Thor's Serpents (20 page)

“Why can’t we just get modern weapons from the bags?” Owen asked.

Baldwin paused and shot a disbelieving look at him. “Because Helen didn’t provide them when I opened the bag. Maybe she wants the monsters to have a sporting chance? Maybe she wants us to prove ourselves? Or maybe whatever magic the bags have doesn’t work with grenade launchers”—he glanced into his bag hopefully and then sighed—“even though it would be kind of neat.”

“Neat?” Owen echoed weakly.

“Do you have a better plan?” Laurie gave him a look that made her feel like she was turning into Fen. She’d only used that I-dare-you stare a few times in her life, but it always made people back down. Today was no different.

“No.”

“Look in my bag for rust.” She tossed it to him. “I need to crack these open.” She started grabbing the Etch A Sketches and sparklers that Baldwin was tossing out of his bag like it was an endless vending machine.

Baldwin paused, glanced at Owen, and asked, “Do you think we can light the thermite and then send it toward the frost giant with your ravens?”

“No.”

“Clay pots,” Baldwin yelled.

Laurie noticed Owen raise both brows, but he didn’t ask, and Baldwin didn’t answer. After a few more minutes, Baldwin was giving them instructions to assemble what he was calling “modified thermite bombs meets Greek fire.”

“Greek fire?”

“Early warfare tactic,” Baldwin said, digging through his bag. “Byzantine War maybe?” He shrugged. “A lot of theories about it: generally delivered via earthen pots or siphons, possibly ignited
by
water, but mostly thought to burn on water. Aha!” Baldwin pulled a small vat of some sort of old-fashioned jar from his bag and exclaimed, “Thanks, Helen.”

“How do you know all this?” Owen asked.

“We might have about six minutes before it sees us,” Laurie reminded them. “Less history. More explosives.”

“
MythBusters
, the History Channel, and chatting with Helen when I was dead,” Baldwin answered as he opened the jar, grinned, and pointed at it. “You need to dip your arrows into this and—”

“They’re ghost arrows,” she interrupted. “I don’t ever
see
them until they hit a target.”

“Hmm.” He sat back from his makeshift science lab. “That’s a problem.”

They stood staring at the miscellaneous pots, jars, broken toys, and sparkler boxes. The giant was getting closer by the moment.

“Four minutes,” she reminded them.

“Try,” Owen murmured. “There’s no other plan. Better to try than not. According to the myth, I’m going to be swallowed by your cousin… and you will die fighting. Baldwin is already meant to be dead. I know you would rather Fenrir be at your side, but we’re here. We believe in you as much as he does.”

Baldwin nodded, and then crouched down to open another jar and waited.

“You can do this,” Owen added.

In that moment, all of her irritation at him seemed to vanish.

She didn’t know if she could, but the arrows flew true, and the best weapon against a creature of frost was an incendiary one. Laurie lifted her bow, pulled back the string, and whispered, “To light the arrow, I need to see it.” She wasn’t sure
why
she thought to say it, but as soon as she spoke the words, an arrow appeared.

“Yes!” Baldwin punched his fist into the air. “Test one, we’ll use the Greek fire. The precise ingredients are unclear, but I
know
that’s what it is. Helen is helping us.”

It wasn’t the sort of help Laurie had hoped for, but it was the only way they were even getting a chance to defeat the
hrímthursar
, so it was enough.

She dipped the arrow into the jar. “Three minutes, guys. This
needs
to work.”

“It will!” Baldwin flicked a lighter and set the tip of the arrow on fire. “Fire in one… two… three.”

When he said “three,” she let loose, and the flaming arrow went sailing through the sky. She saw a flash of light when it hit the
hrímthursar.
She wasn’t sure where or if it even mattered enough to notice. Maybe a small flaming arrow was like a gnat to such a creature. She didn’t know. All she did know was that she had no other plans.

“I need arrows,” she said, and flipped the top of her bag open with her foot. Arrows spilled out of it, and soon the three of them had an assembly line. Owen dunked the arrows into the Greek fire or thermite, and Baldwin lit them for Laurie.

After being hit by the twelfth arrow, the frost giant roared and started to run toward them.

“Now,” she whispered, and began firing as fast as she could. “It sees us
now
.”

“Hurry!” Owen urged.

The
hrímthursar
ran faster and faster, ice spreading from the ground where its feet touched, extending out like frozen lakes that seemed to stretch closer and closer.

Laurie sent a volley of arrows, shooting two or three at once without even realizing that the boys had given her several in each turn.

As the
hrímthursar
got closer, Laurie could feel the cold start to hit them in arctic waves. Her hands were shaking, and her teeth were chattering. Every bit of exposed skin started to burn with the cold. Still she fired.

“It’s working,” Owen told her. “Just keep going.
Please
.” His words were wavering as he forced them through lips that had to be as cold as hers now were. “Again.”

Baldwin’s fingers were slipping off the button as he tried to hold and squeeze the lighter with shaking hands.

It
was
working, though. Sections of the frost giant were blackened from fire, and some fires were still burning. When the flames went out, the exposed parts of the
hrímthursar
were turned to stone.

She targeted the feet and ankles. If it couldn’t walk, it couldn’t run.

Then she targeted the
hrímthursar
’s mouth, eyes, and hands. Little by little, parts of the frost giant turned to stone as the thermite-Greek fire solidified the frost. As the frost warmed, they could see the creature under the ice, as if the ice thawing revealed an entirely new shape.

Fiery arrow after fiery arrow turned the frost giant to stone—first in patches, and then an eye, a finger, an ankle—until it was completely solidified. There, in the Badlands of South Dakota, a new rock formation was made, this one as a result of the descendants of the North trying to stop the world from ending. She wasn’t sure if it would freeze again and go back to its home, but right now, she’d stopped it.

She shivered all over, and for a brief moment, they stood staring at it—but that was all the time they had. The rest of the monsters were still coming, and what they lacked in size, they made up for in sheer number. At the back of the horde, a second
hrímthursar
walked. The moment of victory that she’d felt vanished as she looked at the monsters still approaching.

“One down… way too many left to go.”

T
hey’d lost Astrid. Lost their best chance at an easy win.

Did you really think it would be easy, Matt? After all this?

No, not easy, but perhaps easier. Was that too much to hope for?

He looked out at the Badlands, the dust so thick he could barely see what they were about to face. Barely dared consider what they were about to face.

Nope, easier was definitely too much to hope for.

“So, without Astrid…” he called to Hildar. He rode
behind her as her steed raced across the field. “Now that she’s gone, what happens?”

“Her family will appoint another to take her place.”

“Another kid?”

“No.”

He exhaled. “Good.”

“They will send an adult. One better trained in the art of war.”

“W-what? But… but the battle… it’s supposed to be fair. That’s why Astrid’s fourteen and—”

“And you turned her against them.”

“I—”

“While I understand it was her idea, the fact remains that she joined the opposing side, and one can argue she was influenced by that side.”

“Could you have warned me about that?” Matt glowered at Hildar’s back. “In advance?”

Hildar glanced over her shoulder. “Would it have made a difference? Would you have fought and killed her?”

He didn’t reply.

“I thought not.”

They continued on. After a moment, Hildar looked at him again. “I will be honest, son of Thor. I thought your ploy might work. I would have warned you otherwise. But I believed it was…”

“Worth a shot?”

The faintest tweak of her lips, something that might even be called a smile. “Yes, I thought it was worth a shot. It was a worthy strategy. I am proud. Of you and of Astrid.”

“Will she… She’ll be punished, won’t she? When she goes home?”

“We will ensure she is not, son of Thor. Provided she still has a home to return to and you do not lose to your new opponent and see the world encased in ice.”

“Umm…”

“You would rather I did not mention that possibility?”

“Kind of.”

Another twitch of a smile. “I will not, then, because I am confident that your chances are very good. At least sixty percent.”

“Sixty?”

“At least. Perhaps even sixty-five.”

She offered a bigger smile now, as if she’d just paid him the highest and most reassuring compliment.

“Any last-minute advice on how to raise those odds and—”

The horse reared suddenly. Matt flew off its back. He dimly heard Hildar let out a cry and saw her grab for him, but it was too late. He hit the ground. A horse screamed. Another whinnied. A hoof skimmed Matt’s shoulder.

“Whoa!” Reyna shouted from behind her Valkyrie. “What the—?”

Trjegul yowled. Matt was pushing to his feet, but the thunder of hooves shook the ground so hard the vibrations knocked him down. He peered into the dust. Around him, he heard shouts of surprise and the whinny of frightened horses. He started rising again, but a horse leaped right over him and he barely ducked in time.

The horse came down in front of him… and kept going. Kept
dropping
. The Valkyrie on its back was holding tight, her eyes wide with horror as her steed plummeted into what looked like solid earth.

Matt managed to get onto his knees, scrambling toward the fallen horse, certain he’d see it lying on its side, hoping it hadn’t stumbled because of him.

His hands touched down on air. He jerked back. Then, blinking hard against the dust, he slowly reached forward again, his hand moving along the ground until it reached the edge.

The edge of the ground. Beyond that? Nothing.

He heard Reyna calling for her brother, who replied, and then they both yelled, “Matt!”

Something landed on Matt’s back. He raised Mjölnir just as Trjegul ran a sandpaper tongue over his cheek. The cat bounded off into the dust cloud. When Matt looked again, the dirt had settled enough for him to see he was lying on the edge of a chasm. Below, he caught a flash of the white horse and heard a shout and a whinny. The Valkyrie and her
mount had fallen into the fissure, and were standing on a ledge below.

The earth shook again. Yet it wasn’t the pounding of hooves. He could make out the dim figures of the horses all around him, some milling about in confusion, another fallen with a Valkyrie bent beside it. When the earth shook, the horses neighed and whinnied and stamped. And the earth was shaking because…

Something moved deep in the chasm. The horse below screamed, and its Valkyrie let out a bloodcurdling battle cry. Her sword flashed, but whatever moved below was too far down for her to reach.

Matt leaped into the chasm. As he hurtled down, the thought
What am I doing?
did pass through his mind, but it was too late to change course. He shot past the Valkyrie, who shouted something he didn’t hear. He landed on the thing whipping through the earth and the force of it knocked him off his feet onto his hands and knees. He looked down to see green scales under him. Emerald green.

Um, you’re on the serpent. The Midgard Serpent.

Which was a problem.

He crouched on the serpent as it tore through the earth into a hole too small for him to follow, leaving him stuck atop a conveyor belt moving sixty miles an hour, battering him against the walls of the chasm.

“Matt!” Reyna shouted down. “Get out of there!”

He looked up.
Way
up.

How
was
he going to get out?

A problem to be solved later. Right now, he had something else in mind.

He looked up at the Valkyrie and shouted, “Your sword?”

“My…?” she replied.

“Drop your sword. Quickly. Before the serpent—”

He didn’t need to finish. She let go of her sword. It embedded itself in the dirt wall just above his head. Matt positioned himself, then jumped, grabbed it, and dropped. The fact that he managed to do so without slicing himself in half proved some higher power was still on his side. When he landed, he had both feet dug into the sides of the chasm, with the serpent passing beneath.

He readied the sword, knowing his chance was escaping, fast.

With both hands wrapped around the hilt, he slammed the sword down.
Into
the serpent. A tremendous
boom
rent the earth, like a scream trapped below ground. The serpent writhed. The ground shook. Above him, horses whinnied in panic, and the Valkyries shouted to calm them.

Matt closed his eyes and shoved the sword into the beast, pushing it right up to the pommel. The serpent writhed and screamed and the ground quaked, but it couldn’t escape, nor could it back up and come after him.

Matt wrenched the sword out for another blow, but the
beast shot into the earth, Matt sailing backward, landing against the side, dirt flying up around him. Something landed behind him. He glanced back to see Hildar, with another Valkyrie dropping beside her. Both lifted their swords to plunge them into the serpent, and then—

And then there was no serpent. A flash of a tapered end, like a tail, and it was gone.

Matt struggled to his feet, the ground still trembling as the serpent slithered away. Panting, he pointed at Hildar’s sword.

“You aren’t supposed to do that,” he said between breaths. “It’s against the rules.”

Her chin shot up. “I am not permitted to aid you against the serpent on the battleground. This is
under
the battleground. A matter of interpretation, and I am very precise in my interpretations.” She returned her sword to its sheath. “It was a good idea, son of Thor. You have wounded it.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes, I am always serious.”

“No, I mean did I
seriously
wound it.”

She paused. “I do not know. You may have mostly angered it.”

“Great…”

“It was already going to be angry. But with anger comes rage, and with rage comes weakness. The best warrior is dedicated and passionate yet clearheaded. It is not about revenge or victory. It is about honor.”

“Uh, guys?” Reyna called down. “You still need to get out of there.”

“Yes, we do.” Hildar looked at Matt. “I trust you have a plan, son of Thor?”

“Um… sure. Just… give me a minute.”

Matt figured out a way up, with help from Ray and Reyna. Ray suggested “dirt climbing”—in the absence of rocks—with some kind of rope to help. Reyna used the horse’s reins. Which sounded obvious enough, except that the reins were made from threaded finger bones, which was kind of gross.

The Valkyrie who’d fallen in went first. Hildar had to order her to leave her horse behind. A Valkyrie never abandons her steed… unless there’s a battle brewing and her leader needs her and her horse is safe enough where it is and she can recover it later. While their horses could “fly” across the ground, it was a power of speed, not actual flight. So the horse stayed. The rider went. Matt followed.

He crested the top of the fissure to see a terrible sight through the clouds of dirt. An army of the dead marched toward them.

At least fifty warriors tramped across the earth, the entire ground shaking under their boots. Draugr warriors. Zombies, if you wanted to get pop culture about it, but
draugrs were ten times scarier than any Hollywood zombie because they retained the power of human thought—plus they could grow to double their size.

The draugrs wore the rotted remains of their armor. And the rotted remains of their bodies. Leathery strips of skin hung from their skeletal frames, nearly indistinguishable from the leathery strips of, well, leather. Some wore helmets on heads with matted hanks of hair. Some wore helmets on heads of skull. Missing limbs, missing eyes, missing jaws… none of those infirmities slowed them down. They marched in step, relentless and slow. A wall of death. Coming straight for them.

Matt scrambled up from the crevice. And the draugrs… He’d have said they stopped dead, but that might be disrespectful. They were, after all, great warriors who’d given their lives in Viking battles.

Now they stopped. Absolute silence fell across the plain. Even the dust settled, and Matt caught sight of a distant bird, too high for him to make out. A huge bird, it seemed, but maybe it was a trick of perception; and besides, he shouldn’t be gaping up with fifty undead warriors standing less than a hundred feet away.

The draugrs had gone completely still. Not so much as a shield or sword clanked.

Matt hefted Mjölnir. He didn’t wield it or swing it. Just raised it high.

“Vingthor!”

The cry went up from fifty throats. Or as many of the fifty still whole enough for their throats to form words. Then, as a single body, the draugrs dropped to one knee, the impact nearly knocking Matt off his feet again.

Matt looked out over fifty draugrs on bended knee, heads bent to him, and he didn’t see fifty rotting zombies—he saw fifty Viking warriors. Soldiers who’d died for their country. Who’d fought battles as big as the one he was about to face. True warriors.

That’s what I need to be. A true warrior. Willing to die for my people. As much as I’d really rather not.

As Matt walked toward the draugrs, one in the middle rose.

“
Vingthor
,” he said. “We have come to escort you to the battlefield.”

“Thank—” he began.

“That is our task,” Hildar said, walking forward, her chin up. “The Valkyries escort the son of Thor.”

The draugr lowered his gaze. “And we wish you no disrespect, queen of the shield-maidens. But the way to the field will not be clear. Already, they gather to stop you.”

He extended a bony hand. At first, Matt saw only clouds of dust. Then, above those clouds, the heads of trolls, an army of them, marching their way.

“Trolls, jötnar, mara, and more,” the draugr said. “They
are not permitted to fight alongside their champions, but until you are at the battle proper…”

“Yes, yes,” Hildar said with some impatience. “They may impede our progress. We expect that. We are prepared for it. I will dispatch my troops to deal with them, and
Vingthor
’s goats will assist.”

She waved, and as if from behind a curtain, a swarm of Valkyrie and battle-goats appeared, the ground thundering with hooves, the air ringing with bleats and whinnies and war cries. They bore down on the troll army, stopping it in its path as the shouts and grunts and clangs of conflict took over.