erik said. “There’s nothing like a bracing ocean voyage to blow away the cobwebs.”

      Tom looked at the dragon at the helm of Erik’s longship and remembered the words of the riddle. “Setting sail on your long and thin boat, are you?” Tom said loudly, trying to attract Isis’s attention.

      But Isis was busy trying to pull Erik’s red beard.

      “Sailing across stormy seas, eh?!” Tom shouted.

      Isis finally turned to Tom and winked. “Can we come too?” she asked Erik, innocently.

      Erik’s fiery eyebrows bunched together in a terrifying scowl. “Children on a Viking raid? Are you trying to insult me?” he boomed. “This is a looting party, you know. Do you have any idea what me and my men will be doing?”

      Tom pursed his lips and swallowed hard. “Er, setting fire to people’s houses? Stealing? That kind of thing.”

      Erik grinned and slapped Tom hard on the back. “Precisely, lad! That’s no pastime for a youngster like you. You’d only get in the way.”

      Tom felt their chance slipping away… if he didn’t hurry up and convince Erik to let them come, they’d never get the amulet and he’d be stuck in freezing Scandinavia forever.