The Hammer of Thor

“It’s the trigger for the entrance, yeah. But we’ll still need some magic to get in. Hearth, double-check this for me, will you?”

Hearth crouched next to him. He nodded like, Yep, then traced a rune on the floor with his finger. Immediately, a ten-foot-square section of pavement vaporized, revealing a shaft that plunged straight down. Unfortunately, the four of us happened to be on that ten-foot square when it vaporized.

We dropped into the darkness with a fair amount of screaming, most of which was mine.

Good news: When I landed, I didn’t break any bones. Bad news: Hearthstone did.

I heard a wet snap, followed by Hearth’s grunt, and I knew immediately what had happened.

I’m not saying elves are fragile. In some ways, Hearth was the toughest guy I knew. But on occasion, I wanted to wrap him in blankets and slap a “handle with care” sticker on his forehead.

“Hold on, man,” I told him, which was useless, since he couldn’t see me in the dark. I found his leg and quickly located the break. Hearth gasped and tried to claw the skin off my hands.

“What’s going on?” Blitz demanded. “Whose elbow is this?”

“That’s me,” Sam said. “Everyone okay?”

“Hearth has a broken ankle,” I said. “I need to fix it. You two keep watch.”

“It’s totally dark!” Blitz complained.

“You’re a dwarf.” Sam slipped her ax from her belt, a sound I knew well. “I thought you thrived underground.”

“I do!” said Blitz. “Preferably in a well-lit and tastefully decorated underground.”

Judging from the echo of our voices, we were in a large stone chamber. There was no light, so I assumed the shaft we’d fallen through had closed above us.

In the plus column, nothing had attacked us…yet.

I found Hearth’s hand and made sign letters against his palm so he wouldn’t panic: HEAL YOU. BE STILL.

Then I put both my hands on his broken ankle.

I called on the power of Frey. Warmth blossomed in my chest and spread down my arms. My fingers glowed with a soft golden light, pushing back the darkness. I could feel the bones in Hearthstone’s ankle knitting together, the swelling subsiding, his circulation returning to normal.

He let out a long sigh and signed, Thanks.

I squeezed his knee. “No problem, man.”

“So, Magnus,” Blitz said, his voice hoarse, “you might want to look around.”

One side effect of my healing power was that I temporarily glowed. I don’t mean I looked healthy. I mean I actually glowed. In the daytime it was hardly noticeable, but here, in a dark subterranean chamber, I looked like a human night-light. Sadly, that meant I could now see our surroundings.

We were in the middle of a domed chamber, like a giant beehive carved from rock. The apex of the ceiling, about twenty feet up, showed no sign of the hatch through which we’d fallen. All around the circumference of the walls, in closet-size niches, stood mummified men in rotted clothing, their leathery fingers clasped around the hilts of corroded swords. I saw no exit from the room.

“Well, this is perfect,” I said. “They’re going to wake up, aren’t they? Those ten guys—”

“Twelve,” Sam corrected.

“Twelve guys with big swords,” I said.

My hand closed around my runestone pendant. Either Jack was trembling, or I was. I decided it must be Jack.

“They could just be terrifying inanimate corpses,” Blitz said. “Think positive.”

Hearthstone snapped his fingers for attention. He pointed to the sarcophagus that stood upright in the center of the room.

It’s not that I hadn’t noticed it. The big iron box was hard to miss. But I’d been trying to ignore it, hoping it would go away. The front was carved with ornate Viking images—wolves, serpents, and runic inscriptions swirling around a central picture of a bearded man with a big sword.

I had no idea what a coffin like this was doing on Cape Cod. I was pretty sure the Pilgrims hadn’t brought it over on the Mayflower.

Sam motioned for us to stay put. She levitated off the floor and floated around the sarcophagus, her ax ready.

“Inscriptions on the back, too,” she reported. “This sarcophagus is old. I don’t see any sign that it’s been opened recently, but perhaps Thrym hid the hammer inside.”

“Here’s an idea,” Blitzen said. “Let’s not check.”

I glanced at him. “That’s your expert opinion?”

“Look, kid, this tomb reeks of ancient power. It was built well over a thousand years ago, long before Viking explorers got to North America.”

“How can you tell?”

“The marks on the rock,” Blitzen said. “I can tell when a chamber was hewn as easily as I can gauge the age of a shirt by the wear of the threads.”

That didn’t sound very easy to me. Then again, I didn’t have a degree in dwarven fashion design.

“So it’s a Viking tomb built before the Vikings got here,” I said. “Uh…how is that possible?”

It moved, Hearth signed.

“How can a tomb move?”

Blitzen took off his pith helmet. The gauze netting left a cowlick across his otherwise perfect hair. “Kid, stuff moves in the Nine Worlds all the time. We’re connected by the World Tree, right? The branches sway. New branches grow. Roots deepen. This place has shifted from wherever it was originally built. Probably because…you know, it’s imbued with evil magic.”

Sam touched down next to us. “Not a fan of evil magic.”

Hearth pointed to the floor in front of the sarcophagus. I hadn’t noticed before, but all around the base of the coffin, a faint circle of runes was etched in the stone.

Hearth finger-spelled: K-E-N-N-I-N-G.

“What’s that?” I asked.

Samirah edged a little closer to the inscription. “A kenning is a Viking nickname.”

“You, mean like…‘Hey, Kenning. How’s it going?’”

“No,” Sam said, in that I-am-going-to-hit-you-with-the-stupid-stick tone. “It’s a way of referring to somebody with a description instead of their name. Like instead of Blitzen, I might say Clever-of-clothes, or for Hearthstone, Rune-lord.”

Hearth nodded. You may call me Rune-lord.

Sam squinted at the inscription on the floor. “Magnus, could you glow a little closer please?”

“I’m not your flashlight.” But I stepped toward the coffin.

“It says Blood River,” Sam announced. “Over and over, all the way around.”

“You can read Old Norse?” I asked.

“Old Norse is easy. You want difficult? Try learning Arabic.”

“Blood River.” My bagel breakfast sat heavy in my gut. “Does this remind anybody of bloodshed that cannot be stopped? I don’t like it.”

Even without his gauze netting, Blitz looked a little gray. “It’s…probably a coincidence. However, I would like to point out there are no exits from this room. My dwarven senses tell me these walls are solid all the way around. We’ve walked into a loaded trap. The only way out is to spring it.”

“I’m starting to dislike your dwarven senses,” I said.

“You and me both, kid.”

Hearthstone glared at Blitzen. You wanted to come here. What now? Break kenning circle. Open coffin?

Sam readjusted her hijab. “If there’s a wight in this tomb, it’ll be in that sarcophagus. It’s also the most secure place to hide a magical wea

pon, like a god’s hammer.”

“I need a second opinion.” I pulled off my pendant.

Jack sprang to full length in my hand. “Hey, guys! Ooh, a tomb imbued with evil magic? Cool!”

“Buddy, can you sense Thor’s hammer anywhere around here?”

Jack vibrated with concentration. “Hard to be sure. There’s something powerful in that box. A weapon? A magical weapon? Can we open it? Please, please? This is exciting!”

I resisted the urge to smack him upside the hilt, which would have only hurt me. “You ever heard of an earth giant working with a wight? Like…using its tomb as a safe-deposit box?”

“That would be strange,” Jack admitted. “Usually an earth giant just buries his stuff in…you know, the earth. Like, deep in the earth.”

I turned to Sam. “So why would Otis send us here? And how is this a good idea?”

Sam glanced around the chamber like she was trying to decide which of the twelve mummies to hide behind. “Look, maybe Otis was wrong. Maybe—maybe this was a wild-goose chase, but—”

“But we’re here now!” Jack said. “Aw, c’mon, guys. I’ll protect you! Besides, I can’t stand an unopened present. At least let me shake the coffin to guess what’s inside!”

Hearthstone made a chopping motion against his palm. Enough already.

From the inside pocket of his jacket, he produced a small leather pouch—his collection of runestones. He pulled out one I’d seen before:

“That’s dagaz,” I said. “We use that for opening doors in Valhalla. Are you sure—?”

Hearth’s expression stopped me. He didn’t need sign language to convey how he felt. He regretted this whole situation. He hated putting Blitzen in danger. But we were here now. We’d brought him along because he knew magic. He wanted to get this over with.

“Magnus,” Sam said, “you might want to step back.”

I did, positioning myself in front of Blitzen, just in case Blood River sprang out of the coffin samurai-style and went directly for the nearest dwarf.

Hearth knelt. He touched dagaz to the inscription. Instantly, the Blood River kenning ignited like a ring of gunpowder. Hearth backed away as the sarcophagus’s iron lid blew right off, hurtling past me and slamming into the wall. Before us stood a mummified king in a silver crown and silver armor, with a sheathed sword clasped in his hands.

“Wait for it,” I muttered.

Naturally, the corpse opened his eyes.

All in Favor of Slaughtering Magnus, Please Say Aye

WITH MOST zombies, you don’t expect conversation.

I figured King Mummy would say RARRRR! Or, at most, BRAINS! And then get down to the business of killing us.

I was not ready for “Thank you, mortals! I am in your debt!”

He stepped out of his coffin—a little unsteadily, since he was an emaciated corpse whose armor probably weighed more than he did—and did a tap dance of glee.