Free Votan and Other Novels (FANTASY MASTERWORKS) by John James Page B

up and vowed the hurt of the wound to the God, and then cleaned the wound itself and bandaged it.
    I wanted to sleep, but the old women, all anxious, said through Tawalz that I must eat first. They brought me stewed meat in a bowl, and when I tasted it, it was something that I had not tasted for years, it was horse. I asked them why horse, and Tawalz said:
    ‘Allfather, it is a horse for you.’
    They had caught a horse loose in the forest, and while you or I, if we found a stray horse, and there was no danger of being caught, would use it or sell it, they knew no better than to take it to the tree, which was all the temple that they had, and sacrifice it. But to my horror, it became clear that the horse was sacrificed to me, and now they expected me to eat it all. Have you ever tried to eat a whole horse? The old ladies were very insistent that I should. First I could eat it fresh, and then I would have it salt, and with the offal and the intestines they could make sausages, and they were busy cleaning the skin to make a blanket for my bed. I forget what they were going to do with the hooves.
    I managed to get over to them the idea that if the sacrifice were to me, then I could do as I liked with it. So I would give a feast to the whole clan. And since it is no use eating flesh alone, I gave some of the silver pieces from the wallet for two of the young men to run twelve hours each way to the nearest German farm, where they had an arrangement, to buy corn, salt and beer. Then they let me sleep.
    But before I slept I looked at my hair as it lay on the pillow,and I grew afraid. I asked for a mirror, and of course they had no such thing, but when they understood at last they brought me a bowl of water. When it was still I looked at my reflection in the water. My face was lined and haggard, as I expected. What I did not expect was this, that in those days on the tree, my hair and my beard had changed from black to white. From that day to this, I have been as you see me, a white-haired man, and for years I bore an old man’s head on a young man’s body. It is not at all a bad thing in many ways. It gives you an authority, a reputation which you would not otherwise possess, and old men and chieftains bow to you and call you Father, or even Allfather. White-haired Photinus I have been ever since, and it was as a white-haired man that I came to the Northern Sea and faced the Asers.

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    I slept for twenty-four hours, as far as I could guess. When I woke, they brought me my clothes, all washed and pressed with smooth stones, and they also brought me all the horse furniture. This was not only the rope harness and iron bit and a few iron fittings, but the blanket too, red and blue check, and my own kit-bag. So I went to their feast in all dignity in my best blue tunic, and I drank from my own silver cup, and I ate off my own silver plate. We ate the horse; forty of us left little of a horse, or of a couple of deer and a few dozen carp with it. There was enough beer for all the adults to drink their fill, and even for the children to taste. The women, as well as the men, sat round the fire to eat.
    These people are used to eating but once a day, and that not every day. Their bread was the worst I tasted in the north, being over half acorn and birch pith mixed with the flour. They called themselves the Polyani, from their word for the river meadows in which they lived; and they were proudly distinct from the Rus, who spoke the same language and lived in the same way, but farther east on the wide plains of grass, next to the yellow men, or the Lesny, who lived in the forests between.
    I tried to find out who or what they thought I was.
    ‘Joy led us to Allfather, joy told us he was here,’ said Tawalz, and I was never sure if I had understood him correctly. ‘We come to the tree, and we see Allfather chained there to hunger and to thirst. Yet there is water in his bottles, and there is food in his bag. We see the wolf dance to