The Wurms of Blearmouth Read Online Free PDF

few times there’d been trouble with some stranger, one of them would show up to sort things out right quick, and that had saved Hordilo’s skin more than once.
    So in a way he owed them, didn’t he? And if it wasn’t in a walking lump of iron to feel anything about anyone, Hordilo was flesh and blood, with genuine feelings and even a heart that could break if, say, some hag of a wife he’d once loved went and did the nasty on him, and not just one animal, either, but all kinds of animals, and then told him about it with shining eyes and that soul-cutting half-smile that said she liked what her words were doing to him and besides, Ribble had been his dog, dammit! If something like that had ever happened to him, which of course it hadn’t, why, his heart might break, or at least start leaking. Because a man without feelings was no better than a … well, a golem.
    Reaching Blecker’s Livery, he paused for a moment to utter a soft prayer to the memory of old Blecker, since remorse always came afterwards and never went away, when the fury of knowing that Blecker knew everything with his nickering stallion and all, well, that faded after a time, and that ex-wife he didn’t have was a seductive woman when she wanted to be, not that Ribble cared much either way, with his endless panting and witless but knowing eyes, but Blecker himself had seen plenty, hadn’t he, with his damned menagerie and all. But whisper a prayer anyway, because Hordilo knew that that was what a decent man did, but not much of a prayer, since Blecker had never known a thing about decency and nobody had complained much when he swung from the gibbet, except when they saw Hurta riding off on that stallion with Ribble chasing after them, none of them ever to be seen again—oh, there was plenty of disappointment about that, wasn’t there? That said, Feloovil had cleared his tab at the Heel and spotted him free drinks for a whole week afterwards, which was peculiarly generous of her. This was the kind of mess having a wife would have given him, and was it any wonder he was having none of that?
    Rounding the livery, Hordilo halted in his tracks. Twenty paces away, Grimled was lying motionless on its back. A large black-cloaked man was kneeling beside it, his hands deep in the golem’s chest. Strange fluids were spraying out past the man’s forearms. A few paces beyond them lay two bloated corpses.
    “Hey!” Hordilo shouted.
    But the man ripping pieces out from Grimled’s chest didn’t look up.
    Hordilo set down the bucket and then drew his sword. “Hey!” he yelled again, advancing. “What have you done to Grimled? You can’t do that! Step away from him! By the lord’s command, step away!”
    At last, the stranger looked up, blinking owlishly at Hordilo.
    Something in the man’s piggy eyes made Hordilo slow down and then stagger to a halt. He lifted the sword threateningly, but the blade wavered in his numbed grip. “The lord of Wurms Keep will see you hang for this! You’re under arrest!”
    The stranger withdrew his hands from Grimled’s chest. They were black and dripping. “I was trying to fix it,” he said in a high, piping voice.
    “You broke it!”
    “I didn’t mean to.”
    “Explain that to Lord Fangatooth! Get up now. You’re coming with me.”
    The stranger’s uncanny eyes slipped past Hordilo and fixed on the distant keep. “There?”
    “There.”
    “All right,” the man replied, climbing slowly to his feet. He looked over at the two corpses. “But I want to bring my friends with me.”
    “Your friends? They’re dead!”
    “No, not those ones.”
    The man pointed and Hordilo turned to see a group appearing from the beach trail. That’s where Spilgit was going, and Felittle with him! She must have seen a ship on the reef and snuck out to the Factor, so they could get a first look. Gods below, will the treachery never end?
    “But I want these ones, too,” added the stranger. “I’m saving them.”
    Licking his