Sword of Secrets

by S. M. Schmitz

  Tyr patted my shoulder as he passed me. “I know I’m supposed to die at Ragnarok. Maybe that bodes well for our current expedition.”

  “Sure,” I agreed as I followed him outside. But we hadn’t even made the block when my unusual silence gave me away.

  “Okay, what is going on?” Keira demanded.

  “Nothing,” I lied.

  Yngvarr stopped and shot me a wary look that might have bordered on anger. “Did you have a dream about your death?”

  “That’s it,” Keira insisted. “Everyone turn around. We’re going back to the hotel. Now.”

  I threw my hands up and exclaimed, “I didn’t have a dream about my death, okay? It was about Havard and Arnbjorg’s family disappearing during what I assume was some sort of Viking raid, and if they were Norwegian, what were the Vikings doing raiding their own people?”

  “Do you really think nation states even existed back then?” Yngvarr asked.

  “Can we just resume our Bataan Death March here?” I said with a sigh.

  “Hold up,” Tyr said. “That’s the second historical reference you’ve made today. Who are you and what did you do with the real Gavyn?”

  So, quite naturally, I flipped him off again.

  I didn’t tell him almost everything I knew about the Bataan Death March had come from watching The Great Raid.

  Keira squinted at me and crossed her arms. “There was more to that dream than just Vikings.”

  “A prophecy?” Tyr asked. “Is that what you meant?”

  I groaned and reminded them my dad was still in the clutches of these evil villains, and they were failing miserably at playing superheroes. But since I was losing time, and daylight, I gave up and offered the quickest recap possible, focusing mostly on the sword’s strange glow and Havard and Yngvarr’s argument over his dream.

  “Do you think he dreamed about you wielding that sword?” Yngvarr asked me.

  “How? It’s lost,” I replied. We’d at least resumed our aimless walk through the streets of New Orleans, just hoping we’d get some sort of sign as to where to go.

  Keira had been so quiet as I replayed my dream, and even now, she kept her eyes trained ahead, her brow furrowed as if lost in thought. Tyr and Yngvarr exchanged ideas as to whether Havard’s prophecy had been about me, and where the sword could be hidden, but I kept stealing glances at Keira, wondering where her mind had traveled.

  Ten minutes passed before she unexpectedly blurted out, “He knew he was going to die. This curse… maybe he’s not the one who forced everyone to forget him.”

  Her suggestion surprised Yngvarr, who suddenly stopped walking, his mouth agape at the Valkyrie who seemed to be suggesting his brother had been murdered. My imagination began to run wild with the idea, wondering if Havard’s dream hadn’t been about me at all but whoever had killed him, perhaps to steal an enchanted sword that had more value than a mostly-human guy like me could understand.

  And there was only one god who’d even admitted to knowing anything about this enchanted sword, a god Yngvarr and Havard had never trusted.

  “Could Odin…?” I started, but Keira’s expression cut me off. Odin was her boss, after all.

  Yngvarr’s eyes narrowed. “Could Odin what?”

  I shrugged as if the thought of Odin lying to his own people and cursing them was ludicrous. “Nothing. Just always seemed strange that he knew about some sword nobody else has heard of.”

  “If he had anything to do with this curse, why would he admit to knowing about the sword’s legend?” Tyr pointed out.

  I shrugged again, annoyed that they were getting so distracted by Odin and a dead god when my father’s life was at stake. Tyr seemed to consider Odin’s potential involvement in Havard’s death and the curse that forced all of Asgard to forget him then waved his good hand in the air as if literally wiping the whole idea from existence. “Nah,” he decided. “I don’t think it was Odin. I’ve known him longer than you can imagine, and he’s definitely no saint but I can’t see him doing something like that either.”

  We’d resumed our march again, so I was a little less aggravated by his thoughts remaining on Havard and Odin. Yngvarr’s face still looked stormy at the suggestion his brother had been murdered, but he surprised me when he said, “We should look for this magic sword. I have no idea why it was glowing, but it could be far more important than we realize.”

  “Because it glows?” I asked stupidly. I mean, it was cool special effect, but aside from being an old-fashioned light saber, I didn’t see how that could possibly help us now.

  “In your dream, Havard only beheaded one guy,” Yngvarr explained. “What do you think might have happened if he’d had to fight more people? Or what if he’d had to fight a god who isn’t as easily killed as a human?”

  “I think it would have turned into a light saber and he’d also have to take down a legion of Stormtroopers,” I said.

  Yngvarr narrowed his eyes at me but nodded. “Seems about right.”

  Keira almost smiled. “If you have to possess Havard’s genes to get the sword’s enchantments to work, it could be impossible to find anyway.”

  The sound of something metallic clanking against pavement echoed between the buildings one street over from us, and we all stopped and turned toward it, drawing our weapons. Another metallic echo, closer, louder. Sweat beaded on my forehead and my palms became slick.

  This, I thought, must be what it feels like to be hunted.

  My greatest challenge so far had been accepting what I am and who I was supposed to be. And standing there in New Orleans, with gods approaching, boxing us in with no chance of escape, I realized Agnes and Keira and Tyr had been right all along. I wanted to protect them. I wanted to save the people of New Orleans who’d been locked away as prisoners, and I wanted to save these people who’d actually become my friends.

  But we’d been surrounded, and I already knew there would be no miraculous escape for us.

  We instinctively formed a square with our backs to each other so we couldn’t get taken by surprise from an unguarded direction, but the loudest noise continued on the same street, methodically, rhythmically inching closer to us, stalking us, toying with us. I wanted to ask Tyr if his wolf senses were picking up anything about our predator, but I didn’t dare speak.

  The building directly in front of me exploded, sending bricks and glass toward us as deadly shrapnel. I fell to the ground, covering my head and earning painful cuts on my arms. Footsteps fell against the pavement, crunching broken glass.

  Get up! I screamed as a directive to myself, but I’d dropped my sword and had no idea where it was. Tyr’s spear lay two feet away, so I lunged for it, grasping it in my left hand and twisting around as I stabbed at the body that had reached me. I recognized the man who stared down at me. He’d been atop the ziggurat and had announced that the heroes of the world should surrender. He’d started this nightmare for me.

  The blade of the spear grazed his leg, and he winced but it wasn’t a severe injury. With a flick of his wrist, the rubble shifted all around me, and I heard Keira screaming my name before she was buried beneath it. Ninurta towered over me and the corners of his lips turned up in the slightest smile as if he’d just won the war. A beautiful goddess with long black hair that had been neatly braided held out her hand and the spear I’d been holding was ripped away from me, appearing in her grasp.

  “Gavyn,” Ninurta purred. “How disappointing that you’re so easily defeated.”

  I wanted to agree with him, but I wisely kept my mouth shut. Inanna reached for me, pulling me to my feet, and she looked me over quickly before announcing, “You’re not a complete disappointment.”

  Ninurta laughed, which I found completely unnerving, and New Orleans disappeared into blackness. And I’d become the prisoner of the gods who wanted me dead.

  END OF BOOK ONE

  Sword of Light, book two of the Heroes of Asgard series

  Sneak Peek at Sword of Light

  Chapt
er 1

  Of all the places I’d never wanted to wake up in, which I’d cataloged quite a few times considering the drunken dares between Hunter and me, in the hands of a bunch of angry gods had never made it onto the list. Mostly because I’d never even thought I’d end up in the hands of a bunch of angry gods. But once I found myself there, it quickly rose to the top of that list. I really don’t recommend becoming a prisoner of any kind of god—angry or not.

  I slowly sat up and rubbed the back of my head, which throbbed with a dull headache, but I couldn’t remember falling or anyone hitting me and there was no lump. The pain extended into my neck, wrapped around through my left ear, and landed behind my eye. Nothing in the room looked real. The walls waved and rippled and shimmered and the floor bubbled like a hot spring, so I squeezed my eyes shut and reopened them. For a brief moment, everything settled into place but I blinked, and the walls began to melt.

  A door opened and a woman—no, a goddess whose voice I immediately recognized—entered. “You’re finally awake,” Inanna said.

  She appeared to be melting, too, which was far worse than the walls.

  “What did you to me?” I asked, closing my eyes again because watching a person melt was way too disturbing, even if that person planned to kill me.

  “We just sedated you. It’ll wear off.”

  “Why am I alive?” Probably a stupid question, but I was kinda known for asking stupid questions, so why stop now?

  “Because we think you can lead us to something we want,” she said.

  I snickered. “First of all, you probably should have told your minions to capture me alive then since quite a few of them just tried to kill me. And secondly, the only thing I can lead you to is a lifetime of bad decisions.”

  She snickered now and sat on the other end of the bed, so I opened one eye just enough to peek at her. Since her face was still melting, I quickly closed it again. “First of all,” she said, mimicking my tone, “if they’d managed to kill you in New Orleans, it was no great loss. When we captured you, we simply saw an opportunity and took it. And secondly, you don’t know you can lead us to the Sword of Light, but you will.”

  I inhaled a quick breath and opened my eyes, despite the melting room and melting goddess and my melting brain. “How do you know about that?” I breathed.

  She lifted an eyebrow at me, which temporarily shifted her features back into place. “Because it wasn’t a Norse sword. It was ours.”

  I shook my head slowly. No way. That sword had belonged to Havard, and he alone could wield it. It couldn’t have belonged to the Sumerians. Inanna must have sensed my confusion because she continued, “Our god of magic, Asalluhi, made the Sword of Light. It’s the most powerful weapon among our kind, and with it, we could easily vanquish your new friends.”

  “It won’t work for you,” I insisted. I’d suddenly become violently jealous of even the suggestion that someone else would be using my sword. A tiny voice in my mind reminded me it wasn’t really my sword, so I told that voice to shut up and mind its own business. And then that voice told me to shut up and mind my own business, which I really didn’t appreciate considering I’d been drugged and kidnapped—for the second time in a week, I might add—and was now nursing the world’s worst hangover. I thought the voice called me a pansy, but Inanna began talking again, and I was forced to listen to her instead of the silent argument in my head.

  “What makes you think it won’t work for us?” she asked, and by the sound of her voice, she’d had to repeat the question… maybe more than once.

  “Because it’ll only work for the person it rightly belongs to,” I answered.

  She folded her arms across her chest, and most likely scowled at me, but her features had begun to melt again, so I wasn’t quite sure where her nose and lips and chin actually were. “Who told you that?”

  “Um… the dead god it used to belong to?”

  This seemed to take her by surprise, and I wondered if I should’ve kept that a secret. “You’re dreaming about Havard?” she asked cautiously.

  “You knew him?” I think I was just as surprised now.

  “Of course,” she said, her voice just above a whisper. “I’m the one who gave him that sword.”

  When I awoke again, the walls and floor remained stationary and the headache had mostly subsided. I stared at the ceiling for a long time, trying to decide if I should believe Inanna or not, but I already knew she had no reason to lie to me. Her announcement that she’d given Havard his sword as a present when he was born had been greeted by my stunned silence—a remarkable feat, even for a goddess. There was something in her brief explanation that seemed to suggest she’d known Havard’s father a little too well for my liking, but I’d just sat there, mute and shocked and wanting to throw up but I wasn’t sure if it was from the drugs or her story.

  The one piece of good information I’d gleaned from her account of the Sword of Light ending up in a Norse god’s hands was that she didn’t seem to know Havard beyond his presentation as an infant. On the opposite end of the spectrum, my knowledge of this dead ancestor disturbed her, as if somehow, these memories could be dangerous for her and the Sumerians. I couldn’t imagine how. The only thing I could be fairly certain of was that she seemed even more motivated to end my life early, even if it meant no chance of ever recovering that sword.

  I’d just counted the tiles on the ceiling for the thirteenth time when the door opened again, but this time, it wasn’t Inanna. Ninurta had come to see me, and he seemed to carry a storm cloud with him wherever he went. It was probably just my imagination, but the air in the room even seemed to drop twenty degrees, and I shivered and pulled the blanket higher around my throat.

  “Can you see?” he asked, his voice silken and smooth, but something slithered beneath it like a current of deadly poison.

  I nodded and kept my eyes on the ceiling. “Then get up and follow me,” he ordered.

  I obeyed and he led me through a maze of hallways and stairwells until we finally emerged in a large room with table after table of desktop computers. Ninurta gestured toward the closest computer and commanded, “Sit.”

  I gritted my teeth but pulled the chair away from the table and sat down. Straight ahead was a row of windows, and I could just make out the trunks of trees in the distance and a wide lawn with a birdbath in the center before Ninurta forced my attention away from the outdoors. He stood over me and nodded toward the monitor. “Which of these names is familiar?” he asked.

  I read the list on the screen but didn’t recognize any of them.

  “Impossible,” he insisted.

  “Dude,” I sighed, “I can’t even pronounce any of these names.”

  He slapped his hand against the table, causing me to jump, and leaned in close to my face. I wanted to back away, but he was obviously trying to intimidate me, and I refused to let him know it was working. “Do not,” he said in that icy, silky voice, “waste my time. Your death can be quick or prolonged.”

  “You want me to lie then?” I shot back. “Because I really don’t recognize any of these names.”

  Ninurta stood up straight, narrowing his eyes at me. “Then look again. Concentrate. When a god has children, it’s not only his physical features that get passed down in his genes but his memories and knowledge.”

  I scanned the list of names again, but I still didn’t recognize any of them. I’d suspected, of course, they had something to do with Havard, but now that Ninurta had confirmed it, I wouldn’t have told him the truth anyway. His threat of torturing me to death still hung in the air, but the only emotion that stirred within me was my own stubborn refusal to allow him to win. These assholes had kidnapped my father. Did they really think I’d help them now?

  As if reading my mind, he added, “If you think your father’s life doesn’t depend on your cooperation, you truly are as stupid as you want others to believe.”

  “As far as I know, he’s already dead.”

  The corners of Ninurta�
�s lips turned up in the slightest, most sinister of smiles, and he called out, “Bring him in.”

  Ninurta’s order was answered with shuffling in the hallway, the sounds of a struggle, and I leapt to my feet but he pushed me back down. My father was dragged into the room, his eyes wild and angry, but as they settled on me, they took on an intense and crazed mania. “Dad,” I croaked.

  His face was splattered with dried blood, his shirt torn and stained a deep brownish-red. More blood, I realized.

  “Gavyn,” he breathed.

  “What did you do to him?” I screamed, rising to my feet again only to be forced back down.

  My father strained against the two men, presumably demigods, each gripping one arm. When they’d first dragged him in, they’d been holding him upright, but now, they were holding him back as he struggled to reach me.

  “The names, Gavyn,” Ninurta said, calm and unaffected.

  “I’m going to kill you,” I growled. “All of you.”

  He only smiled again, his eyes flitting to the computer screen as a final warning. Cooperate or watch my father die. I tried to focus on the screen, the letters, strange accents, but they seemed to twitch and dance and refused to stay in place. At first, I thought it was only the adrenaline, the fear, the rage… I couldn’t focus because I’d never been so angry in my life. But as the letters shifted and jumped, I realized I could read them; they weren’t names at all. Not anymore. The letters spelled out a message, and it was directed to me.

  Sharur is with Ninurta at all times. Take him hostage with it. He won’t resist if he thinks he can get it back.

  Sharur, I repeated silently. An image formed in my mind. A spear. Ninurta must have it hidden somehow, in a way only gods could manage. I swallowed and took a deep breath, needing to be able to steal glances at him so I could find it without raising suspicions. I looked at his hands first, telling him, “I’m trying. How long do I have?”