Hammered [3] (34 page)

I was a bloody mess inside, and it was only going to get worse. The tip of the arrow hadn’t gone all the way through, and it would have to before I could snap it off and remove the shaft. Perun, looking around for another foe, spotted me floundering in the snow and I waved him over weakly. He had three arrows in him, all on his limbs on the left side. The two I had spotted earlier were still in his arm, and a third was lodged in his thigh, causing him to half-limp, half-hop to me. The five surviving frost giants were huddling together to admire the frozen Freyja, still clutched triumphantly in Suttung’s hand.

Two vicious battles continued as Perun made his way to my side. Týr was discovering that he had no way to anticipate the drunken boxing moves of Zhang Guo Lao. His thrusts whiffed through the air or caught nothing but the voluminous material of the immortal’s robes, and it was all he could do to keep his shield in front of Zhang’s attacks.

Farther away, almost all the way back to the wall of ice the Jötnar had erected upon our arrival, Leif’s duel with Thor raged on. Considering Leif’s speed and skill with swordplay, I would have thought he’d have finished it one way or another. But Thor was lightning fast himself—go figure. And that new shield of his was holding up very well compared to the first one; there was probably an enchantment of some kind on it.

Perun ducked under my right side and draped my arm
around his hairy shoulders. Together we limped back toward the root of Yggdrasil.

“Is Odin killed?” he asked.

“I don’t think so. I got one of his ravens, so he’s currently functioning without thought—or maybe it’s memory.” The remaining raven was circling over the spot where Odin fell. Vidar was bent over him, trying to get him to respond. “Plus whatever it feels like to have Hrym tee off on you with an ice club.”

The Russian thunder god laughed. “Is good enough for me, then. For wise one to be crippled in mind is fate worse than death.”

“We have to get out of here,” I said. “If the Einherjar or more of the Æsir arrive, we won’t make it.” Two of us and fifteen of the frost giants were dead. We could have left with only two frost giants dead, with Väinämöinen and Gunnar still alive; the thought made me want to weep.

“
Da
. Is truth. But Thor still lives and fights.”

“Leif could probably use our help.”

Perun chuckled wryly. “I do not think we help much at this point.”

Leif was now trying to get past the shield by circling around the thunder god. All he needed was one good strike against Thor for Moralltach to do its work. Unlike Fragarach, Moralltach couldn’t cut through shields or armor, but its power was to kill with one blow. Lopping off a pinky, a flesh wound to the calf, a pound of flesh from the forearm, it didn’t matter: All were fatal wounds when Moralltach delivered them. At least, that was how it was supposed to work. I’d never seen it work like that, because when I decapitated the Norns with Moralltach, its magic was redundant. But Thor was pivoting easily to meet Leif’s blows. Occasionally he lashed out with his hammer, but Leif was never there.

That told me my friend was a fraction faster than the
thunder god. Leif hadn’t figured out how to get around that shield, though. He needed to try something new. Even as I thought this, his blurred circle around Thor came to a halt and he squared off perhaps ten yards away from the thunder god’s shield. A human’s chest would be heaving for breath at this point, but Leif was perfectly still, a statue of a pale blond ninja in a field of white. His booted left leg was bent in front of his right; his right arm was cocked to the side, with the hilt of Moralltach held at ear height, its blade a cold blue gash in the dark above Leif’s head.

A silence fell on the plain. Zhang Guo Lao flipped backward three times to put some distance between himself and Týr, holding up his hands in a clear signal to hold. The warrior god held. The frost giants tore their gazes from Freyja and stopped grunting long enough to listen.

“Do you know who we are, thunder god?” Leif said into the silence. I translated the Old Norse for Perun’s benefit.

“I care not!” Thor sneered.

“That is precisely why we are here. You are a careless, thoughtless god wrapped in protective myths of goodness. You are a slayer of innocents. You killed my family a thousand years ago and dared me to become a vampire. You probably do not even remember, do you?”

The thunder god’s voice rang with icy scorn. “No. Why should I remember a moment’s amusement from a thousand years ago?”

“Amusement? My family’s death was amusing to you? It is as I thought. Come on, Thor,” Leif said, beckoning to him with his left hand. “Your destiny awaits.”

He wanted Thor to charge, thinking he would gain some advantage by it, but I could not see any. Thor bellowed and rushed him, shield and hammer held high. Leif remained immobile, and as I watched the headlong progress of Thor, Leif’s plan became clear to me.

“No, Leif,” I breathed.

In order for Thor to follow through on his hammer blow, he’d have to lower his shield and rotate it to his left side. For the space of a split second, his left shoulder would be unguarded, and Leif wanted to take advantage of it. But, in so doing, Leif could not avoid the hammer.

Their collision was a blurred, dull explosion of crunching bones. Thor’s hammer burst Leif’s skull apart like a watermelon, and he collapsed to the plain without a head. Thor remained standing.

“Ha!” he shouted. “Who has met his destiny? Not I!” But then his shield dropped and he turned to face the spectators. Moralltach was lodged in the muscle above his collarbone, between his neck and left shoulder. It had missed the brigandine and successfully parted the mail; Thor had worn no gorget. It was bleeding well but not gushing by any means. Thor dropped his hammer and wrenched the sword loose with his right hand, tossing it away from him.

“Ha!” he said again, and bent to pick up Mjöllnir. But his face, flushed with victory, darkened to a frown. The skin around the wound began to blacken, and then it spread quickly to his neck and down his arm like an oil spill.

“Eh? What sorcery is this?” the thunder god growled. Those were his last words. The malignant rot reached his heart and perhaps his spinal cord as well, withering them and snuffing out his life. He fell face forward, already dead, the putrefaction continuing to turn him black and greasy.

It was Fae sorcery, of course. A moment of stunned silence settled across the snow as the onlookers absorbed what had happened.

“No!” Týr shouted, breaking into a run toward Thor, his unfinished duel with Zhang Guo Lao forgotten. “He cannot die! He was supposed to slay the world serpent!”

Týr had just made himself vulnerable by giving in to his emotions—the same way I had a few moments ago. The emotions were still there and they wanted all my attention—grief for Gunnar and for Leif and for my inability to stop any of this from happening—but I firmly held them in check and concentrated on damage control. “Hey, Perun, we have to do something about Týr. See if your lightning works again. Thor’s dead, so perhaps his protection is gone. But don’t kill him.”

“Is good idea,” he said, nodding. “I give him baby bolt.” Týr howled as a lightning strike shot through his body, scorching his skin and sending him into an epic flop-and-twitch.

“Excellent. Now can you get a wind to fly us over there?”

“I think yes,” he replied, and I stifled a grunt of pain as the sudden lift tugged at the arrow in my side and we awkwardly flew to the gory aftermath of the duel. The frost Jötnar were walking over to confirm Thor’s demise, and Zhang Guo Lao was casually paralyzing the helpless Týr with his pressure-point technique so the Æsir could bother us no more. Once past them, I had eyes only for Leif—my magical ones.

The mess of his head was splattered across the snow, not a single bone of it left intact. Thor’s hammer had pulverized it down to the neck. But the red ember of vampirism still glowed faintly within his chest. If he didn’t drain out completely, there was still a chance he could recover.

My bear charm was nearly out of juice thanks to multiple shifts and the strain of keeping myself from lapsing into shock and worse. I’d need to touch the earth if I wanted to do much more than keep from passing out. I nearly did when Perun set us down next to Leif’s body; it might have been a swoon.

“Hrym, could you clear some snow away right here
so I can touch the ground?” I asked as the giant approached.

“Graah,” he affirmed. He pointed his ice club at the spot I’d indicated and the snow lifted away, piling up at Leif’s feet.

I stepped onto the frozen ground and felt the energy waiting for me there. “Thank you,” I said. Magic flowed up through my tattoos, enough so that I could dull the pain, stabilize the trauma, and keep functioning. Dealing with it properly would take time I didn’t have right now. “I’m sorry for the people you lost today,” I added.

Incredibly, the frost Jötunn responded with an indifferent shrug. “We lost some but won much today. Thor is dead. Ullr and Heimdall, Freyr and the Valkyries too. Odin is an empty shell. And we finally have Freyja. Usually we win nothing.”

“Oh,” I said, unsure of how else to answer. Hrym’s tally of the dead brought home to me how much trouble I was in—and I meant beyond the arrow lodged in my guts. Once news of this battle spread throughout the world, a whole lot of supernatural folk besides the surviving Norse would be looking for me.

“You were true to your word, tiny Atticus man,” Hrym said. “I will tell my people this. We go now.”

“Right, yes, don’t let me keep you,” I said. The frost Jötnar dropped their clubs and shape-shifted into giant eagles. Suttung, bringing up the rear, gripped the frozen Freyja in his talons as they lifted off and flew toward Ratatosk’s hole in the root of Yggdrasil. I felt sorry for her as I watched them go. I knew I’d promised her to them to secure their help, but I never thought they’d actually take her alive and return to Jötunheim safely. I didn’t like to think what a tribe of horny giants would do to her once she thawed out.

I wasn’t the only one who felt this way. A streak of gray flashed in front of my eyes, a feline yowl split the
night air, then Suttung screeched as said streak slammed into his underside. He dropped Freyja and began to circle around, as did the other eagles, to see what had attacked him. It was Freyja’s flying cats, still harnessed to her chariot, one of the craziest conveyances in all mythology. They had the same agility and speed in the air that normal cats have on the ground, and they swooped underneath Freyja and caught her in her chariot as she fell. Some of the ice shattered on impact, and the goddess broke through the rest on her own, urging her cats to flee.

Those were some pretty smart kittehs. They wouldn’t have stood a chance against the frost Jötnar in bipedal form, but the giants couldn’t bash them with ice clubs as eagles or whip around any elemental magic. All the cats had to do now was outrun the eagles in the air, and I thought their chances were pretty good. They flew southwest toward Freyja’s hall, Fólkvangr, with the eagles screaming after them.

I shook my head to clear it and turned my attention to Leif. Part of me thought it might be best to leave him here. The Norse might be comforted knowing that Thor’s killer was also dead. But I doubted it.

On the other hand, there was no doubt that I had put Hal in a terrible position. The one thing he’d asked me to do—bring them both back alive—I couldn’t deliver. He’d feel betrayed, no doubt, and I already felt guilty beyond words and terrified of facing him. But perhaps, if I got extremely lucky, I could do something to save Leif. Sort of.

Peering through my faerie specs, I sealed up all the leaking vessels in his neck with a binding so that he’d lose no more blood. Whatever that red glow in his chest was, it needed blood to survive. That was the easy part. The hard part would be figuring out how to bring in new blood, new energy, without any fangs or a head to
keep them in. If left alone, the vampire would eventually grow a new head, but would it still be Leif, or would it simply be an unthinking, bloodsucking monster? Vampires of that sort tended not to last long. They killed too many humans, and other vampires destroyed them to keep their existence a secret.

There was no charm I could use for what I wished to do. I had to laboriously speak the bindings from scratch and improvise much of it, because I’d never tried anything like it before. Slowly, as Perun and Zhang Guo Lao stood sentinel nearby, listening to Týr curse impotently at us in the snow, I bound as much solid matter as I could back together. There were some chunks of brain here and there, carbon and calcium fragments that used to be his skull, and strands of hair as well. All of these I bound together in something resembling a head shape, a sort of grotesque mockery of Leif that looked like the head of a primitive voodoo doll. There was no question of me sculpting it back to any semblance of Leif’s actual features or re-creating the complexity of bone and tissues he needed. I was simply trying to give the resurrection engine in his chest as much material to work with as possible, so that Leif would have a fighting chance to come back as some shadow of his former self. Once the head and a rudimentary neck were assembled, I attached them to the stump atop his shoulders, sealed it all around, and then reopened the vessels inside so that the blood could flow into the head and the vampire could begin the work of rebuilding itself.

“That’s all I can do,” I said, sighing. The lump of matter that used to be Leif’s head looked ridiculous on top of a black leather jacket, and smaller without all the fluid, but it was the limit of my capabilities. My old archdruid had taught me only the theory of unbinding a vampire’s component parts, and I hadn’t actually had to do it until centuries later. No one had ever taught me
how to put a vampire back together again or even discussed it as a hypothetical necessity. I don’t think anyone else would have considered it a good idea. I wasn’t sure it was a good idea either; it was more of a desperate attempt to salvage something positive out of this bloodbath. If Leif could come back from this and prevent a vampire war in Arizona, that had to be good.