فصل 65

I Hate This Part

THE STRANGEST THINGS can save your life. Like lions. Or bulletproof ascots.

Fenris lunged at my face. I cleverly escaped by falling on my butt. A blurred shape launched itself at the Wolf and knocked him aside.

Two animals tumbled across the bone yard in a whirl of fangs and claws. When they separated, I realized Fenris was facing a she-lion with a swollen eye.

“Sam?” I yelped.

“Get the rope.” She kept her gaze on her enemy. “I need to have a talk with my brother.”

The fact that she could speak in lion form freaked me out even more than the fact that she had a lion form. Her lips moved in a very human way. Her eyes were the same color. Her voice was still Sam’s voice.

Fenris’s fur stood up on the back of his neck. “So you accept your birthright as you are about to die, little sister?”

“I accept who I am,” Sam said. “But not the way you mean. I am Samirah al-Abbas. Samirah of the Lion.” She leaped at the Wolf. They clawed, bit, kicked, and howled. I’d heard the term fur flying, but I’d never realized what a horrific thing it could be. The two beasts literally tried to tear each other apart. And one of those beasts was a friend of mine.

My first instinct was to charge into battle. But that wouldn’t work.

Freya had told me that killing was the least of the sword’s powers.

The sons of Frey have never been fighters, the Wolf had said.

So what was I?

Blitzen rolled over, groaning. Hearthstone frantically checked the dwarf’s neck.

The ascot glittered. Somehow, it had turned from yellow silk to woven metal, saving Blitzen’s throat in the process. It was honest-to-Frigg bulletproof neckwear.

I couldn’t help grinning. Blitz was alive. He had played to his strength.

He wasn’t a fighter. Neither was I. But there were other ways to win a battle.

I snatched up the ball of string. It felt like woven snow—impossibly soft and cold. In my other hand, the sword became still.

“What are we doing?” Jack asked.

“Figuring stuff out.”

“Oh, cool.” The blade quivered as if stretching after a nap. “How’s that going?”

“Better.” I stabbed the end of the blade into the ground. Jack did not try to fly away. “Surt may get you someday,” I said, “but he doesn’t understand your power. I do now. We’re a team.”

I looped the string’s noose around Jack’s hilt and pulled it tight. The battle seemed to fade around me. I stopped thinking about how to fight the Wolf. He couldn’t be killed—at least not now, not by me.

Instead, I focused on the warmth I felt whenever I healed someone: the power of growth and life—the power of Frey. The Norns had told me nine days ago: The sun must go east.

This place was all about night, winter, and silver moonlight. I needed to be the summer sun.

Fenris Wolf noticed the change in the air. He swiped at Sam and sent her tumbling across the lawn of bones. His snout was shredded with claw marks. The rune of Tyr glistened ugly and black on his forehead.

“What are you up to, Magnus? None of that!” He lunged, but before he could reach me, he fell out of the air, twisting and howling in pain.

Light surrounded me—the same golden aura as when I’d healed Sam and Hearthstone in Jotunheim. It wasn’t hot like the fires of Muspellheim. It wasn’t particularly bright, but it obviously pained the Wolf. He snarled and paced, squinting at me like I’d become a spotlight.

“Stop that!” he howled. “Are you trying to annoy me to death?”

Sam the lion struggled to her feet. She had a nasty cut on her flank. Her face looked like she’d rear-ended a tractor-trailer. “Magnus, what are you doing?”

“Bringing the summer.”

The cuts on my chest mended. My strength returned. My father was the god of light and warmth. Wolves were creatures of darkness. The power of Frey could constrain Fenris just as it constrained the extremes of fire and ice.

Sticking up from the ground, Jack hummed with satisfaction. “Summer. Yeah, I remember summer.”

I rolled out Andskoti until it trailed Jack like a kite string.

I faced the Wolf. “An old dwarf once told me that the most powerful crafting materials are paradoxes. This rope is made of them. But I’ve got one more—the final paradox that will bind you: the Sword of Summer, a weapon that wasn’t designed to be a weapon, a blade that is best used by letting go of it.”

I willed Jack to fly, trusting he would do the rest.

He could have sliced the last of the Wolf’s bonds. He could have flown across the battlefield straight into Surt’s hands, but he didn’t. He zipped under the Wolf’s belly, threading the cord Andskoti around his legs faster than Fenris could react, binding him and toppling him.

Fenris’s howl shook the island. “No! I will not—!”

The sword zipped around his snout. Jack tied off the rope in an aerial pirouette then floated back to me, his blade glowing with pride. “How’d I do, boss?”

“Jack,” I said, “you are one awesome sword.”

“Well, I know that,” he said. “But how about that rope-work, huh? That’s a perfect stevedore’s knot right there, and I don’t even have hands.”

Sam stumbled toward us. “You did it! You—ugh.”

Her lion form melted into regular old Sam—badly injured, face battered, her side soaked with blood. Before she could fall, I grabbed her and dragged her away from the Wolf. Even fully bound, he thrashed and frothed at the mouth. I didn’t want to be any closer to him than I had to be.

Hearthstone staggered after me, holding up Blitzen. The four of us fell together on a bed of heather.

“Alive,” I said. “I wasn’t expecting that.”

Our moment of triumph lasted about…well, one moment.

Then the sounds of battle became louder and clearer around us, as if a curtain had been ripped away. Hearthstone’s shielding magic may have given us extra protection against the Wolf, but it had also sealed us off from the fight with the fire giants…and my einherjar friends weren’t doing well.

“To the Valkyrie!” T.J. shouted. “Hurry!”

He stumbled across the ridge, bayoneting a fire giant and trying to reach Gunilla. All this time, while we’d been dealing with the Wolf, the Valkyrie captain had been holding off Surt. Now she was on the ground, her spear held weakly above her as Surt raised his scimitar.

Mallory staggered around weaponless, too far away and too bloodied to help. X was trying to dig his way out from beneath a pile of giant corpses. Halfborn Gunderson sat bloody and unmoving, his back propped against a rock.

I processed this in a split second. Just as quickly, I realized Hearth, Blitz, Sam, and I wouldn’t be there in time to make a difference.

Nevertheless, I gripped my sword and rose. I staggered toward Gunilla. Our eyes met across the field, her last expression one of resignation and anger: Make it count.

The fire lord brought down his scimitar.