Valhellions, p.14
Valhellions, page 14
“Typical,” I said, though between the water pouring from my mouth and the reflexive gagging of my throat, I’m not sure it came out clearly. The bearer of the shotgun certainly misinterpreted my statement as a threat, because I heard the clear sound of a shell being cycled, and the barrel pressed closer to my head.
“I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking these things don’t work on you. That you’re special. Well I’m special, too, and so’s this gun. Odin blessed, and loaded with the bones of saints who should have known better than to come to Norway. So before you do anything clever, I want you to think about it real careful. Understand?”
I squinted up the length of the barrel. The bearer, a stocky woman in her fifties with a halo of blond-white hair held in place with a cord of braided leather, held the gun unwavering in my face. She was dressed in a faded plaid shirt and workman’s slacks, the thighs stained with dirt and grime. Her eyes were pale blue, the color of glacial ice, and just as cold.
“Do you talk, or do you just stare at every beautiful woman you see?” she asked.
“He talks,” Chesa said, standing slowly from a pool of muck. “But once he starts, you’re going to wish he didn’t.”
“I don’t think that’s fair,” I said. “I’m a perfectly reasonable conversationalist.”
“Perfectly reasonable folks don’t use the word ‘conversationalist,’” the valkyrie said, because that’s obviously what she was. “Now. It ain’t everyday that old Jonah comes to visit, and it’s less everyday that he brings a pack of heroes in his gullet. So who the Sam Hill are you, and what the Sam Hill are you doing in my lake?”
We had all gotten to our feet by now. Even though there were seven of us, and we were clearly armed, the valkyrie seemed not in the least intimidated.
“That’s no way to greet visitors,” Tembo said carefully. “We mean you no harm.”
“Well, we have this thing called Midwest Nice, so I'll just apologize for the shotgun in advance. But I'm still going to have to ask you to explain yourself.” She shrugged. “Sorry.”
“Look, lady, there are seven of us and one of you,” Gregory said. He hooked his thumbs into his belt. “And even if you’re telling the truth about that shotgun—”
“Two,” she said.
“Hmm?”
“Two of us. Sorry.”
The trees nearby shivered, and a dog the size of a horse poked its head from between the branches. It was some kind of elkhound, with perky ears and a pink tongue, and a face like a fox. It looked at us with friendly eyes.
“Magnus is a good boy,” the valkyrie said.
“Yes, yes he is,” I said carefully. “A very good boy.”
“So, again, who are you, and why are you here?”
“We’re friends of Esther MacRae,” I said. “She sent us to find you.”
“Esther MacRae doesn’t have a lot of friends. She has soldiers, and she has enemies.” The shotgun swept over us before settling on Percy. The valkyrie’s face grew hard. Which was quite a feat, because I thought it was already hard enough to bend steel. Turns out there were hidden depths to this woman’s grimness. “And you come here with one of these monsters. You should have left him in the whale.”
“Whatever happened to civility?” Percy mused. “Was a time you could count on an offer of biscuits and a decent kettle when you met someone new. Nowadays it’s all ‘Leave that one in the whale’ and ‘Who here smells like death?’ It’s hardly proper.”
“Madam, we are here on urgent business,” Tembo said, interposing himself between the shotgun and the zombie. “There has been a breach in Valhalla. The Totenschreck has been stolen. We have been sent by Knight Watch to retrieve the Tears of Freya, to ensure their safety.”
“Oh have ya now?”
“We have,” Gregory said, trying his best hero’s smile.
“Well, that’s a darn shame, that is. Lillie and I, we got rid of those fool Tears a long time ago. Too much trouble, what with the wolves following us home every night, and the little pixies scaring the guests.”
“You . . . got rid of them?” I asked.
“Yeah. Poured ’em down the drain, along with about a gallon of Liquid-Plumr. Good riddance. Too bad you came all this way for nothing.” She slung the shotgun over her shoulder, then picked up a fishing pole that had been leaning against a nearby tree. “Well, you’ve got a heck of a walk ahead of you. Won’t do to send you off without some sandwiches. Come on back to the house. We’ll fix you right up.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The valkyrie introduced herself as Hildr as she led us to a beat-up white pickup truck that was parked by the side of the road. Magnus pranced by her side, getting smaller and smaller as we walked, so that by the time we reached the truck he wasn’t much larger than a very large elkhound.
A yellow-and-blue sticker in the truck’s back window declared I brake for Hygge! while another on the back bumper claimed My Other Car Has Eight Legs and depicted some kind of horse. I tugged on Tembo’s sleeve as we approached the vehicle.
“I thought they were supposed to be incognito,” I said. “Those seem a little on point.”
“It’s Minnesota. That is incognito,” the mage answered.
“He is correct. All I have to do is maintain a working knowledge of high school hockey and various potato products, and no one suspects a thing,” Hildr said. “Which is why I do not like having the lot of you poking around. It will draw attention.”
“The real world always makes an excuse for us,” I said. “Local Ren Faires. Wandering game nerds. The Unreal finds a way.”
“It is not the mundanes who worry me. There are other powers in these woods, older than all of us.” Hildr threw her pole and shotgun behind the seat, then jerked a thumb at the bed of the truck. “Hop in. We’re going for a ride.”
“I don’t think I should get in that thing,” I said. “Technology tends to break around me. And if you don’t have the Tears—”
“You let me worry about the truck. Bessie here has hauled stranger things than you. Go on now. Get up.”
Chesa peered distastefully into the bed and sniffed. “Is the passenger seat—” Her line of questioning was interrupted by Magnus, who leapt into the front of the truck, turned around once, then lay down with his massive head resting on the dashboard.
“Pretend it’s a chariot,” I said, holding out my hand to help her into the bed.
“It most certainly is not a chariot,” she said, hopping gracefully into the truck and leaving my hand hanging midair.
We piled into the truck bed and held on for dear life as Hildr the retired valkyrie tore off down the road. Gravel rattled off the rusted-out sidepanels. The ride itself was roughly equivalent to getting kicked in the backside by a metal paddle wielded by an angry and well-muscled god. Magnus hung his head out the window, trailing a long, viscous stream of slobber down the side of the truck. Globules of this would occasionally splatter against the passengers on that side of the vehicle. Including me, of course.
“Why are we doing this?” Bethany shouted over the disturbing rattle and roar of the truck. “If they threw out the Tears—”
“She’s lying,” Percy said. He was sitting point in the spittle fire zone, and was huddled over, his balding pate gleaming with Magnus-drool. “The Tears are here, somewhere. I can feel them.”
“Why would she lie about that?” I asked.
“Wouldn’t you?” Matthew asked. “A bunch of yahoos in medieval battle rattle show up on your doorstep, waving around the name of a woman who once betrayed you and asking for the one thing you’ve given up everything to protect, would you just hand it over? I wouldn’t. I’d take them somewhere safe, away from prying eyes, and work them over a little. See who they were actually working for.”
“Or just get rid of them,” Tembo said. “There’s a reason Valhalla did not give the Tears into Knight Watch’s possession in the first place.”
“So, given that, I’ll ask one more time: Why are we doing this?” Bethany squinted into the back of the truck, where Hildr sat comfortably, one hand on the wheel and the other stroking Magnus’s back. The shotgun sat casually beside the dog. Hildr’s hand was close to the trigger. “The Brit has gotten us this far. Why don’t we dodge this old lady and find the Tears ourselves?”
“Because there are two of them,” Tembo said. “Two guardians. Hildr is the first. If we do something to escape her custody, there’s no chance we convince the other that we mean no harm. No, we should try to gain her trust, and the trust of her friend.”
“By her friend, we’re not talking about the dog?” I asked.
“We are not. It’s probably this ‘Lillie’ she mentioned. Though I suspect it would not hurt to gain his trust as well.”
“I’m not great with dogs,” Chesa said. “Too much . . .” A heavy slug of slobber twisted through the air to land noisily in the middle of her forehead. Chesa’s mouth clapped shut, and her eyes burned with hatred. Like, literally burned. The drool started to sizzle.
“One thing at a time. She is taking us to their sanctuary. If the Tears aren’t there, they will certainly be nearby. And the closer we can get to them before we set out on our own, the better off we’ll be,” Tembo said. He settled back against the side of the truck, looking as relaxed as if he were on a pleasure cruise down the Nile. “Patience, friends. Patience.”
We zipped through scraggly forests and over slowly rolling hills. I could hear the buzz of hundreds of mosquitoes, and saw the glimmer of standing water flashing between the trees like glimpses of a mirror. It felt like a strange place to hide such a powerful artifact.
“So what do we think this sanctuary is going to look like? What kind of place do two valkyries choose to hide from the Unreal world in? Do they have castles in Minnesota?” I asked.
“Not that I am aware of,” Tembo said. “But there is an incredibly large mall.”
“Let’s hope it’s not there. We have bad luck with malls,” I said. Last year we tracked my friend Eric to a mall that had been turned into a bad version of the Dungeon half of D&D. We had to kill a bunch of trees, and I got the world’s worst sunburn. “Isn’t there some kind of cheese-castle thing?”
“Wisconsin,” Bethany said “Everything in Wisconsin has a cheese version.”
“I’m guessing it’s a cabin in the woods,” Greg said. “The kind of place where you lure children with candy and put them in an oven.”
“She does have that ‘cabin in the woods’ vibe to her,” I muttered. “Wherever it is, I’m not too anxious to get there.”
It was not a cabin in the woods, or a castle, or even a haunted mall. No, the place Hildr took us was nothing like what I was expecting. The sign at the end of the driveway declared it the Edelweiss House, printed in flowing pinks and greens, with a large stylized snowflake in the background. The house itself stood on a low hill, and looked like three or four Victorian homes that had been thrown into a blender and then dumped, with a handful of clashing colors and cascading shingle roofs, inside a wraparound porch that was larger than most tennis courts. There was a garden that had gone to seed a long time ago, and a handful of gazebos, a fishing pond, and at least three statues that depicted various Norse gods in a questionable degree of undress. Hildr pulled into the long, winding driveway, then slowed to a halt. Those of us in the truck bed tumbled together in a clatter of armor and dog slobber and disgrace. The valkyrie twisted around in her seat and stared at our faces, pressed against the glass of her rear window.
“I don’t want you upsetting Lillie. No declarations about the end of the world. No threats of violence, no mention of the war . . . and especially nothing about the Tears. Got it?”
“What are we supposed to do, then?” I asked.
“Sit quietly and have a nice cup of coffee, and maybe some sandwiches.” She threw the truck into gear and we lurched forward, sliding unceremoniously to the tailgate, which thankfully held secure.
The ride up the gravel driveway was perhaps the most comically intimate five minutes of my young life. All of us rolling and sliding and gracelessly bumping heads. It felt like there should be violin music going in the background, or perhaps the sounds of Rome burning to the ground. Finally, mercifully, the ride ended. We all stood hastily, tugging mussed armor and misplaced swords into their proper arrangements.
Magnus descended from his perch, barely waiting for the truck to skid to a halt before leaping through the open window and loping up the broad steps to the wraparound porch. Hildr took her time, and offered us no assistance other than a keen eye and a cradled shotgun. Dismounting from a pickup truck in full armor is a lot like getting off a horse, which was something I’d never really gotten the hang of. I ended up scooting down the side of the truck, taking a good deal of paint with me as my chain-mail britches scoured the side. That drew an angry look from the valkyrie, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. Heartless bitch deserved it, the way she was holding that shotgun pointed in the general direction of my crotch.
The front door of the porch swung open and a large woman strode out, wiping her hands on a faded yellow kitchen apron that she wore over weathered overalls and a crisp white button-down shirt. A wispy gray halo of hair framed her head. It was difficult to nail down her age. Wrinkles around her eyes and the color of her hair placed her in her seventies, but her hands and shoulders belonged to a much younger person. She folded thick arms across her chest and made a dissatisfied sound.
“I thought you were fishing, Hildr,” the woman said. Her voice had the stiff formality of a schoolmarm. “These do not look like fish.”
“No, Lillie, they aren’t. But they came out of a fish. So maybe we can make an exception.”
“And what am I supposed to fry for dinner, hmm?” Lillie asked.
“The skinny one might do,” Hildr said. I looked back at her, startled.
“He is nothing but bone and cartilage,” she said, then drew in a long, sharp breath. “They stink of make believe. How did they find us?”
“That would be my fault, mum. I can sense . . . well, I think you know what I can sense,” Percy said, stepping forward. Both valkyries glared at him as though he had just stepped, gleaming and naked, out of their mother’s birthday cake. Percy cleared his throat awkwardly.
“Yes, I suppose we do,” Lillie finally said. “Well, you had better bring them inside while we figure out what to do with you. We are expecting guests shortly, and it wouldn’t do to have to explain the stains on the porch.”
The big lady turned and went back inside. Hildr snorted at our horrified expressions. She clapped me on the shoulder.
“Don’t worry. She’s only joking.” Hildr clomped up the stairs, knocking her muddy boots on each step to clean them off. “The guests aren’t getting here until tonight. We will have plenty of time to clean up any stains.”
“Do we really want to go in there?” I asked. “I don’t feel super welcome.”
“You’ve been to Valhalla. You know what kind of things valkyries find funny,” Matthew said. “We’ll be fine.”
“If I remember correctly, the kind of things valkyries find funny include drowning me with a bear, disrobing John with a cloud of spears, and playing volleyball with a skull,” Gregory said.
“Talking skull,” I corrected. “Well, screaming skull.”
“Have a spine, Rast,” Chesa said. She walked up the stairs and onto the porch. “What’s the worst that could happen?”
“Isn’t that my line?” I mumbled.
“There was talk of a fish fry,” Percy said uncomfortably.
“You don’t like fried fish?” Matthew asked.
“I don’t like being fried,” Percy said. But after an awkward silence, we followed Chesa into the motley-colored house.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The interior of Edelweiss House was just as mismatched and random as the outside. The foyer contained no fewer than three staircases of different designs that led in different directions. There was a grand Victorian flight of carved wood, adorned with carved fruits and nesting birds and a suspicious-looking snake that ascended to a landing that overlooked the entrance hall, along with a more utilitarian craftsman-style staircase that descended into the bowels of the house, adorned with stained glass insets. The third staircase was a simple wrought-iron spiral that rose to a single door in the wall, about six feet up, roped off with a sign that read no trespassing on pain of a stern apology. The rest of the room was a mishmash of styles, with glossy white subway tile fading into peeling velvet wallpaper that surrounded rustic wood paneling. Even the furniture looked like it was the result of a time travel accident, thrown together from every stratum of the timeline.
“Who decorated this place? Dr. Rubik?” I asked.
“I recognize that as a cultural reference, but am not familiar with the context,” Tembo said. “Was Dr. Rubik a madman?”
“Pretty much,” I said. “This place looks like a puzzle someone started to put together and then gave up halfway through.”
“Do I come into your house and make fun of your furnishings?” Hildr asked. She motioned to a door that opened beneath the sweeping arc of the Victorian staircase. “Go on through to the kitchen. Lillie will find something for you to eat, and we can talk. I need to put the dogs away before the next round of guests arrive.”
“You know, on a scale of one to impossible to count, I did not expect to find a pair of valkyries hiding in a bed and breakfast in rural Minnesota,” I said as I made my way to the door. “It almost feels too obvious.”
“As Esther said, ‘You can take the girl out of Valhalla, but you can’t take the Valhalla out of the girl,’” Tembo said. “It is in their nature to provide hospitality.”
“By hospitality, you mean scouring the corpses of a battlefield, taking the worthy to a beer hall in the clouds, and then keeping them drunk until the apocalypse?”
