فصل 35

I Get an Assist from the Murder Murder

“WELP,” I SAID, which was usually how I started conversations about ways to save our butts from certain destruction. “Any ideas?”

“Drink the mead?” Mallory suggested.

Sam rattled her canteen. “Sounds like there’s only one swig in here. If it doesn’t work fast enough, or it wears off before Magnus faces Loki…”

A squadron of tiny T.J.s started bayoneting my gut. Now that we’d gotten the mead, my looming challenge with Loki felt too real, too imminent. I forced that fear to the back burner. I had more immediate problems.

“I don’t think poetry is going to help with these guys,” I said. “Jack, what are our odds in combat?”

“Hmmm,” Jack said. “Baugi and Suttung. I know them by reputation. Strong. Bad. I can take down one of them, most likely, but both at once, before they manage to squash you all flat…?”

“Can we outrun them?” I asked. “Outfly them? Get back to the ship for reinforcements?”

Sadly, I already knew the answer. Watching the eagles fly, seeing how big their forms had gotten in the past minute, I knew they’d be on us soon. These guys were fast.

Sam slung the canteen over her shoulder. “I might be able to outfly them, at least as far as the ship, but carrying two people? Impossible. Carrying even one will slow me down.”

“Then we divide and conquer,” Mallory said. “Sam, take the mead. Fly back to the ship. Maybe one giant will follow you. If not, well, Magnus and I will do our best against both of them. At least you’ll get the mead back to the others.”

Somewhere off to my left, a little voice chirped: The redhead is smart. We can help.

In a nearby tree sat a murder of crows. (That’s what you call a group of them. You learn useless facts like that in Valhalla.) “Uh, guys,” I told my friends, “those crows claim they can help.”

Claim? squawked another crow. You don’t trust us? Send your two friends back to the ship with the mead. We’ll give you a hand here. All we ask for in return is something shiny. Anything will do.

I related this to my friends.

Mallory glanced toward the horizon. The giant eagles were getting awfully close. “But if Sam tries to carry me, I’ll slow her down.”

“The walnut!” Sam said. “Maybe you can fit inside—”

“Oh, no.”

“We’re wasting time!” Sam said.

“Gah!” Mallory fished out the shell and opened the halves. “How do I—?”

Imagine a silk scarf getting sucked into the nozzle of a vacuum cleaner, disappearing with a rude slurp. That’s pretty much what happened to Mallory. The walnut closed and dropped to the ground, a tiny voice inside yelling Gaelic curses.

Sam snatched up the nut. “Magnus, you sure about this?”

“I’m fine. I’ve got Jack.”

“You’ve got Jack!” Jack sang.

Sam shot skyward, leaving me with just my sword and a flock of birds.

I looked at the crows. “Okay, guys, what’s the plan?”

Plan? cawed the nearest crow. We just said we’d help. We don’t have a plan, per se.

Stupid misleading crows. Also, what kind of bird uses the term per se?

Since I didn’t have time to murder the entire murder, I contemplated my limited options. “Fine. When I give you guys the signal, fly in the nearest giant’s face and try to distract him.”

Sure, chirped a different crow. What’s the signal?

Before I could think of one, a huge eagle plummeted down and landed in front of me.

The only good news, if you could call it that: the other eagle kept flying, pursuing Sam. We had divided. Now we needed to conquer.

I hoped the eagle in front of me would morph into a small, easy-to-defeat giant, preferably one who used Nerf weapons. Instead, he rose to thirty feet tall, his skin like chipped obsidian. He had Gunlod’s blond hair and pale blue eyes, which looked very strange with the rocky volcanic skin. Ice and snow flecked his whiskers like he’d been face-diving in a box of Frosted Flakes. His armor was stitched from various hides, including some that looked like endangered species: zebra, elephant, einherji. In the giant’s hand glittered an onyx double-sided ax.

“WHO DARES STEAL FROM THE MIGHTY SUTTUNG?” he bellowed. “I JUST FLEW IN FROM NIFLHEIM, AND BOY, ARE MY ARMS TIRED!”

I couldn’t think of any response that did not involve high-pitched screaming.

Jack floated right up to the giant. “I don’t know, man,” he volunteered. “Some dude just swiped your mead and took off that way. I think he said his name was Hrungnir.” Jack pointed in the general direction of York, England.

I thought that was a pretty good fake-out, but Suttung only frowned.

“Nice try,” he rumbled. “Hrungnir would never dare cross me. You are the thieves, and you have pulled me away from important work! We are about to launch the great ship Naglfar! I can’t be flying home every time the alarm goes off!”

“So Naglfar is close, then?” I asked.

“Oh, not too far,” Suttung admitted. “Once you cross into Jotunheim, you follow the coast to the border of Niflheim and…” He scowled. “Stop trying to trick me! You are thieves and you must die!”

He raised his ax.

“Wait!” I yelled.

“Why?” demanded the giant.

“Yeah, why?” demanded Jack.

I hated it when my sword sided with a giant. Jack was ready to fight, but I had bad memories of Hrungnir, the last stone giant we’d faced. He hadn’t been an easy slice-and-dice. Also, he exploded on death. I wanted every advantage I could get against Suttung, including the use of my murder of unhelpful crows, for whom I had not yet thought of a signal.

“You claim we’re thieves,” I said, “but how’d you get that mead, thief?”

Suttung kept his ax suspended over his head, giving us an unfortunate view of his blond underarm hair in his obsidian armpits. “I am no thief! My parents were slain by two evil little dwarves, Fjalar and Gjalar.”

“Ah, I hate those guys,” I said.

“Right?” Suttung agreed. “I would have slaughtered them as payback, but they offered me Kvasir’s Mead instead. It is mine by right of wergild!”

“Oh.” That kind of took the wind out of my argument. “Still, that mead was created from the blood of Kvasir, a murdered god. It belongs to the gods!”

“So you would make things right,” the giant summed up, “by stealing the mead yet again for yourself? And killing my brother’s thralls in the process?”

I may have mentioned that I don’t like giant logic.

“Maybe?” I said. Then, in a stroke of genius, I thought of a signal for my avian allies: “EAT CROW!”

Sadly, the crows were slow to recognize my brilliance.

Suttung yelled, “DIE!”

Jack tried to intercept the ax, but it had gravity, momentum, and the force of a giant behind it. Jack did not. I dove aside as the ax split the field where I’d been standing.

Meanwhile, the crows had a leisurely conversation.

Why did he say “eat crow”? one cawed.

It’s an idiomatic expression, another explained. It means: to admit you were wrong.

Yes, but why did he say it? asked a third.

“RARRRR!” Suttung yanked his ax from the ground.

Jack flew into my hand. “We can take him together, se?or!”

I really hoped those were not going to be the last words I ever heard.

Crows, one of the crows said. Hey, wait a minute. We’re crows. I bet that was the signal!

“Yes!” I yelped. “Get him!”

“Okay!” Jack yelled happily. “We will!”

Suttung raised his ax over his head once more. Jack pulled me into battle as the murder of crows rose from their tree and swarmed Suttung’s face, pecking at his eyes and nose and Frosted Flakes beard.

The giant roared, stumbling and blind.

“Ha, HA!” Jack yelled. “We have you now!”

He yanked me forward. Together, we plunged Jack into the giant’s left foot.

Suttung howled. His ax slipped from his hands, the heavy blade impaling itself in the skull of its owner. And that, kids, is why you should never use a battle-ax without wearing your safety helmet.

The giant fell with a thunderous THUD, right on top of the pile of thralls.

The crows settled on the grass around me.

That wasn’t very chivalrous, one remarked. But you’re a Viking, so I guess chivalry doesn’t apply.

You’re right, Godfrey, another agreed. Chivalry was more of a late-medieval concept.

A third crow cawed: You’re both forgetting about the Normans—

Bill, just stop, said Godfrey. No one cares about your doctoral thesis on the Norman invasion.

Shiny things? asked the second crow. We get shiny things now?

The entire murder peered at me with beady, greedy black eyes.

“Uh…” I only had one shiny thing—Jack, who was presently doing his victory dance around the giant’s corpse, singing, “Who killed a giant? I killed a giant! Who’s a giant killah? I’m a giant killah!”

As tempting as it was to leave him with the crows, I thought I might need my sword the next time a giant had to be stabbed in the foot.

Then I glanced at the pile of dead thralls.

“Right over there!” I told the crows. “Nine extremely shiny scythe blades! Will those do?”

Hmm, said Bill. I’m not sure where we’d put them.

We could rent a storage unit, suggested Godfrey.

Good idea! said Bill. Very well, dead mortal boy. It was nice doing business with you.

“Just be careful,” I warned. “Those blades are sharp.”

Oh, don’t worry about us, squawked Godfrey. You’ve got the most dangerous path ahead of you. You’ll only find one friendly port between here and the Ship of the Dead—if you can even call the fortress of Skadi friendly.

I shivered, remembering what Njord had told me about his estranged wife.

It’s a wretched place, Bill cawed. Cold, cold, cold. And no shiny things, like, at all. Now if you’ll excuse us, we have to start picking our way through all this carrion to get at those shiny blades.

I love our job, said Godfrey.

Agreed! squawked the other crows.

They fluttered over to the pile of bodies and went to work, which was not something I wanted to watch.

Before the murder could murder themselves on the scythe blades and blame me for it, Jack and I began our long hike back to the Big Banana.