Spirit Walker Read Online Free PDF Page A

pretty, but several merchants hereabouts think it’s worth trying, and they’re financing the expedition. I’m even donating my three-thousand-gallon beer barrel as a container to hold the hatchlings while we transport them, and the masons are donating their wagon and a few mastodons to haul the thing. So, how about it? Want to come?”
    “To Craal?” Ayuvah asked. “You are crazy! No!”
    Scandal smiled and raised a hand to ward off Ayuvah’s refusal as if it were a blow. In his best bartering voice he said, “Dragging a damned wagon nine hundred miles through mountains infested with sabertooths, dire wolves, slavers and giant Mastodon Men—all to catch a barrel of sea serpents—might not sound like your idea of fun, but think of it as an adventure! I’ve got a handful of humans coming, delightful fellows good for banter, but we're going out into the Rough, where there are only mosquitoes and danger for company. I need you Tull—you and a dozen chinless Pwi with their strong backs to build me a road,” Tull kept shaking his head and Scandal kept talking, not pausing to breathe, hoping to say the right thing.
    “And you, Ayuvah, you can scout our trail. With your sharp eyes, it will be an easy job. And you, Tull, you’ll be boss of the road crew! No digging for you, just lording it over others. Neither of you need to lift a hand the whole trip! Just give the Pwi their orders. You could eat like this—my finest meals, three times a day! All you have to do is convince some Pwi to come with us—at first I’d thought forty, then thirty—but I’ll settle for a dozen, make it twelve!”
    Ayuvah spat, “None of the Pwi will go with you to Craal!”
    “Look!” Scandal said, “People are talking. Already they’re calling this whole affair ‘Scandal’s Wondrous Blunder.’ Why, when I told the town of my plan and asked for volunteers, men evacuated their seats so fast they left turds on their stools. We haven’t even hooked the mastodon to the wagon yet, and already things are falling apart. So I need your help. I’m begging. When I’m lying cold in my grave, eating dirt and breathing worms, I don’t want to lose my eternal sleep worrying that people are still laughing at me. If you won’t do it for me, do it for the town. Get it through your thick heads: no fish, no money—and without the serpents to drive the fish in from the sea, we can’t catch them! After last spring’s failure, the town is doomed! You don’t have to piss in the wind to see which way it blows.”
    “We don’t know that the serpent hatch failed,” Ayuvah protested. “The great mothers could have gone to the nesting grounds in the south this year.”
    “For two hundred years they’ve followed the currents north!” Scandal answered with a sigh. He’d voiced this same argument a dozen times in the last week, yet no one seemed to want to believe the danger. “I tell you, there are no serpents lying in the hatching grounds at the Haystack Islands. Not one! I went down last week, and I’ve seen with my own eyes—not only are the young serpents gone, but the old ones that patrol the oceans between here and Hotland are gone as well. The sea lanes are open.”
    Scandal let the pronouncement hang like a smokehouse ham in the hot air.
    “Ayaah, I’ve heard,” Tull said. “But you’ve gotten ahead of yourself. Even if you can bring some serpents back alive, will they do any good? You might put a hundred in the bay and let them grow to eighty feet over the winter, but we don’t know why the old ones are dying. What if yours die, too? No, before you run into the wilderness you should wait for Chaa to return from his spirit walk.”
    That damned Pwi shaman again , Scandal thought. “Use a little common sense!” Scandal said. “He started his spirit walk five days ago. We’ve barely got ten weeks to make it to the Seven Ogre River in time for the hatch. We can’t wait for him. As for the serpents—I’m sure it’s only a