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CHAPTER FIVE

The end of the world had a checklist. Everything in Knight Watch had a checklist of some nature, accounting for every possible situation and eventuality, from invasion by djinn to anthropomorphization of cutlery in the break room, and everything in between. One time, when Clarence’s companion dragon, Kyle, had gotten a bad case of indigestion from eating all the urinal cakes in the men’s room, I had personally watched as Esther filled out a step-by-step guide to extinguishing dragon flame, taking the time to read each step out loud before executing on the procedure. Needless to say we lost the bathroom, but Esther had her list. So it shouldn’t have surprised me that Ragnarok was just another jot on a countdown, filed away for the inevitable.

“Step one!” Esther shouted at the top of her lungs. There was no one else in the harbor, just the tired members of Knight Watch and our boss, waving a pencil like it was Excalibur. “Establish a safe perimeter and secure against immediate incursion!”

“We’re inside Mundane Actual,” I said. “How much more secure could it get?”

“We could be in our domains,” Bethany said, almost but not quite under her breath. “Taking a nap. For example.”

“Agreed, Rast. Perimeter nominal. Incursion chance nominal.”

“Thank the gods we’ve established that. Now if we can just—”

“Step TWO!”

“How many steps can there be to the end of the world?” Chesa asked.

“Fifteen, unless we get stuck in an Armageddon loop, and then we have to go through the eschatological subroutines,” Esther said. “Step Two! Secure Fenrir and apply the Mark XXIII muzzle. That’s a problem. We never did develop the Mark XXIII. Or determine the location of Fenrir. Hopefully it’ll be awhile before he shows up. Guess we should skip ahead to . . . ” She flipped a page, squinted. “Well, everything else involves that dog, so I suppose we’re out of steps. Really should have updated this thing.”

“Esther, may we get off the boat?” Tembo asked. “I am tired, and my feet hurt. I would like to get back to the herd and refill the cistern of my soul.”

“Gravehome will have to wait, Tem,” Esther said. She slapped her sheaf of checklists closed, then shoved her pencil in the tight iron gray bun of her hair. “We will need to speak to the valkyries. Everyone back on the boat.”

“Oh, gods, Esther, I’m seriously tapped out,” Bethany said. “I just need ten minutes. Three days tops. I’ll be in and out before you know it.”

“If what you say is true, then we honestly don’t have time,” Esther said. “We need to get this ship turned around and flying to Valhalla in ten minutes. Someone go get the Saint.”

“Valhalla?” I asked as nonchalantly as possible. My mind went back to the valkyrie I had briefly met months ago, during my introduction to Knight Watch. She had a smile like a sunburst, and an ass like . . . well, I’m not good with ass metaphors. She looked good. I wanted to go there. “Where the valkyries are, right? Like . . . all the valkyries?”

“Ladies and gentleman, Sherlock Bones, the finest mind this side of a spatula,” Bethany said. “Yes, Rast, where all the valkyries are.”

“Well, I mean, if Esther thinks it’s important, then I say we go. I’ll go. Like, right now. Let’s go.”

“Rast, you understand that they’re immortal beings charged with collecting the war dead of generations of Viking warriors?” Bethany asked. “Like, real Viking warriors. Before men had to do CrossFit to feel good about themselves. They’ve been around real men longer than you’ve known how to hold a spoon properly.”

“Well, maybe they’re tired of ‘real men,’” I said. I tried to be offended by this, but of course she had a point. I was Sir John of Rast, champion of suburbia and the kind of guy who somehow made walking look awkward. “Maybe they’ve developed a taste for the quiet, sensitive type.”

“Sure,” Bethany said. “Lotta women prefer the quiet, sensitive type when they’re surrounded by half-god body builders for eternity.”

“Not only that,” Chesa said, “but Gregory will be there.”

“Yeah, yeah, okay, I get it,” I said. I turned around and stomped up the gangway. “Let’s just get this over with.”

“I will retrieve the Saint,” Tembo said. “Perhaps he will have a balm you can rub on your pride, Sir John.”

“Gonna take a lot of balm,” Chesa whispered to Beth, just loud enough that everyone could hear it.

I sat at the back of the bus and waited for the holy man to make an appearance.


Saint Matthew isn’t the kind of holy man who’s good at reading the room. He was dressed in his casual robes, the heavy cream vestments swooshing loudly against the deck as he crossed the harbor. His lanky black hair hung to his shoulders, and his face was split open in a grin as bright as a fluorescent bulb connected directly to a sunbeam. I mean that literally. His teeth were glowing with holy energy. Usually he wore some kind of mask to keep the light of divinity from blinding us, but today he just had on a pair of Ray-Bans and a heavy layer of what might have been sunscreen. How he got away with these anachronisms was a bit of a mystery to me. Matthew’s mythic identity hovered somewhere between medieval monk and stoned-out poet, and he rarely bothered to differentiate between them.

He strolled casually up the gangplank, walked to the back of the aisle, and sat down heavily next to me. The plank seat (also made of toenails, along with everything else on this horrorship) creaked under him as he threw an arm over my shoulders and hugged me close.

“You smell nice, John,” he said. “Like citrus. You change your hair care routine?”

“I have to eat a lot of oranges to keep from getting scurvy,” I mumbled.

“Oh, right. Diseases. Man, that would suck. You got something that needs healing, big guy?” He waggled his fingers inches away from my blinking eyes. “I’ve got a lot of juice today. Angels were in a good mood.”

“I don’t want to know about it,” I said. He shrugged and leaned back, his arm still around me, dragging me into an uncomfortable slouch.

“Going to be a good day, man. I’ve got a great feeling about it.”

“It’s already been the worst of all possible days,” I answered. “Haven’t you heard? The world is ending.”

“Magnificent!” he declared, then leaned against me and fell asleep.

“I should have been a healer,” I said, giving Matthew the side eye.

“They are rarely like this,” Esther said. “Healers, that is. Usually a lot of flagellation and reading. Matthew seems to be the exception to the rule.”

“You’ve been through a lot of healers?” Chesa asked.

“Smart monsters kill the healer first,” Esther answered. “Okay, everyone strap in. We’re going to make this a fast one.”

“The horrific toenail ship doesn’t have seat belts,” I said.

“Figure of speech!” Esther shouted, then pounded her fist against the fuzzy gray length of the main mast. “Valhalla, big guy! Make it snappy!”

Naglfr was apparently anxious to be home, because it roared across the harbor and through the underwater tunnel that led out of Mundane Actual, shooting like a cannonball into the sky. I would have been screaming, but my mouth was full of foot-scented bath water, and my body was simultaneously trying to vomit and choke and scream and eject my lungs through my mouth. I made a sound that approximated these actions. Matthew slept through it.

Once we were safely in the air and headed north—I could not have pointed to Valhalla on a map, and neither could you, but it’s safe to say you can get there by heading toward the coldest place you can find—I tapped Tembo on the shoulder.

“So what are we hoping to find in Valhalla?” I asked, trying to recover my dignity with curiosity. I had learned that in Knight Watch, if you’re asking questions no one can laugh at you for saying something stupid.

“We have a treaty with the valkyries. It governs their activity in the mundane world, as well as our activity in the affairs of Valhalla. Mythic beings like to handle their affairs privately, and rarely want Knight Watch barging in. The feeling is mutual.”

“Ah. So if one of them is violating this treaty, we need to investigate.”

“At a minimum, Esther must serve Runa Hellesdottir notice of the violation. Which should be an interesting interaction,” Tembo said, with the kind of smile that said he was not interested in this interaction. “They have history.”

“What sort of history? Girl history?”

“Runa was Freya’s top officer in the war.”

“Oh, so they worked together?”

“No. They did not,” Tembo said, then turned around and wouldn’t answer any more questions.

I settled into my seat, trying to ignore the clouds screaming past us, and the fact that the air temperature had dropped by about a thousand degrees, and also the way the sun and moon were moving across the sky, like they had come loose in their orbits and were dancing drunkenly among the stars. Esther sat up front, going through paperwork. She had left her grenade launcher at home, I noticed. That was worrying. But other than that, she didn’t give any indication that she cared about the upcoming meeting one bit.

Considering we were going to heaven to talk to some valkyries about the end of the world, that was even more worrying.

My reverie was broken by the arrival of a fighter jet escort. Or at least, that’s what I thought it was at first. A blur of light flashed off the portside bow, the roar of its passage battering us and stealing the breath from my lungs. The shape tore past us and then turned in a long sweeping arc. Sunlight glinted off steel wings as it came about for another pass. I stood up, grabbing the mast for stability.

“That’s definitely going to break some mundane brains,” I said. “Tower, this is Maverick. I’ve got a Viking longship flying over Toledo. Please advise.”

“They’ll just think we’re a spaceship. They always think we’re a spaceship,” Bethany said. She was the only one of us to not stand up when the jet flew past. “Odds are their cameras will fritz out. Nothing to worry about.”

“Long as they don’t get too close,” Chesa said. “Wouldn’t want Rast’s antitech bubble to knock out their engines.”

“It’s not a jet,” Esther said quietly. She stood at the bow, arms crossed, frowning at the shape swooping toward us. “It’s our escort.”

The blur slowed down, wings dipping to bring it level with our flight path. A trail of water vapor curled out from the tips of its wings, rainbows dancing in the contrails, and that’s when I noticed that Esther was right. It wasn’t a jet. It was a woman. A woman dressed in unrealistically skin-tight metal armor, with a steel visor that didn’t appear to have eye slits, but that only covered the top half of her face. The helm was polished to a mirror shine that caught the sun and threw it back at us like a laser beam. At first glance, her wings looked like they were metal, too, but then I saw that they were simply moving so fast that they glowed. What I had mistaken for the roar of a jet engine was in fact the endless thunder of displaced air, propelling her through the air. Her arms were outstretched like . . . well, like Superman, and she carried a winged sword at her waist.

She pulled level with us, her flightpath wavering slightly side to side as she looked over our ship. Then she saw Esther, and her face twisted into the kind of frown that sinks ships and starts wars. With a jerk of her head, she drew the sword and pointed it at Esther. For a long moment neither of them moved, Esther’s arms crossed defiantly across her chest, the valkyrie’s sword tracing a line that would have passed straight through Esther’s heart. Then the valkyrie banked away, dropping into the cloud deck like a bomb.

“Good to see you, too,” Esther said. Then she turned away, strolling to the back of the ship to sit next to Tembo. The two of them fell into a hushed conversation.

Greg’s heavy hand came down on my shoulder, and he leaned against me, bringing his cinnamon-scented mouth close to my ear.

“Well, that was certainly the finest piece of aeronautical technology I’ve ever seen,” he said, his voice dripping. “Looks like Valhalla might be my kind of place.”

“Don’t be a creep,” I said.

“Or a hypocrite,” he answered. “Your jaw is still on the floor, Sir Rast. You are going to catch your daily allowance of bugs before we arrive.”

I clapped my mouth shut and turned angrily away. Behind me, he gave a little amused snort. I had something clever to say, I really did. I just . . . hadn’t thought of it yet.

The Naglfr banked smoothly, following the valkyrie into the clouds, and beyond.


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