The patch of the odin so.., p.1
The Patch of the Odin Soldier, page 1
THE PATCH OF THE ODIN SOLDIER
Book Three of the Lincoln Blackthorne Series
By Charles L. Grant (writing as Geoffrey Marsh)
A Gordian Knot Production
Gordian Knot is an imprint of Crossroad Press
Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press
Smashwords edition published at Smashwords by Crossroad Press
Crossroad Press Digital Edition 2019
Original publication by Doubleday—1987
LICENSE NOTES
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Meet the Author
Photo by Jeff Schalles
Charles L. Grant taught English and history at the high school level before becoming a full-time writer in the ’70s. He served for many years as an officer in the Horror Writers Association and in Science Fiction Writers of America.
He was known for his “quiet horror” and for editing the award-winning Shadows anthologies. He received the British Fantasy Society’s Special Award in 1987 for life achievement; in 2000, he was the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from HWA. Other awards include two Nebula Awards and three World Fantasy Awards for writing and editing.
Charlie died from a lengthy illness on September 15, 2006, just three days after his birthday. He lived in Newton, NJ, and was married to writer/editor Kathryn Ptacek for nearly twenty-five years.
Book List
Horror
Novels
Black Oak: Genesis
Black Oak: The Hush of Dark Wings
Black Oak: Winter Knight
Black Oak: Hunting Ground
Black Oak: When the Cold Wind Blows
Fire Mask
For Fear of the Night
In A Dark Dream
Jackals
Millennium Quartet #1: Symphony
Millennium Quartet #2: In the Mood
Millennium Quartet #3: Chariot
Millennium Quartet #4: Riders in the Sky
Night Songs
Raven
Something Stirs
Stunts
The Bloodwind
The Curse
The Grave
The Hour of the Oxrun Dead
The Last Call of Mourning
The Nestling
The Pet
The Sound Of Midnight
The Tea Party
The Universe of Horror Trilogy
The Soft Whisper of the Dead
The Dark Cry of the Moon
The Long Night of the Grave
Collections
Dialing the Wind
Nightmare Seasons
The Black Carousel
The Orchard
Science Fiction
A Quiet Night of Fear
Ascension
Legion
Ravens of the Moon
The Shadow of Alpha
As “Geoffrey Marsh”
The Fangs of the Hooded Demon
The King of Satan’s Eyes
The Patch of the Odin Soldier
The Tail of the Arabian, Knight
As “Lionel Fenn”
The Quest for the White Duck Trilogy
Blood River Down
Web of Defeat
Agnes Day
The Kent Montana Series
The Really Ugly Thing From Mars
The Reasonably Invisible Man
The Once and Future Thing
The Mark of the Moderately Vicious Vampire
668, the Neighbor of the Beast
The Diego Series
Once Upon a Time in the East
By The Time I Get To Nashville
Time, the Semi-Final Frontier
The Seven Spears of the W’dch’ck
As “Simon Lake”
The Midnight Place Series
Daughter of Darkness
Death Cycle
He Told Me To
Something’s Watching
As “Felicia Andrews”
Moonwitch
Mountainwitch
Riverrun
Riverwitch
Seacliffe
Silver Huntress
The Velvet Hart
As “Deborah Lewis”
Eve of the Hound
Kirkwood Fires
The Wind at Winter’s End
Voices Out of Time
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To Robert Vardeman:
For showing me that a B.O.H.
Can be a true blossom indeed
Table of Contents
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
ONE
The moose of Maine were missing. Despite their ungainly size, uncommon strength, and continual defiance of the adage that even the ugliest of God’s creatures have some beauty in them, they were proving this particular summer to be devilishly elusive, a fact not necessarily bad nor unsettling unless one were a hunter intent on breaching the statutes of the Pine Tree State in order to rack up a trophy for a den or a law office.
The area around Great Pass Lake was typical of the countryside in all respects including the missing moose—the mountains were high and darkly forested, the lakes clear and perfect reflectors of the sky, which held the occasional billowing cloud sweeping over from the Canadian border, the air sharp with the scent of pine and flower, and the human population as limited as Nature could make it on short notice. The roads, when there were any and they hadn’t been laid down by now defunct logging companies, were barely two lanes and tended to hug the contours of the land tighter than a gigolo hugs his matron. But they were serviceable, and as long as it didn’t snow they sped the local to work or to home, and the tourist comfortably on his way to his destination—preferably to New Hampshire or Massachusetts.
Great Pass itself was an impressive notch in the Longfellow Mountains; it was the apex of an inverted triangle whose western point was Moosehead Lake and whose northeastern tip was the town of Millinocket. The Pass itself was reached by a dirt road picked up ten miles out of Brownville Junction, at the four-corner hamlet of Paccatomet, and the lake was just beyond, in a pocket valley two miles on a side and hidden from most by the nature of its accessibility. It was not a large lake, nor even a particularly spectacular one as Maine lakes go, but it was the centerpiece of a meadow lined by massive pines that cast shadows long before dark, and it was fed by a large stream at its eastern end, emptying into a larger one at the west when the beaver weren’t busy and the rains were on schedule.
So far off the beaten trail was it that the only ones to visit its shores in the month of August had been a party of lost hunters still looking for moose.
And Lincoln Bartholomew Blackthorne.
The cabin was constructed on the eastern shore, just ahead of the rocky slope of Great Pass Mountain, and just below the Great Pass itself. It was made of seasoned, still-barked logs closely joined and sealed with mud from the lake’s bed; there were two large windows in front, one on either side, and two in back. A porch with a slightly sagging roof faced the water two hundred yards distant, and the shingled roof was broken only by the sturdy top of the fireplace chimney. The land ahead of the cabin had been cleared a while ago, though no attempt had been made to turn the wild grasses and flowers into a lawn. Trees overhung it, there was a shed on its left, and just to its right was a large-mouthed well with an old oaken bucket resting on the lip.
It was warm this third week of August, and dragonflies hovered listlessly over the reeds, bees limped from blossom to blossom, and back in the woods one could hear the limpid scolding of several birds disturbed by a bear heading for Quebec.
Lincoln sat in a rocking chair on the porch and smiled, his face partially covered by the sagging brim of a fly-festooned fishing hat, his booted feet propped up on the rough-hewn railing. He enjoyed listening to the orchestral arrangements of the forest around him, the lake slapping the shore at twilight, the stream to his right splashing over the rocks; he hummed along with the birds, chuckled at the groans of bears sorting out their territory, and waited patiently for the indelicate bellow of a moose hunting its mate.
That was the only disappointment this year—there were no moose, at least not at Great Pass.
Had he been a less content person, he would have turned right around and returned to his tailor shop in Inverness, New Jersey; he would have swallowed his pride and allowed to his friends that all his complaints about never having seen a moose in the wild were not satisfied, despite the fact that doing just such a thing was the avowed purpose of the trip.
But he knew that sooner or later life would provide him with a moose in its own good time. If it was meant to be, then it was meant to be; and if it wasn’t, there would always be a next time, assuming he didn’t get himself killed.
He sighed loudly and stretched his arms over his head.
This was indeed the life.
His vacation had originally been scheduled for just three weeks, and had been postponed because of a side trip to New Mexico he was trying to forget; but once begun it had left three weeks behind and stretched, thus far, into five. A few hasty letters from his friends in Inverness wanted to know if he had abandoned the shop for emulation of Natty Bumppo, and he had sent only a postcard in reply, assuring one and all that he was merely making up for lost time—it was, when all was said and done, the first true vacation he had had in nearly a decade, and he wasn’t about to cut it short just because his business needed him.
It was a truth, despicable or otherwise, that he did not need it.
There were plenty of tailors in Sussex County who could suit his customers if emergencies had been declared; and plenty of shops in nearby malls where slick smiling salesmen could con the green from a man faster than the man could step back from the cold-handed measurement of his one and only inseam.
He, on the other hand, did not exactly have money to burn, but certainly enough to insure a comfortable old age should he be fortunate enough to reach such an earthly plateau. It was true he had enemies, and it was true they were constantly attempting to plug him into the insurance companies’ fine-tuned statistics, and it was also true that he got himself easily into more trouble than the average tailor on an average day in an average but uneventful year.
Yet, he thought, it was a burden he was usually willing to shoulder once he returned to civilization—as long as he could spot his goddamned moose.
He sighed again and watched as the sun was speared by the ridge across the lake. The water had turned dark, the sky to indigo laced through with rose, and a lone cloud scudded north to south. A flock of mallards soared over the cabin and landed with admirable precision along the western shoreline. Their calls made him smile, and he listened so intently he did not hear the footsteps rounding the corner.
When he did, instead of leaping to his feet and snapping out the knife he habitually kept in a sheath on his left wrist, he turned his head insolently and stared at the figure approaching the steps.
“Don’t bother,” he said when a hiking boot lifted to climb the first stair. “I’m not in the market.”
“Now, Mr. Blackthorne,” said Owen Kintab, “it ain’t right you should be here all this time without tryin some.”
Lincoln shook his head. “I’m not interested.”
“Cheaper than the stores.”
“No,” he said, and deliberately looked away from the lanky man in the red plaid hunting jacket, rounded red cap, and dark red trousers tucked into red boots. He was young, in his mid-twenties, and didn’t seem strong enough to lift a pebble much less hike with a forty-pound pack through the high notch from Great Pass Village. At least once a week, however, Kintab did just that, trying to sell his illegal venison and bear steaks, solemnly declaring on his mother’s as yet undug grave that even the most sophisticated Down East gourmet over to Bangor seldom had an opportunity to tantalize his taste buds with fare like this.
Lincoln demurred easily on the side of legality; besides, eating venison would be like taking a bite out of Bambi, and what would Thumper do for fun then? Bear steaks he refused to even contemplate, considering the odor that wafted from the pack whenever Owen brought them along.
Kintab pushed his cap to the back of his head, gave the tailor a look of mercantile disgust, and unshouldered his oversized red backpack. “Brought your beer, anyways.” He yanked on a zipper, pulled out two six-packs and left them on the top step. “Ain’t very cold. You want me t’ put em in the water?”
“No, thanks, I can do it.” He reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out a bill, glanced at it, and tossed it in the air. Kintab moved swiftly, his left hand out and in his own pocket before Lincoln could blink.
“Much obliged.”
“Anytime.”
“Sure you don’t want—”
“I’m sure.”
“You city boys don’t know what you’re missin.”
“I’ll pass.”
Kintab shrugged, replaced the pack, and started off. At the corner of the porch, however, he snapped his fingers, stopped, and looked over his shoulder. “Some people at the store lookin for you, Mr. Blackthorne.”
Lincoln slowly lowered his feet to the floor. “Who?”
“City folks.” The young man smiled toothlessly. “Thought they could bribe me, they did. Flashin more money than I’ve ever seen in m’life. Sure were anxious to find ya.”
Lincoln looked the question.
“Nope.”
“How many?”
“Two.”
“Men?”
“Woman, man, damnedest things I ever did see.”
He rose and sat on the railing, scanning the water, suddenly feeling the chill as the sun dipped below the ridge. “What did they say?”
Kintab turned around, deftly caught another bill before the night breeze took it, and shrugged the pack into a more comfortable position. Then he sniffed, adjusted his cap, and buttoned his jacket. It would be well past midnight before all that red would be invisible to the naked eye.
“The man says he’s lookin for you, says he’s an old friend of the family and was just passin through.” The man chuckled. “The only things what pass through here are the moose, ain’t that right, Mr. Blackthorne?”
“What moose,” he grumbled.
“What moose? Why, Mr. Blackthorne, one big old bull got into my Aunt May’s clothesline just yesterday mornin. Tore her sheets to ribbons, it did. Took me and May four hours to chase the critter away.”
“That,” Lincoln said with a scowl, “is unkind, Owen. What else did he say?”
“Nothin much. Just flashed that money around and asked me again.”
“Did you take it?”
“Yep. You think I’m a fool?”
“Where did you send him?”
“Over to Bangor. Told him you was sick and tired of the mosquitoes eatin you alive and was gonna rent my rich cousin’s air-conditioned house, the one with the ugly bats on the fence to keep the bugs away. Said you said you wasn’t comin back until next year.”
Lincoln nodded. “Who was the woman?”
“Wife, I suppose.”
He nodded again. And doubted it. “Take off, Owen. I got to get some sleep.”
“Sure thing, Mr. Blackthorne,” Kintab said, tipping his hat and backing into the shadows. “Sure thing. You take care, hear? We don’t want you all tuckered out, now do we?”
Lincoln did not reply, but waited until he could no longer hear the man pushing along the trail toward the Pass. Once he was positive he was alone, he went into the cabin and switched on the lamp nearest the door.
The front room was thirty feet on a side, the left portion the living area complete with a fieldstone fireplace large enough to put a couch in, the right the dining room with a small table, four chairs, and the walls covered with glass-fronted bookcases. The floors were covered by a series of thick, hand-braided mgs, the ceiling was low with its beams exposed, and in the center of the rear wall was a china closet skillfully refitted to hold a meager selection of firearms and knives. To the left of the closet was the door to his bedroom, to the right the open door to the kitchen. The room was cold, and he wasted no time laying a fire, then kneeling before it to consider his options.
