Say Your Prayers Before You Sleep WHEN DR Nicholas Blake was a little boy he lived with his Granny in a little grey house in a long grey street in Glasgow. His granny wasn’t like other grannies. Other grannies told their grandchildren to say their prayers before they went to bed, his Granny said it didn’t matter. Once upon a time, she’d say after she tucked Nicholas in and turned the radiators down so far the windows would have frost lacing in the morning, the gods would listen to the prayers of men and wolves and, if it amused them, they’d answer them. It would never end wellgods don’t understand the needs of wolves and men and find disaster amusingbut at least they heard when you prayed.
Those days are past. People tried to shortchange the gods, like misers at the corner shop with euros in their pocket, and the gods grew weary of the lip service piety. So, like a cook with a sour broth, they are set to try again. First they will send the winter. The seas will freeze and the ground will grow bones instead of wheat. Blood will freeze in the veins of the living, everything that man has built and made with falter and fail. This is the wind age, when the weak will die. That’s when the wolves will go down over the wall. From John o’Groats to Land’s End they will harry those strong enough to have survived this long. The Run Away Man will lead them for a Wolf Winter is red as blood and has a butcher’s mercy for the sheep. This is the wolf age, when the only god who will listen for prayers is sharpeared, bloodytongued Fenrir. When Fenrir is glutted, fat