Odin's Child (Odd Tangle-Hair's Saga) by Macbain Bruce

Author:Macbain, Bruce [Macbain, Bruce]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Amphorae Publishing Group, LLC
Published: 2015-05-18T16:00:00+00:00

22

My Secret Discovered

“Wake up, Odd Tangle-Hair. Wake up!”

Ketil’s grandson shook me until my eyes opened. The loft was dark except for the feeble light of his candle.

“Eh? What do you want, Toke? What hour is it?”

“Not yet cockcrow, sir, but you’re to run down to the wharf just as quick as you can.” He said it particular, ‘as quick as you can.’ He gave me another shake for good measure.

“Who says?”

“Man what was just here, sir. Rouses me with rappin’ on the door and gives me this message for you from One-Legged Gorm. It’s your ship, Master Tangle-Hair. There’s been a fire in the ship shed. You’re to go and see for yourself what’s to be done.”

“Hel’s Hall!” I was up in a second and fumbling in the dark for my clothes. “Damn the man! He has six silver ounces from me to keep her dry over the winter and what does he do but burn her! Toke, fetch me a light.”

Throwing a sealskin coat over my shoulders, I scrambled after him down the ladder.

“When Stig wakes up, send him after me.”

“But can’t I go along?”

“Do as I tell you.”

I lit a torch from the hearth and stepped out, shivering, into the starry night. The snow, which lay thick all around, was crisscrossed by deep trodden pathways. I followed one that took me past rows of houses down to the square, where a black circle on the ground was all that remained of the Lucy fire that had burned itself out three nights before. Another path led around by the side of the cathedral and brought me to the waterfront.

By the time I reached it, a ribbon of gray lay along the horizon and the huddled shapes of sheds and warehouses were just creeping out of the darkness.

“Gorm!” I roared, as I slid and splashed ankle-deep through the salty slush that covered the wharf. “Gorm, you son-of-a-bitch, if my ship is ruined, I’ll tear the other leg off you!”

One-Legged Gorm’s shed, which was nothing but a broad shingled roof supported on squat posts, loomed ahead in the gloom, from under its eaves a glow of firelight. I rushed inside.

“Over here,” said a low voice. A torch flared in the dark, splashing its light against the curved hull of my ship and one of the props that supported it. The man who spoke stood with his back to me.

“Gorm, what’s it all about? The shed’s not afire—”

“N-no indeed.”

He spun and landed me a blow in the face that staggered me. At the same time, a pair of arms circled me from behind. He hit me a second time, and a third, until I sank down, unconscious.

A helmetful of icy slush in my face brought me to. I lay on the deck of my ship with my hands tied behind me and my eyes blindfolded. My jaw ached and my mouth was full of blood. What a fool I was to have walked into this childish trap—to have thought that the stammering man hadn’t seen me at Bergthora’s.

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