Kevin Hearne - Hammered

“You are the northman who has been asking questions about blood drinkers,” he said. It was not a question; it was identification.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“I am no one of importance. I represent a gentleman—a scholar—who may be able to answer your questions. Would you like to meet him?”

I peered at him suspiciously. “Is this an invitation to my death? I have seen people frown at me and heard the muttered oaths. The Christians, especially, do not like me speaking of this. Are you one of them? You have a group of men outside ready to silence me forever?”

“Hardly,” the small man snorted. “This gentleman merely wishes conversation. I think you might survive.”

“Why does he not come here and talk to me? Tell him where I am.”

“He already knows where you are. That is why I am here. You must forgive him; he is somewhat of a recluse. He is obsessed with converting his scrolls to books. Have you heard of these?”

“Yes, I have seen books. The Christian monks and priests have them.”

“Precisely. But they have only one book, do they not? My employer has many in his library and is making more. He has learned how to make paper from the Arabs, who learned it from the Chinese. Now he employs the literate in copying his scrolls and turning them into books.”

“Why not simply copy the scrolls?”

“Books are sturdier. Easier to travel with. Are you able to read?”

I shrugged. “I know the word tavern in three languages. That probably does not count.”

The small man chuckled. “No, but that is a good word to know. Perhaps there is much you can learn from my employer. Will you not return with me to his study?”

“This is not an ambush?” I asked again.

He finished his drink and toyed with his mustache before answering. “I will not raise a hand against you. Neither will anyone I’ve employed, nor anyone my employer has hired. Good enough?”

“What about your employer?”

“I cannot speak for him. He is a … violent defender of knowledge, shall we say. But I believe he merely wishes to speak with you. That is all I can say.”

“Hmm. What is your employer’s name?”

“He will give it to you if he wishes.”

“Very well. I will go with you.” We settled our tabs with the barkeep and walked into a softly moonlit evening in the Little Quarter. The small man did not offer light conversation but kept silent. I kept my eyes moving and a hand on my sword hilt. After three blocks we stopped at the gate of a walled compound. The guards there recognized the small man.

“I have brought him,” he said, and the gates were opened. Beyond them was an impressive house—impressive for the time, anyway—its façade lit by torches in the brick courtyard in which we currently walked. There was a fountain. Flower beds. Architecture. This bookbinder was a wealthy man.

My guide led me into a candlelit foyer. The floors were marble and covered with Persian rugs. Tapestries hung on the walls. It was the sort of wealth one saw only when raiding a monastery, and it exceeded anything in my personal experience. I caught but a few glimpses of the rooms on that floor, because the mustachioed man led me down a flight of stairs into the basement. There was a hallway with periodic candle sconces and several doors that I could see. We stopped at the first one and my guide knocked.

“Come,” a voice said from the other side.

We entered a room lined entirely with bookshelves. Of course it was a library, but I had never seen such a room before. A long worktable scattered with loose pages, scraps of leather, and strange tools led my eyes to a pale man standing at the end of it. Though it was winter and quite chilly in the basement—and I was grateful for the warmth provided by my cloak—this man seemed unaffected by the cold. He wore rich purple silk imported from Asia; the fabric was new to me, but I recognized immediately that it was far superior to linen and wool. He was examining a book he’d apparently just pulled from a wooden vise.

“Ah, you must be the northman. Magnificent,” he said.

“You must be the mysterious scholar,” I replied. “I am Leif Helgarson.”

“It is my pleasure to meet you.” He placed his book gently on the table and inspected me frankly. “Tall, blond, and Viking. Excellent.”

I could have noted at that point that he was none of these, but I had no wish to be rude. Yet. “And what shall I call you?” I asked.

He paused to consider, communicating that any name he gave me would not be his true one. “You may call me Björn.”

“That is not your name.”

“No. It is what you may call me. My name has a high price.”

“You paid nothing for mine,” I said.

“Untrue. You have cost me much already with your ceaseless pursuit of a blood drinker in Prague.” He shifted his gaze to my guide. “Thank you. You may leave us.” After the unnamed servant closed the door behind him, the unnamed scholar smiled thinly and resumed. “Tell me, Mr. Helgarson, why you are so keen to find a creature who drinks nothing but blood.”

“Are you such a one?”

He waved my question away. “More about me later. Tell me about you. Your curiosity has piqued mine.”

There was no point in crafting evasions. Either he could help me or he could not. “I have heard that these creatures possess great strength and long life. I need that to avenge my family. Thor killed them, and so he needs killing in return. But I will never be successful without the time and means to do it.”

“You want to kill a god?” he said, raising an eyebrow.

“Not just any god. Thor.”

“And thus you want to become one of these creatures?”

“Yes.”

The scholar studied me and rolled his tongue around in his mouth. Abruptly, he laughed. “That is a new one, I must admit. I give you credit for novelty. So you are not a Christian?”

“No.”

“Are you aware that the Christians believe these creatures to be damned—or even demons?”

“Yes.”

“Because you know that you must die to become one of these creatures and then hope you rise from the dead?”

“I have heard that, yes.”

“Tell me, Viking, what would you suffer for the cause of vengeance? What atrocities would you commit in the name of revenge?”

I paused to consider. “If it brought me closer to my goal, I suppose I would suffer anything, commit most any crime.”

“Most any?”

“I have … no stomach for harming the young.”

This brought a wry smile to the scholar’s face. “Because they are innocent?”

“No, it is not that. I have killed innocent men and women along with the corrupted. Whatever they are when their doom falls, they are what the Norns have made them, and I am merely the instrument of their end. But children … are incomplete. I suppose the Norns do not wish to finish the ones who die, but then, neither do I, if you see what I mean.”

“Interesting. You dislike leaving things undone.”

“Precisely. And slaying Thor is something that must be done.”

He said mockingly, “Do not the Norns have something planned for him? A battle with a serpent, I believe?”

“I will figure something out. But, first, I need time.”

“So single-minded! You wish to subvert fate to your own will. That will truly take some figuring. I can see that you have trained your body to dominate others with the sword. Can you train your mind to dominate with the word?”