فصل 02

Your Standard Rooftop Chase Scene with Talking Swords and Ninjas

I SHOULD introduce my sword.

Jack, these are the peeps. Peeps, this is Jack.

His real name is Sumarbrander, the Sword of Summer, but Jack prefers Jack because reasons. When Jack feels like snoozing, which is most of the time, he hangs out on a chain around my neck in the form of a pendant marked with fehu, the rune of Frey:

When I need his help, he turns into a sword and kills things. Sometimes he does this while I wield him. Other times he does this while flying around on his own and singing annoying pop songs. He is magical that way.

As I bounded across Newbury Street, Jack sprang to full form in my hand. His blade—thirty inches of double-edged bone-forged steel—was emblazoned with runes that pulsed in different colors when Jack talked.

“What’s going on?” he asked. “Who are we killing?”

Jack claims he doesn’t pay attention to my conversations when he is in pendant form. He says he usually has his headphones on. I don’t believe this, because Jack doesn’t have headphones. Or ears.

“Chasing assassin,” I blurted out, dodging a taxi. “Killed goat.”

“Right,” Jack said. “Same old, same old, then.”

I leaped up the side of the Pearson Publishing building. I’d spent the last two months learning to use my einherji powers, so one jump took me to a ledge three stories above the main entrance—no problem, even with a sword in one hand. Then I hop-climbed from window ledge to cornice up the white marble facade, channeling my inner Hulk until I reached the top.

On the far side of the roof, a dark bipedal shape was just disappearing behind a row of chimneys. The goat-killer looked humanoid, which ruled out goat-on-goat homicide, but I’d seen enough of the Nine Worlds to know that humanoid didn’t mean human. He could be an elf, a dwarf, a small giant, or even an ax-murderer god. (Please, not an ax-murderer god.)

By the time I reached the chimneys, my quarry had jumped to the roof of the next building. That might not sound impressive, but the next building was a brownstone mansion about fifty feet away across a small parking lot. The goat-killer didn’t even have the decency to break his ankles on impact. He somersaulted on the tar and came up running. Then he leaped back across Newbury Street and landed on the steeple of the Church of the Covenant.

“I hate this guy,” I said.

“How do you know it’s a guy?” Jack asked.

The sword had a point. (Sorry, I keep stumbling into that pun.) The goat-killer’s loose black clothes and metal war helmet made it impossible to guess his or her gender, but I decided to keep thinking of him as male for now. Not sure why. I guess I found the idea of a bro goat-assassin more annoying.

I backed up, took a running start, and leaped toward the church.

I’d love to tell you I landed on the steeple, slapped some handcuffs on the killer, and announced, You’re going away for livestock murder!

Instead…well, the Church of the Covenant has these beautiful stained glass windows made by Tiffany in the 1890s. On the left side of the sanctuary, one window has a big crack at the top. My bad.

I hit the church’s slanted roof and slid back, grabbing the gutter with my right hand. Spikes of pain shot up my fingernails. I dangled from the ledge, my legs flailing, kicking the beautiful stained glass window right in the Baby Jesus.

On the bright side, swinging precariously from the roof saved my life. Just as I twisted, an ax hurtled from above, slicing the buttons off my denim jacket. A centimeter closer and it would’ve opened up my chest.

“Hey!” I yelled.

I tend to complain when people try to kill me. Sure, in Valhalla we einherjar are constantly killing each other, and we get resurrected in time for dinner. But outside Valhalla, I was very much killable. If I died in Boston, I would not be getting a cosmic do-over.

The goat-assassin peered down at me from the peak of the roof. Thank the gods, he appeared to be out of throwing axes. Unfortunately, he still had a sword at his side. His leggings and tunic were stitched from black fur. A soot-smeared chain mail coat hung loosely on his chest. His black iron helmet had a chain mail curtain around the base—what we in the Viking business call an aventail—completely covering his neck and throat. His features were obscured by a faceplate fashioned to resemble a snarling wolf.

Of course a wolf. Everybody in the Nine Worlds loves wolves. They have wolf shields, wolf helmets, wolf screen savers, wolf pajamas, and wolf-themed birthday parties.

Me, not so much loving the wolves.

“Take a hint, Magnus Chase.” The assassin’s voice warbled, modulating from soprano to baritone as if going through a special effects machine. “Stay away from Provincetown.”

The fingers of my left hand tightened on the hilt of my sword. “Jack, do your thing.”

“You sure about that?” Jack asked.

The assassin hissed. For some reason, people are often shocked when they find out my sword can talk.

“I mean,” Jack continued, “I know this guy killed Otis, but everybody kills Otis. Getting killed is part of Otis’s job description.”

“Just chop off his head or something!” I yelled.

The assassin, not being an idiot, turned and fled.

“Get him!” I told Jack.

“Why do I have to do all the hard work?” Jack complained.

“Because I’m dangling here and you can’t be killed!”

“Just because you’re right doesn’t make this cool.”

I flung him overhead. Jack spiraled out of view, flying after the goat-killer while singing his own version of “Shake It Off.” (I have never been able to convince him that the line isn’t cheese graters gonna grate, grate, grate, grate, grate.)

Even with my left hand free, it took me a few seconds to haul myself up to the roof. Somewhere to the north, the clanging of blades echoed off brick buildings. I raced in that direction, leaping over the church’s turrets, launching myself across Berkeley Street. I bounced from rooftop to rooftop until I heard Jack yell in the distance, “OW!”

Most people might not run into battle to check on the welfare of their swords, but that’s what I did. At the corner of Boylston, I scrambled up the side of a parking garage, got to the roof level, and found Jack fighting for his…well, maybe not his life, but at least his dignity.

Jack often bragged that he was the sharpest blade in the Nine Worlds. He could cut through anything and fight a dozen enemies at once. I tended to believe him, since I’d personally seen him take out giants the size of skyscrapers. Yet the goat-killer was having no trouble forcing him back across the roof. The assassin might have been small, but he was strong and quick. His dark iron sword sparked against Jack. Every time the two blades connected, Jack yelped, “Ow! Ow!”

I didn’t know if Jack was in real danger, but I had to help. Since I didn’t have another weapon and I didn’t feel like fighting empty-handed, I ran to the nearest lamppost and ripped it out of the cement.

That sounds like I was showing off. Honestly, I wasn’t. The pole was just the handiest weapon-like object I could find—except for a parked Lexus, and I wasn’t quite strong enough to wield a luxury automobile.

I charged the goat-killer with my twenty-foot-long jousting light fixture. That got his attention. As he turned toward me, Jack lashed out, opening a deep cut in the assassin’s thigh. The goat-killer grunted and stumbled.

That was my chance. I could have taken him down. Instead, when I was ten feet away, a distant howl cut through the air and froze me in my tracks.

Jeez, Magnus, you’re thinking, it was only a distant howl. What’s the big deal?

I may have mentioned I don’t like wolves. When I was fourteen, two of them with glowing blue eyes killed my mother. My recent encounter with Fenris hadn’t done anything to increase my appreciation for the species.

This particular howl was definitely that of a wolf. It came from somewhere across the Boston Common, reverberating off the high-rises, turning my blood to Freon. It was exactly the same sound I’d heard the night of my mother’s death—hungry and triumphant, the baying of a monster that had found its prey.

The lamppost slipped from my grip, clanging against the asphalt.

Jack floated to my side. “Uh, se?or…are we still fighting this guy or what?”

The assassin staggered backward. The black fur of his leggings glistened with blood. “And so it begins.” His voice sounded even more garbled. “Beware, Magnus. If you go to Provincetown, you will play into your enemy’s hands.”

I stared at that snarling face mask. I felt like I was fourteen again, alone in the alley behind my apartment the night my mother died. I remembered gazing up at the fire escape from which I had just dropped, hearing the wolves howl from our living room. Then flames exploded from the windows.

“Who—who are you?” I managed.

The assassin let out a guttural laugh. “Wrong question. The right question: Are you prepared to lose your friends? If not, you should leave Thor’s hammer lost.”

He backed to the edge of the roof and toppled over.

I ran to the ledge just as a flock of pigeons surged upward, rising in a blue-gray cloud, swirling away over the Back Bay’s forest of chimneys. Down below: no movement, no body, no sign of the assassin.

Jack hovered next to me. “I’ve could’ve taken him. You just caught me unprepared. I didn’t have time to do my stretches.”

“Swords don’t stretch,” I said.

“Oh, excuse me, Mr. Expert on Proper Warm-up Techniques!”

A tuft of pigeon down helicoptered to the ledge and stuck in a smear of the assassin’s blood. I picked up the tiny feather and watched red liquid soak into it.

“So what now?” Jack asked. “And what was that wolf howl?”

Ice water trickled down my eustachian tubes, leaving a cold, bitter taste in my mouth. “I don’t know,” I said. “Whatever it was, it’s stopped now.”

“Should we go check it out?”

“No! I mean…by the time we figured out where the sound came from, we’d be too late to do anything about it. Besides…”

I studied the bloody pigeon feather. I wondered how the goat-killer had disappeared so effectively, and what he knew about Thor’s missing hammer. His distorted voice reverberated in my mind: Are you prepared to lose your friends?

Something about the assassin had seemed very wrong…yet very familiar.

“We have to get back to Sam.” I grabbed Jack’s hilt and exhaustion washed over me.

The downside of having a sword who fights on his own: whatever Jack did, I paid the price as soon as he returned to my hand. I felt bruises spreading across my arms—one for each time Jack had been struck by the other sword. My legs trembled like they’d been doing lunges all morning. A lump of emotion formed in my throat—Jack’s shame for letting the goat-killer fight him to a standstill.

“Hey, man,” I told him, “at least you cut him. That’s more than I did.”

“Yeah, well…” Jack sounded embarrassed. I knew he didn’t like sharing the bad stuff with me. “Maybe you should rest for a minute, se?or. You’re in no shape—”

“I’m all right,” I said. “Thanks, Jack. You did good.”

I willed him to return to pendant form, then reattached the runestone to my neck chain.

Jack was right about one thing: I needed rest. I felt like crawling inside that nice Lexus and taking a nap, but if the goat-assassin decided to double back to the Thinking Cup, if he caught Sam unaware…

I took off across the rooftops, hoping I wasn’t too late.