Then I had to concentrate my attention on the first two draugar that Oberon had knocked down. After a few moments of disorientation, they did not lumber to their feet so much as dissolve into mist and re-form again — except that when they re-formed, they were standing up instead of lying prone. I was still behind them and gaining fast.
<That’s how they showed up,> Oberon explained. <They kind of rose up out of the rock, like steam, and then, blam, they’re blueberry death on the march.>
Let’s see if they can go all misty on a sword blade, I said. Iron hurt them but wasn’t always fatal, from what I’d heard. This was the first time I’d ever run into draugar. Though I’m sure Hel had other forces at her command, draugar would be the bulk of her army. They wore heavy helmets with chain ventails to protect their necks; it was low-cost stuff but enough to prevent easy decapitation. Otherwise they wore nothing but the ragged remnants of tunics and breeches that they had died in long ago. White bone shone through here and there where the blue necrotized flesh had torn or rotted away.
I came in from behind and hacked at the arm of the draugr on the right, expecting the blade to shear through fairly easily, but it sank into flesh and bone and got stuck as if it was lodged in soft wood. Caught by surprise, the draugr jerked away, and suddenly I was disarmed, Moralltach dangling impotently from the arm of this corpse. The Fae magic began to work, the blue flesh turning black, but it only made the creature shudder. Its flesh was already necrotic, the creature already dead, so the enchantment was unable to kill it again.
“I miss Fragarach,” I said, as both draugar turned to face me. Empty eye sockets and gaping skeletal smiles grimaced at me as they lurched forward. The one I’d hacked at made no effort to wrench the sword out of its arm. The arm was swelling, sealing the blade in if anything.
Can you knock down the blue one and buy me some time? I asked Oberon. I need to take care of this black one first.
<Easy,> Oberon said. He was behind them now. Juicing up my speed and strength, I charged the blackened draugr, who opened his arms wide to welcome me. Oberon charged the blue guy, and as he leapt up onto his opponent’s back, I dove down and to my right, wincing as the rock tore at my skin. My dive put me next to the draugr’s legs and, bracing myself with my hands and forearms, I spun around to kick the back of its knees; it crashed down heavily onto its back, right next to me. Its left elbow rammed into my back ribs and drove all the breath out of my lungs, but I was thrilled to see the hilt of Moralltach hit the ground first on its other side: That impact forced the sword to pop out of the thing’s arm and fall backward. Before the creature could decide to turn into mist, I snaked my left arm across its throat and then pulled with all of my might as I tried to fill my lungs again. It flailed at me, putting that left elbow to good use, but I wasn’t letting go. A couple of cracking vertebrae, a sudden lack of tension, and I had torn its head from the body. I rose with it, gasping, and located the blue draugr not five yards away, newly re-formed out of mist after Oberon had knocked him down. I threw the head of his buddy at him and it caught him in the face; he staggered backward a couple of paces. That allowed me time to locate Moralltach and retrieve it. As I set myself to meet the draugr, I heard a massive bellow to my right. I risked a quick glance toward the sound and saw the most incredible possession I’ve ever seen.
Frank Chischilly was suddenly unbelievably strong, because he held what must have been a two-ton boulder above his head with one hand. As I watched, he jumped high into the air with it, one of those super anime leaps that are wholly unnecessary but completely awesome, and then came down with that boulder in his hand like he was dunking a basketball — a two-ton sandstone basketball that he slammed onto the head of the third draugr. The creature just disappeared under that rock, and Frank crouched down to land on top. If he’d been in the movies, he would have stayed there and risen slowly, heroically, as the dust cleared, but he leapt right down off that boulder and charged the last draugr, who was coming for me. Frank’s shirt strained at the buttons as muscles he didn’t have before threatened to burst out. His eyes were completely white and glowed a bit. I switched my vision to the magical spectrum, and Frank didn’t have that cute little white line in his aura anymore; he was almost entirely made of white magic now, at godlike levels. He whipped around his right arm in a backhand swing at the draugr’s head, and when his fist connected, it was like he had teed off on the fourth hole. The head sailed away into the north sky, in the direction that Hel had run, and the dead blue corpse sank to the ground. Frank roared at it, and the veins on his trunk-size neck stood out; the turquoise stone of his bolo tie snapped off the cord and went zinging away, and his massive quivering pecs reminded me of Lou Ferrigno’s. His opinion of the draugr established, he turned in a circle, searching for more foes. He looked faintly disappointed not to find any more — Hel was gone — and those glowing eyes examined us again for an uncomfortable few seconds, to make sure we weren’t legal targets. And then he began to deflate, the light winked out of his eyes, and he coughed once, violently, before slumping into a faint. Coyote darted in quickly to catch him; he was a frail old man again.
Chapter 6
“Okay, Coy — Mr. Benally, I mean — what the fuck just happened?”
“I should ask you the same thing, Mr. Collins!” Coyote snarled. “Who was that lady and what were those things?”
“Tell me about Frank first. Is he going to be okay?”
“Yeah, he’ll be all right,” Coyote said, the anger in his voice modulating to regret. Frank’s chest was still moving up and down. “Wished he hadn’t of done that, though. He ain’t gonna get another shot, and I was kinda countin’ on him to use it on somethin’ else.”
“What’d he do?”
“He called Changing Woman and told her we had monsters here. Let himself be a vessel, see? So she sent her son, Monster Slayer, to help us out, a onetime limited engagement.” So that had been a god inside him. An aptly named one.
Granuaile’s footsteps approached from the south. “I’m assuming it’s safe now? Ugh,” she said, looking at the headless corpses. “What are those things?”
“They’re sort of like zombies on Red Bull with a little bit of ghost mixed in,” I said.
Frank moaned and his eyes snapped open. Then he closed them again and raised a hand to his head, saying something in Navajo that made Coyote laugh. He must have a killer headache. Coyote helped him up to a sitting position and patted him companionably on the back.