The Ship of the Dead (Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard #3)

My first task was my favorite one—getting out of the way.

I scrambled right as the giant’s mallet slammed into a tree, smashing it to kindling. With a dry CRACK, T.J.’s rifle discharged. The giant roared in pain. He staggered backward, smoke streaming from his left eye, which was now black instead of amber.

“That was rude!” Hrungnir raised his mallet again, but T.J. circled to his blind side, calmly reloading. His second shot sparked off the giant’s nose.

Meanwhile, Mokkerkalfe lumbered forward, swinging his tiny arms, but Pottery Barn was quicker. (I wanted to credit the great work I’d done on their coil joints.) P.B. ducked to one side and came up behind Mokkerkalfe, slamming both vase-fists into his back.

Unfortunately, their fists sank into Mokkerkalfe’s soft gooey flesh. As Mokkerkalfe turned, trying to face his opponent, P.B. got yanked off their feet and dragged around like a ceramic tail.

“Let go!” Alex yelled. “Pottery Barn! Oh, meinfretr.”

She loosened her garrote, though how she could help without actually fighting, I wasn’t sure.

CRACK! T.J.’s musket ball ricocheted off the giant’s neck, shattering a second-story window. I was amazed the locals hadn’t already come out to investigate the commotion. Maybe there was a strong glamour at work. Or maybe the good people of York were used to early-morning Viking/giant smack-downs.

T.J. reloaded as the giant pressed him back.

“Stand still, little mortal!” roared Hrungnir. “I want to smash you!”

King’s Square was close quarters for a jotun. T.J. tried to stay on Hrungnir’s blind side, but the giant only needed one well-timed step or one lucky swipe to flatten T.J. into an infantry pancake.

Hrungnir swung his maul again. T.J. leaped aside just in time as the maul splintered a dozen tombstones, leaving a ten-feet-deep hole in the courtyard.

Meanwhile, Alex lashed out with her wire. She lassoed Pottery Barn’s legs and yanked them free. Unfortunately, she put a little too much muscle into it just as Mokkerkalfe swung in the same direction. With the excessive momentum, Pottery Barn went flying across the square and smashed through the window of a store offering payday loans.

Mokkerkalfe turned toward Alex. The clay man made a wet gurgling sound in his chest, like the growl of a carnivorous toad.

“Whoa there, boy,” Alex said. “I wasn’t actually fighting. I’m not your—”

GURGLE! Mokkerkalfe launched himself like a wrestler, more quickly than I would’ve thought possible, and Alex disappeared under three hundred pounds of wet clay.

“NO!” I screamed.

Before I could move or even process how to help Alex, T.J. screamed at the other end of the courtyard.

“HA!” Hrungnir raised his fist. Wrapped in his fingers, struggling helplessly, was Thomas Jefferson Jr.

“One squeeze,” the giant boasted, “and this contest is over!”

I stood paralyzed. I wanted to break into two parts, to become a duality like our ceramic warrior. But even if I could, I didn’t see how I could help either of my friends.

Then the giant tightened his fist, and T.J. howled in agony.





POTTERY BARN saved the day.

(And, no. That’s not a line I ever thought I would use.)

Our ceramic friend exploded from a third-story window above the payday loan office. They hurled themselves onto Hrungnir’s face, clamping their legs around the giant’s upper lip and whaling his nose with both their vase-fists.

“PFBAH! GET OFF!” Hrungnir staggered, releasing T.J., who landed in an unmoving heap.

Meanwhile, Mokkerkalfe struggled to get up, which must have been difficult with Alex Fierro imprinted on his chest. From beneath his weight, Alex groaned. Relief washed over me. At least she was alive and might stay that way for a few more seconds. Triage decision: I ran toward T.J., whose condition I wasn’t so optimistic about.

I knelt at his side, put my hand against his chest. I almost snatched my hand away again because the damage I sensed was so bad. A trickle of red etched the corner of his mouth like he’d been drinking Tizer—but I knew it wasn’t Tizer.

“Hang on, buddy,” I muttered. “I got you.”

I glanced over at Hrungnir, who was still stumbling around trying to grab Pottery Barn off his face. So far so good. At the other side of the square, Mokkerkalfe had peeled himself away from Alex and now stood over her, gurgling angrily and pounding his blobby fists together. Not so good.

I yanked the runestone from my neck chain and summoned Sumarbrander.

“Jack!” I yelled.

“What?” he yelled back.

“Defend Alex!”

“What?”

“But do it without actually fighting!”

“What?”

“Just keep that clay giant off her!”

“What?”

“Distract him. GO!”

I was glad he didn’t say what again, or I would’ve worried that my sword was going deaf.

Jack flew over to Mokkerkalfe, positioning himself between the clay man and Alex. “Hey, buddy!” Jack’s runes pulsed up and down his blade like equalizer lights. “You want to hear a story? A song? Wanna dance?”

While Mokkerkalfe struggled to comprehend the strange hallucination he was having, I returned my attention to T.J.

I put both hands against his sternum and summoned the power of Frey.

Sunlight spread across the blue wool fibers of his jacket. Warmth sank into his chest, knitting his broken ribs, mending his punctured lungs, un-flattening several internal organs that did not function well when they were flattened.

As my healing power flowed into Thomas Jefferson Jr., his memories backwashed into my mind. I saw his mother in a faded gingham dress, her hair prematurely gray, her face stretched thin from years of hard work and worry. She knelt in front of ten-year-old T.J., her hands tightly clasping his shoulders as if she were afraid he might blow away in a storm.

“Don’t you ever point that at a white man,” she scolded.

“Ma, it’s just a stick,” T.J. said. “I’m playing.”

“You don’t get to play,” she snapped. “You play-shoot at a white man with a stick, he’s going to real-shoot you back with a gun. I’m not losing another child, Thomas. You hear me?”

She shook him, trying to rattle the message into him.

A different image: T.J. as a teenager, reading a flyer posted on a brick wall by the wharf:


TO COLORED MEN

!FREEDOM! PROTECTION, PAY, AND A CALL TO MILITARY SERVICE!