by A J Hackwith
The hall had reacted quickly to the prospect of a duel. Claire and Hero were evidently to fight simultaneously—a dual duel. The wordplay made Claire roll her eyes, but she had to admire the way the hall had quickly reorganized for the occasion. Bjorn had swept her away to the far end. The tables were pushed clear, revealing a hard-packed arena in the center of the lodge. She stopped her pacing at the side of the ring. “Librarians are not warriors or wizards. Is this really necessary?”
Bjorn rolled his shoulders as he selected a staff of his own. “Have some sense of showmanship, lass. We may be a rough lot to you, but we appreciate a good performance. You’ve dueled in our way before, yes?”
“My predecessor taught me.” Claire stared at the staff in her hand as if it were a snake. “But more for . . . recreation and training, not death by combat.”
“Oh, I would never kill you, lass.” Bjorn turned with a smile. “Just mightily embarrass you in front of all these fine, handsome Viking men.”
“No loss. I prefer my partners slightly less hirsute.”
“Like your pretty lad, there?” Bjorn gestured to Hero, who had his back to them. He was allowing Brevity to fiddle with the straps on his armor. He had abandoned the jacket and waistcoat for fine-scale mail that hung lightly on his chest and gleamed the same burnished bronze as his hair.
Claire turned back. “I also prefer my partners slightly less fictional. He’s a character. A book.”
“Looks real enough for me. But then there’s no accounting for taste.” Bjorn was in no hurry to turn his appreciative gaze away. Claire didn’t have time for the antics of a lecherous old bard. She located the notebook in her bag and pulled it out. She had begun making notations when Bjorn cleared his throat.
“No books in the ring.”
“I beg your pardon? I’m a librarian. You asked for a story, and this is where I keep my stories. I’ll carry your silly staff, but I’m keeping my notes.”
“That’s not how stories work here, lass. You’re not in your library anymore—here, the word is your voice. And your voice is your tale.” Bjorn flashed a grin. “The spoken word was the first kind of library, after all.”
Oral storytelling. She should have expected as much. It was awkward, dated, and entirely unreliable. Messy in every way she couldn’t stand. Unreliable narrators, the lot of them. In her opinion, there was a reason humanity had invented the written word, and that reason was progress. Claire ground her teeth. “That is a loose interpretation.”
“Is it?” Bjorn mildly met her glare. “Once, people memorized books’ worth of spoken words, songs, and sagas that contained all their history, traditions, stories, survival. The Arrernte called it their Dreaming.”
Bjorn knew his stuff. Claire was forced to remember that, for all his wild appearance, he was a former librarian. And had a longer tenure than her. She ceded the point. “I’m not a storyteller.”
“Then you can go back to your library.” Bjorn shrugged.
The crowd was increasing. Someone had procured a war horn, and its bleat was seeding a headache. Claire tossed the book on top of her bag in a huff. “You’re crude.”
“And you rely too much on those bits of paper. This is how it all started, you know.” Bjorn handed Claire a mug of a dark frothy liquid. When she bent her head, she caught a vague whiff of fire and chocolate. “Drink up.”
Up close, the smell nettled her nose with iron and honey. “What is this?”
“Mead of poetry,” Bjorn said a touch too lightly.
Claire searched her memory of half-remembered myths. Nothing in Valhalla’s stories was as simple as mead, and this place seemed exaggerated past even the original myths. “This isn’t . . . Kvasir’s blood?” The Norse had a tale about the mead of poetry. Blood extracted from a keen, all-knowing, and thoroughly murdered god. She gave it a repulsed look before taking a tentative sip. She could feel the magic begin to seep into her tongue. It tasted like bitter chocolate. “If I recall the lore right, a simple vial of this is adequate.”
“But then ye don’t have an excuse to drink.” Bjorn downed his portion in one gulp and wiped his beard. “No books, just a saga, a staff, and a swig. I’ll make a Norseman of you by the end of this, Librarian.”
“Just try not to fall on your head when I beat you.” Claire finished her mug and handed it back to him. “I still need answers.”
Bjorn’s laughter was as warm as their drink as he led the way into the arena.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
BJORN ABANDONED CLAIRE AND Hero in the middle of the ring and disappeared to fetch Hero’s opponent. The tables and stands were already filling up with curious faces. Word of their spectacle had spread, and Valhalla’s residents were always ready for a fight. The arena bubbled with spilled mead and a lazy kind of bloodlust.
Claire ran her gaze over the crowd, locating Hell’s contingent at the table nearest the ring, easy enough to pick out by Brevity’s seafoam green hair. Brevity stood on the bench in order to throw Claire an exuberant thumbs-up sign. At least one of them was confident about their chances.
Claire’s toe found a divot in the packed dirt. She glanced at Hero. “You’re quite prepared, then?”
“I’ll do my heroic best not to embarrass you, warden.” Hero’s voice was dry. He shifted on the balls of his feet and didn’t move his gaze from where Bjorn had disappeared. “I’d see more to yourself. You don’t strike me as the battle-maiden type.”
“Librarians have their own way of competing. Though I admit . . . it’s been quite a while.” More than quite a while. More like since she became librarian three decades ago.
It’s not as if she’d had anyone to spar with. Brevity, being a muse, didn’t have the interest in classic literature most human unauthors did, and no assistant before her had progressed far enough in the training to make dueling relevant. Claire had been lax, and she wasn’t looking forward to Bjorn reminding her of that fact.
She pushed that thought away before it could unravel her nerves more than it already had. “I have to ask, Hero. Why?”
Hero appeared ready to force her to draw out the question—why had he volunteered? why was he risking this?—but his eyes slid past her face, and he shrugged. “It’s what I’m made for, isn’t it? Figured I might as well agree while I could still pretend you honored me with the choice. Besides, you’re not the only one with a reason to see this foolhardy mission through.”
His author. She was alive and would be caught up in this if Heaven and Hell truly decided to go to war. Claire put it together quickly, but Hero offered it with a smile just scraping the line of loathing. “Pure self-preservation.”
“Selfish heroism, then. I expected nothing less,” Claire said.
The ground began to shake. Hero’s grip tightened on his sword, Claire saw in her peripheral vision.
Out of the gloom swung a wall. Or what had to be a wall. A wall in the shape of a man. No, men didn’t grow that tall. A giant. Uther.
He was easily as large as Walter back home, Claire estimated. His shoulders were bare and as wide as Claire was tall. The warrior’s scarred face was occupied by a long yellow beard, knit with bones and feathers, below a gnarled nose. In one boulderlike hand, a wrecking ball of a maul lazed. The weapon glowed with a dark red stone.
Bjorn was dwarfed beside him and could only give the giant a pat on the elbow before separating.
Hero had gone very still beside her, and Claire glanced up. His face was blank and held the dread of a goose only now vaguely aware it was about to be made dinner.
She cleared her throat. “He’s not wearing much armor.” The warrior, in fact, wore more war paint and feathers than clothes from the waist up.
“Oh, good. I would hate to cause him a laundry bill when I inconsiderately die all over him.”
“What I mean is, if you’re fast enough, you have a good chance.
”
“I don’t need tactical advice from an academic, thanks,” Hero snapped, and he glared steadily at the beast lumbering across the ring rather than look at Claire.
“Fine, be a fool. Heroes are good at that.” Claire turned with her staff to where Bjorn had taken up position. “But I’ve already stitched your life together once today. I’ve got the hand cramps to prove it, and I’d rather not do it again. So . . . just don’t die.”
If Hero had a reply, she didn’t hear it as she strode away to face her own test.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
THE RING WAS LARGE enough to separate the duels by several yards—far enough that she would not be swept up in the first swing of Uther’s grand maul.
Claire positioned her back to Hero’s match. She would have to keep moving. This was not the stand-and-deliver type of duel that she was familiar with from the Library. But as she wrapped her fingers over the soft grip of her staff, she settled on a grim certainty. Whatever the outcome, she was not leaving the realm until she had her answers.
“Seeing as you’re our guests”—Bjorn raised his voice so it carried over the watching crowds—“we’ll allow you the first attack.”
“Grand.” Claire heard Hero’s dripping sarcasm behind her.
There was a shuffle and a thundering step as Hero initiated the attack, and Claire could not stop from twisting around as the crowd began to roar. Hero had opened with a testing swing, darting forward and aiming for Uther’s unprotected side. But the giant easily avoided it, batting aside Hero’s sword as if it were a gnat. Hero grunted and recovered, cautiously maintaining his distance.
“Well, Librarian?” Bjorn’s voice brought her around.
She would have to stop worrying about Hero’s fight if she was going to survive her own. A duel between librarians was a duel of words. Not just any quotation from a poem or other passage would do; it had to hold meaning for the audience. It was the meaning that carried the weight. The opposing librarian would have to identify it, take away the audience’s meaning, and redirect it to defuse the attack. Claire tightened her grip on the staff and considered her audience. This was Bjorn’s audience, not hers. She would be operating at a disadvantage. The encounter with the ravens at the steps came to mind. “‘Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.’”
Her voice rang out, and she felt the silky shudder on her lips as the magic took hold. Fine silver script flowed through the air, etching the words in a glowing ribbon. A flare of figures formed around it, tiny points of light in the shape of faeries, fine ladies, jesters and daggers, moons and men. It whispered as it flew sharply at Bjorn’s face, and the crowd murmured approval.
The old man grunted and whipped his staff to the side, catching the words from the air. The silver script tangled and scraped at the wood, tendrils whipping like a lash toward his face. He spoke just one word to make them disappear into nothing. “Shakespeare.” Bjorn snorted as he named the author. “Starting with the Bard, Librarian? A beginner’s move. I hope you have more than that.”
“It seemed fitting, considering.” Claire began to circle as Bjorn moved. The tumult from the crowd was growing. Out of the corner of her eye, she registered swirls of movement as Hero and Uther began to trade blows in earnest. Claire forced herself to stay focused on the bard in front of her.
“‘It’s much better to do good in a way that no one knows anything about it.’” Bjorn’s words were gold and old stone runes, tiny marching men and snowflakes, all sharp edges as they snapped toward her. Claire’s mind spun along with her staff, and she stumbled back a step as she barely avoided being sliced by the tail end.
“Tolstoy.” The words disappeared, and she stifled a sigh of relief before she began to circle again. Bjorn was faster than an old man had a right to be, his words too sharp. She needed the space to react.
“Out of practice, Librarian?” Bjorn took easy strides around the ring.
“‘The sun himself is weak when he first rises, and gathers strength and courage as the day gets on.’”
She aimed the words lower this time, forcing Bjorn to dance away lest the gossamer script tangle his boots. “Dickens. Wasn’t he a contemporary of yours? Or would have been if you’d written.”
“Low blow.”
“Not low enough, it seems.” The old man narrowed his eyes at her before forming a return volley. “‘He knew everything there was to know about literature, except how to enjoy it.’”
Claire caught the gold words at the center of her staff. She found the quotation but took a fraction too long. The gold script managed to slice at the back of her arm before she could dispel it. “Joseph Heller,” she gasped. Blood welled up in thin lashes up to her elbow.
So they went, back and forth, trading blows up and down the written words of history. Bjorn staggered when an Austen escaped his guard and landed a blow to his knee. Claire found herself diving to the ground to avoid an Eliot as it lashed for her head. It was when she was rolling to her feet that she first noticed the blood staining the other side of the ring.
Hero moved like a dervish, darting into the larger man’s reach only as long as it took to aim the edge of his blade along Uther’s flank. Striking a blow, then flinging himself out of the way of the maul again. Both men were bloodied, though Hero bled black, pitiless ink. They both breathed heavily; Uther favored his side, while Hero held one injured wrist away from his opponent.
Claire took a deep breath and faced Bjorn again with a long attack. “‘Be men, or be more than men. Be steady to your purposes and firm as a rock. This ice is not made of such stuff as your hearts may be; it is mutable and cannot withstand you if you say that it shall not.’”
A boisterous approval came from the sidelines. “What soldier wrote that?” came a call from the crowd.
“Mary Shelley,” Bjorn said grudgingly. With more bravado than she felt, Claire bowed, and the gathered crowd laughed.
Bjorn shook his head. “‘And the rest is rust and stardust.’”
“Nabokov,” Claire said with a grunt as she spun and dispelled a marching line of script and meteors. “God, Russians.”
Bjorn chuckled but did not dispute her sentiment on the literature. Claire paced a few more steps to catch her breath. This needed to end soon. “‘We lived in the gaps between the stories.’”
“Atwood.” Bjorn returned with a line from Tolkien, which Claire dispelled before he commented, “Your soldier looks tired, Librarian. Blows like that . . . he’s not standing much longer.”
Claire allowed her eyes to stray to Hero. Uther had gotten lucky. She’d missed the blow that had sent Hero sprawling, but its impact must have been tremendous. He’d risen from his knee but held heavily to his sword with his one good hand, ink dribbling down one cheek. He reserved all his energy for a glare at the moving mountain in front of him.
Claire swallowed hard and forced her attention back to Bjorn. “‘Logic may indeed be unshakable, but it cannot withstand a man who is determined to live.’”
“Kafka.” Bjorn dismissed it with a wave of his staff before returning a volley toward Claire. “‘The weak man becomes strong when he has nothing, for then only can he feel the wild, mad thrill of despair.’” He aimed the volley for Claire but was grinning at the other combatants in the ring.
“Arthur. Conan. Doyle.” Claire gritted her teeth, searching for a line that would wipe that smug, blood-mad grin off the Viking’s face.
But it was then that Hero made his move. He regained his feet and swung, lithe bronze figure glinting as the sword arrowed toward Uther’s ribs. The giant turned, fast, too fast, and a crack reverberated throughout the hall as maul met blade, and both sword and swordsman were flung away.
Hero sprawled on the dirt, groaning. Black liquid flowed freely from the cut on his temple now, and his movements were slow. His sword came to r
est several yards away. Weaponless, Hero clenched his teeth in a death’s-head grin as he gained a knee and turned toward Uther. The Norse warrior inclined his head and brought his arms back to deliver the winning blow.
“‘War is cruelty, and none can make it gentle!’” The words were out before Claire could think them. But they were not aimed at Bjorn; her gaze was locked on the other fight. Silver words flew, and sharp serifs struck deep across a monstrous, scarred face. Uther stumbled midswing, bellowing in pain as his maul dropped, and the giant man clawed at his face.
Bjorn stared, mouth gaping. Hero, to his credit, knew an opportunity when he saw one. He scrambled for his sword and took a hobbled leap at Uther, growl in his throat.
“Parker! Gilbert Parker!” Bjorn shouted, and the silver words wound around Uther’s face dissolved. But Hero was faster. The broadsword pierced his ribs deep, and Uther’s bellow became shrill, then silent.
The giant man convulsed, landing a grip on Hero’s shoulder. But it began to loosen even as they fell back to the earth. Hero twisted the blade with a snarl, and it struck Claire that his features were beautiful, even more so in fury. A purity in the hate that she recognized. She hadn’t thought books could truly hate.
“Clever. No honor, but clever.” Bjorn was solemn as Claire turned back to face him. There was a dark regard in the old man’s eyes, but he spoke before Claire could open her mouth to explain. “‘And hope buoyed like a flag, fragile on the wind. Death was the only freedom.’”
The gold words curled in the air and furled out, thick and unstoppable. The words were unfamiliar, even as they triggered something that burned at the edge of her brain. But they were strange, accompanied with dizzying shapes, birds in flight, cathedrals, and cobblestone streets. White cliffs and sunsets. She had no defense. She managed to retreat two steps before the gold letters slammed into her chest and drove her to the ground.
A thick, buzzing weight twined hungrily around her arms. She squeezed her eyes shut and waited for the ensuing pain, but it never appeared. After a moment, Claire carefully cracked one eye open. The words had wrapped her up neat as a present, and they thrummed warningly against her chest, but they did not cut unless she struggled. Bjorn stood over her, dark eyes regarding her with a mixture of disapproval and amusement. “No response, Librarian?”
