The Scorpio Races Read Online Free PDF Page A

babies here on the beach; there is only me and the horses. Brian Carroll has told me that when he is out at sea at night, he can sometimes hear the horses calling to each other under the water, and it sounds like whale song, or a widow wailing, or something chuckling.
    I look down to the water in the deepest cleft of the rocks below me; it has risen fast. How long have I been standing here? The boulders in front of me are already nothing but shiny humps of rock barely above the black water. I am empty-handed, but I am also out of time — I need to turn back and pick my way across the seaweed-slimed rocks while I still can.
    I look at my hand; a thick trickle of blood has welled in my palm and down between the two bones of my arm. It gathers, swells, drips soundlessly into the water. My palm will hurt later. I look at the water where my blood disappears. I am silent. The cave is silent.
    I turn around and there is a horse.
    It is close enough to smell the briny odor of it, close enough to feel the warmth off its still-wet skin, close enough to look into its eye and see its dilated square pupil. I smell blood on its breath.
    And then they wake me.
    It is Brian and Jonathan Carroll, and their faces both spell concern. Brian’s face wears the traditional brand: furrowed eyebrows, lips puckered. Jonathan’s comes out as an apologetic smile that changes shape every few seconds. Brian is my age and I know him from the piers; we both deal with the water for our living and so we have history together, though we are not friends. Jonathan is his brother, trailing Brian in every way, including brains.
    “Kendrick,” says Brian. “You up?”
    I am now. I lie there in my bunk like I am tied to it and say nothing.
    Jonathan adds, “Sorry to wake you, mate.”
    “You’re the man,” Brian says. Though I’m feeling no kinship for him now in the middle of the night, I don’t mind Brian. He says what he means. “There’s nothing else for it; Mutt’s in a world of trouble. He had a mind to wait up for one of the capaill to come out of the water and now he’s gotten what he asked for and I don’t think he likes it.”
    “It’s going to kill them,” Jonathan says. He looks pleased to have been able to state something so obvious before Brian could.
    “Them?” I echo. It’s cold and I’m wide awake.
    “Mutt and a bunch of his mates,” Brian says. “They’re all in it, and they’ve got the capall sort of caught, but they can’t let it go and they can’t bring it in.”
    Now I’m sitting. I don’t have any love in the world for Mutt — also known as Matthew Malvern, the bastard son of my boss — or any of the grooms who scurry in submissive friendship behind him, but they can’t leave a horse tangled up on the beach in whatever fool trap they’ve devised.
    “You’re the one for the horses, Kendrick,” Brian says. “I reckon someone’s going to get killed unless we fetch you back there.”
    Back there. Now I understand their expressions; they were part of this and they know that I’ll think less of them for it.
    I don’t say anything else. Just get out of bed, pulling on my old sweater and snatching up my grease-black-blue coat with all my things in its pockets. I jerk my chin toward the door, and they scurry before me like sandpipers, Jonathan wrenching the door open so that Brian can lead the way out of the stable.
    Outside, the wind is a live, starving thing. The sky over Skarmouth is a dull brown, lit by the streetlights, but everywhere else is inky. There is a bit of a moon, so it will be brighter by the ocean, but not much. We strike out across the fields, taking the straightest path to the beach. There’s nothing out here but rocks and sheep, but it’s easy enough to fall over either of them.
    “Torch,” I say, and Brian flicks on a flashlight and offers it to me. I shake my head. I’ll need my hands free. Behind us, Jonathan jogs and trips keeping up with our pace, making a beam of light arc