The Dark Horse Read Free Page B

coming back from fishing and pulling the boats up the beach, and women returning from the fields.
    “Lost something, Olaf?” Herda, the Song-giver, asked my father.
    He held up his hand as if to say, “Be quiet,” but it was too late.
    So Herda and a few others joined the search, and Mouse was found. Sleeping with the hounds in the farthest darkness of the great broch.
    A crowd had gathered as Father pulled Mouse blinking into the light.
    Horn was standing by, a mocking smile on his face.
    “Your daughter prefers the company of dogs?” he said.
    There was laughter. Not kind laughter.
    My father was embarrassed. He shook Mouse angrily by the shoulder. It was one of the few times I saw him angry with her.
    “What are you thinking of ?” he shouted. “Lying with dogs!”
    Then, and then, and then! Mouse spoke for the first time!
    “But they were sad,” she said.
    For a while we were all too amazed that she’d spoken at all, never mind what she had said. Never mind the strange accent to her voice.
    Olaf gathered himself.
    “What did you say?” he asked her.
    “The dogs are sad since Graylegs died,” Mouse said simply, as if it were obvious. Graylegs was one of the older hounds. He had died a couple of days before.
    “What? How do you know they’re sad?” Father asked, bewildered.
    “They told me,” said Mouse.
    Then she asked her first question. That look of confusion she’d had on her face when we first saw her had returned.
    “Why?” she asked. “Don’t they talk to you?”

7

    In front of a small fire, in a shelter of branches and bracken, the man with white hair and skin rubbed the black palms of his hands together. He felt warm enough, but he shivered, as if with a fever. He spread all his possessions out before him by the jumping firelight.
    First. His knife, the length of a hand, with a different blade on each side, one toothed and one smooth. As good for skinning a goat as cutting a throat.
    Second. Some leather cord, for various purposes.
    Third. A little dried fish.
    Fourth. An oiled bag containing his fire sticks.
    Fifth was the leather bag in which he carried these things. That was all. His only other possessions were his clothes and a charm around his neck, a round metal disc with a picture of a horse on it. How he wished he still had his horse for this task . . . but she had died when he was only a year into his journey.
    He’d been heading north when the ship ran aground on the reef in the storm. It had irritated him to learn that he’d already passed the place, had gone too far south. He’d had to find a ship heading back the way he’d come.
    None of the traders whose ship it was seemed to have survived the shipwreck. It hadn’t been far to the shore, but they’d all been drunk. He’d despised them for it as he clung desperately to the box with one arm and swam inland with the other, the cord of his leather bag tightening around his neck with every stroke.
    So he’d go on going north. It was always possible the box had been washed out to sea while he lay unconscious on the beach, but he didn’t think so. He’d seen footsteps near him in the sand, though the tide had washed most of them away, and there was no trail to follow. Besides, he’d come too far to fail. He had to succeed. And he had to have the box to do it.
    Without it he felt anxious. It was his reason for being here; in a way it was simply his reason for being. After years of traveling, and so close to the end of his journey, he’d lost it.
    He held the charm in his hand and vowed he would find the box. It was too cold to sleep tonight, but before the sun had set on him tomorrow, he
would
find the box. He shivered again, and a drop of sweat fell from his forehead into his eye. He ignored it, his mind on more important things.
    No one else knew what the box held, and even if they did, he was safe enough for now. The box had its own protection.

8

    After Sif had produced the box, Horn had shouted at Mouse and Sigurd.