The Outcasts Read Online Free PDF Page A

dining room. She heard water splashing into a basin and guessed that he was trying to wash the stink away. She stepped closer to Thorn, standing over him, forcing herself to endure the renewed olfactory assault.
    “Thorn, you disgust me,” she said. Her voice was low, but it cut like a whip and the old sea wolf actually flinched. For perhaps a second, a brief glimmer of anger showed in his eyes. But almost immediately, it died away as he pulled his protective coat of self-pity back around himself.
    “I disgust everyone,” he said. “What’s special about you?”
    “I don’t care about everyone. I care about me. There was a time when people looked up to you. Now they laugh at you. Even the boys call you crazy old Thorn. It’s an affront to see what you’re doing to your life.”
    Now anger did flare in Thorn.
    “What I’m doing? What I’m doing?” He held up the scarred stump of his right arm, pulling the ragged sleeve back from it to bare it. “Do you think I did this to myself? Do you think I chose to be a cripple?”
    “I think you’re choosing to destroy your mind and your body and your self-respect, along with your arm,” she told him. “You’re using your arm as an excuse to destroy the rest of you. To destroy your own life!”
    “It’s my life. I’ll destroy it if I want to,” he retorted. “What right do you have to criticize me?”
    “I have the right because you promised Mikkel that you’d stand by me and Hal. You swore you’d see that we were all right. You let us down. And you continue to let us down with every day that you try to destroy yourself!”
    Thorn’s eyes dropped away from hers.
    “You’re doing all right,” he muttered. But she laughed harshly at his words.
    “No thanks to you. And no thanks to the promise you made. A promise you broke, and continue to break every day!”
    “Not my fault,” he said, in a voice so low she could barely hear it. “Leave me alone, woman. There’s nothing I can do for you.”
    “You promised,” she said.
    He reared his shaggy head up at her, goaded now to full anger. “I promised when I still had my hand! It wasn’t my fault that I lost it!”
    “Maybe not. But it was your fault when you let everything else go with it! You’re killing yourself, Thorn! You’re destroying a good man, a worthwhile man. And to me, that’s a crime! I won’t stand by any longer and watch while you do it.”
    “Haven’t you noticed?” he said, sarcasm heavy in his voice. “I’m not a man anymore. I’m a cripple. A useless cripple who’s no good for anything, no good to anyone!”
    “I don’t recall it saying anywhere that a man is measured by how many hands and legs he has. A man is measured by the worth of his spirit, and the strength of his will. Most of all, he’s measured by his ability to overcome tragedy in his life.”
    “What would you know about tragedy?” he shot back at her. She held his gaze until, once more, his eyes dropped from hers.
    “You only lost a hand,” she said finally. “I lost an entire man. A wonderful man.”
    He kept his eyes down, nodding his head in apology.
    “I’m sorry,” he said. “If I could bring him back, I would.”
    “Well, you can’t. But there is something you can do for me.”
    Thorn laughed bitterly, shaking his head at the idea. “Me? What can I do for anyone?”
    And in that second, Karina had a flash of insight. She knew what Thorn needed to hear.
    “You can help me. I need you,” she said.
    He looked her directly in the eyes then, searching for any sign of dishonesty or falsehood.
    “Hal needs you,” she continued. “He needs a man’s influence and guidance. There are things you can tell him that I can’t—about being a warrior and about the bond that forms among shipmates.” She paused to let that thought sink in, and saw that it had reached him. “He’s growing up fast and it’s not easy for him. He’s different from the other boys. He’s half Araluen and half Skandian.