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CHAPTER FIFTEEN

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Doors out the back of the great hall led to a garden maze that buzzed with swarms of honeybees and the fragrant scent of flowers in full bloom. Pebbled pathways wound between hedgerows that were shaped with laser-sharp precision, leading to a collection of small fountains and statues that peeked between walls of green shrubbery like shy animals. The sky overhead was pearly blue, fading to cobalt in the west. The silver crescent of the moon hung overhead.

“Wasn’t it already night back in the castle?” Chesa asked.

“It’s always dusk here. Something about the capital ‘E’ Empire, I think,” Clarence said. “Unless it’s raining. You can always tell his mood by the rain.”

“Prone to depression?” I asked.

“Exactly the opposite. The madman seems happier when it rains. Here we are! Percy!” Clarence stomped toward a bush that was shivering by the edge of the path. His approach startled the bush, which leapt up from its planting and scurried away, like a pheasant flushed from . . . well, itself. “Percy! It’s me! Stop being a boob!”

The bush paused in its retreat, though not in its shivering. A thin face emerged from the foliage, itself made up largely of bent twigs and misplaced leaves, with two round eyes as round and as white as the moon. The face blinked at Clarence several times, then revealed itself to be in possession of a smile, though a timid one.

“Clarence!” the face said. “You shouldn’t sneak up on a man like that! Still got the nerves from your last visit! Is he . . .” The face, obviously belonging to Percipept Humboldt-Hastings IV, narrowed suddenly, and his eyes darted around our company. “Is he here?”

“He’s back at the castle,” Clarence said soothingly. “I promise, there won’t be a repeat of that incident.”

“Bloody well hope,” Percy said, then emerged from the bush, which proved to be a kind of portable shed made of woven vines, just large enough for a very thin man capable of folding himself into a very small ball, should the need arise. Which was precisely what Percy happened to be. From narrow shoulders to bony chest, and limbs that seemed too thin to support their own weight, Percy was every inch the traditional ghast, except for the fact that he seemed very much alive and willing to smile. He was wearing a tweed body suit with more pockets than the most enthusiastic janitor could imagine, and a pair of rubber galoshes. His hands were caked in mud, which did not prevent him from offering a handshake to Clarence. The knight demured.

“What’s with the shack, Percy?” Clarence asked, nodding to the woven shed. “Expecting an air raid?”

“Garden gnomes,” Percy answered. “Been lingering ever since that thing with the fountain.” He looked us over, nodding to Tembo, squinting at Chesa, smiling brilliantly at me and Greg. “One of the fountains started spouting blood. Damned arterial, it was. Thought it might be a witch thing, but Clarence assured me it was just an aberration. Had gnomes ever since. Nasty buggers.”

“Garden gnomes?” Chesa asked. “Fat little fellows with the pointy hats?”

“Aye, the same. Ambushed me in the topiary maze, first time I saw them. Teeth like razor wire, and as crafty as mad foxes.” Percy shivered, rubbing his wide hands together. Flakes of dried mud tumbled to the ground. “Been staying in ever since. But the petunias needed replanting, and they weren’t going to do it themselves, were they?”

“Well, I assure you, friend. You will be safe from garden gnomes in our company,” Gregory said, his tone dismissive. “My sword is guard enough against a fat baby with a novelty spade.”

“Garden gnomes are an extrapolation of certain Scottish legends,” Tembo said quietly. “Redcaps, their hats stained that way by soaking them in the blood of their victims. If there is an infestation of the creatures, we should seek shelter. They will easily be the match of anything we saw in Valhalla.”

“Valhalla?” Percy said. “I thought maybe it was happening again. Bloody headaches, and the smell of blood in my nostrils.” He swallowed, a grand gesture that somehow incorporated his entire body. “So is this it, Clarence?”

“You are safe, Percy,” Clarence said, patting his friend on the shoulder. “But there are things we must discuss. Your cottage?”

“Right this way,” Percy said, abandoning his shed and whatever petunias needed planting, as he led the way. He walked with a long, scissoring gait, hands firmly in his pockets. “Couldn’t be a social visit, could it? Couldn’t just be dropping by for tea. Has to be bloody Valhalla!”

“So there’s no tea?” Clarence asked.

“Of course there’s tea!” Percy snapped. “What am I, a barbarian?”

We made our way to a cozy-looking cottage, tucked behind a low wall that contained another garden, this one a little wilder and, somehow, more natural than the well-manicured landscape we had just left behind. The place reminded me of my domain, without all the fear and darkness and dogs the size of office buildings. Percy bustled us inside, then disappeared into the kitchen.

“Are you sure this is wise?” Bethany asked. “Hiding a zombie in your backyard?”

“Hasn’t been a problem so far. Occasional gnomes, dryads, the odd revenant. Nothing I can’t handle. Though this business with the valkyries—” He fell silent as Percy burst into the room, overburdened with tea cups, kettles, delicate plates of cake and oddly shaped sandwiches, and lace doilies that looked out of place in the hands of the gardener. We sat back in our plush chairs as Percy set out the meal on the coffee table, bustling back and forth as he arranged plates and poured cups of tea. I watched this with growing horror. It seemed possible that my mother, with her commemorative tea sets and tins of butter shortbread, could very well be some kind of British zombie.

“There we are, here we go, that’s just right, and one for you. Milk? Sugar?” Percy mumbled as he worked his way around the circle. “The sandwiches are liverwurst and pickle, touch of mayonnaise. The fish sandwiches are over there. The cookies have been basted in linseed oil and licorice. And these . . .” He plucked up a small cake that had been frosted to look like a rose, regarding it curiously. “I can’t remember. Rutabaga? Bamboo? I lose track, sometimes.”

“I think you’re using the wrong words to describe—” I scooped up a sandwich and bit into it. The acidic broth of boiled pickles and overripe cottage cheese bit into my tongue, rushing all the way to my nose before I could spit it out. “Nope. That’s precisely what these things are.”

“You can take the Brit out of the zombie, but you can never get the zombie out of the Brit,” Clarence said, daintily pushing his plate of frog-mash cakes away. “He hasn’t eaten anything in a long time. Forgets how it’s supposed to go. But the tea is still excellent.”

“Yes, yes, the tea is always perfect,” Percy said, apparently unfazed at having mistakenly poisoned his guests with pickle sandwiches. He swept the cozy off the kettle. “We will always have tea.”

What he had, unfortunately, was a bleached skull, stuffed to the eyeholes with dry leaves and twigs and moss. Percy stared at it for a long heartbeat, then threw the cozy across the room.

“It’s the bloody gnomes!” he yelled.

“Maybe we should just get to the matter at hand,” Tembo said briskly.

“Probably for the best,” Clarence agreed. “Percy, we need to talk to you about something.”

“I really don’t know how they got into the house,” Percy said. He collapsed into one of the free chairs, head in both his hands, staring at the skull. “I have salt on the windows and sprigs of horseradish at the door. Is that right? I can’t very well salt the door, can I?”

“Percy, forget about the gnomes for a minute, will you?” Clarence said. “Something has happened. Something very serious.” That got Percy’s attention, though it seemed a great effort to draw his gaze away from the ruined tea. “This is the rest of Knight Watch. They’ve just come from Valhalla.”

“Yes, I know. I knew you were coming,” Percy said. “I could feel it return.”

“Return?”

“The sword. Yesterday afternoon. I was out among the lilies, preparing them for winter. It’s never really winter here, but still . . .” His voice trailed off. He poked at the skull, then stood up, collecting untouched plates. “Anyway, I felt it come back. First time in years. Decades? How long has it been, Clarence?”

“Decades, at least. Honestly I’m not sure. Time isn’t something I keep track of.” Clarence slid forward on his seat, the upholstery squeaking under his chain-mail pants. “So you felt the sword return?”

“He couldn’t have. It’s still in Valhalla. Or at least it was, until this morning,” Chesa said.

“How do we know time moves normally here? He could have felt it leaving Valhalla. Or he could have sensed the Totenshrieker trying to break into the Unreal at the Ren-Yay-Ssaince Faire. Either way, we already knew it was back,” I said.

“So it’s true. I was hoping I was just imagining things.” Percy deflated, putting the plates in danger of falling from his hands. Bethany stood and smoothly relieved him of his burden of plate and kettle and skull. He let them go without seeming to realize they were gone. She disappeared into the kitchen. Percy collapsed onto the divan. “So this is it. You’ve come to put me down.”

“No one is here to put you anywhere,” Clarence said, quickly put his hand on Gregory, who already had his sword half out of the scabbard. “Just because the sword is back in play doesn’t mean you’re about to lose your will.”

“Perhaps it’s better if you did,” Percy said miserably. “You have no idea what it’s like, the lot of you. Waking up every morning with the memory of last night’s death still in your mind. The taste of your last victim still in your mouth. Ready to kill again. Anxious to kill again.” He looked up at Clarence with pathetic eyes, his long, thin face drawn sharply downward. “They’ll do it again. They’ll put me under the leash, me and all the rest of them. And I can’t face it.”

“That’s why we’re here, Percy. To prevent that from happening,” Clarence said, laying a comforting hand on the thin zombie’s shoulder. “But we need your help.”

“As we understand this, there are two components to this zombie thing,” I said. “The first, the sword, is already in play—”

“‘Already in play.’” Bethany snorted. “What are you, Rast, an operator operating operations now? Is this a debrief? Are we gonna go tactical?”

“I do not understand any of these references,” Tembo said.

“Just . . . focus for a second,” I said. “The point is that the bad guys already have the sword, and someone to wield it. But without the other bit, that sword is dangerous, just not as dangerous.” There was silence, and I turned to Tembo to confirm. “Do I have that right?”

“Yes. The sword can raise the local dead, but without the Tears of Freya, they are limited in what they can do,” Tembo answered. “The grand army of the dead raised in the war will remain in Folksvangr, at peace, waiting for Ragnarok.”

“At peace, except for you, Percy,” Clarence said. “You’re the only connection we have to the Tears.”

“Then . . . shouldn’t I stay here? Where the valkyries can’t find me?” Percy asked, shrinking deeper into the divan. “Wouldn’t that be best for everyone involved?”

“Listen, Percy, I understand how frightening this is,” I said, leaning down in front of him. “But sometimes you have to stand up and be counted. Sometimes you have to—”

“Spare me your pleasantries, Yank,” Percy said. “I rode one of Hobart’s funnies on Sword Beach under a hail of gunfire. I fought my way through Ouistreham, crawled through the blood of better men than you, killed better men than you. Thought I was going to get through it, and then . . .” He chuckled, a sharp sound, at odds with his mood. “And then a man with a bloody SWORD walked out of a shattered patisserie and killed every one of my friends. I put enough lead into him to drown a whale, but he kept coming. Drove that sword right through my heart.” He blinked rapidly, though no tears formed in his eyes. “I thought that was it. Thought I was dead. Then I woke up, and that’s when the nightmare started. So if you need me to go out there, don’t ask me to be brave about it. I’ve been brave. All courage got me was this half-life, and gnomes in the garden.”

We were silent for a long moment. Finally, Clarence cleared his throat and pulled Percy to his feet.

“We wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important, Percy. We don’t want this to happen to anyone else. And the only way we can do that is with your help.”

“Yes, alright, whatever. The petunias will keep. Probably safer out there than it is in here, anyway,” Percy said. “At least there aren’t any garden gnomes in the real world.”


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