Valhellions, p.12
Valhellions, page 12
“Not at all. We had to hunt them down one at a time and put them back in the grave. And even then, their souls are still up in Folksvangr, waiting to be called again,” Clarence said. “If someone manages to reunite the sword and the Tears, all those dead soldiers are going to come roaring back to life. Kill them all you want. They’ll be back.”
“That sounds bad,” I said. “How many do you think it is?”
“Enough to kick off Ragnarok,” Tembo said quietly.
“More than enough for that. Valhalla will have to summon their hosts to counter, and Fenrir will come looking for his moon pie.” Clarence pushed his food around on his plate one more time, searching fruitlessly for something that could be consumed by the human digestive system, then poured himself another glass of wine. “You said you’ve encountered a facsimile of the sword, which means someone is training a new bearer. But as long as the real deal is safe in Valhalla, you’ve nothing to worry about.”
“It’s not,” I said. “Someone got it last night, right in the middle of the Mr. Valhalla competition. Runa blames us.”
“Hmm. That sounds like trouble.” He drew another apple from the pile and crunched into it loudly. “Next step is to find the Tears. Because if those two get together, you’re going to have a lot of dead soldiers coming for you.”
“Great. That’s just great. Runa says she doesn’t know where they are.”
“I’ll bet she doesn’t,” he said. “But I do. Or, more accurately, I know someone who does.”
“Who?” Chesa asked.
“The last zombie,” Clarence said. “Nice guy. You’ll like him.”
“Wait, some of those things are still wandering around?” Tembo asked. “Esther said that operation was over. You rounded up the last of those guys in the eighties!”
“I made my last kill in 1984, at a roller skating rink in suburban Charlotte,” Clarence said. “But there was one left. Clever fellow. Managed to hide for a very long time. Kept moving around so no one would get curious about their ageless neighbor. I just couldn’t bring myself to kill him.”
“Clarence! He’s a zombie!” Bethany said.
“Maybe. But he’s also a hell of a gardener. Anyone who can grow roses like that can’t be all that dead,” Clarence said. “Besides, it sounds like my mercy was providential. If anyone can find the Tears of Freya, it’s Percy.”
“As in Sir Percival?” Gregory asked.
“As in Percipept Humboldt-Hastings the Fourth,” Clarence said, “Apparently it’s a family name.”
“Family name or no, I can’t imagine calling a kid Percipept,” Chesa said.
“Not that part. The Fourth,” Clarence said. “His dad was named Billy. Actually, Billiam Humboldt-Hastings”—he made a rolling gesture with his hand—“the Fourth.”
“So where is he now?” I asked. “Still moving around?”
“No. That was too dangerous. He had to come up with a new identity each time, and the cops were getting curious. Plus he had to start his garden over with every iteration, and that was a bloody tragedy,” Clarence said. “I helped him out. Carved off a slice of the old Unreal and gave him some cover. The neighbors don’t get curious anymore. As long as he keeps his head down, no one’s the wiser.”
“But you can get us to him?” I asked.
“Quick as a whistle,” he answered, standing up and wiping his hand on the bristling back of Commissar Snowflake. Kyle lifted his head and let out a disapproving snort. “We can walk there from here.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Doors out the back of the great hall led to a garden maze that buzzed with swarms of honeybees and the fragrant scent of flowers in full bloom. Pebbled pathways wound between hedgerows that were shaped with laser-sharp precision, leading to a collection of small fountains and statues that peeked between walls of green shrubbery like shy animals. The sky overhead was pearly blue, fading to cobalt in the west. The silver crescent of the moon hung overhead.
“Wasn’t it already night back in the castle?” Chesa asked.
“It’s always dusk here. Something about the capital ‘E’ Empire, I think,” Clarence said. “Unless it’s raining. You can always tell his mood by the rain.”
“Prone to depression?” I asked.
“Exactly the opposite. The madman seems happier when it rains. Here we are! Percy!” Clarence stomped toward a bush that was shivering by the edge of the path. His approach startled the bush, which leapt up from its planting and scurried away, like a pheasant flushed from . . . well, itself. “Percy! It’s me! Stop being a boob!”
The bush paused in its retreat, though not in its shivering. A thin face emerged from the foliage, itself made up largely of bent twigs and misplaced leaves, with two round eyes as round and as white as the moon. The face blinked at Clarence several times, then revealed itself to be in possession of a smile, though a timid one.
“Clarence!” the face said. “You shouldn’t sneak up on a man like that! Still got the nerves from your last visit! Is he . . .” The face, obviously belonging to Percipept Humboldt-Hastings IV, narrowed suddenly, and his eyes darted around our company. “Is he here?”
“He’s back at the castle,” Clarence said soothingly. “I promise, there won’t be a repeat of that incident.”
“Bloody well hope,” Percy said, then emerged from the bush, which proved to be a kind of portable shed made of woven vines, just large enough for a very thin man capable of folding himself into a very small ball, should the need arise. Which was precisely what Percy happened to be. From narrow shoulders to bony chest, and limbs that seemed too thin to support their own weight, Percy was every inch the traditional ghast, except for the fact that he seemed very much alive and willing to smile. He was wearing a tweed body suit with more pockets than the most enthusiastic janitor could imagine, and a pair of rubber galoshes. His hands were caked in mud, which did not prevent him from offering a handshake to Clarence. The knight demured.
“What’s with the shack, Percy?” Clarence asked, nodding to the woven shed. “Expecting an air raid?”
“Garden gnomes,” Percy answered. “Been lingering ever since that thing with the fountain.” He looked us over, nodding to Tembo, squinting at Chesa, smiling brilliantly at me and Greg. “One of the fountains started spouting blood. Damned arterial, it was. Thought it might be a witch thing, but Clarence assured me it was just an aberration. Had gnomes ever since. Nasty buggers.”
“Garden gnomes?” Chesa asked. “Fat little fellows with the pointy hats?”
“Aye, the same. Ambushed me in the topiary maze, first time I saw them. Teeth like razor wire, and as crafty as mad foxes.” Percy shivered, rubbing his wide hands together. Flakes of dried mud tumbled to the ground. “Been staying in ever since. But the petunias needed replanting, and they weren’t going to do it themselves, were they?”
“Well, I assure you, friend. You will be safe from garden gnomes in our company,” Gregory said, his tone dismissive. “My sword is guard enough against a fat baby with a novelty spade.”
“Garden gnomes are an extrapolation of certain Scottish legends,” Tembo said quietly. “Redcaps, their hats stained that way by soaking them in the blood of their victims. If there is an infestation of the creatures, we should seek shelter. They will easily be the match of anything we saw in Valhalla.”
“Valhalla?” Percy said. “I thought maybe it was happening again. Bloody headaches, and the smell of blood in my nostrils.” He swallowed, a grand gesture that somehow incorporated his entire body. “So is this it, Clarence?”
“You are safe, Percy,” Clarence said, patting his friend on the shoulder. “But there are things we must discuss. Your cottage?”
“Right this way,” Percy said, abandoning his shed and whatever petunias needed planting, as he led the way. He walked with a long, scissoring gait, hands firmly in his pockets. “Couldn’t be a social visit, could it? Couldn’t just be dropping by for tea. Has to be bloody Valhalla!”
“So there’s no tea?” Clarence asked.
“Of course there’s tea!” Percy snapped. “What am I, a barbarian?”
We made our way to a cozy-looking cottage, tucked behind a low wall that contained another garden, this one a little wilder and, somehow, more natural than the well-manicured landscape we had just left behind. The place reminded me of my domain, without all the fear and darkness and dogs the size of office buildings. Percy bustled us inside, then disappeared into the kitchen.
“Are you sure this is wise?” Bethany asked. “Hiding a zombie in your backyard?”
“Hasn’t been a problem so far. Occasional gnomes, dryads, the odd revenant. Nothing I can’t handle. Though this business with the valkyries—” He fell silent as Percy burst into the room, overburdened with tea cups, kettles, delicate plates of cake and oddly shaped sandwiches, and lace doilies that looked out of place in the hands of the gardener. We sat back in our plush chairs as Percy set out the meal on the coffee table, bustling back and forth as he arranged plates and poured cups of tea. I watched this with growing horror. It seemed possible that my mother, with her commemorative tea sets and tins of butter shortbread, could very well be some kind of British zombie.
“There we are, here we go, that’s just right, and one for you. Milk? Sugar?” Percy mumbled as he worked his way around the circle. “The sandwiches are liverwurst and pickle, touch of mayonnaise. The fish sandwiches are over there. The cookies have been basted in linseed oil and licorice. And these . . .” He plucked up a small cake that had been frosted to look like a rose, regarding it curiously. “I can’t remember. Rutabaga? Bamboo? I lose track, sometimes.”
“I think you’re using the wrong words to describe—” I scooped up a sandwich and bit into it. The acidic broth of boiled pickles and overripe cottage cheese bit into my tongue, rushing all the way to my nose before I could spit it out. “Nope. That’s precisely what these things are.”
“You can take the Brit out of the zombie, but you can never get the zombie out of the Brit,” Clarence said, daintily pushing his plate of frog-mash cakes away. “He hasn’t eaten anything in a long time. Forgets how it’s supposed to go. But the tea is still excellent.”
“Yes, yes, the tea is always perfect,” Percy said, apparently unfazed at having mistakenly poisoned his guests with pickle sandwiches. He swept the cozy off the kettle. “We will always have tea.”
What he had, unfortunately, was a bleached skull, stuffed to the eyeholes with dry leaves and twigs and moss. Percy stared at it for a long heartbeat, then threw the cozy across the room.
“It’s the bloody gnomes!” he yelled.
“Maybe we should just get to the matter at hand,” Tembo said briskly.
“Probably for the best,” Clarence agreed. “Percy, we need to talk to you about something.”
“I really don’t know how they got into the house,” Percy said. He collapsed into one of the free chairs, head in both his hands, staring at the skull. “I have salt on the windows and sprigs of horseradish at the door. Is that right? I can’t very well salt the door, can I?”
“Percy, forget about the gnomes for a minute, will you?” Clarence said. “Something has happened. Something very serious.” That got Percy’s attention, though it seemed a great effort to draw his gaze away from the ruined tea. “This is the rest of Knight Watch. They’ve just come from Valhalla.”
“Yes, I know. I knew you were coming,” Percy said. “I could feel it return.”
“Return?”
“The sword. Yesterday afternoon. I was out among the lilies, preparing them for winter. It’s never really winter here, but still . . .” His voice trailed off. He poked at the skull, then stood up, collecting untouched plates. “Anyway, I felt it come back. First time in years. Decades? How long has it been, Clarence?”
“Decades, at least. Honestly I’m not sure. Time isn’t something I keep track of.” Clarence slid forward on his seat, the upholstery squeaking under his chain-mail pants. “So you felt the sword return?”
“He couldn’t have. It’s still in Valhalla. Or at least it was, until this morning,” Chesa said.
“How do we know time moves normally here? He could have felt it leaving Valhalla. Or he could have sensed the Totenshrieker trying to break into the Unreal at the Ren-Yay-Ssaince Faire. Either way, we already knew it was back,” I said.
“So it’s true. I was hoping I was just imagining things.” Percy deflated, putting the plates in danger of falling from his hands. Bethany stood and smoothly relieved him of his burden of plate and kettle and skull. He let them go without seeming to realize they were gone. She disappeared into the kitchen. Percy collapsed onto the divan. “So this is it. You’ve come to put me down.”
“No one is here to put you anywhere,” Clarence said, quickly put his hand on Gregory, who already had his sword half out of the scabbard. “Just because the sword is back in play doesn’t mean you’re about to lose your will.”
“Perhaps it’s better if you did,” Percy said miserably. “You have no idea what it’s like, the lot of you. Waking up every morning with the memory of last night’s death still in your mind. The taste of your last victim still in your mouth. Ready to kill again. Anxious to kill again.” He looked up at Clarence with pathetic eyes, his long, thin face drawn sharply downward. “They’ll do it again. They’ll put me under the leash, me and all the rest of them. And I can’t face it.”
“That’s why we’re here, Percy. To prevent that from happening,” Clarence said, laying a comforting hand on the thin zombie’s shoulder. “But we need your help.”
“As we understand this, there are two components to this zombie thing,” I said. “The first, the sword, is already in play—”
“‘Already in play.’” Bethany snorted. “What are you, Rast, an operator operating operations now? Is this a debrief? Are we gonna go tactical?”
“I do not understand any of these references,” Tembo said.
“Just . . . focus for a second,” I said. “The point is that the bad guys already have the sword, and someone to wield it. But without the other bit, that sword is dangerous, just not as dangerous.” There was silence, and I turned to Tembo to confirm. “Do I have that right?”
“Yes. The sword can raise the local dead, but without the Tears of Freya, they are limited in what they can do,” Tembo answered. “The grand army of the dead raised in the war will remain in Folksvangr, at peace, waiting for Ragnarok.”
“At peace, except for you, Percy,” Clarence said. “You’re the only connection we have to the Tears.”
“Then . . . shouldn’t I stay here? Where the valkyries can’t find me?” Percy asked, shrinking deeper into the divan. “Wouldn’t that be best for everyone involved?”
“Listen, Percy, I understand how frightening this is,” I said, leaning down in front of him. “But sometimes you have to stand up and be counted. Sometimes you have to—”
“Spare me your pleasantries, Yank,” Percy said. “I rode one of Hobart’s funnies on Sword Beach under a hail of gunfire. I fought my way through Ouistreham, crawled through the blood of better men than you, killed better men than you. Thought I was going to get through it, and then . . .” He chuckled, a sharp sound, at odds with his mood. “And then a man with a bloody SWORD walked out of a shattered patisserie and killed every one of my friends. I put enough lead into him to drown a whale, but he kept coming. Drove that sword right through my heart.” He blinked rapidly, though no tears formed in his eyes. “I thought that was it. Thought I was dead. Then I woke up, and that’s when the nightmare started. So if you need me to go out there, don’t ask me to be brave about it. I’ve been brave. All courage got me was this half-life, and gnomes in the garden.”
We were silent for a long moment. Finally, Clarence cleared his throat and pulled Percy to his feet.
“We wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important, Percy. We don’t want this to happen to anyone else. And the only way we can do that is with your help.”
“Yes, alright, whatever. The petunias will keep. Probably safer out there than it is in here, anyway,” Percy said. “At least there aren’t any garden gnomes in the real world.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
We emerged from Clarence’s domain just long enough to walk the three flights of stairs to our own domains. None of us had seen the inside of our mythic realms since the incursion at the Mickleville Ren-Yay-Ssaince festival, and I was feeling it. Without some proper domain-time, the members of Knight Watch can’t tap into our mythic identities, which means no magic powers, and no interaction with the Unreal world. We could walk past an ice demon with nothing more than a shiver and a cold sweat. We’re no better than cosplayers with a very good budget. Unfortunately, time was short, and Esther is a stickler for a schedule. I don’t think I was in my domain—that pleasant cabin in a very dark forest I mentioned earlier, but with a magical pot of stew—for more than an hour before she yanked me out and set me on the road to adventure. Again.
“You know, when this whole thing started, I thought being a hero would be a lot more . . . heroic. Derring do and all that,” I grumbled as Esther set me down at the banquet table that served as the centerpiece for all our briefings. “Can’t we have a decent nap before we charge headlong into certain death?”
“You’re not charging headlong into certain death. Probably,” Esther said as she walked to the door to Chesa’s domain. “At the very worst, you’re going to be walking slowly toward certain death.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, as Chesa rose from her domain—literally. Esther opened the door just as a tree limb sprouted from the depths of Chesa’s domain, unfurling like a leafy banner into the great hall. The bough split open, revealing Chesa’s reclining form, cradled gently in a creche of living oak. The tree, creaking, slowly tilted her upright. She awoke and stepped gingerly to the floor. Its service complete, the bough retreated back into her domain.
“Good morning, everyone!” Chesa said cheerfully. Then she realized Esther and I were the only ones in the room. Her face fell.
