Thor's Serpents (23 page)

“Four down!” Matt shouted. “Do you want to talk, Glaemir? Or let me keep warming up?”

The draugr king didn’t answer, but Matt swore he heard the gnashing of teeth. Another draugr appeared, this one on the rocks over Matt’s head, and he hurled Mjölnir with a little too much confidence—and at the entirely wrong angle. The hammer sailed over the draugr’s head and kept going.

Matt launched his amulet power, but the Mjölnir mistake distracted him and the Hammer fizzled. The draugr leaped in front of him and raised its sword, chuckling a horrible wheezing chuckle. It peered at Matt with one good eye, the other a dried blob hanging on its cheek. Then it charged. Matt dove. He hit the draugr in the legs and knocked it back. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the sword swing down and he slammed its arm with a blow hard enough to knock the bone from its socket. The draugr snarled… and switched the sword to its left hand.

Matt jumped to his feet and backpedaled just in time to avoid the draugr’s swing. He was dodging the next when Mjölnir slapped back into his hand, which would have been awesome, if he’d seen it coming. As it was, it knocked him off balance, his hand barely closing in time. He started to
swing the hammer, when two more draugr appeared. Matt slammed Mjölnir into the first and ducked the sword of the second and—

A shadow passed overhead. A fourth draugr? He couldn’t take on four. He danced backward, considering his options, when a leaping figure hit the one-eyed draugr with an angry bleat. It was Tanngnjóstr.

Matt’s sigh of relief was cut short as
he
was nearly cut by a sword aimed at his midriff. He spun out of the way just in time.

One whack of Mjölnir knocked the sword out of the draugr’s hand. A second blow caught it in the side with a horrible crunch. A third broke its femur, and it went down. Matt pulled the hammer back to aim at the fourth draugr, but Tanngrisnir leaped from the rocks and toppled it. A wild stamp of hooves made sure the draugr stayed down, groaning and alive, but making no move to rise.

“Two left,” Matt said to the goats as they surveyed the zombified bits littering the ground. “If you guys can focus on the last two regulars, I’ll take Glaemir.”

The goats bleated. This time, Matt knew exactly what was out there—namely the draugr with the bow and arrows. He warned the goats, and they dodged arrows as they galloped toward the distant draugr.

Matt surveyed the open ground. Glaemir stood to the
side, brandishing his sword. It looked more like a dagger, barely the length of Matt’s forearm… because Glaemir himself had grown to twice his already impressive size.

“No one left to hide behind,” Matt called. “If you want to run away, I’ll let you.”

Glaemir laughed. “You are indeed Thor’s champion, boy. As delusional a braggart as your ancestor.”

“It’s not delusional if it’s true. But I can see why you’d hide behind your warriors. I beat you once. Rather not face me again, I bet. Especially now that I have…” He hefted Mjölnir.

Glaemir charged. Matt walloped him in the knee, which was at the perfect height. Glaemir barely staggered before recovering and swinging his sword. The problem with being twice Matt’s size? Matt could easily strike his kneecap, but Glaemir had to bend to swing his now-undersized sword. It was an awkward move, handily avoided.

Matt slammed Mjölnir into Glaemir’s other kneecap. Now the draugr king stumbled. A third blow and he fell to his knees.

“The bigger they are…” Matt said, raising Mjölnir for a final blow, but as he swung, Glaemir suddenly shrank to his normal size and Matt flew off his feet from the force of his missed blow. The tip of Glaemir’s sword tore through his shirt. This time Matt met it with his shield. The clang was enough to set his arm quivering, but he managed to get to his feet and face off against the draugr king.

“You know what’s missing from this warm-up?” Matt said. “The warming part. I’d really like to at least break into a sweat before my real battle.”

Glaemir swung. Matt blocked.

“So if you could step it up—”

Another block.

“I’d really appreciate it, and I think the serpent would, too. Otherwise—”

Whoosh. Clang.

“—I think she’ll be disappointed. It
is
Ragnarök, after all.”

“Hey, Matt!” a voice yelled. “You talking or fighting?”

He caught a glimpse of Reyna, running through the dust with Ray at her heels.

“I can do both,” he called back.

“Yeah, well, maybe less of one and more of the other?” She pointed toward a mangled draugr crawling toward them.

“Right,” Matt said. “Okay, then. Gimme a real fight, Glaemir. Get my blood pumping and—”

Glaemir snarled and swung. The sword cut so close Matt felt the wind of it.

“Um, Matt?” Reyna said. “You want some help?”

“Nope. Unlike some people—some
undead
people—I fight my own battles. Thanks for the offer, though.”

“Anytime. But if you could hurry it up…”

Another swing. Another block. Matt heaved Mjölnir
back. Glaemir rushed him, grabbing a shield off a downed draugr. The zombie ducked Matt’s blow and when he spun off balance, it slammed him with the shield. Matt went down, flat on his back.

“Matt!” Reyna rushed forward.

“Got it,” Matt said… as Glaemir put his sword to Matt’s throat.

The twins and the goats lunged toward the fighters. Matt raised his shield hand.

“Really, I’ve got it,” he said. “I think Glaemir and I can discuss this reasonably. I’m willing to accept his surrender with no hard feelings.”

Glaemir laughed. “You truly are Thor’s child. Arrogant to the core. I have you pinned, boy. One thrust of my sword—”

“A truce, then?”

“You are amusing. Perhaps even brave. But it is time to admit defeat, boy, and prepare to meet Hel on the other side, an ignoble fighter cut down by a true warrior—”

Matt smacked Glaemir’s sword away with his shield and leaped to his feet. “Can’t resist the urge to gloat, can you? Thanks, I was counting on that.” As he spoke, he swung Mjölnir. It caught Glaemir in the side of the head—and both kept going, hammer and skull, knocked clean off Glaemir’s neck. The draugr’s head shot across the plain, disappearing into the dust.

“Hey, hear that?” Matt said. “The sound of silence. Finally.”

He hefted the shield over his shoulder as the twins stared at him. “Oh, don’t worry. He can put it back on.” Matt waved at the draugr’s body, crawling pathetically in the wrong direction. “As soon as he finds it. By then? We’ll be—”

The thunder of hooves cut him short. Hildar rode up, her normally impassive face drawn with worry. Then she saw Matt and reined to a stop.

“Son of Thor.” She exhaled. “Finally.”

“Sorry,” he said. “Old business to attend to. But I got my warm-up.”

He motioned to the disabled draugr king crawling their way.

Hildar sniffed. “I knew they were not to be trusted.”

“No, you just don’t like them. But with these few, you had good reason. Now, I think I have a real battle to get to.”

“You do,” Hildar said, and reached down to swing him onto her horse.

“So this is the spot?” Matt said, peering around in the near dark. It looked a lot like the place where he’d found the draugrs, with both open land and rocks for cover.

“We were granted the right of choice in this as well,” Hildar said. “You approve?”

Matt slid off the horse. The others were gone. Even his goats weren’t permitted to join him here. Just Hildar, and only for transportation services. Matt climbed to the top of a rock and looked out.

“Seems good. Is there a foul line?”

“When the serpent arrives, your battle-ring will become warded.”

Matt looked at the expanse of open earth to his left. “Is there a depth barrier, too? I mean, I’m hoping the serpent can’t just burrow in the ground if I injure it.”

“It cannot. The boundary applies to the ground and to the air.”

He squinted up. “Um, okay. That’s not going to block my powers, is it? Sure, I can’t fly like the comic book Thor, but if there’s an upper barrier, can I still invoke weather?”

“You can.”

“Let me rephrase that. Will that weather still reach the battlefield?”

“It will.”

“Good. So the sky barrier…? Why…?” He trailed off as he saw the giant bird, high in the night sky. “Is that so
it
can’t attack? Whatever it is?”

Hildar did not reply. When Matt looked at her, she tugged a strand of hair anxiously. Then she caught him looking and tossed the strand back, her chin lifting. Yet she said nothing.

“Hildar… this is a one-on-one battle isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

A distant crack, like thunder. The bird was descending. No, not a bird, he realized. It was an odd shape, almost like an airplane, long and thin with wings. He blinked hard, trying to focus, but the night was too dark and the creature too high.

“I don’t have to fight that thing, right?” he said.

Silence.

“Hildar?”

“Yes.” A pause. “Yes, son of Thor. You must fight it.”

“But…?” The creature dropped lower and let out a horrible cry, one that nearly knocked Matt off his feet. When he recovered, it had swooped down, and he could see it clearly.

It was a dragon. A huge, serpentine dragon with bat-like wings and a massive head. Matt stared up at it.

“That… That…” He swallowed. “That’s the Midgard Serpent?”

Hildar didn’t answer. He looked over to see her staring as the creature swooped again, its shape blocking every star above.

“No,” she whispered.

“That’s not the serpent?” he said. “Thank the gods, because—”

“No!” she shouted, punching the air with her shield. She swung and yelled into the open expanse around them. “It is to be the
champion
. The chosen champion.”

A voice answered, slithering from all around them, an unearthly voice that didn’t come from the dragon, but from the earth itself. “You stole our champion.”

“No, Astrid betrayed you. Not us. Your side must choose a new champion.”

“We have.”

“That is not—” She wheeled, roaring now into the emptiness. “That is not a champion. It is the
serpent
. The true Midgard Serpent.”

Laughter floated all around them. “So it is. So it is.” And, in a blink, Hildar and her horse vanished, and Matt was left alone, staring up at the creature above.

Not Astrid in dragon form. Not her cousin or her mother or an aunt. Her grandmother.

No, not even her grandmother. The thing that had consumed her grandmother, that her grandmother had died to become.

The real Midgard Serpent.

That’s what he had to fight.

W
hen Helen had arrived, Laurie hadn’t known whether to cheer or weep. The myths told that Helen worked with the monsters to bring about the end of the world, but she’d seemed to favor Laurie over Fen. She’d gifted her with the incredible bone bow and ghost arrows, and she’d given her the map to exit Hel. Still, one could never be completely sure about any of the children of Loki, and Helen was his actual daughter.

But she’d opened the earth and brought forth her monsters, not to fight
for
the end of the world, but to stop the world from ending.