02 The Invaders Read Online Free PDF

sun would have risen hours ago. Then he smiled evilly at Stig. “And if you don’t get moving, I’ll have you seeing stars.”
    He slammed the hickory baton down on the ground a few centimeters from Stig’s head. Startled, the muscular boy sprang up from his bedroll and began fumbling for his breeches. Still half asleep, he managed to trip and fall as he pulled them on. Around him other members of the crew were having the same problem. Thorn surveyed them, shaking his head in disgust.
    “What a bunch of doddering old biddies you are!” His eye fell on Hal, who was on hands and knees, searching for his clothes, unaware that they were hidden under the blankets that Thorn had dragged off him. He yawned, then the yawn turned into a yelp as Thorn gave him a none-too-gentle rap on the behind with the hickory baton.
    “And you’re the skirl!” Thorn said scornfully. “You should be leading the way, not blundering round on your hands and knees like a dozy old badger! Up! Up! Up!”
    Within a few minutes, the Herons were standing in a ragged line outside the tent, some of them still fastening their pants and jackets, all of them tousle-haired and shivering in the cold, dim morning. The faint glow on the treetops was now a much more defined red. Stefan looked back enviously at his warm bed. In spite of Ulf’s predictions that he’d freeze in his drafty new spot, he’d slept soundly and blissfully, until Thorn’s insane yelling and banging had startled him awake.
    Thorn, infuriatingly jovial and depressingly wide-awake, surveyed the sniffing, shuffling group.
    “Gorlog’s bleached and broken bones but you’re a sorry lot!” he boomed. “You’d strike fear into any pirate’s heart—once he stopped laughing. Now, let’s get warmed up! Jump! Jump and clap your hands over your head. Come on!”
    Reluctantly, they began to jump in place, slapping their hands together over their heads as they did so. Thorn strode down the line behind them, exhorting them to greater efforts with a stream of abuse and judicially placed whacks with the hickory baton.
    Stig, next in line to Hal, muttered out of the corner of his mouth as he leapt in the air and clapped his hands.
    “I think I preferred him when he was an old drunk. This rehabilitated Thorn is a bit hard to… OW!”
    The exclamation was wrung out of him as Thorn, who had approached without Stig’s being aware of it, put a little extra venom into a whack across his behind. Stung by the blow, Stig leapt somewhat higher than he had planned to, and Thorn chuckled.
    “That’s the way, Stiggy boy! Higher and harder! Show the others how to do it!”
    Stig bit back an angry retort and continued to leap and clap. As he did so, he realized that already he was warming up. The blood was flowing freely through his legs and arms and warming his extremities. And, as he breathed deeply with the exercise, the oxygen he was dragging into his lungs was driving the sleepiness away.
    Beside him, Hal grinned at him unsympathetically. People always find it amusing when they see a friend suffering, Stig thought.
    “Serves you right for talking… OW! OW!”
    Hal was sure that Thorn had moved away from behind them. Now he realized that the shabby old sea wolf had sneaked back, unnoticed. Not for the first time, he marveled at how quietly and quickly Thorn could move these days.
    “Should be setting a better example, skirl!” Thorn guffawed.
    Some of the other Herons laughed as well. Ruefully rubbing his stinging behind, Hal reflected on Thorn’s tactics. By punishingthe skirl, he made sure that there could be no charges of favoritism leveled at him. And it definitely raised the spirits of the others to see Hal leap in shock—just as it had cheered him when it happened to Stig.
    Thorn moved down the line, pausing behind Ingvar. The huge boy was barely leaving the ground. His face was set in determined lines and he tried to hurl himself higher from the ground with each leap. It was his sheer