Thunder God Read Online Free PDF Page A

will serve him right.’
    I pushed past my mother and out into the night, ignoring her orders to return. I tried to find Olaf, but he seemed to have vanished. I went up to the temple, looking for him, but the place was empty.
    While I was there, it began to rain and then to thunder.
    I left the doors open and sat down on one of the benches, waiting for the storm to pass, but it only seemed to grow stronger. The rain which fell in front of the door looked like a grey veil, and the smell of it sifted into the room.
    Lightning flickered, and in its flash I saw Olaf.
    He was standing in the middle of the fields. His arms were raised, as if to touch the fire branching from the sky.
    I called to him, but either he did not hear me or the sound of thunder stole my voice away.
    When the lightning flashed again, he was gone.

I woke up in the temple,
    I woke up in the temple, amongst the charred bones of old sacrifices.
    Sun was shining through the open doors, puddles from last night’s rain reflecting a clear blue sky.
    As I started walking home, I saw flames rising from the town. Houses were burning. Half hidden in the smoke were two boats, moored in shallow water near the beach. Long and thin with dirty square sails and curved prows, I recognised them from my father’s stories. They were Drakkar warships, the greatest nightmare to come trampling through the sleep and waking dreams of every person on this coast.
    Raiders with long and braided hair were loading their ships with everything they could find. They carried off goats and sheep, some of the animals still alive, with their legs bound together. Others were dead, broken necks lolling on the shoulders of the men. The raiders brought out trunks of clothing, which they tipped into the street and began trying on to see what fitted. I saw men from our town chased into the water and killed with long-handled axes. One woman reached out towards her attacker, as if to stop the sharpened steel with her bare hands. Her screaming reached me on the wind.
    While I stood there on the crest of the hill, too shocked tomove, one of the raiders spotted me. He dumped the armful of rope he had been carrying and began running up the path towards me. His shirt was made of countless iron links, its sleeves reached down to his elbows and its skirt stopped just above his knees. The salt of dried sea-spray was etched around the metal like a frost. Under this he wore a bright red tunic and baggy trousers made of heavy brown wool, which were bound at the calves but left to billow about his thighs. He carried a sword and a large round shield slung across his back in a way that seemed to twist his shape out of its human form. He wore a helmet with a heavy plate running down the bridge of his nose. The salty iron seemed to grow like some deformity out of his weather-beaten face, from which sprouted a tangle of beard as red as my own hair.
    Smoke spread above the town and twisted away over the sea, snuffing out the gleam of sun off the water. Down in the village, fire curled like a breaking wave from the doorway of Guthrun’s forge. The roof of my father’s boat shed collapsed in an upward-falling rain of sparks. The walls tumbled in after it, as if the whole structure were being sucked into the ground.
    The sound of the cracking timbers brought me to my senses and I ran, muscles turned to fire under my sweating skin. I sprinted down the rows of drying fish, brushing past them so the husks of their fins rattled together, spinning light to dark to light again, like leaves in the breeze.
    I glanced back to see the raider closing in on me and at last, when I could go no further, I stopped and turned towards him.
    We faced each other, both gasping for air.
    He reached out to the black stone hammer which hung around my neck and, with one tug, snapped the old leather. The cord trailed over the sides of his hand.
    ‘Where did you get this?’ he asked, in a language I half understood.
    ‘It was given to