CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
“Keep moving!” I shouted over the sounds of battle. Matthew and I fought shoulder to shoulder, battering our way through the ranks of the undead. Chesa followed in our wake. Her arrows had little effect on the tough flesh of the zombies, but each shot landed in an eye, or a throat, or through the skull of an attacker. Even zombies fall to that kind of precision. “The only way this works is if we stay ahead of them.”
“Not so sure about this, Rast,” Matthew said. He was fighting with his improvised staff, cracking skulls and blessing the fallen. “Where are we even going?”
“And do we have a plan once we get there?” Chesa followed up.
“That circle of stones at the top of the hill looks like a ritual site to me,” I said, nodding at the broken ring of menhirs crowning the grassy knoll. “The Hangnail touched down right in the middle. I figure that whatever they’re doing there, we want to stop them.”
“I mean, they’ve already animated the army of the dead. What more can they do?” Matthew asked. A zombie in the tweedy tan and tanner of the BEF—British Expeditionary Force—grabbed at the saint’s shoulder and tried to pull him down. I slipped behind Matthew’s back, lay my blade against the undead creature’s elbow, then sliced clean through flesh and bone. Gargling, it fell back, staring at its new stump in shock.
“These things are barely fighting back,” I said. “Think of the stories Percy told us. Organized units of the dead. Ambushes.” Another zombie grabbed at my legs, but I was able to kick it down and keep going. “This is a mere fragment of their power. They’re not even using their guns.”
“Feels like they’re fighting just fine to me,” Chesa said. She was struggling to keep up with us. Every step we took, the zombie horde collapsed behind us like water in the wake of a boat. She had to keep moving to avoid being overrun, but aiming and shooting took time. There were a dozen long scratches on her arms and face, and at least one tear in the shoulder of her sweatshirt that looked like it had been done with blunt teeth.
“It’s going to get worse,” I said. “We’re almost there. Maybe save your arrows for the creep in the skull helmet, or those valhellions circling overhead.”
The valkyries in question had me nervous. They had yet to strike, despite having ample opportunity to drop down. Instead they flew in slow, lazy circles around the battlefield. I counted three, but there had been a dozen more on the Hangnail, and who knew how many in the clouds above, waiting in reserve. If we could barely hold back the zombies, what chance did we have against their winged masters?
“So our plan is to keep fighting against impossible odds, keep pressing into the endless mob of soldier zombies, and keep moving, no matter what? Kill everything, or die heroically?” Chesa shouted. “Do I have that right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s the plan.”
A German soldier in gray fatigues shambled out of the horde. He swung a dented submachine gun off his shoulder and pointed it in our direction. I had a moment of existential dread. Being a member of Knight Watch is supposed to protect you from modern weapons, in the same way the various mythic creatures we battle are immune to bullets and taxes. But a gun carried by a zombie? Does that count as magical? Or just really unsettling?
The point was moot. The SMG let out a loud, solitary click. The zombie shook the gun, then threw it to the ground and drew a knife.
“Okay, knives I understand. Knives I can deal with,” I said. “I think I have the reach advantage, big guy.”
What I had forgotten were Percy’s warnings about the nature of these zombies. Their strength and durability. Their smarts. The soldier lumbered up the hill toward me. When it got close enough, I swung hard at its head, thinking to end this quick so I could get at the edgelord.
The zombie caught my sword in one hand, twisting as the blade cut through his palm and stuck into the tiny bones of his wrist. While I tried to wrestle my weapon free, he drove his knife into my shield, puncturing the face just above my fist, then slammed into me with his shoulder. I went flying, leaving sword and shield in the creature’s grasp.
Digging a rut in the grassy hill, I came to a stop ten feet away, with my feet in the air and a healthy supply of sod down the back of my cuisse. Pants. My steel pants. I rolled clumsily to my feet, drawing my mercy dagger. The long, thin blade of the dagger wouldn’t do much to the zombie’s dead flesh, but I had to try something.
The zombie tossed my shield to the side and marched toward me. Levering the blade back and forth, he worked my sword free, giving it a practice swing as he approached.
“Willkommen in der Armee der Toten,” he said. His voice was thick and slurred and in German, but I assumed he was being a smart-ass. I backed up.
“No, you’re fat,” I said. His head tilted to the side but he kept coming. “Probably all the tatertots you ate. Chunky boy.”
“Kartoffel Toten. Ja.” He raised the sword overhead. “All zee dead potato heads.”
He swung too hard, and I dodged to the side, watching him bury the sword in the ground. He was holding it with his one good hand and, despite his strength, could not maintain the grip. I plunged my dagger into the side of his throat, which drew a fountain of clay-thick blood and a disappointed grunt from the zombie. Then he grabbed me and lifted me effortlessly off the ground.
“You put! My boyfriend! Down!” Chesa shouted. With each exclamation, an arrow went into the zombie’s face. He swatted at them like flies, blinking uncomfortably around the shaft of an arrow embedded in his nasal cavity and through his cheek. He dropped me and shambled in Chesa’s direction.
“I had no idea you cared!” I said as I scooped up my shield and banged it, two-fisted, into the back of the zombie’s head. His skull came loose, and he stumbled forward, falling flat in front of Chesa. She jammed the heel of her boot against his neck and put one more arrow through the back of his head. The squirming stopped.
“Ex-boyfriend,” she clarified, glaring at me.
“I wasn’t really expecting a romantic reunion in the middle of a zombie battle,” I said, trotting back to pick up my sword. “Though that would be pretty on point for us.”
Chesa didn’t answer, which was fine, because we were being overrun with zombies. Matthew was drawing lines in the grass with his staff that glowed whenever the undead tried to cross them, but he couldn’t close the circle because they kept lurching around the sides before he could reach them. It meant he looked like the first dancer in a dangerous conga line, backpedaling away from the rest of the party.
That’s when the valkyries circling overhead decided to join the fray. The three of them landed in a triangle around us, scattering a few of their shambling brethren and throwing up a wall of blowing grass and scattered debris. I was still blinking the dust out of my eyes when the one closest to me attacked.
She was kind of short for a valkyrie, but thickly muscled and quick with her spear. She held it in both hands, moving the petal-leaf tip smoothly, first striking at my head then quickly switching to my exposed leg when I lifted my shield. The spear danced off the thick armor of my greaves, but the impact sent me stumbling backward. As I reset, she chuckled.
“This is what passes for a hero these days?” she said. Her voice had a hollow resonance to it. Her helmet was closed, so I could see nothing of her face, but she sounded familiar. I ran through the valkyries I had met. Most were lying unconscious back at the Madhall. She struck again, this time catching the gap between my chest and shoulder plates. The spear dug into the chain mail. I heard rings pop and felt hot blood run down my bicep. The pain came a second later. She laughed again. “It’s no wonder Valhalla has grown stagnant and weak.”
“I’m still in training,” I said. “The onboarding process is kind of a bitch.”
“At least you’re clever. I do enjoy killing clever boys.”
Just then, Chesa cried out in pain. I glanced around in time to see her collapse backward, tripped by the spear of the valkyrie she was facing. I was about to go to her aid when my valkyrie pressed her attack. She was overconfident, but I was distracted. The first spear thrust drove my shield down, the second reached my chest and slid back toward my already injured shoulder. I twisted away, but that left my right side exposed with only the sword to defend. The valkyrie swept the butt of her spear toward my leg. I parried and tried to recover my guard position, but the valkyrie kicked at my thigh and followed it up with a quick strike to my neck. The haft of her spear crashed into my chin, snapping my head to the side and dealing a glancing blow to the soft flesh of my throat. Choking, I stumbled backward, barely catching myself before going ass over teakettle into the grass.
“We need a new plan, Rast,” Chesa growled. She was on the ground next to me. She had lost her bow, and was drawing her crescent blades. If Chesa was going to the knives, we were in some trouble. Matthew, to his credit, was holding his own. The priest could swing a staff, it turned out.
“Gotta save the magic for the edgelord,” I gasped. “Keep fighting.”
“Idiot,” Chesa said, but her heart wasn’t really in it. We pulled each other up, then turned back-to-back, facing our opponents.
“Brave idiots, clever idiots, heroic idiots,” the valkyrie said. “In the end, dead idiots.”
“Sometimes it takes a healthy dose of stupid to be a hero,” I shouted. “Chesa, with me!”
“Yuck, teamwork,” she said, but followed me into the fight.
The stout valkyrie was surprised by our sudden charge. She tried to disengage, flapping her wings desperately, but I came in low and Chesa went high. The edge of my shield slammed into Stout’s kneecaps, and Chesa leapt over my back, scything her way through those wings like they were wheat. Stout screamed in pain and frustration, then went down.
Unengaged, the valkyrie that had been kicking Chesa’s ass rushed us, but only came far enough to cover her fallen sister. Then she motioned to the third valkyrie and yelled.
“Veldi, I think we’re done here!” she called.
“Yes, okay. This one is getting tired anyway.” The one fighting Matthew disengaged in a flutter of wings. She tilted her head in Stout’s direction. “Why is she lying down, Leddi?”
“The mortals overwhelmed her,” Leddi answered. With one last thrust of her spear to drive us back, Leddi took to the air.
“Typical,” Veldi said. Together she and Leddi swooped down, forcing us to the ground as they swept overhead. They landed just long enough to grab the fallen valkyrie by the arms and hoist her into the air. She looked different. Her wings hung in tatters, and her black armor had lost its otherworld shine. As they flew off, a plume of feathers trailed in their wake. They made their way to the crown of the hill, struggling with their fallen companion’s weight suspended between them.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Chesa said. “That actually worked.”
“I’m just as shocked as you are,” I said. “Doesn’t seem like they’re used to fighting in groups.”
“Too much dueling in Valhalla, I guess,” Chesa said. “Matthew, you okay?”
“Doing great. Had her right where I wanted her,” he said, rubbing his jaw. There were bruises all up and down his face, but the glow in his eyes was a little more than divine. “That chick really packed a punch.”
With the valkyries gone, the surrounding mob of zombies seemed to lose interest in us, and went back to shuffling back and forth and groaning pitiably. I was glad for the reprieve. Matthew had just enough Brilliance to bind our wounds and wick the fatigue out of our bones. While he was doing that, I stared at the spot where the valkyrie had fallen. Something about it bothered me.
Kneeling in the beaten grass, I pulled up a fistful of feathers. They looked like . . . chicken? And they’d been daubed with black paint.
“What do you guys think this is about?” I asked, holding up the feathers. Chesa squinted at them and shrugged.
“She got hit pretty hard. Lost a little plumage, I guess.”
“No, you don’t understand. These don’t look particularly . . . mythic. Do they?”
Matthew got closer and plucked one of the feathers from my hand. He ran it under his nose, then sneezed.
“Goose,” he said. “And maybe tar, or just cheap paint. That doesn’t make any sense.”
“None of this makes any sense,” I said. “Valkyries trying to end the world, a field full of zombies that can’t seem to be arsed to attack us, and now goose feathers. There were turkey feathers at the B&B, too”
“In your armor, yeah. And lying around the outside of the house,” Chesa said. “What do you think it means?”
“Some kind of costume, maybe? But those wings looked real enough while they were flying away,” I said. “There was something about her armor, too. Lost a lot of its shine when she went down.”
“You know what it reminds me of?” Chesa asked. She kicked at the ground where the valkyrie had fallen, finally coming up with a bit of armor that must have fallen off. It was leather, and old, the clasp rusty and worn. “The skeletons at the convention center.”
I had to go way back to remember those. After we’d driven off the edgelord and his winged girlfriend, the skeletons that he had summoned had all collapsed into cheap plastic bones and Halloween masks. The convention-goers he had zombified all turned back, as though nothing had happened.
“You think someone is dressing up as valkyries and trying to make it real through sheer willpower?” I asked.
“Willpower and whatever magic they’re able to squeeze out of that sword,” she said. “But who the hell would do that?”
“Who cares about Valhalla enough to try to end the world to fix it?” Matthew mused.
I looked up at the crown of the hill. The HMS Hangnail was parked haphazardly between two monolithic stones, but I could see a circle of winged figures, with the edgelord in the center. The sound of chanting rolled down the hill. The air was filled with supernatural power, the kind of power that could really screw with the world.
“I think I know,” I said. “And if I’m right, we need to get up that hill before they finish whatever the hell they’re doing.”
“What? Why?” Chesa asked.
“Because they’re not trying to end this world,” I shouted as I took off through the mob of listless zombies. “They’re trying to start a new one!”