Valhellions, p.10
Valhellions, page 10
“One thing you haven’t counted on,” Gregory said. Even though his face was pale and slick with sweat, he spoke with strength. He unlimbered his massive zweihander and brought it to a guard position, stepping forward. “I may not have my magic, but steel is steel, and I’m willing to bet I can still take you in a fair fight.”
“A good point,” the black-cloaked swordsman said. “But there is something that you have not taken into consideration as well.” He brought Totenschreck to the salute position, touching it lightly to the forehead of his gruesome mask. “Some of the souls who died by this steel were Vikings. Dead in battle, and certainly worthy of Valhalla.”
He whispered something into the sword. The steel changed, striking a clear note like a tuning fork that washed out across the beer hall. The sound made my skin crawl.
Out in the mounds and piles of dead flesh, there came a chorus of muttering voices. The shadows shifted. I caught sight of fingers twitching, spines straightening, the horrid clatter of teeth snapping convulsively shut. I took a step back, preparing for the rush.
Then Mr. Valhalla groaned and stood up. His eyes were pale white orbs, and a ghostly light wafted from his open mouth. He slumped forward to stand next to Totenschreck’s dark wielder.
“Okay,” Gregory said. “Now I’m willing to talk about an escape plan.”
“Looooooozzzzzersssss,” Mr. Valhalla groaned. “Unworthy of Valhalla. BE GONE!”
“Gladly!” I yelped, but he was already bearing down on me. I brought up my shield just as he thumped down at me with one of his meaty fists. The impact threw me flat to the ground. I scrambled back until Tembo pulled me to my feet. My shield lay next to the firepit, well out of reach. I could see my sword, though.
“I know he’s a big guy, but that feels a little over the top,” I said.
“He is a legend of Valhalla, Sir John,” Tembo said. “They are not mere mortal musclemen.”
Mr. Valhalla turned and wrenched one of the benches out of the ground. Twelve feet long and hewn from the heartwood of a single tree, the bench must have weighed a thousand pounds. Mr. Vee propped it on one shoulder like he was waiting for his turn at bat.
“Okay, that does seem a bit much,” Tembo agreed. “Gregory?”
“Let’s go, Captain Testosterone. Let’s see you bench press three feet of razor-sharp German steel!” Greg lifted his zweihander over his head and charged, wobbling, forward.
Mr. Valhalla met him with the long edge of the bench, swinging the lumber with both hands. Greg yelped and went flying. He landed on the other side of a pile of still-dead Vikings with a clatter of armor.
The hulking mass of resurrected Viking meat turned back to where Tembo and I stood. He smiled crookedly and hefted the bench once again.
“I like having other people do my fighting for me,” the edgelord said. “But you know all about that, don’t you, John?”
“I take it you’ve got nothing in the tank, Tem?” I asked, ignoring the man’s taunt. “A portal could come in real handy right about now.”
“I’m as cold as a drowned rat,” he said.
“That works better with wetness,” I said. “But I get the idea. After you!”
Tembo scrambled over the throne and I followed, ducking behind the dais. We were trapped between Mr. Valhalla and the wall of swords. The shadows thrown against the wall told me that our glistening attacker had crossed the firepit, but then he hesitated. Must have been something about the throne itself that gave him pause. I grabbed Tembo by the collar.
“You get to Greg. If he’s still alive, then the two of you get outside and go back up that mountain. Hide out until dawn.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Maybe earn a place in Valhalla,” I said. “Just run when I say run, okay?”
We were interrupted by a titanic roar from the other side of the throne. The back of the tri-seat creaked and then lifted off the ground, revealing Mr. Valhalla, sweating, straining, his face screwed up with the effort of deadlifting the throne.
“Deadlifting,” I muttered. “That’ll be funny later. Tembo, RUN!”
But of course being a rational human and not an idiot obsessed with slightly funny wordplay, Tembo had already lit out for the hills, his robe flapping like a banner on a rocket ship. Mr. Valhalla and the edgelord watched him vault the stacked bodies, then slowly turned back to look at me.
“I guess that means I go this way,” I said, then ran in the other direction.
Mr. Vee dropped the throne with a boom, then loped after me. His feet came down like cannon shots in my wake. Fortunately it seemed to take a lot of energy to move a body that big, and I was motivated by fear. I scrambled around the corner of a row of benches lined with temporary corpses, then rolled between the feet of a couple of them and belly-crawled into the row. By the time I came up, I could hear Mr. Vee already passing me by. Not very clever, the big muscle guys. That’s why I wasn’t a big muscle guy. Right. That was the reason.
Without a weapon, or a shield, or pants, there was no way I was going to face off with Zombie Valhalla, much less the creepy dude pulling his strings. My best chance was to hide out until the valkyries returned, or hope that Esther could find a way back into the realm. Our plan depended on the fact that we should have been alone to retrieve the Totenschreck. Now that the edgelord had shown up, we were screwed.
Which brought up an interesting question: How did this guy get inside? Did Runa know he was here? Had she cleared the hall so he could grab the sword unopposed? Was that why she had encouraged us to participate in the games, so we’d be drained and have to return to Mundane Actual?
What was going on here?
My thought process was interrupted by a splintering sound ahead of me. A bench-full of slumping Vikings tumbled into the aisle in front of me, and Mr. Vee’s ghostly eyes appeared among the shadows. I ducked under another bench, crawling until I reached an extinguished firepit that let me squirm into another row without being seen. My pursuer bellowed his frustration. I went the other direction. The thundering crash of footsteps let me know that Mr. Valhalla was in close pursuit.
I skirted the edge of the fighting pits, trying to stay out of sight as best I could, even though Mr. Valhalla’s lumbering pursuit never seemed to vary. I leapt across a firepit whose coals hadn’t yet gone cold, then shimmied between two benches before finding myself on the edge of a long row of fighting pits. Most were still occupied, their last combatants lying cold and dead in the sand. I grabbed a discarded sword from one corpse, then unhooked an unattended round shield from a rack before dashing beneath a table littered with cold meat and half-filled flagons of ale.
It amazed me how variable the corpses strewn across the hall were. I would think that if you were preparing to die, and did so every night, you would find a nice place to lie down and expire. To cut down on the backaches, at the very least, if not to avoid burning all night in a firepit, or waking up with a lung full of bloody sand. But the Vikings lay in every possible posture, some with food hanging half out of their mouths, or a sword pressed lovingly into their spleens, or worse. And by the persistent smell of urine and . . . worse . . . it seemed like many of the honored dead hadn’t bothered to relieve themselves before death came knocking. It made me shudder.
“Wouldn’t want to be their janitor. Or their laundry guy,” I said to myself. And that made me think of the feral janitors who haunted the depths of Mundane Actual, excreting vile chemicals to consume bloodstains and other unmentionable acts. “Those two would probably be really comfortable in this place.”
Maybe whatever magic brought these idiots back to life also cleaned their underwear. Anything was possible in the magical land of Valhalla.
“He’s going to find you!” The voice came from right next to my foot. I jumped, banging my head against the bottom of the table, then came down on something hard and round that immediately started to chew on my kneecap. I screamed and kicked it away, which prompted another round of screaming from whatever I had landed on. I watched as it rolled against a table leg and came to a stop. It was the volleyball.
Volleyball head. Volleyhead? Anyway.
It looked like the head of a Viking warrior, the skin shrunken and stretched tight over its skull. It wore a steel cap crooked across its scalp, covering one sunken eye, while the other contained a wrinkled, blackened eyeball. Its nose was gone, but its mouth hung open, revealing many yellow teeth and a dry, cracked husk of a tongue. The head kept screaming.
“Will you shut up?” I hissed. “There’s an undead Viking trying to tear my spine out!”
The head’s jaw clapped shut. It rolled that blackened eye around to look at me. I think it winked at me, but it might have just blinked.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
“My pleasure,” the ball answered.
“Aren’t you supposed to be dead?” I asked.
“I am,” it said. “Are there a lot of living decapitated heads where you come from?”
“No. But the dead decapitated heads are a lot less talkative.”
“Oh! Yes, I suppose they would be,” the ball said. Then it stared up at the underside of the table with a distant, contemplative look. “But I’m not really understanding your question, then.”
“I mean,” I said, “shouldn’t you be dead and quiet, like the rest of these folks?”
“Ah, that’s the point of it. I see now. No, no, I’m sort of their mascot. A draugr, you understand. The living dead.”
“An actual zombie. That’s a refreshing change of pace.” There was no sound of Mr. Valhalla, or the Totenschreck guy, so I settled onto my haunches. “So is it always like this? Vikings littering the ground like worms after a hard rain?”
“No, no, not at all. They usually sing a little song and then tuck into their grave goods. Bit different tonight,” the draugr said. “Not often they forget to put me back on my body. Don’t know how I’m supposed to clean everything up like this. Drag myself around on my tongue, I guess. Going to be a hell of a night.”
“Wait, so this is different? What happened?”
“Don’t know. Everyone just dropped. Floki was carrying me back to my body, but instead he, you know, shat himself and flopped over. I rolled under here. I thought it was going to be kind of dull until you showed up.”
“Were the valkyries still here?” I asked.
“Yes, yes, of course. They don’t bugger off until after the nightly burials. They seemed quite upset. Said something about that Esther bitch, and went flying. Glad I’m not one of her lot.” The head thought for a moment, then squinted at me. “Say, weren’t you with them? You’re one of those mortal thingies, aren’t you?”
“Me? No, no, of course not. I’m . . . just like you.”
“You don’t smell like me. You smell like fear.” The ball grimaced, then started rolling away, using a clever combination of its jaw and forehead. I grabbed for it. “Help! Help! Someone help me!” it shouted.
A shadow fell across the table just as I was coming out from under its protective cover. I looked up, right into Mr. Valhalla’s steely eyes.
“Ah. Shoot.”
“You are a failure!” Mr. Valhalla screamed.
“Maybe! But at least I know how to wear pants!” I rolled to my feet, bringing up my stolen sword and shield. Unfortunately, my sheet caught on the edge of the table, and tore free from my waist, making my whole “pants” line kind of irrelevant. I blushed furiously.
Mr. Valhalla keeled straight back, landing like a felled tree in the forest. I stared at him for a long moment. He didn’t move. I looked down at my nakedness.
“I mean, it’s not that bad,” I said.
“For a mortal,” Runa said. She descended from the ceiling on slow, steady wings, flanked on both sides by a dozen valkyries.
“Oh, gods, why does this keep happening to me?” I muttered.
“Because you make poor decisions,” Runa said. “Now. You’re going to have to answer some questions.” She landed hard on the edge of the table, scattering cold turkey and drenching me in warm ale. “Starting with: What have you done with the Totenschreck?”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I stumbled onto the moonlit expanse of the grassy field in a daze. Now that night had fully fallen, I noticed that the tree in front of the beer hall glowed with an inner light. Veins of gold and amber shimmered through its bark, and the leaves seemed to pulse in soft waves of crimson radiance. It was by this light that I was able to make out the host of valkyries gathered on the lawn. Their eyes reflected the tree’s light, making them look like a pack of wolves, crouching in the shadows.
They weren’t alone. The crowd parted, and three figures entered the clearing. Esther looked a little roughed up, and Bethany had a bruise across her cheek and manacles on her wrists. Chesa seemed alright, but there was fear in her eyes. A pair of armored valkyries flanked them, as though standing guard. They wore close-fitting helms that covered their faces, and their plate mail was painted black. Revna stepped forward and shoved Esther and the girls to the ground.
“I take it things didn’t go according to plan?” I asked.
“We didn’t really have much of a plan in the first place,” Esther said. “But what we had kind of fell apart.”
“Where’s Matthew?”
“Cooling his heels with the Naglfr.” Esther craned her neck to look behind me, scanning the crowd. “Tembo? Gregory?”
“They were hiding in the privy,” Runa said. She gestured, and four valkyries paraded in, carrying a pair of spits between them. Our mage and our knight hung from the spits like bound pigs, both of them dripping wet. “We hosed them off for you.”
“More like they tied us to the Jörmungandr and let us do a couple cycles through the wash,” Tembo said. “We’re going to need the saint. And some towels.”
“Saint never got to his domain,” Bethany said. “They’ve been holding us just the other side of the mountain, waiting for you three to screw up.”
“Which brings us to the interesting part of our conversation,” Runa said, very loudly, and with special emphasis on the word interesting. “You have taken our sword. I want it back. NOW!”
“That wasn’t us!” I said. “The edgelord was here! The guy from the Ren faire!”
“We know that isn’t true,” Runa said. “No one enters Valhalla without my permission. And you are the only mortals to enter these grounds in the last fifty years. So, again, where is my sword?”
“If John says we don’t have it, we don’t have it,” Esther said. “You’ve searched our ship, our clothes, I’m assuming you’ve searched John’s sheet. Now let us go.”
“They might have hidden it somewhere on the grounds,” Revna said. “Shall I have them killed until they tell us where it is?”
“If you kill us, how are we supposed to tell you anything?” I asked.
“We have our ways,” she answered, stepping forward menacingly.
“That will not be necessary, Revna. If the sword is here, we will find it,” Runa said. She gave us one last look, then turned away. “I just want these mortals out of my realm. Expel them.”
“Thank the gods,” Chesa said. “I never thought I’d be glad to get on that damned toenail ship.”
“Oh, no,” Runa said, glancing back at us. “You are in clear violation of our agreement. Until this matter is cleared up, we are keeping the boat.”
“But then how are we supposed to get back home?” I asked.
I did not want to know.
The words “Rainbow Bridge” imply a certain amount of calm. They imply beauty, and grace, and perhaps trippy visual effects from the 1960s. They do not, in my opinion, imply falling out of the sky at a million miles an hour with nothing between you and the ground but colored light.
My point is that the Bifrost is misnamed. “Screaming Gravity Chute” is more accurate. “Colorful Terminal Trajectory,” perhaps. “Pissing yourself at a hundred miles an hour while riding a slide full of glitter” is a lot closer.
Regardless of the name, we fell screaming from the sky. Esther handled it better than the rest of us, plummeting with her arms folded across her chest and her face set in an impressive scowl. At least they gave me my clothes and weapons back before they tossed us in the gravity cannon. The feral janitors would have been very disappointed if I did all this terror-urinating without a pair of breeches to be cleaned afterward. There was nothing magical about this bridge. Well. There was nothing magical about the first couple hundred miles of howling, madness-inducing, stomach-churning velocity. That last ten feet were technically magic, because just as we were about to splatter into the ground we came to a complete stop, in violation of all the laws of physics and inertia, somehow floating the final bit of our plummet like butterflies. Not that I stopped screaming, mind you. I was locked into the screaming at that point. At least in the darkness you couldn’t see the stains.
We landed on the outskirts of a grassy field, somewhere deep in the heart of nowhere. It was hours until morning, and the cold night air burned as I sucked it into my lungs. I lay panting on the ground, trying to recover my composure and failing, all while my heart hammered in my chest like a dwarf angry at his anvil. After a few minutes I realized I was the only one still screaming and shut up. At least the others had the decency to stare up at the sky in wide-eyed horror for a while. Finally, Esther cleared her throat.
“So you really don’t have the sword?” she asked.
“My gods, Esther, no! Do you think I’d suffer through all that if I had the sword?” I asked. “I’m not that kind of brave.”
“No. I suppose you’re not. I was just hoping you were that kind of clever.” She stood up and dusted herself off, then snapped her fingers. “On your feet, squad. It’s going to be a long walk. We need to get home by first light.”
