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.”
“Walk? We have to walk? Do you even know where we are?” Chesa asked.
“Of course I know where we are,” Esther said, pointing. “MA is about ten miles that way. Didn’t you see it on the way down?”
“Was it on the inside of my eyelids?” Chesa asked.
“No.”
“Then no, I did not see it on the way down.”
“How could you tell? Everything’s dark. I can barely see my hand in front of my face,” I said.
“There are certain beacons set out, in case we have to crash-land the Naglfr,” Tembo rumbled. “Though I did not see them. To be fair, I was not looking for them, so much as I was staring at the ground, and our imminent deaths.”
“Man, you guys would have hated Normandy. It was that, but with flak, and a hundred-pound ruck on your back.” Esther rubbed the small of her back. “At least this time no one’s shooting at us. Yet. Let’s go!”
Groaning, the rest of the team worked their way to their feet and started after Esther, before we lost her in the darkness.
“Boss,” I said, hurrying to catch up with the gray-haired whirlwind. “I think Runa’s lying.”
“No kidding,” Esther said. “This nonsense about us taking the sword and hiding it in Valhalla . . . it’s just delusional.”
“No, I mean, about more than that.” I told her what the volleyball had told me, about the untimely deaths, and the valkyries’ sudden flight. “Something happened up there that they weren’t expecting. It’s too bad you were still in flight. I thought you would have made it back to Mundane Actual by then.”
“Wait, it was already dark?” Esther asked. “You didn’t go in too early, like an idiot?”
“Sorry to disappoint, boss, but no. We waited just like we were supposed to. Even had time to explore a little bit. But once the edgelord showed up, it was all dodging tables and hiding in the shadows.”
“That’s . . . interesting.” Esther was silent for a dozen vigorous strides, then looked over at me. “They picked us up right away. Those two in the black armor. Swooped out of the clouds and detained us. We thought you’d already been picked up.”
“Unless time moves a lot differently on that mountain, we were still hunkered down, waiting for night to fall,” I said.
“That means we’re dealing with more than a single rogue valkyrie playing muse to a disgruntled outsider,” she said. “Chesa, did either of those valkyries look familiar?”
Chesa trotted to match our stride. “The tall-and-quiets?” she asked. “No, why would they?”
“They were in on it. Picked you up before things went bad in Valhalla, then held you until Runa came looking,” I said. “So maybe one of them was the same as what we met in Mickleville.”
“I don’t think so. But hard to say with those helms on,” she said.
“So we’re maybe looking at three, and if there are three, there’ll be more,” Esther said. “No time for a leisurely stroll. We need to get home. I want to talk to Clarence.”
“What does Clarence have to do with this?” I asked.
“He’s the one who killed the bearer of Totenschreck last time around,” Esther answered. Then she fell into a steady jog that, while it didn’t look fast, quickly left the rest of us in the dust.
Chesa groaned and looked at me. “What did you say to her!”
“Well, it certainly wasn’t Can we please run ten miles in the dark?,” I said. “You can’t blame me for this.”
“You have no concept of my capacity for blaming you for things, John,” Chesa said. Then we all started running, before we lost sight of Esther completely.
The last time I was in Clarence’s domain, it was to die. Repeatedly. This was right after I had first joined Knight Watch, while Chesa and I were still in training. Neither of us knew what to expect. What we got was stabbed in the gut each time we screwed up a sword form. But at least we also got to meet a friendly dragon named Kyle.
The entrance to Clarence’s domain is in one of the subbasements of Mundane Actual, tucked behind a rather average-looking door. After Clarence retired from the active team, his portal was moved out of the barrel-ceilinged great hall that serves as our central meeting place.
“Try to not get him too worked up,” Esther said, handing us each a damp burlap sack. “If he knows there’s trouble in the real world, he’s going to try to rejoin the team, and frankly our insurance won’t cover that.”
“We’re there to ask Clarence about a magical Nazi zombie sword,” I said. “How are we supposed to do that without making it seem like a big deal?”
“Well, of course you’ll have to tell Clarence,” she said. “It’s Kyle I don’t want you to upset. What did you think the bags were for?”
“To be honest, I’ve gotten used to you handing me inexplicably damp packages full of”—I glanced inside the bag—“what appear to be intestines.”
“Pig,” Esther said. “If he gets curious, just swing them around your head a couple times and give it a throw. And whatever you do, don’t get any on you.” She shuttled us toward the door. “He sometimes has trouble telling the difference between human in pig blood and just plain old pig. Kyle’s more of a bite first, ask questions later type.”
“And you’re not coming with us?” Chesa asked, holding the dripping mass of her sack at arm’s length.
“I need to get down to Reality Control, see if the Actuator can get a fix on what happened to that sword,” Esther said. “Don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of time to catch up with Clarence. Time moves funny down there.”
“Tell me about it,” Bethany said. “Last time I saw the old guy, he was still talking like bell bottoms were a thing.”
“They’re not?” Matthew asked, clearly distressed.
“Enough chatter,” Esther said. “In you go!” And she pushed us bodily through the portal, barely waiting for my boots to clear the threshold before slamming the door shut.
We were surrounded by darkness. This is always how it is, when entering domains—magical places unique for each member of Knight Watch that supposedly reflect our mythic identities. We went there to recharge our powers after a mission, or to detox following a long exposure to the mundane world. Mine was a cabin in the very dark woods—a warm, cozy place that felt like the home I never knew I missed. Chesa’s somehow involved shirtless elf princes and treetop palaces, while Tembo lived on a grass-swept plain, haunted by elephant spirits and the promise of death. Clarence’s was a little more typically fantastic. Frankly, he lived in the kind of place I thought I would get, with a majestic castle surrounded by primeval woods and populated by invisible servants. It was also under constant threat of being destroyed by Kyle, the dragon. So there were trade-offs, I suppose.
The darkness passed, and we found ourselves on a forest path. Every domain had a pathway in, an exit out, and a hearth that served as the center of the mystical world, and this softly lit trail winding its way through an ancient forest was the pathway into Clarence’s mythic identity. Our clothes changed slightly as well, bringing them more in line with Clarence’s vision of the knightly fantasy. Matthew looked like a slightly drunk monk, tonsure and all, while Tembo squinted out from under a peaked wizard’s cap and swooshing blue robes. Gregory and I stayed mostly the same, but Bethany and Chesa transformed into maidens, with velvet overdresses and light-colored tunics. Even as a maiden, Bethany displayed more knives across waist, thigh, and sleeve than an overstocked butcher’s block.
“What’s the problem with this Kyle person?” Gregory asked. “Is he some kind of cannibal?”
“Kyle’s a dragon,” I said. “A real sweetie. Nothing to worry about.”
“So little to worry about that we’ve been given pig guts to take care of it.”
“Yeah, well. Living the dream.”
“This is sort of disappointing,” Chesa said, looking down at her dress. “How am I supposed to fight in this?”
“You look nice,” I said.
“Now it’s downright horrifying,” she answered. “I can’t go on like this! I’m taking it off.”
“Even better,” Gregory said with a smile. Chesa punched him, but a great deal lighter than she would have punched me if I said something like that. By the time we got to the edge of the forest, they were joking and laughing and having a grand old time.
The bastards.
Fortunately, I was spared the misery of their conversation by the appearance of Clarence’s castle. It was less grand than I remembered, though maybe in retirement Clarence had settled into a smaller space, with fewer crenellations to clean and hallways to dust. Besides, he didn’t need the training grounds anymore.
The castle proper sat on a hill at the head of a little valley, flanked by a river on one side and a precipitous cliff on the other. Concentric rings of stone walls led to the top of the hill, where a single tower rose into a sky the color of sapphires. We followed the long trail down to the castle. There was a small village on the banks of the river, but it looked empty and dark, though a few columns of woodsmoke seemed to indicate some form of habitation. We reached the main gate of the castle, a massive twenty-foot-tall double door, bound in iron and thick enough to keep out a dragon. I kept one eye to the skies the whole time, but there was no sign of Clarence’s scaly companion.
“So what do we do? Knock?” Gregory asked.
“Worth a try,” I said. I pounded on the door with the pommel of my sword, but that only produced a dull thud.
“I could probably scale this,” Bethany said.
“Let’s not go breaking into someone else’s fantasy world,” I said. “You never know what you’re going to find. I’d rather not stumble across the old guy in the bath.”
“Hey,” Chesa said. “There’s a pull-rope over here.”
“Seems pretty obvious,” Bethany said. She grabbed the rope and, leaving her feet, gave it a mighty pull.
At first it was just one church bell, ringing in steady rhythm, but then another joined it from the far end of the castle, and then another, and another. Soon the whole castle shook with the sound of hundreds of bells, gonging and tolling, pealing and re-pealing, until the air seemed to vibrate with the sound of their song. We stood at the gate with our hands over our ears until they slowly, one by one, fell silent. My whole skeleton hummed with the aftershock. We waited.
And waited.
For a long time.
“I’m starting to worry,” Chesa said.
“This is a little strange,” I said too loudly. I had been the last to get my hands over my ears, and the ringing sound in my skull was like a small blacksmith had taken up residence between my ears. “Maybe Bee should go in after all?”
“There you are! I thought I heard someone messing about!” Clarence shouted. He popped over the top of the wall, his head wreathed in a wild mane of white hair. “Whatever are you doing here?”
“Looking for you, Sir Clarence,” I said. “We have some questions about an old mission.”
“Well, I’ve certainly got the old part covered,” he said with a laugh. His face fell as he saw what we were all carrying in our hands. “My gods, what on earth are those?”
I lifted my bag. “We brought Kyle some treats.”
“Well, you better get rid of them. He’s off meat. Got himself a cat, and now we all have to eat vegetables and bits of moss. It’s bloody awful,” Clarence said. “Come on inside! Kyle will be thrilled to see you!”
He disappeared behind the wall. A few minutes later the gate creaked open.
“A dragon who’s gone off meat?” Gregory mused. “What has the world come to?”
“I’m more worried about the cat,” I said, tossing my bag by the side of the road. The others followed suit, and then we went inside.