The Sword of Summer: Chapters 41–53

“I’ll stand, compliments of my walker, Granny Shuffler, famous among geriatric products, made by Nurse Bambi, my private assistant.”

I doubted that laughing would be good diplomacy.

“Your father was my nemesis! You besmirched my reputation. And you want my help. You’ve got iron guts, Blitzen, I’ll give you that.”

“You must not have a lot of competitions,” I said, “if the loser always gets decapitated.”
“That’s the traditional wager,” Blitz said.

He seemed suddenly calmer about his impending doom, which I found unsettling.

“Well”—he shrugged listlessly—“now you know. Junior is still holding a grudge. My dad’s death wasn’t enough. He wants to shame and kill me, too.”

His hair floated with static, like plant tendrils searching for sunlight.

Each had a forge with bellows to stoke the fire, an assortment of anvils, a few sturdy tables, and racks of tools that looked like torture equipment.

As we approached the court, the crowd gave Blitzen a smattering of applause.

His two bodyguards stood behind him, dressed like their boss in overalls and leather gauntlets.

“Kid, this is a forge, not a haberdashery. Besides, fashion is not a recognized craft.”

I considered how the sword either hummed or stayed silent, either guided my hand or lay heavy and inert.

He folded and crimped the chain mail into its final shape, then soldered the seam.

I could almost discern its voice now: Yeah, okay. Mmm-hmm. I suppose.

“Not only is this accessory fashionable, but it will stop anything up to a 30-06 round. It can also be worn as a cravat.”

“This is unfair! I have never lost a contest. All of you know my skills. This meddler, this poseur Blitzen has somehow managed to ruin my—”

You impugn my father’s reputation!

The old dwarf’s facial muscles convulsed, but he managed to get out the words.

“He means things that aren’t supposed to exist. Paradox ingredients are very difficult to craft with, very dangerous. Gleipnir contained the footfall of a cat, the spittle of a bird, the breath of a fish, the beard of a woman.”

“The point is, this rope is even better! I call it Andskoti, the Adversary. It is woven with the most powerful paradoxes in the Nine Worlds—Wi-Fi with no lag, a politician’s sincerity, a printer that prints, healthy deep-fried food, and an interesting grammar lecture!”

The sword’s voice was definitely male. It emanated from the runes along the blade, which vibrated and glowed with every word like the lights on a stereo equalizer.

A few blocks away, an iron-plated vehicle with caterpillar treads and a mounted turret was turning slowly onto our street. “That’s a tank,” I said.

A hundred feet down, braided iron cables moored the ship to a dock.

His eyes were like Sam’s—bright and intense, the color of burning—but there was something harder and more calculating about Loki’s gaze—something that didn’t jibe with his friendly smile.

“The gods were not content to punish me with eternal torture. They took out their wrath upon my two favorite sons—Vali and Narvi. They turned Vali into a wolf and watched with amusement while he disemboweled his brother Narvi. Then they shot and gutted the wolf. The gods took my innocent sons’ own entrails..." Loki’s voice cracked with grief. “Well, Magnus Chase, let’s just say I was not bound with ropes.”

“Odin pierced his side with his own spear and hung there in pain, without food or water, until the runes revealed themselves. The pain made him hollow...a receptacle for magic.”

From this distance, through the spray of water and mist, I couldn’t see much of the god himself: shoulder-length red hair, a curly red beard, and bodybuilder arms protruding from a sleeveless leather jerkin.

Jack hummed indignantly. “You want me to kill a two-thousand-foot-tall giantess?”

Hearthstone sat at the fire, nibbling on a piece of Marvin haunch.

Everything the thunder god did, he did with gusto. He loved cooking his goats. He loved eating and drinking mead. He loved telling stories.

Thor regaled me with his theories about a hypothetical death match between Daryl from The Walking Dead and Mike from Breaking Bad.

These deployments were starting to get to him. I had to grant him a furlough.

You have four people to storm the giant’s citadel!

Since the god had crashed outside, Hearthstone commandeered the two-man tent.

I wondered if maybe, just maybe, I was growing more resilient as I became bonded to the sword.

We got hitched (so to speak) and followed our intrepid rock-shaping, fashion-conscious guide up the side of Mount You-Gotta-Be-Kidding-Me.

In the other direction, Jotunheim spread out like an electron microscope landscape—impossibly jagged peaks, crystalline cliffs, ravines filled with ovoid clouds like floating bacteria.

The drop on the other side was just as precipitous as the one we’d climbed.

Sam shook herself out of her reverie.

“Hey, señor, guest rights and host rights are important magic protocols. They keep situations from escalating.”