Valhellions, p.13
Valhellions, page 13
“It means we don’t have the Naglfr any longer,” Esther said, ignoring Chesa’s grand entrance. “We’ll have to arrange alternative transportation.”
“Oh, you mean horsies?” Chesa asked.
“Last time I led a pack of horses down Route 66 it caused a traffic backup that lasted three weeks, and nearly forced the timestream to reverse course. I’m not doing that again,” Esther said. “Don’t worry about it. I have a plan.”
Chesa shrugged and sat down across from me. I have to admit, elf looks good on her. I mean, pretty much anything looks good on her, but elf seemed to particularly suit her. Once again, I found myself regretting breaking it off with Chesa back when we were both just mundane humans in a mundane world. But, as they say, if I couldn’t handle her in cosplay, I didn’t deserve her in Elfheim.
“Feeling better?” I asked.
“Much, thank you. Do you have any idea what Gregory’s domain is like?”
“Probably a lot of damsels in distress,” I said, then, much lower. “Especially with that lout prowling the grounds.”
“I’ll bet it’s a grand palace. All chivalry and parties and music,” she said. “Did you see your scary dog friend?”
“The World Dog keeps to himself,” I said. Chesa took every opportunity to remind me that my domain wasn’t exactly the medieval fantasy I had hoped for going in. “What about you? Get any inconvenient splinters?”
Chesa sniffed and looked away. Slowly, the rest of Knight Watch filed into the great hall. Tembo sat at the head of the table with a haunted expression in his eyes, while Saint Matthew slouched in his chair, blissed out and peaceful. When Gregory d’Haute came in, Chesa followed his journey from door to table with keen interest. He flashed her a brilliant smile, then settled into his place.
“So,” Gregory said, “what’s the plan?”
“The plan is that we get the Tears before the valhellions. That means—”
“Wait, the who?” I interrupted.
“Valhellions,” Esther answered. “That’s what we’re calling them—the valkyries trying to reclaim Totenschreck and empower the Tears of Freya, kicking off Ragnarok. We can’t just call them valkyries, for legal reasons, so . . . valhellions.”
“Did you come up with that?”
She sniffed and carried on with the briefing.
“We need to get the Tears before the valhellions,” she said, glaring at me. “We know that they’re in the care of two former valkyries, but other than that, we’ve got nothing. The only way we can hope to find them is with our friend Percy. I’ve been talking to him, and he definitely feels drawn to something to our north. We’re going to assume it’s the Tears. So we’re going to saddle up and start in that direction.”
“How do we know they’re even on this plane of existence?” Bethany asked. “Couldn’t these former valkyries be hiding in their own little pocket of the Unreal somewhere?”
“They were forced to give up their powers,” Tembo said. “They have no connection to Valhalla, and therefore no way of drawing mythic attention.”
“This all happened seventy years ago,” I said. “If they’ve given up their magic powers, won’t they be dead by now?”
“Just because they’ve given up their powers doesn’t mean that they’re not magical. You can take the girl out of Valhalla, but you can’t take the Valhalla out of the girl,” Esther answered. “I suspect we’re going to find two very brusque Nordic women with funny accents somewhere to our north.”
“Thus describing the entirety of Minnesota,” I said, settling back into my chair. “This should be a walk in the park. At least it’s not winter.”
“Yet,” Esther said. “Everyone, get your kit together and make your way to Mundane Actual. Clarence and Kyle are coming out of retirement just long enough to secure HQ while the rest of you are in the field. Without the Naglfr we won’t be able to get back here quickly at range, and I don’t want Percy’s gnomes breaching the perimeter.”
“There’s always Tembo’s domain,” Chesa said.
“We will not be repeating that exercise,” Tembo said gravely. “Things have changed on the sveldt as a direct result of your . . . incursion. I cannot take the chance again.”
“Right, so, no magical longship, no horses . . . how are we getting north?” I asked.
“You’ll see, Rast,” Esther said. “Just be patient.”
The good news was that Knight Watch had alternatives to the HMS Toenail Clippings. Mundane Actual had drivers in magically inconspicuous cars who could ferry us around, or even enchant those same cars so they could drive themselves. The bad news was that we couldn’t get far by those methods, and couldn’t be away from our domains for a prolonged road trip. I had never considered just how limited Knight Watch was without the flying ship. Turns out there’s a lot of dangerous magic out there, and not all of it occurs within walking distance of Mundane Actual. But apparently there was a solution, and we were on our way to see it.
With Kyle in tow. Kyle, who in Clarence’s domain was a majestic dragon of great power and fickle temper, but in the real world . . . well . . . in the real world, he was a cross between a cartoon and a puppy. Literally.
Kyle skittered down the hallway, his nails scraping loudly against the tile floor, his wide, purple butt slamming into the walls every time he tried to take a corner too fast. His grape soda–colored scales protected him from the impacts, but left cratered drywall and broken tiles behind. Commissar Snowflake sat impassively on Kyle’s head like a puffy round hat with yellow googly eyes.
“Clear the hall! Kyle! Over here, Kyle!” Clarence shouted. “You’re going the wrong way! KYLE!”
“Sorry, sorry, sorry, hi! Hi, who are you?” Kyle shoved his head into a room as he passed, drawing a round of shouts and one mad laugh. Kyle’s head emerged again, with a Happy Birthday garland around his horns. Snowflake was cleaning one paw, and looked like he didn’t have a care in the world. “They were nice.”
“Clarence, you need to get him under control,” Esther hissed. “Last time he was here we had to rebuild half the hospital wing. Two nurses retired. A third converted to Quakerism, but I think that was just a cover for his nerves.”
“I’m doing the best I can,” Clarence said.
“You should have just left him behind,” Tembo said.
“If I’m not around he gets bored and rearranges the furniture,” Clarence said. “And the walls. And parts of the sky. It gets messy.” We all winced as Kyle crashed into a wall, sending ceiling tiles raining down. “I think it’s the bloody cat that puts him up to it. Vile thing has been trying to knock that castle down since the day he arrived.”
Commissar Snowflake turned a yellow eye in Clarence’s direction, tail twitching in irritation. The old knight flinched back.
“Alright, alright, everyone calm down,” Esther barked. “It’s important to stay calm for the next bit. We don’t want to scare him off.”
“Scare who off, exactly?” I asked.
“You’ll see. Right through here.” Esther led us up the last flight of stairs and onto the shores of the underground lake that formerly housed the Naglfr. There were underwater passages that led to the lake overhead, which didn’t make any sense from a hydrodynamic point of view, but not much about Mundane Actual was actually mundane. There was talk among the team about other things lurking in the depths of the lake, some of which were less than friendly, so as Esther led us down the shore and onto the pier that stretched into the lake, I was beginning to wonder if we were the ones she was trying to not scare off.
“We going to swim north?” Bethany asked.
“Going to be rough going in this armor,” Gregory said. “I think I’ve had enough of drowning for a lifetime.”
“Once is usually enough for a lifetime,” Bethany said.
“Not to be indelicate, but I do not have the bits that usually float,” Percy said. “Fat and blood and all that. I suppose I could walk along the bottom, but—”
“Everybody be quiet!” Esther snapped. She was scanning the surface of the lake. There were always strange currents in the water, but today I felt like they were stranger, or at least more foreboding. “Okay, this is it. Everyone into the water.”
“I . . . think I mentioned the problem of armor,” Gregory said.
“And there’s no way I’m getting my hair wet,” Chesa said. “It takes a literal miracle to get it to look like this.”
“Stop complaining and get in,” Esther said. “No one’s going to drown. Probably.”
“Listen, I think we need to slow down and talk this through,” I said. “Maybe if we knew a little bit more about the plan, we’d be amenable.”
“I guarantee you that’s not the case,” Esther said.
“Then I think you can see why I’m hesitant to—”
“Get in the water, Rast,” she said, then grabbed me by the shoulder and hurled me into the lake.
I hit the water with a slap. It was cold, mind-numbingly cold, so cold that I forgot to hold my breath or swim or anything. I emptied my lungs in a single yelp, then started sucking in lake water like a thirsty fish. By the time I remembered I was supposed to be swimming, I had already lost sight of the surface, and my lungs were screaming in pain.
Strong arms surrounded me, pulling me up and cradling me as warm light permeated my skin. We broke the surface of the lake like a pair of corks. Matthew’s arms were around me.
“Stop thrashing around, John. You’re making this difficult,” he said. I tried to calm down, but the cold depths beneath me sent a chill up my spine. Slowly the warmth returned to my skin, and my lungs stopped twitching. “There we go. Just gotta have a little faith.” He pulled me upright, and I realized we were standing on the water. “See? No problem.”
The rest of the team was standing around us, their feet only sunk a few inches into the water. Chesa peered down at the lake distastefully, while Bethany hopped up and down, experimenting with the surface underfoot. Kyle and Clarence watched from the pier, with Esther between them. Tembo was helping Percy down from the pier. The zombie, dressed in what could only be described as a formal battle cumberbund and spats, did not seem keen on the concept of water. Not at all.
“This isn’t so bad,” Gregory said. “But I don’t see how it’s going to get us to where we’re going.”
“That’s being taken care of as we speak,” Esther said. “Now, it’s important that you pay really close attention to what I’m about to say. Are you listening? All of you? Bethany?”
“Sorry,” Beth said. She stopped bouncing. “What were you saying?”
“I just want to be sure that you’re all paying really close attention. Look at me,” Esther said. I wrinkled my forehead. She didn’t seem to be saying anything important, but Esther sure was keen on our attention. In fact, she wasn’t really looking at us anymore. Her gaze was fixed over our heads. I glanced at Clarence. The old knight’s eyes had gotten big, and he was slowly backing down the pier. Commissar Snowflake, perched safely on Kyle’s head, was definitely smiling at us mischievously.
Fear gripped my heart. I turned around just in time to see something break the surface of the water. It was dark and blunt and bigger than anything I’d seen before, big enough to give the World Dog a run for his money. I made some kind of sound, a cross between a shriek and incoherent babbling. Standing next to me with his hands thrust into the pockets of his robe, Matthew glanced at me, his eyebrows up. He turned around to see what I was screaming about.
“Oh, I know this guy,” he muttered.
Then the creature’s mouth opened, and the lake rushed in, swallowing us whole. I tried to scream, but my voice disappeared into the depths of its throat.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
What followed was a great rush of dark, cold water, and the feeling that I was being shoved through a soft tube that was about three sizes too small. Someone kept kicking me in the head, and I wasn’t sure if I was going to pass out first from head trauma or suffocation. Finally, my head broke the surface of the water. I sucked in a great, gasping breath. The air smelled like rotten fish and gingivitis, and I immediately started gagging, simultaneously trying to breathe and vomit, vomit and breathe.
It was oppressively dark, and everything was moving. I knelt on a spongy shoreline, water covering my knees and splashing against my wrists. When I tried to crawl forward, the ground spasmed, throwing me onto my face and filling my mouth with an intriguing broth of stomach bile, lake water, and something that could only be described as insufficiently digested fish parts. I leapt to my feet, but that led to me banging into the low ceiling, which, just like everything else here, was slightly warm, soft, and shivering at my touch. I flinched back, only to stumble headlong into Chesa. I knew it was Chesa because of the disgusted sound she made when we touched.
“Oh, God, where the hell are we?” I asked around a mouthful of fishy roux. I spat a few times, rubbed my lips against the raspy chain sleeve of my armor, then tried again. “Is this seriously the belly of a whale?”
“Got it in one.” Matthew’s voice came from somewhere to my left. “I’m going to try a light. I’m not sure what will happen. Our host might not like getting the way it tickles.”
“Forget our host, we might not like what we see,” Bethany mumbled. “Maybe the dark is better.”
“The dark is definitely not better,” I said. Just then, the fish lurched forward, sending us all to the moist ground. A brick of something as soft as cheese and as fragrant as rotting garbage squished between my fingers, working its way into my armor.
With a hiss and a crackle, a spark of light appeared in Matthew’s hands. The saint sat huddled near the front of the belly, with Gregory at his side, and Bethany beside him. The three of them looked to have gotten the worst of the drenching. Streamers of seaweed hung from Bethany’s hundred knives, and Gregory looked like he had been strained through a film of dripping green muck. Tembo stood hunched on the opposite end of the belly, peering distastefully at the puckered exit. Chesa and I were in the middle, standing in what I now saw was a pile of putrefying fish that had gotten caught in a fold of the creature’s stomach lining. Chesa yelped and stepped quickly out of the filth. Unfortunately, she took the last scrap of clean real estate, and I was forced to stay in place.
Only Percy seemed unfazed by our predicament. He sat placidly near the ignominious exit, hands folded comfortably in his lap, waiting for all this to blow over. I envied his calm, if not his complexion.
“So what do we do now? How does this damned thing know where to go?” Chesa asked.
“Matthew’s the expert in these matters,” Tembo said, his examination of the exit complete. “You say you’ve had experience with this manner of conveyance?”
“Not personally. Sushi is about as close as I’ve come,” Matthew answered. “But it’s a well-documented trick. I think we just have to sit back and let it do its thing.” He looked appraisingly around the fish’s interior. “I really thought it would be roomier. Not made for high-occupancy travel, I suppose.”
“Roomier? I’d settle for cleaner, and less . . .” I gestured hopelessly. “Less the inside of a fish.”
“All of our transports have one thing in common,” Chesa said. “They smell terrible. I keep hoping we’ll hitch a ride on a golden chariot, or fly a Pegasus. But this is ridiculous.”
“Look on the bright side,” I said. “At least it can’t get much worse.”
A rush of wind blew through the stomach, closely followed by a wall of frigid water. Those unfortunate enough to be sitting down were immediately submerged, while the rest of us struggled to keep our heads above water. I caught sight of Bethany spinning head over heels in the middle of the room, and grabbed her by the knife strap. Tembo crashed into me, and the three of us joined the currents, slapping against the fleshy walls and bouncing off one another like pinballs. The torrent swirled around us for several seconds, before rushing out the way it had come.
I lay on my back in the same pile of putrefying fish, which had somehow survived the flood unmoved. Bethany squatted beside me. I scrambled to my feet and did a quick head count. Everyone was still here, though in various states of disarray and general poor spirits. But we were no longer alone.
The bilious tsunami had brought with it hundreds and thousands of tiny prawn, each about the size of my little finger. They lay in a thick carpet over everything, chittering anxiously and crunching underfoot anytime one of us moved. The tiny bugs were tangled in our hair, in our clothes, were scrambling into the cracks of my armor . . . everywhere. It was horrific. Just the smell, which had already been awful, was much, much worse.
“You!” Chesa yelled from across the stomach, pointing at me. “Keep your mouth shut! Not one word!”
“But—”
“Silence!”
I held up my hands in surrender. A prawn, slick with whale mucus, crawled up my middle finger and slowly, deliberately, pinched the tip of my finger.
We rested as well as we could on a carpet of dying prawn in the belly of a fish that was somehow magically whisking us northward. I had no idea what waterways we were following, or if we were still inside Mundane Actual, doing short laps around the lake while Esther devised a plan to extract us from our fishy prison. My only indication that this wasn’t the case was the fact that every once in a while Percy would sniff the air and announce that we were getting closer. I hoped so. It felt like we were huddled together in a slowly collapsing tent made of damp lunch meat.
Our journey ended abruptly, but no more pleasantly than the rest of our time in the belly of this particular whale. I was just discussing the finer points of getting rotten fish out of your hair with Chesa when the ground beneath our feet lurched, and we were expelled, prawn, bile, and all. I landed with a thump on a pebble beach, the grit and grime forcing its way into my armor and clogging my nose. Dragging myself through cold, shallow water, I crawled until I reached dry land and collapsed. The sounds of misery and struggle surrounded me, not the least of which came from Gregory, who seemed to have brought a good deal of the whale’s intestines with him. I lay panting on the shore. When I looked up, it was directly into the barrel of a shotgun.
