The Nethergrim Read Online Free PDF

had gotten underway by the time he came back up, making the trip to every table a whirling gantlet of arms and legs. It took seven weaving, ducking trips down to the cellar and back to serve the whole of the tavern—it would have taken only six if Wat Cooper had not chosen that particular moment to swing his wife right around in Edmund’s path. No dodging that one—and of course Father saw it all.
    “Everyone got your round? Got it? Then here’s to ’em!” Nicky Bird leapt onto a table. “Raise ’em, come on, raise ’em up. Here’s to Tristan and John, to the Ten and the fifty, to Vithric!”
    Edmund stopped, seized with the sick and flailing sensation that there was something he wanted very much to remember but could not. He glanced around the tavern room, thinking that maybe he had missed serving one of the corners. For a moment something slipped in and out of his thoughts, leaving only the memory of a pair of eyes watching him in cold disdain. He shrugged—or shuddered—then poured out the foamy bottom of his pitcher into the mug of old Robert Windlee, who had so far managed to sleep through all the din.
    “To Tristan and Vithric!” Everyone raised his voice, even Grubby Hands. It was the loudest sound Edmund had ever heard: “To the Ten and the fifty, the men who slew the Nethergrim!”

Chapter 3

    E dmund lay upon his pallet, fully dressed. He had been drifting off to the sound of distant, rumbling conversation and drunken singing for as long as he could remember, and by rights should be so weary as to sleep for a week—yet he had never felt so awake, so quick with anticipation. He passed the time by watching the shafts of firelight that shot up through the many gaps in the floorboards to play on the sharply angled ceiling of his bedroom, winking off and on as the shadow of a reveler passed near the fire in the hearth of the tavern below. They were still at it, long after his father would usually have kicked out all the locals and shut the taps for the night. Horsa Blackcalf scraped the tune of a bawdy drinking song; villager and traveler slurred and shouted their way through the chorus, bashing their mugs on the tables in clumsy rhythm. Edmund could hear his father circling the room, holding them all to the tune in his fine, round baritone, pausing only to urge them to louder choruses, greater joy, and most of all the purchasing of more of his ale.
    There came a restless rustle from the pallet next to Edmund’s. He shut his eyes and breathed in through his nose, deep and even as though lost in sleep.
    “Edmund? Edmund!” Geoffrey leaned across the gap between their beds. His breath reeked of the onions Edmund had avoided at dinner. “Why have you got your clothes on?”
    Horsa drew out the last note of the song into an uneven tremolo, after which there came a raucous cheer and the dull clack of coins being tossed into a hat. Edmund savored the familiar, happy tension in his belly. He ran back and forth over the things he had been practicing to say.
    Geoffrey grasped his shoulder. “I know you’re awake!”
    “Get off.” Edmund shoved his brother back with one arm and gained his feet.
    Geoffrey followed him over to the window. “Where are you going?”
    Edmund opened the shutters. The moonlight shone in at a slant. Nothing moved amongst the shadows in the yard below. He turned from the window and opened the trunk at the foot of his bed.
    Geoffrey crossed his arms over his hand-me-down nightshirt. “I’ll tell Mum.”
    Edmund favored his brother with a look of withering scorn. He pulled out a belt, then dropped it and felt around for the other.
    “I’ll tell Father!”
    “Think it through for a moment.” Edmund fastened the belt around his waist. “I’ve heard that you actually have some friends now—Miles Twintree, Emma Russet, that kid from across the river, what’s-his-name.”
    “I have lots of friends. More than you!”
    Edmund moved a bowl of water to the window. “You and I