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CHAPTER Nine

The mood in the beer hall was reaching a fever pitch. The interruption of the volleyball tournament had led to a kind of shirtless diaspora, and now a bunch of disgruntled Vikings with pecs like boulders were wandering the crowds, looking for some way to vent their frustration.

“It feels like we’re on the verge of a riot,” I said.

“That might well be the next event,” Matthew said. “Disorganized melee, followed by a round of slowly bleeding to death. Last man to death rattle wins.”

“That’s a pretty sharp escalation from volleyball,” I said.

“They were playing with a human head,” Chesa said.

“Point taken.”

Aelwulf appeared at our side, as though summoned by magic.

“Esther tells me you would like to participate in some of our games?” he asked. “I must warn you, the boys can be rambunctious. The sagas are littered with tales of mortals trying to earn a place in Valhalla through the games. They rarely do well. Or survive.”

“Not a worry,” Gregory said, flashing his million-dollar smile. “We’ve got a healer.”

“I hope he is very good,” Aelwulf said, glancing at Saint Matthew, who had become fascinated by the flames in a nearby brazier.

“He’s the best,” Greg said. “Now. What sort of contests are we talking about? Bear wrestling? Stone throwing? Sword fighting?”

“Can you swim?” Aelwulf asked.

“Of course!”

“In armor?”

“Of . . . Maybe? I’ve never tried. Why would I?”

“I’m glad you mentioned a bear. I think that would be a nice addition to this year’s festivities.” He clapped Greg on the shoulder. “Come with me, my friend.”


We stood on the muddy bank of a pool that had apparently been dug directly into the floor of the beer hall expressly for the purpose of drowning otherwise healthy men. There were already a number of bodies floating peacefully in its depths, along with several large logs. Between the churned-up mud and a fair amount of blood, it was impossible to judge the depth of the pool. Certainly deep enough to drown, though.

Gregory d’Having-Second-Thoughts stood on one end of the pool, staring desolately at his opponent across the way. The other man was packing four hundred pounds of muscle into a two-hundred-pound body, and wasn’t shy about his skin. He still wore armor, but only on his shoulders and around his waist, kind of like a poodle that had been bred with an armored personnel carrier. His hair was bound in a long braid that hung all the way down his back. He sneered at Greg, then spit into the pool and drew a battle-ax from his belt. The dark-feathered valkyrie, Revna, had joined us. Aelwulf observed from a distance, hovering like a butler but also an assassin. I kept glancing at him. The man smiled every time, and the way his face wrinkled around that scar made me a little uncomfortable.

“This should be interesting,” Chesa said.

“Aren’t you supposed to be poking around? Trying to figure out what Runa’s hiding?” I asked.

“Sure. And right now I’m poking around here,” she said. “You think this guy’s going to kill Gregory?”

“I think it’s a distinct possibility.”

“That would be a pity,” Chesa said.

“I’m not sure I understand the rules of the contest,” Greg said. “First in the water, is that it?”

“First to drown,” Revna said. She was sitting in a lifeguard’s chair on the other bank. She even had a whistle around her neck, though I wasn’t counting on her saving any lives, or even getting close to the water. “Death by any other method is strictly barred.”

“Wait? DEATH? What kind of—”

“I said that mortals didn’t do very well in these contests,” Revna said. “Horeth, are you ready?”

“I will fill this coward’s lungs with his own stomach acid!” Horeth, the poodle-shaped opponent, shouted.

“I’m not a coward!” Greg yelled back.

“He’s right. That’s more my thing,” I answered, but Revna ignored me.

“Does that mean you are ready, mortal?” Revna asked.

“Is the saint around?” Greg asked.

“I’m here, buddy,” Matthew answered. Behind his mask, his face was glowing like candlelight. “Just say the word.”

“If I’m drowning I can’t say much,” Greg answered.

“Yeah, that makes sense. I’ll just improvise,” Matthew said.

“Saint!”

“Be cool, be cool. Panicking is John’s thing.”

“I already pointed that out,” I said. “Kind of goes with the ‘coward’ thing.”

Revna blew the whistle, and the contest began.

Horeth leapt from the bank onto the first of the logs. The log rolled under his feet, but he danced across it, getting closer and closer to where Greg was standing. Greg finally stepped gingerly onto a different log, balancing carefully as he edged his way across the pool. Horeth bellowed and charged, leaping from log to log.

The two combatants met in the center. Horeth struck a mighty pose, ax poised to strike, his muscles rippling powerfully under his scant armor. Gregory, not to be outdone in the pose-striking department, brought his zweihander to bear. The steel blade flashed in the torchlight.

“Prepare to die, little man!” Horeth boomed.

“I will fight for the honor of Knight Watch, and the glory of my name! To the breach! To the walls! For GLORY!” Gregory d’Monologue shouted.

“Oh, I almost forgot the bear,” Revna said. She blew her whistle again, and the crowd behind her parted to reveal a bear rumbling toward the combatants. It was the size of a VW bug, and each step of its rolling gait sent shivers through the ground and kicked up waves in the pool. Both Horeth and Gregory froze in place, their mouths hanging open.

“When did they add a bear?” Horeth asked quietly.

The bear reached the edge of the pool and, roaring like a thousand angry bullhorns, launched itself into the air, paws extended, slavering mouth flapping open, muscular body extended. It hit the water at a thousand miles an hour, right on top of Gregory and Horeth. They disappeared in a plume of water and splintered logs.

“Going in,” Matthew said as he shouldered past us, stripping off his robe and sunglasses, until all that was left was complicated underwear and shining, golden skin. He slipped into the churning, bloody water of the pool like a sunbeam. Chesa and I stared in horror and the tumult.

“The bear is a nice touch,” one of the other onlookers said happily.


“Well, that was more satisfying than I expected,” I said as we strolled casually through the crowds. Bethany had joined Chesa and me, while Matthew was still attending to Gregory. Aelwulf trailed behind us, like a bad scent. Apparently the bear had won the contest, to the delight of everyone not directly involved in being drowned by an angry bear. But at least I had gotten to hear Greg scream like a frightened girl. It gave me hope for the rest of the day.

“It felt a little one-sided,” Chesa said, “even without the bear. How is someone like Gregory supposed to win against an immortal Viking?”

“My understanding is that they can die. They just come back in the morning,” Bethany said. “Just like the sun.”

“Or a rash,” I grumbled.

“A particularly well-muscled rash,” Chesa said. A group of drunk Vikings barged through our group, brushing me aside on their way to more mead. The girls watched them go with very inappropriate and lingering gazes. I cleared my throat.

“The two of you are supposed to be figuring out what Runa’s up to,” I said. “And it feels like you’re not really doing that.”

“Well, you can’t say that we’re not keeping our eyes open,” Chesa said.

“Or paying attention to our surroundings,” Bethany continued.

“I think you might be missing the forest for the abs,” I said.

“This looks interesting.” Bethany nodded in the direction of a platform raised above the crowd. Two firepits had been set up, each with a pyramid of logs arranged in the center. As we approached, a pair of valkyries were dousing the logs in a clear liquid.

“Kerosene, probably,” Bethany said. “That’s going to make one hell of a boom.”

“Actually, I think it’s water.” Matthew slipped up behind us. His robe hung loose over his shoulders, and his hair hung in damp curls down his face. His skin had lost most of its pearlescent glow, but his eyes were still piercing orbs of light behind his sunglasses. “They stole this one from us. Might be some copyright violations going on. I’ll have to check.”

“Your priest is correct. The contest is to see who can burn the offering. The water is meant to replicate theTears of Freya, shed because she misses her husband,” Aelwulf said, glancing at Matthew. “Which is a completely Nordic tradition and has nothing to do with any previous event.”

“Whatever,” Matthew said, rolling his eyes.

“How’s Gregory?” Chesa asked.

“Recovering. I was able to fix everything except his pride. Cost a lot of Brilliance, though.”

A bell rang, and out of the crowd emerged our mage. Tembo climbed onto the platform. He was joined by a pale, crooked-looking man in patchwork leather robes. He leaned on a bent staff that was hung with fetishes and burned bark. At first I thought the man wore the same black makeup as Runa, but it turned out that he was blind, and his face was simply smeared with ash. One of the valkyries helped him up onto the platform, where he stood working his mouth, pale tongue flicking out between yellow teeth, as though he was scenting the air.

“Now that’s a creepy dude,” I said.

“Be respectful of our rites,” Aelwulf said. “At least we don’t go around baptizing each other.”

“He’s a priest of some sort, or a skald,” Matthew said. “Looks like Tembo’s gotten himself into a burning things competition.”

“Tem’s going to win the hell out of that,” Bethany said. “I’ve seen him light up most of a city block with that staff.”

“Yeah, well, Greg said he knew how to swim, and look where that got him,” I said.

Truthfully, Tembo looked pretty confident up on the platform. He examined the pyre, testing the depth of the water that pooled at its base and the quality of the timber. Meanwhile his opponent continued to open and close his mouth like a giant, fleshy flytrap.

“What are the conditions of victory?” Tembo asked.

“Biggest flame,” the attending valkyrie answered. “It should be pretty obvious, but the crowd will determine close results by applause.”

“Hardly scientific,” Tembo said with a sniff.

“We’re talking about starting fires with pagan rituals and thaumaturgy wrestled from the land of the dead with profane vows and blood magic,” the valkyrie said. “Science doesn’t have a lot to do with it.”

Tembo and the blind priest moved to opposite ends of the platform, with the two unlit pyres between them, and the valkyrie at the exact center. She signalled to Tembo to begin. Our friendly mage rolled up the sleeves of his robe and gestured lightly toward the closer pyre. The damp logs started to hiss and steam, and then a tongue of flame licked across the rough bark of one of the logs before disappearing in a flash of steam. Tembo curled his fingers into a fist. A bolt of scintillating light jumped from his hands to the pyre. The pyramid of stacked wood erupted in a ball of flame. The crowd let out an appreciative Oooooooo, and then the flames subsided into a heartwarming crackle.

“Get it, my man!” I shouted, then let out a long whistle. “Tem! BO! Tem! BO! Tem—!”

With an almost dismissive gesture, the blind skald flicked his hand toward the other pyre. The logs exploded in flame, showering the crowd with sparks and sending a plume of bright cinders curling into the air. The valkyrie smirked, and looked back to Tembo.

Tembo stared numbly at the priest’s inferno. Then he cracked his knuckles and summoned his staff of white ashwood. The staff appeared in a flash of amber light, echoed in the glowing runes around Tembo’s left eye, and the silver bracelets on his wrists. Gripping the staff in both hands, the mage turned to the flickering flames of his pyre and spoke, his voice a low, even growl.

“I have faced many problems in my journeys, and overcome many foes. But there is no enemy that I have faced that could not be laid low by a ball of fire,” he said. Tembo swung the staff over his head. Flames gathered on the whirling tip, roaring to life as he spun the staff around and around, growing larger and larger until a ball of corruscating fire the size of a wolfhound clung to the tip of the staff. “Behold the fire of my rage!”

Tembo slammed the staff to the ground, hurling the ball of fire into the stacked logs. With a thunderclap they burst into white-hot flame, the black outlines of the logs washed out by the bright light of the fire, quickly disappearing into ash and swirling cinders. The pyre burned like a magnesium flare, a constant, even, roaring flame that consumed the wood, drank the water, and cracked the stones of the firepit. Heat pressed the crowd back.

The blind priest smiled. It was a horrific sight. His mouth bristled with spit-slick yellow teeth, set in blackened gums. A burning cinder landed on his pale, snake-like tongue, sizzling against the flesh. The priest tasted the cinder, chewing noisily and with apparent relish. Then he cast his patchwork robes aside and strode, naked and knobbly, into the flames of his pyre.

“This is full-on crazy, right?” I asked.

“Or heavy, heavy magic,” Matthew answered. “Probably a little of both.”

Flames caressed the bony length of the priest’s legs. He kicked aside the stacked logs to stand in the middle of the pyre, oblivious to the glowing coals underfoot or the ashes that clung to his skin. He lifted his hands to the sky and began to speak dark, broken words.

The sound of his voice rolled out across the audience. They made my skin crawl, and the hair stand up on the back of my neck. Bile rose in the back of my throat as the flames burned the priest’s skin. The smell of burning meat filled the room, and thick black smoke wafted off his flesh. The priest lifted a dagger of sharpened bone over his head, then plunged it into his chest. Dark blood splashed off the blackened stones, feeding the flames.

A tornado of flames whipped out around the blind priest, joining his voice with its own roaring fury. The inferno obliterated the priest, the pyre, the stones, and half the platform in a whirlwind of screaming flame and cutting wind. I threw my arm across my face, but I could still see the white-hot fire through my eyelids, their fury burned into my brain like a brand. When I opened my eyes, there was a crater where the priest’s half of the platform had been. The edge of the crater looked like it had been cut with a blowtorch.

Nothing was left of the priest other than charred bones and a skull, still smiling with those crooked, yellow teeth.

The valkyrie turned to Tembo and raised her brows.

“Elephant man?” she asked.

Tembo shrugged.

“Nice trick,” I said. “Too bad you can only do it once.”

“Nonsense,” Bethany answered. “He can do it all over again tomorrow. Immortal, remember?”

“Yeah,” I said. The crowd was dispersing. We watched as Tembo descended from the platform, his shoulders slumped. “Really not fair.”

“No one said it was going to be fair,” Chesa said. “Now. Let’s go find this armor competition. I’ve heard good things.”


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