TO DIE FOR

I shift quietly so I don’t wake the hairy giant asleep next to me. I got what I wanted last night and now I just need to slip away without being noticed.

“No, wait!” I think. “He’ll remember! What can I do? When he remembers he’ll come after me and…” The thought makes me shiver.

Poor Ivar, he was a big lump of muscle-bound putty in my hands when I started paying court to him and pretended to be getting shit-faced on that Viking ale. He didn’t stand a chance. He’d have told me anything I wanted to hear. Well, he did actually. He gave me the recipe that my dad, the brewer, would kill for.

Kill for? Good idea. One look tells me that Ivar’s stonking great battle axe is propped up by the door. Shame, really but needs must.

One blow cleaves his head in two and I creep out, the list of ingredients clutched in my hand.

We’ll call it something in his honour, poor Ivar. How about “Skull Splitter”?