IT TAKES A PILLAGE by John H. Dromey

Erik the Redneck spent his summer vacation “flipping Burghers.”

He hung around the village tavern waiting for gluttonous merchants to pass out after swilling too much lager.

Turning over the stupor-rich topers so he could cut their purses was hard work but highly rewarding.

When he wasn’t rolling drunks, Erik was a typical Viking teenager. He listened to the latest sagas, worried about his complexion, and complained loudly about doing homework—he despised chopping wood, fetching water, and picking up those rare table scraps that even the family dogs refused to eat.

Erik was well on his way to becoming a rich man himself when the source of his newfound wealth became an open secret. A barmaid blabbed.

Magnus the Mariner had no difficulty in organizing a small raiding party to go after Erik.

“You won’t even have to get your feet wet,” Magnus told his recruits, “and you can be home by midnight.”

Of those invited, only Hrolf the Eveready—a specialist in assault and battery—begged off, citing chafed knuckles and a bruised ego (from not being the first ruffian asked to participate).

With vulpine cunning, Erik easily outwitted the first three attackers by placing a bearskin rug over an open trapdoor.

Knut the Rock Knee, so-called because he often bumped into boulders when going ashore on unfamiliar beaches, was the first to fall into the root cellar. He was followed close behind by Thorfinn the Complainer and Eystein the Insecure, who both leaned over the opening to see what had happened to their companion. They discovered that for themselves when Erik nudged them sequentially with just enough force to tip them past their centers of gravity.

Ivard the Intimidator was a different matter entirely. Erik knew he wasn’t strong enough to take the bully by the horns, but that thought gave him an idea.

“Are you wearing your wife’s helmet? Those look like cow horns to me,” Erik taunted.

Ivard was unable to reach up and check the calcified protrusions and swing a broadsword at the same time. Erik kicked him in a delicate part of his anatomy and then finished him off with a dagger. 

Having tippy toed into the tavern during the preceding commotion, Olaf the Obnoxious asked the sixty-four-Thaler question, just before he tapped Erik the Redneck on the back of the head with a war club: “Are you smarter than a fifth raider?”