Odin's Ravens

by K. L. Armstrong

  “What is that smell?” Baldwin exclaimed, hands flying to cover his nose and mouth.

  “Dead people.”

  Baldwin looked a little green, and Matt wished he hadn’t said that quite so bluntly. Baldwin probably felt different about the dead after having spent some time among them, in the afterlife.

  “You can wait out here,” Matt said.

  “No, I’m good.”

  Matt pushed on the door. At first, it didn’t budge, but then he put his weight behind it, shoulder against it, and it groaned again and began to open with a grating noise that set his teeth on edge. It was hard work, and he stopped as soon as the opening was big enough to get through. It was also big enough to let out a whole lot more of that stink.

  “Um, maybe I could stand guard?” Baldwin said.

  “Good idea. I’ll be right back.”

  Matt turned sideways and eased through the opening. Inside, the mausoleum was pitch-black. His amulet still glowed, but it didn’t seem to give off any actual light, as if smothered by the darkness. Even the light from the open door didn’t penetrate more than a few inches inside. Matt peered through, and his heart beat faster at the thought of stepping in there.

  It’s only darkness. It can’t hurt me. Just take it slow. Let the amulet lead the way, like it did with the shield.

  He got through the doorway and took one step into the mausoleum. The amulet began heating up.

  If only it would glow a little brighter, that would be much more useful.

  Matt put one foot out, sweeping the way, then doing the same with his hand, checking for obstacles before he—

  A papery whisper sounded deep inside the mausoleum. Matt froze. It came again, like something moving over the stone.

  Rats. Or snakes, holed up for the winter. A brown snake or a bull snake. No problem.

  Matt chuckled to himself. A few weeks ago, the thought of a snake might have stopped him in his tracks, but compared to the Midgard Serpent, he wasn’t even sure a rattler would faze him.

  Matt took another step—

  The air whistled. He caught a faint blur of motion. Then something hit him in the jaw, right where Rusty had smacked him, and he slammed backward into the stone wall.

  SEVENTEEN

  OWEN

  “DEADLY WATER SPORTS”

  Owen worried the entire trip to Hot Springs. He worried about Laurie, Fen, Matt, and Baldwin. He worried that he had changed too much or not enough or that by inviting Fen’s anger, the wrong details of the future would alter. Whatever the consequences, he now had blank spots in his knowledge of the future. He was involved, and that changed how much he could see.

  Since he wasn’t yet involved in the fight at Hot Springs, he could see the twins. Right now, they wouldn’t survive the attack. This time, he knew what to do. He had to intervene, even though it would end his ability to see what happened next. When the others were in Hel, he’d watched. He’d sent the ravens. Every time they made a major choice, he’d been poised to intervene, but they hadn’t needed him, so he’d stayed away. The presence of his ravens wasn’t the same as his presence, so it didn’t count as involvement. It didn’t mean he’d stop being able to see their futures.

  He’d stayed back, watching through the ravens and looking at the possible futures for the descendants of the North. Right now, they wouldn’t all survive Ragnarök. He kept seeking that one choice that could change that outcome. So far, he’d had no luck, and now he was on the verge of being so involved that his vision would be limited. He hadn’t told them his reasons. He wasn’t ever sure how much was too much to reveal, and it wasn’t something he’d had much experience with. His family hadn’t liked trusting him alone around people after an incident with some lottery numbers when he was a kid. But, really, how was he to know it was a big secret what the winning numbers were going to be? She seemed like a nice woman, and she’d asked him what they were. It turned out she’d been joking, humoring a kid in line as far as she knew. Then she won, and on every interview, she talked about him: Some kid in line just told me what numbers to pick. Owen’s mother still brought that up when she lectured him.

  He hadn’t said much to Laurie and Fen about what they’d learn soon, but he’d had to say something, to offer a clue so she could try to prepare. If she lost Fen while they weren’t speaking to one another, it would hurt her too much. Owen wasn’t able to stay silent this time. He’d followed the rules his family had taught him even though it cost his eye. Sometimes, a person just had to break the rules—and he figured that if he pushed too far, the Norns or Valkyries or someone would show up and warn him.

  Owen hoped that the others would make the smart choices at Saint Agnes. The twins certainly hadn’t made the right choices, or he wouldn’t have ended up here today to rescue them and convince them to join the rest of the team. The reason Owen was gifted with being all-knowing—or in reality, mostly knowing—was so he could help keep things on the right track when possible. Today, that meant returning Ray and Reyna to the path they should’ve been on.

  One of the Berserkers, Vance, stepped in front of him. They had reached Evan’s Plunge. It was really just a swimming pool that used the natural mineral waters of Hot Springs, South Dakota, but since it was the oldest tourist attraction in the Black Hills, pretty much everyone in this part of the state had been there at least once. More impressively, since it had opened way back in the 1800s, their parents and grandparents had been there, too.

  Vance opened the door to the building, and they poured inside the lobby. Two of the Berserkers stepped forward to pay the admission fees.

  Owen didn’t have time for waiting in line, so he instructed Vance, “Give me a distraction. Follow soon.”

  At Vance’s signal, the Berserkers started doing flips and tumbles. Two ran at the wall and used it for leverage, half walking up it and flipping back. Their movements were often mistaken for parkour. It wasn’t truly PK, although it was a mix of the sport and several different martial arts. The Berserkers had used their unusual style for as long as Owen could remember, and he knew that generation after generation of athletic fighters trained and lived in preparation for the battle that this generation would soon fight.

  As the others created some harmless chaos, the young woman on duty looked away, and Owen darted past the counter.

  Once he reached the pool area, which looked a lot like most community pools but with slides and gymnastic rings, he slowed to a complete stop. He saw the missing descendants safe in the water. He wasn’t too late yet!

  The twins were fair-haired and pale, pretty in a way that probably caused them more attention than they liked. They were clearly trying to look scary. They had multiple piercings and black fingernail polish. Reyna wore a one-piece skull-covered swimsuit; her brother had a pair of black trunks. Most important, they were both still alive.

  If this had been a regular water park, they’d have been safer, but the water here was from a natural hot spring. In the past, it had been claimed by at least two different Native American tribes, the Cheyenne and the Sioux. Back then, in the late 1800s, the water had been thought a cure for a variety of ailments. Now it was harnessed and used for recreation. The one unchanging fact, however, was that the water was natural. It flowed from the earth as springs did all over the world, and in such rivers, deadly creatures like nykurs could thrive.

  Even as he thought about the threat, one of the nykurs lifted its massive gray head from the water beside Reyna. Owen hadn’t ever seen one so close. They were much larger than he’d thought. Like the nykurs of legend, this one was made of water and was allover gray with its ears aimed the wrong direction. He couldn’t see them, but he had heard that their knees bent in the wrong direction, too.

  “Another monster, Ray!” Reyna yelled, and then she struck out, swimming quickly to the edge of the pool where her twin reached down and yanked her out of the water. Most of the other swimmers stayed in the water, staring at the nykur that had just risen in the middle of the pool.
<
br />   Then one little girl yelled, “Horsey!”

  Her father scooped her up, and they hurried out of the water.

  “Get out,” Reyna shouted at the people in the pool.

  Some of them looked at the nykur as if it were a trick or an illusion. It was as if they were in shock. Horses didn’t appear in the middle of pools, and they certainly weren’t made of water.

  “Get out of the water!” Ray yelled. “Now! Out. Out. Out.”

  Then the enormous horselike water monster moved under a girl who looked to be about fourteen. Once she touched its back, it rolled, flipping her under the water and holding her there. The water frothed around the struggling girl as people rushed to the edges of the pool to get to safety. One man with an obvious military haircut tried to reach the drowning girl.

  At the edge of the pool, the twins stepped closer together and clasped hands.

  “Show them that you are not so easily frightened,” Owen said, although they couldn’t hear him. He was used to speaking when no one was near him. It was a way to pretend he was connected to people, feel invested in them, one that his father had taught him when he was a small child crying over his loneliness.

  The twins acted as if they were one being divided into two bodies. Their free hands lifted to either side. Their palms were open as if they were cupping something that no one else could see, and then at the same time, they flipped their hands upward so they were palms-out in a “halt” gesture.

  As they did so, the water lifted like a wall in front of the nykur.

  “Help the others escape,” Owen told the Berserkers. “Wait outside the building.”

  He dove into the water and swam to the girl who was under the water still. He knew the wall the twins had erected wouldn’t hold long, but he couldn’t spare the time to look for the nykur, either.

  As quickly as he could, he grabbed the girl’s hand, yanked her away from the nykur, and pulled her to the surface. The man who’d tried to help her joined him, and together they tugged her to the edge of the pool. Once there, a Berserker heaved her out of the water, and others pulled him and the man out. Owen felt the nykur’s teeth snap in the air near him, not quite grazing him, but close enough that it made him jump. The man carried the unconscious girl out of the pool room.

  Owen stayed where he was and watched the water, knowing that the threat wouldn’t be easily contained but unable to know any more than that. Being involved in a situation made the knowing fade away. All he had were straggling details. If he hadn’t gotten involved, he’d see more clearly—but the girl would have drowned.

  On either side of the nykur, another just like it lifted its head from the warm mineral water. All three of the monstrous water horses watched the Freitag twins.

  “You need to—” His words were cut off by a towering wave as the nykurs drew untold amounts of water from the springs outside. The wave fell over everyone still inside, including the twins, sweeping all of them violently off their feet and into the pool, which now flowed over the sides and partway up the walls.

  He could see three of his Berserkers struggling to swim to him. Another was trying to reach the twins—who were trying to reach each other.

  Owen started to swim toward the door, hoping to open it and release some of the water.

  Two of the nykurs were after the twins, and the third was bearing down on him. He took a deep breath, preparing for the inevitable, and closed his eyes as it pulled him under the surface. His hands gripped the nykur’s mane, and he tried to use the creature’s body as leverage to pull himself to the surface. After several chest-tightening moments, he managed to climb atop its back—which it really didn’t like. It immediately began bucking, trying to throw him off, and from the force of it, he realized that if it did throw him, he could break a lot of bones on impact. The upside, though, was that as it bucked, it pushed him out of the water. He was able to gasp a quick breath before it rolled again.

  Owen clung to its back, hoping the others were faring better.

  This time when it surfaced, Owen saw Huginn and Muninn, his ravens, swooping into the building, making straight for him. Huginn dived for the nykur’s eye, clawing and beating his enormous wings while Muninn called to Owen, “Look up!”

  Above his head, Owen finally saw his escape route: rings hanging from the ceiling. They were the same kind that every boy used in basic gymnastics. Luckily, because of his time with the Berserkers, Owen’s training was a bit more intense than that of the usual kid in gymnastics class.

  When the nykur bucked again, Owen leaped, pushed against the nykur with both feet on its back, and stretched out his arms to grasp the rings. He only caught one, but after a brief struggle, he managed to grip a second ring.

  Underneath him, the nykur bared its teeth and leaped after him, leaving the water briefly, vaulting higher than should be possible for such a large creature. The nykur was sluggish outside the water, though, and Owen hoped that would be enough to keep him safe. He swung his legs up, tucking himself into a ball, and hoped it couldn’t reach even higher.

  It seemed like only a moment between the nykur returning to the water and leaping a second time. This time, it seemed to pull the water underneath it like a platform to allow extra leverage.

  Again, Owen folded himself up to the rings. He wasn’t sure he could get high enough to be out of reach.

  Then Huginn and Muninn flew toward the nykur’s face, talons outstretched and beaks open.

  “Ours!”

  “Vile beast!”

  “Pluck your eyes!”

  “Gouge your throat!”

  He wasn’t sure if other mythic beasts could understand the words his ravens cried out, but the nykur’s attention flickered to them, so Owen took his chance and started to move across the rings. As he swung from ring to ring, his ravens darted at the nykurs and cawed threats.

  The nykur dropped back down to the pool again. As it watched him, he worked his way across the row of rings. A quick glance down showed him that his Berserkers were with the twins, and they were slowly working their way up the slide that snaked down to the pool. Another of his Berserkers was atop the catwalk above that spanned the length of the building.

  As the twins reached the top platform of the slide, they joined hands, and in a shaky voice, Reyna murmured words Owen couldn’t understand. In a matter of moments, a gash appeared in the side of the building and the waters poured out in a rush.

  The nykurs let out loud screams of protest and began to kick against the pull of the water. It frothed as their hooves churned it, but the pressure of the water escaping created a current that was too much to resist. They started moving toward the opening in the wall.

  Reyna leaned against her brother and watched as the bodies of the three nykurs dissipated into the water. There was no way to tell if they returned to where they originated or if the flow pulled them apart. Either way, they were gone.

  Owen flipped from where he still hung on the rings toward the now-vacant edge of the pool, slipping along the tile as he landed and tearing his trousers. Blood turned his already wet jeans darker, but it was only a cut. He’d avoided broken bones, and the Freitag twins were both alive.

  The Berserkers helped the twins down from the slide, and a few moments later they joined the rest of the confused crowd outside. Huginn and Muninn had left again. He felt grateful, and more than a little surprised, that they’d come to his aid. His ravens weren’t meant to be creatures that entered into battles. They watched. They brought him knowledge.

  “I’m Odin,” he said to the twins when they reached him. “It’s time for us to leave.”

  Reyna’s eyes narrowed. “And exactly why should we trust you?”

  Ray said quietly, “Maybe—”

  “Your girlfriend killed Baldwin.” Reyna spoke over her brother. “When Astrid showed up at Baldwin’s house, she actually brought monsters with her. Now you show up here, and more monsters appear?”

  “Astrid is not my anything. A stranger arrive
s and lies about me, and you hold me responsible? I showed up to help you…. Also, Baldwin is alive. Fenrir, Laurie, and Matthew retrieved him from Hel.” Owen accepted a shirt from one of the Berserkers, ripped it, and wrapped it around the cut in his leg like a bandage. “They’re expecting us.”

  Reyna eyed him. “So you say. Let me repeat: why would we trust you?”

  As much as Owen understood her doubt, he didn’t have the patience for it today. “Your grandmother gave you a cloak of feathers when you were a small child, Freya. It will work now.”

  She opened her mouth and closed it without speaking.

  “Her name is Reyna,” Ray muttered.

  Owen nodded. He did forget sometimes that they all weren’t as accustomed as he was to thinking of themselves as their other identities.

  “Only Ray knows about the cloak,” Reyna said.

  For a moment, Owen saw the twins as they were: kids like him, but also kids who were afraid. He was, too, but he had learned to hide that most of the time. They didn’t have time for fear. Ragnarök was coming.

  “As I said, I am Odin. I am all-seeing.” He shrugged. “We should collect your cloak before we join the others. Your father’s driver will take us to Blackwell when you tell him you won tickets to a concert by a band he’s never heard of. If the other descendants aren’t there, you can turn around and return to fighting monsters on your own.”

  The twins exchanged a look, and then Reyna nodded.

  “But your acrobat guys aren’t coming with us,” Reyna said.

  “I know. They’ll meet us at camp.” Owen smiled. Now he just had to hope that the others were holding up well with the surprise waiting for them at Saint Agnes.

  EIGHTEEN

  MATT

  “MJÖLNIR”

  Matt recovered from the blow and raced out the mausoleum door. Well, it was more like “race and then squeeze out the door as fast as possible,” but that was the basic idea. He couldn’t fight something he couldn’t see. So he got out of there, stumbling into the light, blinking.