Thunder God by Paul Watkins Read Free Book Online Page B

up a handful of dirt and let it sift slowly through his fingers. Then he sprinkled some salt, only a few crystals, into the bone cup and added water from his drinking skin. If he had any fat for the lamp, he would light it and hold the cup over the tiny flame, dissolving the salt. He would lift the cup and pour the water over his head, then kneel with his hands on the hilt of his sword, sinking the blade into the earth.
    This ritual marked the beginning of every prayer, which was always followed with these words:
    The boundaries of time are come undone.
    I stand in the gateway between two worlds.
    Hear me through the veil that hides you from my sight.
    Help me through this day.
    Watch me. Shelter me.
    Do not forget me.
    I am your child.
    Sometimes our fellow travellers, draped in furs and weaponry, would come to watch. They kneeled at a respectful distance, swords laid out on the ground in front of them. Whatever words Halfdan had for his god, these others seemed to lack. They had no affection for Halfdan, but when it came time to ask for help in cruising the cataracts of the Dnieper, its banks strewn with wreckage and the rag-clothed bones of those whose luck ran out, these men would trust him with their lives.
    To take his mind off the cataracts and the Petcheneg, Halfdan spent his time gambling. By the time we put ashore one night, he had lost half of what he owned, and took out his frustration by striking me for some imagined offence until my front teeth were loose and one of my eyes was swollen shut. Then he walked me out onto a treeless plain through which a river twisted sluggishly.
    I wondered if he was going to kill me, and realised that I was less afraid of the beatings, or even of dying, than of the fact that I never knew what he was going to do next.
    Halfdan pushed me far out through the rustling, knee deep grass.
    ‘Here,’ he said, suddenly, and pointed to the ground.
    I understood then that he had only been looking for a place to pray.
    A storm came down upon us while we prayed, twisting the gut of the sky into coils of greenish-grey. He took no notice of the first claps of thunder, but when the rumbling drew closer, stabbing the clouds with lightning, he grew afraid and lay flat in the middle of his sword-drawn ring. Storm clouds, veined with fire, tumbled across the plain.
    ‘Get down!’ shouted Halfdan. ‘Get down!’
    But I stayed on my feet. The only way to defy him was to sacrifice his property, which was what my life had become. The grass thrashed in sudden gusts of wind and soon it was rainingso hard that I could barely stay on my feet. The bellowing of the storm was all around us, whipping past in a stampede of fire-legged beasts. The sky crackled like fat spitting from cooked meat. I breathed the burnt air and felt the pressure in my ears as the bolts cut through the sky above me. In all its wordless fury, the lightning raged but never hurt me, as if its only chance had failed, and I laughed as Halfdan cowered at my feet.
    After the storm, sunlight blinded us with its sharp and twitching glare as we made our way back over the wet grass. A rainbow arced through the settling sky. Halfdan looked at me as if I might at any moment climb its colour-banded path and disappear into the clouds.
    I had meant only to defy him, but in his mind, I had defied much more than that.
    After that day, he addressed me in tones of respect, and put aside the beating of his slave. I became more of a student than a servant. There were times he even treated me like a son. The only way to keep his respect was to listen to his teaching, and in spite of myself, I could not help wanting to learn.
    Soon I knew the names of all the Norse gods, not only Odin, Thor and Frey, about whom I had learned from my father, but Baldur, Bragi, Forseti, Heimdall, Njord, and Ull. He made me recite their names, and the names of the seasonal rites – The Feast of the Dead, Winter Solstice, Samhain, Walpurgisnacht, Imbolc, Spring Equinox,