A Hackwith - The Library of the Unwritten

“My predecessor taught me.” Claire stared at the staff in her hand as if it were a snake. “But more for… recreation and training, not death by combat.”

“Oh, I would never kill you, lass.” Bjorn turned with a smile. “Just mightily embarrass you in front of all these fine, handsome Viking men.”

“No loss. I prefer my partners slightly less hirsute.”

“Like your pretty lad, there?” Bjorn gestured to Hero, who had his back to them. He was allowing Brevity to fiddle with the straps on his armor. He had abandoned the jacket and waistcoat for fine-scale mail that hung lightly on his chest and gleamed the same burnished bronze as his hair.

Claire turned back. “I also prefer my partners slightly less fictional. He’s a character. A book .”

“Looks real enough for me. But then there’s no accounting for taste.” Bjorn was in no hurry to turn his appreciative gaze away. Claire didn’t have time for the antics of a lecherous old bard. She located the notebook in her bag and pulled it out. She had begun making notations when Bjorn cleared his throat.

“No books in the ring.”

“I beg your pardon? I’m a librarian. You asked for a story, and this is where I keep my stories. I’ll carry your silly staff, but I’m keeping my notes.”

“That’s not how stories work here, lass. You’re not in your library anymore—here, the word is your voice. And your voice is your tale.” Bjorn flashed a grin. “The spoken word was the first kind of library, after all.”

Oral storytelling. She should have expected as much. It was awkward, dated, and entirely unreliable. Messy in every way she couldn’t stand. Unreliable narrators, the lot of them. In her opinion, there was a reason humanity had invented the written word, and that reason was progress. Claire ground her teeth. “That is a loose interpretation.”

“Is it?” Bjorn mildly met her glare. “Once, people memorized books’ worth of spoken words, songs, and sagas that contained all their history, traditions, stories, survival. The Arrernte called it their Dreaming.”

Bjorn knew his stuff. Claire was forced to remember that, for all his wild appearance, he was a former librarian. And had a longer tenure than her. She ceded the point. “I’m not a storyteller .”

“Then you can go back to your library.” Bjorn shrugged.

The crowd was increasing. Someone had procured a war horn, and its bleat was seeding a headache. Claire tossed the book on top of her bag in a huff. “You’re crude.”

“And you rely too much on those bits of paper. This is how it all started, you know.” Bjorn handed Claire a mug of a dark frothy liquid. When she bent her head, she caught a vague whiff of fire and chocolate. “Drink up.”

Up close, the smell nettled her nose with iron and honey. “What is this?”

“Mead of poetry,” Bjorn said a touch too lightly.

Claire searched her memory of half-remembered myths. Nothing in Valhalla’s stories was as simple as mead, and this place seemed exaggerated past even the original myths. “This isn’t… Kvasir’s blood?” The Norse had a tale about the mead of poetry . Blood extracted from a keen, all-knowing, and thoroughly murdered god. She gave it a repulsed look before taking a tentative sip. She could feel the magic begin to seep into her tongue. It tasted like bitter chocolate. “If I recall the lore right, a simple vial of this is adequate.”

“But then ye don’t have an excuse to drink.” Bjorn downed his portion in one gulp and wiped his beard. “No books, just a saga, a staff, and a swig. I’ll make a Norseman of you by the end of this, Librarian.”

“Just try not to fall on your head when I beat you.” Claire finished her mug and handed it back to him. “I still need answers.”

Bjorn’s laughter was as warm as their drink as he led the way into the arena.

BJORN ABANDONED CLAIRE AND Hero in the middle of the ring and disappeared to fetch Hero’s opponent. The tables and stands were already filling up with curious faces. Word of their spectacle had spread, and Valhalla’s residents were always ready for a fight. The arena bubbled with spilled mead and a lazy kind of bloodlust.

Claire ran her gaze over the crowd, locating Hell’s contingent at the table nearest the ring, easy enough to pick out by Brevity’s seafoam green hair. Brevity stood on the bench in order to throw Claire an exuberant thumbs-up sign. At least one of them was confident about their chances.

Claire’s toe found a divot in the packed dirt. She glanced at Hero. “You’re quite prepared, then?”

“I’ll do my heroic best not to embarrass you, warden.” Hero’s voice was dry. He shifted on the balls of his feet and didn’t move his gaze from where Bjorn had disappeared. “I’d see more to yourself. You don’t strike me as the battle-maiden type.”

“Librarians have their own way of competing. Though I admit… it’s been quite a while.” More than quite a while. More like since she became librarian three decades ago.

It’s not as if she’d had anyone to spar with. Brevity, being a muse, didn’t have the interest in classic literature most human unauthors did, and no assistant before her had progressed far enough in the training to make dueling relevant. Claire had been lax, and she wasn’t looking forward to Bjorn reminding her of that fact.

She pushed that thought away before it could unravel her nerves more than it already had. “I have to ask, Hero. Why?”

Hero appeared ready to force her to draw out the question—why had he volunteered? why was he risking this?—but his eyes slid past her face, and he shrugged. “It’s what I’m made for, isn’t it? Figured I might as well agree while I could still pretend you honored me with the choice. Besides, you’re not the only one with a reason to see this foolhardy mission through.”

His author. She was alive and would be caught up in this if Heaven and Hell truly decided to go to war. Claire put it together quickly, but Hero offered it with a smile just scraping the line of loathing. “Pure self-preservation.”

“Selfish heroism, then. I expected nothing less,” Claire said.

The ground began to shake. Hero’s grip tightened on his sword, Claire saw in her peripheral vision.

Out of the gloom swung a wall. Or what had to be a wall. A wall in the shape of a man. No, men didn’t grow that tall. A giant. Uther.

He was easily as large as Walter back home, Claire estimated. His shoulders were bare and as wide as Claire was tall. The warrior’s scarred face was occupied by a long yellow beard, knit with bones and feathers, below a gnarled nose. In one boulderlike hand, a wrecking ball of a maul lazed. The weapon glowed with a dark red stone.

Bjorn was dwarfed beside him and could only give the giant a pat on the elbow before separating.

Hero had gone very still beside her, and Claire glanced up. His face was blank and held the dread of a goose only now vaguely aware it was about to be made dinner.

She cleared her throat. “He’s not wearing much armor.” The warrior, in fact, wore more war paint and feathers than clothes from the waist up.

“Oh, good. I would hate to cause him a laundry bill when I inconsiderately die all over him.”

“What I mean is, if you’re fast enough, you have a good chance.”

“I don’t need tactical advice from an academic, thanks,” Hero snapped, and he glared steadily at the beast lumbering across the ring rather than look at Claire.

“Fine, be a fool. Heroes are good at that.” Claire turned with her staff to where Bjorn had taken up position. “But I’ve already stitched your life together once today. I’ve got the hand cramps to prove it, and I’d rather not do it again. So… just don’t die.”