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

“I could heal you,” I offered.

Hrungnir curled his lip. “How typical of a weak, pathetic Frey-son. I welcome death! I will re-form from the icy abyss of Ginnungagap! And on the day of Ragnarok, I will find you on the field of Vigridr and crack your skull between my teeth!”

“Okay, then,” T.J. said. “Death it is! But first, the location of Kvasir’s Mead.”

“Heh.” Hrungnir gurgled more gray slip. “Very well. It won’t matter. You’ll never get past the guards. Go to Fl?m, in the old Norse land you call Norway. Take the train. You’ll see what you’re after quick enough.”

“Fl?m?” I got a mental image of a tasty caramel dessert. Then I remembered that was flan.

“That’s right,” Hrungnir said. “Now kill me, son of Tyr! Go on. Right in the heart, unless you are as weak-willed as your friend!”

Alex started to say, “T.J….”

“Wait,” I muttered.

Something was wrong. Hrungnir’s tone was too mocking, too eager. But I was slow to compute the problem. Before I could suggest we should kill the giant some other way, T.J. accepted Hrungnir’s final challenge.

He jabbed his bayonet into the giant’s chest. The point hit something inside with a hard clink!

“Ahh.” Hrungnir’s death gasp sounded almost smug.

“Hey, guys?” Jack’s weak voice called from over at the pharmacy. “Don’t pierce his heart, okay? Stone giants’ hearts explode.”

Alex’s eyes widened. “Hit the deck!”

KA-BLAM!

Shards of Hrungnir sprayed the square, breaking windows, destroying signs, and peppering brick walls.

My ears rang. The air smelled of flint sparks. Where the giant Hrungnir had lain, nothing remained but a smoking line of gravel.

I seemed unhurt. Alex looked okay. But T.J. knelt, groaning, with his hand cupped over his bleeding forehead.

“Let me see!” I rushed to his side, but the damage wasn’t as bad as I’d feared. A piece of shrapnel had embedded itself above his right eye—a triangular gray splinter like a flint exclamation point.

“Get it out!” he yelled.

I tried, but as soon as I pulled, T.J. howled in pain. I frowned. That made no medical sense. The shard couldn’t be that deep. There wasn’t even that much blood.

“Guys?” Alex said. “We have visitors.”

The locals were finally starting to come outside to check on the commotion, probably because Hrungnir’s exploding heart had shattered every window on the block.

“Can you walk?” I asked T.J.

“Yeah. Yeah, I think so.”

“Then let’s get you back to the ship. We’ll heal you there.”

I helped him to his feet, then went to retrieve Jack, who was still moaning about being covered in mud. I put him back into runestone form, which did not help my level of exhaustion. Alex knelt next to the remnants of Pottery Barn. She picked up their detached head, cradling it like an abandoned infant.

Then the three of us staggered back through York to find the Big Banana. I just hoped the water horses hadn’t sunk it along with our friends.





THE SHIP was still intact. Halfborn, Mallory, and Samirah looked like they’d paid a heavy price to keep it that way.

Halfborn’s left arm was in a sling. Mallory’s wild red hair had been shorn off at chin-level. Sam stood at the rail dripping wet, wringing out her magic hijab.

“Water horses?” I asked.

Halfborn shrugged. “Nothing we couldn’t handle. Half a dozen attacks since yesterday afternoon. About what I figured.”

“One pulled me into the river by my hair,” Mallory complained.

Halfborn grinned. “I think I gave you a pretty good haircut, considering I only had my battle-ax to work with. Let me tell you, Magnus, with the blade so close to her neck, I was tempted—”

“Shut up, oaf,” Mallory growled.

“Exactly my point,” said Halfborn. “But Samirah, now—you should’ve seen her. She was impressive.”

“It was nothing,” Sam muttered.

Mallory snorted. “Nothing? You got dragged under the river and came up riding a water horse. You mastered that beast. I’ve never heard of anyone who could do that.”

Samirah winced slightly. She gave her hijab another twist, as if she wanted to squeeze out the last drops of the experience. “Valkyries get on well with horses. That’s probably all it was.”

“Hmm.” Halfborn pointed at me. “What about you all? You’re alive, I see.”

We told him the story of our night in the pottery studio and our morning destroying King’s Square.

Mallory frowned at Alex, who was still covered in clay. “That would explain Fierro’s new coat of paint.”

“And the rock in T.J.’s head.” Halfborn leaned closer to inspect the shrapnel. T.J.’s forehead had stopped bleeding. The swelling was down. But for reasons unknown, the sliver of flint still refused to come out. Whenever I tried to pull it, T.J. yelped in pain. Fixed above his eyebrow, the little shard gave him a look of permanent surprise.

“Does it hurt?” Halfborn asked.

“Not anymore,” T.J. said sheepishly. “Not unless you try to remove it.”

“Hold on, then.” With his good hand, Halfborn rummaged through his belt pouch. He pulled out a box of matches, fumbled one free, then struck it against T.J.’s flint. The match burst into flames immediately.

“Hey!” T.J. complained.

“You have a new superpower, my friend!” Halfborn grinned. “That could be useful!”

“Right, enough of that,” Mallory said. “Glad you all survived, but did you get information from the giant?”

“Yeah,” Alex said, cradling the head of Pottery Barn. “Kvasir’s Mead is in Norway. Some place called Fl?m.”

The lit match slipped from Halfborn’s fingers and landed on the deck.

T.J. stomped out the flame. “You all right, big guy? You look like you’ve seen a draugr.”

An earthquake seemed to be happening under Halfborn’s whiskers. “Jorvik was bad enough,” he said. “Now Fl?m? What are the odds?”

“You know the place,” I guessed.

“I’m going below,” he muttered.

“Want me to heal that arm first?”

He shook his head miserably, as if he was quite used to living with pain. Then he made his way down the ladder.

T.J. turned to Mallory. “What was that about?”

“Don’t look at me,” she snapped. “I’m not his keeper.”

But there was a twinge of concern in her voice.

“Let’s get under way,” Samirah suggested. “I don’t want to be on this river any longer than we have to.”

On that, we all agreed. York was pretty. It had good fish and chips and at least one decent pottery studio, but I was ready to get out of there.