Thunder God by Paul Watkins Page B

sparring partner, I learned to handle weapons almost as well as he could. Soon, the skill of wielding them no longer required conscious thought. The movements of axe and spear and sword became so fluid that it was as if they had not been learned but remembered, from a time more distant than my birth.
    Afterwards, in heated marble baths, we used sea sponges and olive oil soap to wash away the dust of Miklagard.
    At long tables, we were served mutton and fish, flat bread and goat’s cheese, black olives cured in oil. We ate dripping chunks of honeycomb and drank more wine than water.
    Beneath these rooms, at the end of a passageway deep underground, was the temple of the Varangians. The pillars here were not made of wood but of stone and illuminated with fire pits fueled by olive branches. The wooden benches which lined the walls had been carved with flared crosses, sun wheels and dragon heads, all copied from Norse war-shields.
    It was here that Halfdan went to pray each day. I would follow at his heels, the heat of the day fading as we travelled underground and the smell of olive wood fires gradually filling our lungs.
    This was the only place where he and I were equals. It served to remind me that, as masters went, Halfdan treated me better than most.
    I knew one boy whose master cut off his fingers one by one for such trivial mistakes as spilling food. When the boy had no fingers left, the man set him free. The last time I saw that boy, he was wandering away into the dust of a gathering sandstorm in the wastelands west of Itil.
    For his part, Halfdan did not expect anything more from me than belligerent obedience. Anything else would have seemed to him insincere.
    But no matter how well Halfdan treated me, I still hated him. No slave can love his master. His infrequent acts of grudging kindness, like the cast-off clothes he gave me and the food he sometimes shared, only made me hate him more. I watched him while he slept, when he would bark at all the demons in his head. I saw the blood pulse in his neck and thought about setting that blood free from its endless wanderings down the tunnels of his body.
    In the end, I did not kill him, because it seemed more cruel tolet him live. I even learned to pity Halfdan. He had been on the move most of his life and had travelled to places that could not be found on any maps, nor named, nor found again. He was as sick in the head from the things he had watched people do to each other as he was from the beauty of what he had seen but could not find the words to describe. As a result, he lived half in and half out of the past. It was Halfdan’s curse that his thoughts did not live in the same world as his body.
    My own thoughts swirled endlessly around the memories I kept of home. Slowly, these memories began to unravel. When the images faded, I tended to them as if repairing an old tapestry that hung against the inside of my skull. In the end, what remained was not really a picture of my home, only the idea of it. But it was an idea that made life bearable. Sometimes, the promise I had made to return there was the only thing keeping me alive.
    Meanwhile, it seemed as if the only thing keeping the Emperor alive was the Varangian Guard. He was a short and stocky man, with pale blue eyes and a face as round as a coin. Unlike his courtiers, who swathed themselves in silk and gold brocade, the Emperor usually appeared in a simple purple tunic. Although he was physically frail compared to the average Varangian, the Emperor was strong in other ways. He was quietly and thoroughly aware of the vast complexities behind the workings of the empire he ruled. The wealth he commanded was almost unimaginable – rooms stacked with gold, sacks of jewels spilled across the floor – all the substance of fantastic rumour until you saw them for yourself. He stood like the hub of a wildly-spinning wheel, in which the Varangian were only one of a hundred spokes. He alone could navigate the canals of lies