Take it, she said softly, pressing it to my hands. When you are ready, call me.
We came to this house with its roomy garage and dripping old shingles so I’d have time to focus and find the troll mother.
Too ragging bad I don’t know what I’m doing.
Making plans has never been my strength, gathering intelligence and resources never a priority. I want to be the gun fired, the arrow cast, not the general. The information we have is scattered and doesn’t seem to fit any design. Why was the troll mother in Ohiyo at all? What was there, and why hasn’t she shown herself again after so clearly appearing to the tipster who called? The one thing nobody has reported in days is any greater mountain trolls. We don’t even know if the influx of lesser-troll sightings has anything to do with the troll mother, though for my wager it must. It’s all connected by choices and consequences.
My best hope is that Baldur has been arranging to get Soren and me into the Mjolnir Institute, which tracks herd movement via satellite. Theoretically, a huge beast like her moving out of her territory should impact prey migration or leave some other widespread sign that their computers and tracking equipment can pick up on.
Rathi’s come for lunch both days, mostly to keep my spirits up while I wait. To keep me from running off half-cocked. I must admit it’s something I’m prone to do—I’ve already threatened to go immediately back to Montreal if Baldur doesn’t get me into the institute soon—and so I humor Rathi. Together we compared the vivid poetry of Valtheow’s Lament with The Song of Beowulf. The former was composed by a Valkyrie named Christina a hundred and fifty years ago, a version of Beowulf from Valtheow’s perspective. It’s so much fantasy, but we spend hours poring over the two poems, marking the differences, most of which can be written off as the fifteen hundred years between compositions.
For Rathi, I mark all the changes I remember Unferth made when he recited The Song of Beowulf for me in Canadia. In particular I describe the language shifts and bridges between dialect and rhyme that I remember.
And I remember I cried when Unferth recited the verses about Beowulf battling Grendel’s mother, when she died. If I shut my eyes I can almost hear his voice, hear the rush of the engine so many months ago, when it all began.
Someday soon, I swear to myself, I’ll find her. She’ll show her tusks again, and I’ll be there. The nightmares will end, and I can put all of it to rest.
I close the newspaper and fold it, then drop it onto the damp ground. I draw my rune scar into the condensation on the side of my iced coffee. It haunts me every night, carved into the troll mother’s dream hand, too.
Captain Darius pushes open the screen door and walks softly down concrete stairs to me. He bows shallowly. “I’m going out,” he says. The announcement is unnecessary, as he’s not in uniform but jeans and a plain blue T-shirt. His tattoo, untarnished by the trimmed Frankish beard around his mouth, will give his identity away if it’s noticed, but his uniform would guarantee it and we’re supposed to be as discreet as possible. We discovered yesterday, when I ventured out myself with Sharkman, that an interweave magazine is willing to pay a lot for my whereabouts. Sharkman discouraged the individual who shouted at us from collecting.
“What do we need?”
“Sharkman says he’ll break all the windows if we don’t have mead tonight.”
I sigh. “He should go be wild in the Old Quarter, get it out of his system.” I wish I could. Being pent up in this house makes my blood burn, too.
Darius almost smiles. “There’s not enough alcohol or sex or battle in the world to get it out of Sharkman’s system. But I’ll take the mead out of his pay.”
After he leaves, I gather up the paper and my empty glass and head inside. The walls shake and there’s an arrhythmic pounding from the heavy bag Thebes acquired and drilled up into one of the ceiling beams in the defunct dining room. To distract myself I change into exercise clothes and join them. Sharkman works the bag while Thebes goes over some of the hand-to-hand techniques they’ve been teaching me. The worn hardwood floor is smooth under my toes, and natural light streams in through the bay window. A fan creates a false breeze against the heavy heat, but I’m sweating and thoroughly diverted in no time. It’s so hot, unlike the frozen practice ground on Vinland. I’m loose and alive, and I relish the blank blaze that comes over me. Their frenzy stretches out from them, tingling my skin, reminding me of that belonging I felt when we consumed madness together at the funeral.
If only when I stopped the feeling of completeness would stay. Instead, it drips off me like sweat.
Sharkman shoves my shoulder. “Why the frown?” He grins in my face.
“I’m jealous,” I say, baring my teeth back at him.
“Oh, you don’t have to be, pretty Valkyrie.” He presses nearer to me, backing me up until my heels touch the wall. Heat envelops me. He’s bare-chested, skin flush from energy. “You can have everything I have.”
With a suddenly dry mouth, I lower my gaze to the row of eight horizontal spears tattooed down his sternum.
Sharkman tilts my chin up and puts his lips a breath from mine. The torch rune spins in his right eye. “I will let you make the first prick, ink your line across my chest,” he murmurs. I sway nearer, thinking, Yes, this is real distraction, and kiss him with an open mouth.
“I guess you’re not ready to go,” Soren says from the entryway.
I stop moving, and Sharkman growls from low in his chest as he pushes off the wall. He stalks away without greeting Soren, snapping his T-shirt up off the floor. We hear him take the stairs hard.
Thebes shrugs at me from the floor, where he’s clearly been going through a round of sit-ups.
And Soren says, “Sorry.”
I touch my hot mouth and blink slowly. My body feels like it’s melting and going rigid at the same time. “Ah, no, it’s all right, I’ll … shower.”
The pipes scream upstairs as Sharkman turns on the water. I roll my eyes at the ceiling and think, Maybe I should wait.
“We’re supposed to be there at one and it’s an hour drive,” Soren adds.
“Odd-eye!” I crack to attention. “The Mjolnir Institute! He got us in finally.”
We go into the kitchen and I fill a water glass from the squeaky tap. Soren sits at the small round breakfast table, sunlight streaming through the fluffy curtains behind his head and casting his face in shadow. There’s a black cloth covering his right forearm, like a sock with the foot cut out. It must be protecting the new tattoo he said Baldur was taking him to get. I hop onto the counter and guzzle half the water. It tastes like rust and I’m still so hot. What am I doing with Sharkman?
Whatever you want, apparently, Unferth mutters.
Soren must be thinking the same thing. “Do you love him?” he says, eyes narrowing in confusion.
I laugh. “Love? Odd-eye, Soren, what has that got to do with it?”
He frowns. I suddenly remember the rumpled, pretty Lady of Youth I met, and the plain way he talks about her, the yearning when he stumbles over her forbidden name. I haven’t told him yet that I saw her. I want to, but we’ve barely been alone in this little house. This afternoon, though, we will be for a few hours as we drive to the Mjolnir Institute. Time for him to hear me, and deal with it however he needs to.
“He’s very … berserker,” Soren says by way of explaining his discomfort, but I know it’s more than that. Sharkman makes no bones about his dislike of Soren. Last night when I mentioned the institute, Sharkman said, If you can rely on the Sun’s rag-boy, and Darius sent him away from the table like a child.