Troll Blood Read Free Page A

moment later, flames splutter fiercely up.
    “Oil.” Sinumkw nods. “They poured in oil to make it burn.”
    Kwimu can actually hear it, crackling like a hundred spits. Black smoke pours up in a tall column. The neck and proud horned head show clearly, but the long serpent body seems writhing in flames.
    Down below, the child is scrambling off the roof. He drops the last few feet and goes racing down over the ravaged grasslands toward the beach.
    “Let’s get him!” Kwimu turns to Sinumkw. “Please,
nujj
…”
    His father shakes his head. “No.”
    “Oh, please,
nujj
. He’s only little, and he’s brave….”
    “A bear cub is little and brave,” says Sinumkw grimly, “and if you take one for a pet, it will grow up into a big bear and claw your arm off.”
    Kwimu swallows. “I know, but … can we leave him to die?”
    “They
have.” Sinumkw nods toward the bay. “He’s not one of the People, Kwimu. Not one of us.”
    “You like him, though,” says Kwimu desperately. “You laughed at the way he tricked the warriors. See—Fox approves!” Fox twists his head and licks Kwimu’s hand suddenly, as though to encourage him. Kwimu hardly dares to go on, but the words come anyway, forcing their way up from deep inside him, like a spring of water that has to bubble out. “He might become your son,
nujj.
My brother.”
    Sinumkw looks at him. His chest rises and falls in a sigh. “Well, we can try. Perhaps the cub is young enough to tame. Don’t be surprised if he bites you.”
    They turn, for the slope ahead is too steep to descend, and it will be necessary to go back into the woods and find another way down. Kwimu casts a backward glance at the burning vessel, and is in time to see it tip up and slide neatly backward under the water. The snarling serpent head vanishes last, and then it’s as though it has never existed, except for the smoke drifting higher and higher, a fading stain against the sky.
    The other
jipijka’m
is already out of the bay and turning up the gulf toward the open sea; and from this distance it looks more like a serpent than ever—a living serpent, swimming quietly away through the haze.
    Down on the shore, nine-year-old Ottar, young son of Thorolf the Seafarer, stands knee-deep in the cold waves. Tears pour down his cheeks. He’s alone, orphaned, desperate, stranded in this horrible place on the wrong side of the world. He hears a shout from the beach behind him. He turns, his heart leaping in wild, unbelieving hope. Somehow it’s going to be all right—it’s been a bad dream or an even worse joke—and he won’t even be angry. He’s going to run to whomever it is, and cling to them, and sob until the sobbing turns into laughter.
    And then he sees. His mouth goes dry. Coming toward him on the rising ground between him and the houses are two terrible figures. Their long hair is as black as pitch, and tied with colored strings. Their clothes are daubed with magic signs. Furs dangle from their belts. They are both carrying bows. But the frightening thing—the really frightening thing about them—is that you can’t see their expressions at all. Half of their faces are covered in black paint, the other half in red. Their eyes glitter white and black.
    “Skraelings!” Ottar whispers. “Dirty Skraelings!”
    He prepares to die.

CHAPTER 2
Water Snake

    T he green sea wrapped itself around Peer Ulfsson’s waist, and rose to his chest with a slopping sound. “Yow!” he yelled. As the wave plunged past he sucked in his breath, and bent quickly to look through the water.
    There! In the heaving brown-green glimmer he saw it: the hammer he’d dropped, lying on the stones. He groped with his arm, his fingers closed on the handle, and the next wave swept past his ears and knocked him over. There was a dizzy moment of being rolled backward in a freezing froth of bubbles and sand. He struggled up, spluttering but brandishing the hammer in triumph.
    “Got it!”
    “So I see.”