Pieces of Eight by Steve Goble

Author:Steve Goble
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Pieces of Eight: A Spider John Mystery
ISBN: 9781645060376
Publisher: Seventh Street Books
Published: 2020-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

26

He’d hoped to make it back to Issac’s barn by nightfall, but was coming to realize that was impossible. He’d hidden in a fish shack until he’d convinced himself that he was not being pursued, then slowly hobbled back southward along the docks. Once he’d gotten away from town, he’d plopped onto the beach and removed the damned stilts from his screaming legs. He’d suffered sword gashes in his day, and knocks on the skull and hot musket balls lashing his skin. He still winced whenever he recalled the cutlass that had claimed the small finger on his left hand. The shooting, burning, throbbing pain in his legs and feet from those fucking stilts, however, were worse than any of that.

“Good riddance,” he said, snarling at the small pile of wood. He tossed the short stilts into the harbor.

Spider rolled up the britches—now too long for him—and picked up the crutches. He would carry them back to Isaac, so as not to waste good wood.

A gull’s call echoed across the water in the lowering light, and the fog was beginning to form. Spider walked, keeping an eye out for the bearded man with the earring and for birds and wishing there were more trees on this island he could use for cover. Then he stopped. He could hear Odin in his mind: “The trees are where the fucking birds are, you lobcock!”

The memory of the man in the tricorn got him to thinking. Had the sack of silver been intended for Spider’s skull, and not Stoneham’s? Had someone followed him there, intending to kill him, and simply missed in the fog and confusion?

He could not dismiss that idea, though he thought it unlikely. The man in the pasture might have been looking for anything, a wayward sheep, for instance. Spider had no real reason to suppose he’d been the man’s prey, and no one seemed to care enough about Stoneham to protect him. Maybe someone had sought to avenge Wood, though.

Spider looked at the clouds rolling across the darkening sky and moved on, sending new throbs of pain up his legs with each step. That’s when he heard a voice.

He halted, and crouched.

“This way.” It was a man’s voice. A whisper, so it had to be close. It came from somewhere behind him.

Spider glanced over his shoulder. He saw two shapes in the distance, and possibly another beyond, illuminated by a lantern one of them carried.

Fuck and bugger.

He considered his options. He could creep into the water, and simply hide, watch, and listen. He might freeze, but that was better than being shot or stabbed or dragged to the gallows. They might not spot him in the dark, and he might learn something that way. It would be risky, though, and he had no weapons save for his knife if they caught him.

He could try to swim to safety, but his aching legs scoffed at that idea, and he’d have to lose the heavy coat and his boots.

Spider decided. He

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