“All right, I’ve stalled long enough,” I said, wincing. “Perun, if you push through my one arrow and break off the tip, I’ll do all three of yours.”
“Is deal,” he said. “Ready?”
“One thing. Can you tell if it’s going to come out where my tattoos are on the right side?”
He and Zhang Guo Lao both examined the angle of the arrow and determined that it would come out slightly in front of them on the stomach side.
“Good, that makes things a bit easier,” I said. The tats renewed themselves as part of my skin whenever I took my Immortali-Tea; they looked new instead of two thousand years old. But if they were torn completely, I’d need to get them touched up, and at this point that meant going to one of the Tuatha Dé Danann. No thanks.
Feeling the comfort of the earth underneath my feet, I asked Zhang Guo Lao if I could use one of his iron rods. He handed it over and I put it between my teeth, at which he blanched. Who knew he was a germophobe?
“Okay.” I nodded at Perun. “Do it.”
Yes, I cheated and dulled my pain receptors. You would too. I still felt a blazing stab, and the unspeakable discomfort of things tearing inside cannot be ignored, pain or no pain. This wasn’t simply hemorrhaging tissue; there were gastric acid and other toxic fluids loose. Without the earth’s help, it would have been a mortal wound.
We weren’t finished. Perun snapped off the arrowhead and I felt the twinge of it through my core. He did his best to clear away any splinters, and then I bit down hard on the iron rod as he yanked the shaft back through me.
Thank the Gods Below I didn’t have to deal with this while stranded on cement somewhere. The earth gave so much to me, and as I used its energy to bind my insides back together, I was reminded again that I still needed to help the earth heal itself in the Superstition Mountains. Every moment that it gave of its substance to help me renew myself only increased my debt.
After an indeterminate time, I became aware of an ache in my jaw and realized I still had my teeth clenched around a rod of iron. My companions were staring at me. I withdrew it from my mouth, now a bit slobbery, and offered it to Zhang Guo Lao with my thanks.
“Consider it a gift,” he said, a trifle horrified. “I will get a new one.”
I thanked him again and refocused on my healing, closing my eyes. When I opened them again, Perun’s arrows had been removed, and he was urging a giggling Zhang Guo Lao to have just one more shot of vodka with him as they sat on the boulders around the fire pit. And it was daytime.
“Where’s Leif?” I said. “Guys? Where’s Leif?”
“Druid speaks!” Perun gushed, throwing his hands up in the air. The growth underneath his arms was nearly as full as his beard. A gigantic smile split his hairy face, and he said, “We should have drink!”
“Honored Druid,” the immortal Zhang Guo Lao began, waving at me. He must have been deep in his cups, for this action caused him to slip off his boulder and fall backward, feet in the air. This set off Perun and he nearly fell over himself.
“Guys? Seriously. Where’s Leif?”
“Is fine,” Perun managed. “Is safe. We bury him behind you.” He pointed, and I turned to see three grave-shaped mounds of dirt. Perun’s voice was sober in my ears, hilarity gone: “We bury others also. Is okay?”
I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. “You buried Gunnar?”
“Da. You sleep standing up, could not wake, so we make us busy.”
Zhang Guo Lao raised himself up to a sitting position and waved for my attention. “Honored Druid, I have a question.”
“Yes?”
“I have a question,” he repeated.
“You said already,” Perun pointed out.
“Thank you for your attention. My question is this: When are you going to put on some clothes?”
I looked down and realized with some embarrassment that I’d left my clothes back in Asgard. It was precisely the reaction they’d been hoping for, and they clutched at their bellies and roared with unbridled mirth.
Chapter 28
Zhang Guo Lao took his leave near midday and walked east with his pack and fish drum. He offered to donate a robe to me before he left “as a public service,” but I found a spare set of clothes in Väinämöinen’s pack that would serve—a simple pair of pants and a tunic that I tied up with a length of rope, since I didn’t find a belt.
Perun agreed to help me transport Leif and Gunnar back to Tempe. We would have done something for Väinämöinen had we known where else to take him, but in the absence of better information, he had found his final resting place. We took turns saying a few words for him—inadequate for such a life—and bid him a somber farewell.
“Why do you think the Norse have not come here yet?” Perun asked. Now that it was just the two of us, we spoke Russian, in which he was far more fluent than I.
“They have funerals to conduct and a severe leadership crisis at this point,” I said. “And perhaps an identity crisis to deal with as well. Many of them have dedicated their very long lives to preparing for Ragnarok. Now they have undeniable evidence that it won’t happen as prophesied.”
“Yes, they will need a new purpose,” Perun said. “I see.”
“Beyond that, they have to use Bifrost to reach Midgard. They can’t shift planes the way I can. But since I blamed the dark elves and Bacchus, the Æsir will probably bother them first.”
Perun chuckled. “That was good. It will give us time to hide.”
“You’re going into hiding?”
“Yes, for long time.”
“Thunder gods don’t hide.”
The Russian shrugged. “I am not like Thor. I have the Russian depth of character. And I like to help people, not hurt them. Usually I help with vodka. You want some?”
“No, thanks, I don’t think that would be wise right now. I have a delicate digestive system at the moment.”
He beamed at me. “I will help some other way. Sleep and heal more. I will watch.”
Grateful for the chance to continue my recovery, I stretched out on the ground and dropped back into a healing trance. I still had a long way to go and I’d be on a liquid diet for a while, but nothing was leaking anymore and the acid was neutralized. I’d done very little about the wounds on the outside or the torn abdominal muscles, partly because they weren’t immediately dangerous and partly because they’d provide me a bit of safety when I had to face Hal. He had to know already that Gunnar was dead, because the alpha magic would have settled on his shoulders by now.
Perun woke me at sundown, and I felt much better inside. I might be able to concentrate on the muscle walls soon and devote some attention to a weak collarbone.
I asked the earth to move aside from the bodies of Gunnar and Leif. Leif didn’t look any better, but neither did he look any worse. Perun and I levered them up to a standing position, then the Russian summoned winds and bore us south to the forest where I could shift us to Tír na nÓg. Once safely on the Fae plane, I did not wish to waste another day shifting only part of the way for Leif’s benefit. It was morning in Arizona, so if we wanted to travel there immediately, we’d need a way to protect his body from the sun. The solution was to build a coffin without any nails.
Trees are plentiful in Tír na nÓg. The trick is to find one that isn’t vital to shifting planes through some tether or other. We had to walk a mile before I found a young ash tree suitable for harvest. Perun laid about with his axe, cut rough planks, and I bound them together magically, making sure that there were no gaps for sunlight to leak through. We built one for Gunnar too.
Once ready, we shifted all the way back to the Aravaipa Canyon Wilderness.
“I have never been here,” Perun said, looking at the stream and the bare sycamores along the bank with pale, fingerlike branches scraping the sky. “It is beautiful.”
I agreed and cast camouflage on both of the coffins and us. Once we got to populated areas, people would probably feel the wind of our passage and see a blur overhead, but I couldn’t bring myself to get too concerned; I figured they’d blame it on aliens or secret military experiments or the mushrooms they ate and that would be the end of it. But I was careful to cast this using magic stored in my bear charm and not draw anything from the earth. I had a theory that the Hammers of God could track those draws somehow and thus pinpoint my location. It would explain how they knew about most of my activities—but not how they had found me at Rúla Búla. That mystery aside, I was going to be operating on a reduced magic diet as a general policy now that I was back in Arizona. There would be too many people—and perhaps too many gods—looking for me here, and I didn’t want to give them any clues.
“Where are we going?” Perun asked.
I didn’t want to fly back to Tempe under these circumstances. Any magic, including Perun’s, was likely to draw attention now. So I named a town about seventy miles from Tempe and hoped I could arrange a ninja operation from there. “A copper-mining town called Globe, northwest of here. I know the perfect place. You can drop me off and I’ll buy you a Big Boy.”
“I am not fond of children.”
“Don’t worry, it’s a drink.”
We reached Globe a little after eleven in the morning by riding the winds, and I directed Perun to an alley behind Broad Street downtown—specifically the alley behind a sports bar called the Huddle. It wasn’t an urban alley full of rats and moldering dumpsters but rather a wide sort of throughway with parking and a couple of trees. Asphalt laid down decades ago was deteriorating, crumbling to gravel and allowing weeds to poke through.
The Huddle had a back patio constructed specifically for smokers; it faced an unused parking lot on the other side of the alley, currently fenced off with chain link. A single trash can sat in front of that fence, enjoying the shade of a willow acacia tree. I had Perun set us down there, and we stacked the coffins on top of each other about five feet away from the trash can. No one saw us do this, because the Huddle isn’t full of smokers at eleven in the morning. The smokers tend to come out at night.
“I need to make a couple of calls in there,” I said, gesturing at the back entrance of the bar, “and then we can enjoy our Big Boys.” I’d chosen this place precisely because it had a back entrance; those come in handy sometimes.
I dispelled our camouflage but left it on the coffins. After a bit of conversation, Perun was convinced that he didn’t need to wear his fur cloak into an American bar around lunchtime. Besides, we were in Arizona now: It was sixty degrees outside in December. He removed the fur to reveal another layer of fur underneath—his own hairy arms and shoulders sprouting from his thin sleeveless shirt. I grinned as I camouflaged his cloak on top of the coffins. Americans have a visceral fear of body hair—a fact exploited by hippies, bikers, and construction foremen—so Perun’s appearance would likely scare everyone in the bar, including the bikers.
After I reminded Perun to speak English again, we entered the Huddle and I threw a wave at Gabby, the owner. She had a quick smile, a ready laugh, and the supreme confidence that she could handle anything. I watched her size up Perun, who was probably two feet taller than she was and weighed twice as much, and savored the moment when I saw she had decided she could take him, even though he was holding Odin’s spear.
“Hey, Atticus, it’s been a while. Good to see you again,” she said. My familiarity with her and her place of business was based on several hunting excursions I’d made in this vicinity with Oberon. She pointed at our weapons. “You need to put those behind the bar.”
“No problem.” I carefully leaned the swords and spear up against the bottled-beer fridge.
“What’ll it be?”
“Two Big Boys full of Bud.” She had a fully stocked bar, complete with a large mirror behind it, but most people came in to enjoy the thirty-four-ounce frozen mugs of beer. Perun and I pulled up stools and avoided eye contact with the locals. They were staring at us and trying to decide if they’d pick a fight if Gabby weren’t around. After a minute I felt their eyes slide away, probably because they reasoned that anyone as aggressively unshaven as Perun was thoroughly dangerous.
Gabby gave us our beers and Perun eyed his uncertainly. “This is Big Boy?”
“Correct.”
“Is not vodka,” he observed.
“Right. You’re in an American bar, so to fit in you have to drink this.”
Perun glanced around the bar at the other patrons, who were mostly wearing jeans and T-shirts and shaved responsibly. “Do you really think I can fit in here?”
“Not a chance. But it’s your duty to make the effort. Cheers.” I clinked his mug and started chugging. Perun took a few cold swallows and then set down the mug abruptly, shuddering as some of it dribbled down his beard.
“Americans like this?” he asked.
“They say they do. Bestselling drink in the States.”
“Should I give them my respect or my pity?”
“It’s a dilemma, isn’t it?” I said. “Hey, Gabby, mind if I borrow your phone?”
I had my cell phone, but there was no way I was going to turn it on at this point; it was most likely dead anyway. Gabby handed the bar’s phone to me, and I punched in a memorized number while Perun took in the sights of the bar. There was plenty to see, starting with the mounted jackalope wearing a pair of sunglasses near the bottled-beer fridge. There was also a mounted javelina head staring at us with glass eyes, because dead animals are practically mandatory objets d’art in Arizona bars. The centerpiece of the place was a pure carven teak sculpture of an Indian motorcycle, resting on an old bartop that was hung from the ceiling by chains. Two pool tables in the back room were currently awaiting players, and an old Lynyrd Skynyrd song moaned on the jukebox in the corner opposite the bar.