Thunder God Read Online Free PDF

me,’ I replied.
    Carefully, he wrapped the cord around the medallion and put it in his pocket. Then he closed his fist in the tangle of my hair and pulled me down to the town, past screaming children and women and men who lay bleeding in the mud.
    I called out for my mother and Kari, but there was no reply. Both of them would have left for town soon after sun up; Kari to go to the tailor’s and my mother to the market for bread and milk. But I did not see them now among the corpses in the street.
    I noticed a horse lying dead in the traces of a cart it had been pulling. The cart had been flipped over and a face was peering out from under it. It was Olaf, his skin blackened with soot, staring wide-eyed at the man who dragged me along.
    The raider and I reached the water’s edge. Bodies rolled in the surf. The scudding foam was tinted pink with blood.
    The raiders waded out to their boats, piling in what they had stolen. They muttered under their breath as their eyes passed over me and seemed to disapprove of my being brought on board.
    The man still held me by my hair. We had just begun to wade out to his ship when a door slammed in one of the houses and we both turned to see Tostig emerge from the darkness of his hut. He must have hidden himself or else had been of so little interest that the raiders left him alone. He was carrying an old war axe, whose wide, grey blade showed a band of silver along the edge. Tostig raised the axe above his head, snake-veined hands knotted around the wooden shaft. Then he began, very slowly, to move towards us. Tostig’s lips were pulled back from his gums with the effort of holding the axe.
    The other raiders turned to watch. Some of them began to laugh.
    Tostig stumbled forwards.
    The raider let go of my hair.
    I should have run then. Perhaps that was what Tostig had intended for me to do, but I was as stunned as everyone else to see this ancient man waving an axe that he could barely lift above his head.
    The metal-shirted raider smiled as he unslung the shield from his back and held it close against his chest. He drew his sword and braced his legs in the shallow water.
    The other raiders cheered at Tostig, as if he were winning a race.
    Tostig took no notice of them. He moved like a man in a trance. With ten paces still to go, he suddenly tipped forward. At first it looked as if he had fallen, but then the axe left his hands and flashed through the air, end over end, and the gasp that went up from the raiders came at the same moment as the crash of the blade against my captor’s shield. He staggered back as the axe blade cut clean through the metal strapping which held his shield together and jutted through the other side, a finger’s width from his chest.
    Tostig was on his hands and knees in the sand, head down, fighting for breath.
    The raider threw aside his ruined shield and strode across to him.
    I thought he would kill Tostig then, but instead he hooked his arm around the old man’s body and lifted him up the way I had seen sheep hoisted from pens. He carried Tostig out to the boat, pushing me along in front of him.
    When the warships left our bay a short while later, Tostig and I were on board, tied by our necks to the mast, side by side with our backs against the wood. On deck were bags of money from almost every family in town and chests filled with silver cups and amber beads. Clothes lay heaped upon the planks.
    Despite its size, Altvik had been a wealthy town. The fewwho had refused to give up their money were dead and burning in their houses or staring up through bloodied water from the bottom of the bay. The flames of Altvik reached into the sky. Above them, thick smoke gathered like some distorted shadow of the ships that had brought these men here. Then even that disappeared.
    The second ship kept close behind us, following in our wake.
    Soon after we lost sight of land, another boat appeared, coming towards us.
    Instead of trying to get away, the raiders slackened