The Ship of the Dead by Rick Riordan

I DID NOTaccept his apology.

Neither did my friends. They formed a protective ring around me and began slashing through the enemy ranks, slowly shuffling toward the starboard side of the ship.

Still hopping on one leg, Mallory Keen scooped up her evil walnut and dropped it into her pocket, then demonstrated her dual-knife-wielding prowess by stabbing her blades into Captain Hrym’s crotch.

Halfborn and T.J. fought like killing machines. I didn’t want to give myself credit for their gusto, but the way they plowed through troops of draugr was awe-inspiring, almost as if they were determined to be as good as I’d described them—as if my words had made them larger while making Loki smaller.

“Follow me!” Sam yelled, her spear of light blasting a path to starboard. Alex swung her garrote like a whip, lopping off the heads of any giants who came too close.

I was afraid Blitzen might get trampled in the crush, but Hearthstone knelt and let the dwarf climb onto his shoulders. Okay, that was a new one. I didn’t think Hearth had the physical strength to carry Blitz, who was short but stout and hardly a little kid. Yet Hearth managed, and from the unquestioning way Blitz accepted the ride, I got the feeling they’d done this before.

Blitz threw neckties and expand-o-ducks like Mardi Gras beads, sowing terror in the enemy’s ranks. Meanwhile Hearth lobbed a familiar rune toward the foredeck:

Ehwaz, the rune of the steed, exploded with golden light. Suddenly, floating in the air above us, was our old friend Stanley the eight-legged horse.

Stanley surveyed the chaos, whinnied as if to say Fight scene cameo? Okay. Then he leaped into the fray, fly-galloping on the skulls of jotuns and generally causing havoc.

Jack, buzzing angrily, flew to my side. “I have a blade to grind with you, señor.”

“What?” I ducked as a spear flew over my head.

“You give this beautiful speech,” Jack said. “And who do you leave out? Really?”

Jack hilt-punched a giant so hard the poor guy flew backward, domino-toppling a line of zombie cavalry.

I gulped down my mortification. How could I have forgotten my sword? Jack hated being forgotten.

“Jack, you were my secret weapon!” I said.

“You said that about Alex!”

“Uh, I mean you were my ace in the hole! I was saving the best for, you know, emergency poetry!”

“A likely story!” He chopped through the nearest clump of draugr like a Vitamix.

“I—I’ll get Bragi the god of poetry to personally write an epic about you!” I blurted out, regretting the promise as soon as I made it. “You’re the best sword ever! Honestly!”

“An epic, huh?” He glowed a brighter shade of red, or maybe that was all the gore dripping from his blade. “By Bragi, huh?”

“Absolutely!” I said. “Now let’s get out of here. Show me your best stuff so, you know, I can describe it to Bragi later.”

“Hmph.” Jack whirled toward a metropolitan giant, snicker-snacking him into natty pieces. “I suppose I can do that.”

He went to work, slashing our enemies like a frantic Black Friday shopper rifling through clothes racks. “No, no, no!” Jack yelled. “I don’t like you! Get out of my way! You’re ugly!”

Soon our little cluster of heroes reached the starboard rail. Unfortunately, the drop over the side was four hundred feet at least, straight into the icy gray waters. My stomach twisted. This was twice as long a fall as the one I’d flubbed from the mainmast of Old Ironsides.

“We’ll die if we jump,” Mallory noted.

The enemy horde pressed us against the rail. No matter how well we fought, our enemies wouldn’t even have to hit us to kill us now. Their sheer numbers would flatten us or push us overboard.

I pulled out my yellow handkerchief. “I can summon Mikillgulr, the way we did in Aegir’s hall.”

“Except we’re falling down now,” Alex said. “Not floating up. And there’s no Njord to protect us.”

“She’s right,” Blitz yelled, throwing a generous handful of neckties to his admirers. “Even if the ship doesn’t break apart on impact, all our bones will.”

Sam peered over the side. “And even if we survived, those guns would blow our ship out of the water.”

“Guns?” I followed her gaze. I hadn’t noticed them before, probably because the ports had been closed, but now the side of Naglfar’s hull bristled with rows of cannon muzzles.

“That’s not fair,” I said. “Vikings didn’t have cannons. How come Naglfar gets cannons?”

T.J. jabbed a zombie with his bayonet. “I’ll be sure to lodge a complaint with the Ragnarok Rules Committee. But right now, whatever we’re going to do, we need to do it!”

“Agreed!” Halfborn shouted, his ax slicing through a pack of skeletal wolves.

“I’ve got a plan,” Sam announced. “You’re not going to like it.”

“I love it!” Blitz cried. “What is it?”

“Jump,” Sam said.

Alex ducked a javelin. “But the whole breaking-every-bone-in-our-bodies thing…?”

“No time to explain,” Sam said. “Jump!”

When your Valkyrie tells you to jump, you jump. I was the first one over the side. I tried to remember what Percy had told me—skydiver, eagle, arrow, butt—though I knew that falling from this height, none of it would matter.

I hit the water with a mighty floom. I had died enough times to know what to expect—a sudden overwhelming surge of pain followed by complete darkness. But that didn’t happen. Instead, I bobbed to the surface, gasping and shivering but completely unharmed. I realized something was buoying me up.

The water churned and bubbled around me like I’d fallen into a Jacuzzi. Between my legs, the current felt almost solid, as if I was sitting astride a creature sculptured from the sea. Directly in front of me, a head rose from the waves—a strong neck of gray water, a mane of frost, a majestic snout spewing plumes of icy mist from its nostrils. I was riding a vatnavaettir—a water horse.

My friends plunged into the water, too, each dropping right onto the back of a waiting horse spirit. The vatnavaettir whinnied and bucked as spears rained down around us.

“Let’s move!” Sam swooped down with her blazing spear and settled onto the back of the lead water horse. “Toward the mouth of the bay!”

The horses raced away from the Ship of the Dead. Giants and draugr screamed in outrage. Spears and arrows splashed in the water. Cannons boomed. Shells exploded near enough to spray us with water, but the vatnavaettir were faster and more maneuverable than any ship. They zigged and zagged, rocketing across the bay with incredible speed.

Jack flew up beside me. “Hey, señor, did you see that one disembowelment I did?”

“Yeah,” I said. “It was amazing!”

“And the way I cut off that jotun’s limbs?”

“Right!”

“I hope you were taking notes for Bragi’s epic.”

“Absolutely!” I made a mental note to start taking more mental notes.

A different equine figure zoomed above us—Stanley the eight-legged horse, checking that we were okay. He whinnied like Okay, guess we’re done here? Have a nice day!

Then he shot toward the steel gray clouds.

The water horse was surprisingly warm, like a living animal, which kept my legs and crotch from freezing completely in the frigid water. Still, I remembered Mallory’s and Halfborn’s stories about vatnavaettir dragging their victims to the bottom of the sea. How was Samirah controlling them? If the herd decided to take a dive, we were all dead.

Yet we kept racing forward, toward the gap in the glaciers at the mouth of the bay. Already I could see the water beginning to refreeze, the ice floes thickening and hardening. Summer in Niflheim, which lasted about twelve minutes, was now over.

Behind us, the boom of cannons carried over the water, but the ship Naglfar remained at its moorings. I could only hope, since we had their admiral in a walnut, the ship would be forced to stay there.

We shot out of the bay into the frosty sea, our water horses picking us a path through the broken ice floes. Then we turned south toward the much safer, monster-infested open waters of Jotunheim.