'There are a few more around,' Gard said. 'But everyone's heard of that one.'
'You called the grendelkin a scion of Grendel,' I said. 'Am I to take it that you're a scion of the Geat?'
Gard smiled slightly. 'My family and the grendelkin's have a long history.'
'He called you a Chooser,' I said.
She shrugged again, and kept her enigmatic smile.
'Gard isn't your real name,' I said. 'Is it?'
'Of course not,' she replied.
I sipped some more of Mac's award-winning dark. 'You're a Valkyrie. A real one.'
Her expression was unreadable.
'I thought Valkyries mostly did pickups and deliveries,' I said. 'Choosing the best warriors from among the slain. Taking them off to Valhalla. Oh, and serving drinks there. Odin's virgin daughters, pouring mead for the warriors, partying until Ragnarok.'
Gard threw back her head and laughed. 'Virgin daughters.' She rose, shaking her head, and glanced at her broken arm again. Then she leaned down and kissed me on the mouth. Her lips were a sweet, hungry little fire of sensation, and I felt the kiss all the way to my toes-some places more than others, ahem.
She drew away slowly, her pale blue eyes shining. Then she winked at me and said, 'Don't believe everything you read, Dresden.' She turned to go, then paused to glance over her shoulder. 'Though, to be honest, sometimes he does like us to call him Daddy. I'm Sigrun.' I watched Sigrun go. Then I finished the last of the beer. Mouse rose expectantly, his tail wagging, and we set off for home.
DAY OFF
– from Blood Lite, edited by Kevin J. Anderson Takes place between Small Favor and Turn Coat
Kevin Anderson talked to me at NYCC and asked me if I'd be interested in participating in a new kind of anthology (for me, anyway) in which authors known for their work in supernatural and horror fiction tried their hands at comedy. I loved the idea.
Poor Dresden. I mean, I keep putting the weight of the world on the poor guy's shoulders-and I feel really bad about it. No, really. I'm serious. I feel awful, honestly.
Okay, well. Less 'awful' and more 'gleeful,' but you get the point. It's easy to torture Harry when there are master vampires and superghouls and ghosts and demons and ogres traipsing all over the scenery. But I found myself intrigued with the idea of making him suffer just as much frustration and embarrassment in a situation where his opponents and problems were relatively trivial.
I don't really know how other people reacted to poor Harry struggling to get to enjoy a day off work-but I thought it was pretty darned funny. The thief was examining another trapped doorway when I heard something- the tromp of approaching feet. The holy woman was in the middle of another sermon, about attentiveness or was in the middle of another sermon, about attentiveness or something, but I held up my hand for silence and she obliged. I could hear twenty sets of feet, maybe more.
I let out a low growl and reached for my sword. 'Company.'
'Easy, my son,' the holy woman said. 'We don't even know who it is yet.'
The ruined mausoleum was far enough off the beaten path to make it unlikely that anyone had just wandered in on us. The holy woman was dreaming if she thought the company might be friendly. A moment later they appeared-the local magistrate and two dozen of his thugs.
'Always with the corrupt government officials,' muttered the wizard from behind me. I glanced back at him and then looked for the thief. The nimble little minx was nowhere to be seen.
'You are trespassing!' boomed the magistrate. He had a big boomy voice. 'Leave this place immediately on pain of punishment by the Crown's law!'
'Sir!' replied the holy woman. 'Our mission here is of paramount importance. The writ we bear from your own liege requires you to render aid and assistance in this matter.'
'But not to violate the graves of my subjects!' he boomed some more. 'Begone! Before I unleash the nine fires of Atarak upon-'
'Enough talk!' I growled, and threw my heavy dagger at his chest.
Propelled by my massive thews, the dagger hit him two inches below his left nipple-a perfect heart shot. It struck with enough force to hurl him from his feet. His men howled with surprised fury.
I drew the huge sword from my back, let out a leonine roar, and charged the two dozen thugs.
'Enough talk!' I bellowed, and whipped the twenty-pound greatsword at the nearest target as if it were a wooden yardstick. He went down in a heap.
'Enough talk!' I howled, and kept swinging. I smashed through the next several thugs as if they were made of soft wax. Off to my left, the thief came out of nowhere and neatly sliced the Achilles tendons of another thug. The holy woman took a ready stance with her quarterstaff and chanted out a prayer to her deities at the top of her lungs.
The wizard shrieked, and a fireball whipped over my head, exploding twenty-one feet in front of me, then spread out in a perfect circle, like the shock wave of a nuke, burning and roasting thugs as it went and stopping a bare twelve inches shy of my nose.
'Oh, come on!' I said. 'It doesn't work like that!'
'What?' demanded the wizard.
'It doesn't work like that!' I insisted. 'Even if you call up fire with magic, it's still fire. It acts like fire. It expands in a sphere. And under a ceiling, that means it goes rushing much farther down hallways and tunnels. It doesn't just go twenty feet and then stop.'
'Fireballs used to work like that.' The wizard sighed. 'But do you know what a chore it is to calculate exactly how far those things will spread? I mean, it slows everything down.'
'It's simple math,' I said. 'And it's way better than the fire just spreading twenty feet regardless of what's around it. What, do fireballs carry tape measures or something?'
Billy the Werewolf sighed and put down his character sheet and his dice. 'Harry,' he protested gently, 'repeat after me: It's only a game.'
I folded my arms and frowned at him across his dining room table. It was littered with snacks, empty cans of pop, pieces of paper, and tiny model monsters and adventurers (including a massively thewed barbarian model for my character). Georgia, Billy's willowy brunette wife, sat at the table with us, as did the redheaded bombshell Andi, while lanky Kirby lurked behind several folding screens covered with fantasy art at the head of the table.
'I'm just saying,' I said, 'there's no reason the magic can't be portrayed at least a little more accurately, is there?'
'Again with this discussion.' Andi sighed. 'I mean, I know he's the actual wizard and all, but Christ.'
Kirby nodded glumly. 'It's like taking a physicist to a Star Trek movie.'
'Harry,' Georgia said firmly, 'you're doing it again.'
'Oh, no, I'm not!' I protested. 'All I'm saying is that-'
Georgia arched an eyebrow and gave me a steady look down her aquiline nose. 'You know the law, Dresden.'
'He who kills the cheer springs for beer,' chanted the rest of the table.
'Oh, bite me!' I muttered at them, but a grin was diluting my scowl as I dug out my wallet and tossed a twenty on the table.
'Okay,' Kirby said. 'Roll your fireball damage, Will.'
Billy slung out a double handful of square dice and said, 'Hah! One-point-two over median. Suck on that, henchmen!'
'They're all dead,' Kirby confirmed. 'We might as well break there until next week.'
'Crap,' I said. 'I barely got to hit anybody.'
'I only got to hit one!' Andi said.
Georgia shook her head. 'I didn't even get to finish casting my spell.'
