فصل 07

You Look Great Without a Nose, Really

WOW, MAGNUS, you’re probably thinking. That was…stupid!

Thanks. I have my moments.

Normally I don’t go stepping into walls of flame. But I had a feeling it wouldn’t hurt me. I know that sounds weird, but so far I hadn’t passed out. The heat didn’t feel so bad, even though the pavement was turning to sludge at my feet.

Extreme temperatures have never bothered me. I don’t know why. Some people are double-jointed. Some people can wiggle their ears. I can sleep outside in the winter without freezing to death or hold matches under my hand without getting burned. I’d won some bets that way in the homeless shelters, but I’d never thought of my tolerance as something special…magical. I’d definitely never tested its limits.

I walked through the curtain of fire and smacked Surt in the head with my rusty sword. Because, you know, I always try to keep my promises.

The blade didn’t seem to hurt him, but the swirling flames died. Surt stared at me for a millisecond, completely shocked. Then he punched me in the gut.

I’d been punched before, just not by a fiery heavyweight whose ring name was the Black One.

I folded like a deck chair. My vision blurred and tripled. When I regained my focus, I was on my knees, staring at a puddle of regurgitated milk, turkey, and crackers steaming on the asphalt.

Surt could have taken my head off with his fiery sword, but I guess he didn’t feel I was worth it. He paced in front of me, making tsk-tsk sounds.

“Feeble,” he said. “A soft little boy. Give me the blade of your own free will, Vanir-spawn. I promise you a quick death.”

Vanir-spawn?

I knew a lot of good insults, but I’d never heard that one.

The corroded sword was still in my hand. I felt my pulse against the metal as if the sword itself had developed a heartbeat. Resonating up the blade, all the way to my ears, was a faint hum like a car engine turning over.

You can renew it, Randolph had told me.

I could almost believe the old weapon was stirring, waking up. Not fast enough, though. Surt kicked me in the ribs and sent me sprawling.

I lay flat on my back, staring at the smoke in the winter sky. Surt must have kicked me hard enough to trigger a near-death hallucination. A hundred feet up, I saw a girl in armor on a horse made of mist, circling like a vulture over the battle. She held a spear made of pure light. Her chain mail shone like silvered glass. She wore a conical steel helmet over a green head wrap, sort of like a medieval knight. Her face was beautiful but stern. Our eyes met for a fraction of a second.

If you’re real, I thought, help.

She dissolved into smoke.

“The sword,” Surt demanded, his obsidian face looming over me. “It’s worth more to me freely surrendered, but if I must, I will pry it from your dead fingers.”

In the distance, sirens wailed. I wondered why emergency crews hadn’t shown up already. Then I remembered the other two giant explosions in Boston. Had Surt caused them, too? Or brought along some fiery friends?

At the edge of the bridge, Hearth staggered to his feet. A few unconscious pedestrians had started to stir. I couldn’t see Randolph and Blitz anywhere. Hopefully they were out of danger by now.

If I could keep Burning Man occupied, maybe the rest of the bystanders would have time to clear out too.

Somehow I managed to stand.

I looked at the sword and…yeah, I was definitely hallucinating.

Instead of a corroded piece of junk, I held an actual weapon. The leather-wrapped grip felt warm and comfortable in my hand. The pommel, a simple polished steel oval, helped counterweight the thirty-inch blade, which was double-edged and rounded at the tip, more for hacking than for stabbing. Down the center of the blade, a wide groove was emblazoned with Viking runes—the same kind I’d seen in Randolph’s office. They shimmered in a lighter shade of silver, as if they’d been inlaid while the blade was forged.

The sword was definitely humming now, almost like a human voice trying to find the right pitch.

Surt stepped back. His lava-red eyes flickered nervously. “You don’t know what you have there, boy. You won’t live long enough to find out.”

He swung his scimitar.

I’d had no experience with swords, unless you count watching The Princess Bride twenty-six times as a kid. Surt would’ve cut me in half—but my weapon had other ideas.

Ever held a spinning top on the tip of your finger? You can feel it moving under its own power, tilting in all directions. The sword was like that. It swung itself, blocking Surt’s fiery blade. Then it spun in an arc, dragging my arm along with it, and hacked into Surt’s right leg.

The Black One screamed. The wound in his thigh smoldered, setting his pants on fire. His blood sizzled and glowed like the flow from a volcano. His fiery blade dissipated.

Before he could recover, my sword leaped upward and slashed his face. With a howl, Surt stumbled back, cupping his hands over his nose.

To my left, someone screamed—the mother with the two kids.

Hearth was trying to help her extract her toddlers from the stroller, which was now smoking and about to combust.

“Hearth!” I yelled, before remembering that was no good.

With Surt still distracted, I limped over to Hearth and pointed down the bridge. “Go! Get the kids out of here!”

He could read lips just fine, but he didn’t like my message. He shook his head adamantly, hoisting one of the toddlers into his arms.

The mom was cradling the other kid.

“Leave now,” I told her. “My friend will help you.”

The mom didn’t hesitate. Hearth gave me one last look: This is not a good idea. Then he followed her, the little kid bouncing up and down in his arms crying, “Ah! Ah! Ah!”

Other innocent people were still stuck on the bridge: drivers trapped in their cars, pedestrians wandering around in a daze, their clothes steaming and their skin lobster red. Emergency sirens were closer now, but I didn’t see how the police or paramedics could help if Surt was still storming around being all fiery and stuff.

“Boy!” The Black One sounded like he was gargling with syrup.

He took his hands from his face, and I saw why. My self-guided sword had taken off his nose. Molten blood streamed down his cheeks, splattering on the pavement in sizzling droplets. His pants had burned off, leaving him in a pair of flame-patterned red boxers. Between that and the newly sawed-off snout, he looked like a diabolical version of Porky Pig.

“I have tolerated you long enough,” he gargled.

“I was just thinking the same thing about you.” I raised the sword. “You want this? Come and get it.”

In retrospect, that was a pretty stupid thing to say.

Above me, I caught a glimpse of the weird gray apparition—a girl on a horse, circling like a vulture, watching.

Instead of charging, Surt bent down and scooped asphalt from the road with his bare hands. He molded it into a red-hot sphere of steaming gunk and pitched it toward me like a fastball.

Another game I’m not good at: baseball. I swung the sword, hoping to knock away the projectile. I missed. The asphalt cannonball plowed into my gut and embedded itself—burning, searing, destroying.

I couldn’t breathe. The pain was so intense I felt every cell in my body explode in a chain reaction.

Despite that, a strange sort of calm fell over me: I was dying. I wasn’t coming back from this. Part of me thought, All right. Make it count.

My vision dimmed. The sword hummed and tugged at my hand, but I could barely feel my arms.

Surt studied me, a smile on his ruined face.

He wants the sword, I told myself. He can’t have it. If I’m going out, he’s going with me.

Weakly, I raised my free hand. I flipped him a gesture that he wouldn’t need to know sign language to understand.

He roared and charged.

Just as he reached me, my sword leaped up and ran him through. I used the last of my strength to grapple him as his momentum carried us both over the railing.

“No!” He fought to free himself, bursting into flames, kicking and gouging, but I held on as we plummeted toward the Charles River, my sword still embedded in his stomach, my own organs burning away from the molten tar in my gut. The sky flashed in and out of view. I caught a glimpse of the smoky apparition—the girl on the horse diving toward me at a full gallop, her hand outstretched.

FLOOM! I hit the water.

Then I died. The end.