Norseman Raider (The Norseman Chronicles Book 4) by Jason Born

Author:Jason Born [Born, Jason]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Published: 2014-08-15T04:00:00+00:00

PAR

T III – Dal Riata!

CHA

PTER 8

Godfrey Haraldsson was indeed blessed. I didn’t know if it was from his ancestors such as his father, Harald of Bayeux, and all the work they’d done or the seed they spilled into broad-hipped women. I wasn’t certain if his blessings came from Thor. Thor was the most human of gods. He was one of us. He fought for us. I wondered if King Godfrey, with his somewhat reckless ways and headlong approach, engendered Thor’s compassion. Perhaps it was Thor who plucked us from grim situations and made them magnificent. A turn of a blade here, a shift of a man’s foot there could sometimes be the difference between victory and defeat. Thor could and would do that for a man. The oral tales said that our god of thunder had sympathy on the young lad who’d sucked the marrow from his goat’s bones so that when Thor resurrected the beast, it had a malformed leg. Instead of hammering the boy and his family to death with his mjolnir, Thor took the boy on as a servant. The two went on together and had many adventures. Perhaps Godfrey was that modern-day boy.

Or, I did not know if the king was blessed by this One God, so in vogue. Killian called it Providence when God’s all-powerful hand came down and presented a way out of a situation or gave a man a gift as fundamental as his life or as basic as a loaf for his supper.

Whether it was quality breeding stock of the generations that came before him, or because of habits learned at the foot of a famously strong father, or because of favor with Thor, or from God’s graceful Providence mattered little to me in those days. Now I know that all goodness comes from the hand of the One True God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and me. I’ve read it on the vellum pages of a book and experienced it in my life. Back on the Isle of Man, after our twin successful raids in a span of less than three weeks, what mattered and what was sure in my mind was that Godfrey carried heaps of blessings on his back and walked on the high seas of luck. He danced on the outstretched oars of a longboat, extended like a shelf and parallel to the sea. He skipped from one oar to the next, never fearing of a misstep, never worrying that he’d fall into the deep.

King Godfrey was blessed.

I now understood what the life of a hero could be like. Since easing into the docks of Man, celebrations had carried on and on. They began on the shingle before many of us had even exited the longboats. Parties with ale-swilling men erupted all the way up the hillside to the walled town. The constantly muddy streets were tilled by the jubilant dancing feet of her residents. A parade spontaneously started when the king crossed into the gates. Broad-shouldered young men hefted Godfrey into the air.

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