Valhalla Virus by Nick Harrow (best management books of all time TXT) 📕

it touched her flesh. Bridget didn’t take her eyes away from the axe as it spun through the air. She grabbed Arthur’s wrist, dug her heels in, and pushed backward with all the strength she could muster.

The thrown battle axe spun through the air in a golden blur. Its blade sang as it slammed into Arthur’s outstretched arm and severed it. With a wild grin, Bridget grabbed the axe’s haft before it could fall away.

Arthur slammed his clenched fist into the side of Bridget’s head. The blow knocked her from the platform, and her body flew over the crowd of jötnar around the platform, blood streaming from her lips. But even as the white light faded from her eyes, Bridget focused all of her strength and wrenched Arthur’s dead fingers from around her throat. She hurled the lifeless limb toward Gunnar.

The jarl surged forward, desperate to reach Draupnir before the jötnar snatched it away. This was his chance to end the ritual and stop Hyrrokkin from sending her armies swarming into the ruins of Vegas.

If he failed, though, the jarl would have a front-row seat to the end of the world.

Chapter 26

THE JÖTNAR SURGED TOWARD Gunnar, a wall of screaming faces, whipping blades, and thrashing horns. One after another they fell before his spear, heedless of their wounds, eager only to stop him from reaching his goal. Hyrrokkin’s mad eyes stared back at him from every face as she pushed her minions beyond the limits of sanity. Black claws seized the edges of the jarl’s armor, only to be snapped or cut off as the jarl dragged himself forward in a desperate rush to catch Arthur’s severed arm before it vanished into the crowd.

Mimi’s voice split the air in a banshee’s wail. She sang a song of destruction as her blades hacked into the jötnar. The völva was far faster than the monsters she faced, so nimble she slid under their swiping weapons and leapt over their savage kicks. An enormous jötunn tried to grab her with outstretched arms, but she drove her sword into its stomach, pulled herself up to drive the second weapon through its heart, then scrambled onto its shoulder to make a spinning leap over the blades thrust at her. She vanished from Gunnar’s sight, but her song went on as she plunged back into the crowd behind her blades.

The bodyguard was no match for his partner’s agility, but he was far stronger and taller. Inspired by her acrobatic escape from the crowd, he rammed the tip of his spear through a jötunn’s thigh and used the weapon to vault into the air. He ripped Gungnir out of the beast he’d stabbed and thrust it out in front of him.

The enchanted weapon impaled Arthur’s severed forearm a split second before one of the jötnar could snatch Draupnir. With a howl of victory, Gunnar pulled the haft back and grabbed his prize. He tore Arthur’s finger away from the rest of the hand, and the golden ring fell into his palm. The bodyguard closed his enormous fist around the relic as he reached the end of his vault and crashed into the jötnar crowd.

The savage beasts went wild when he landed amongst them. They stomped, howled, and hammered at Gunnar with their weapons. The air reeked of their filthy bodies and the wretched, sulfurous smoke of their fires. The jarl could scarcely breathe from the miasma, and his head swam with the effort of surviving the mosh pit from hell.

Gunnar rose to his knees and rammed his spear through the guts of a jötunn. He hammered his clenched fist into the groin of another. He was so close to victory, but he needed a few more seconds and space to inscribe the blood rune on his arm.

The jötnar wouldn’t give it to him. They crushed in around him in a relentless tide, driven by Hyrrokkin’s rage and fear. “You are finished,” her voice howled from a dozen throats. “You will go no further, pawn of Odin.”

There was nowhere for the jarl to escape to, no way to carve a path through the writhing ring of flesh, horns, and blades that surrounded him. For a moment, he considered drawing on the power he’d used in the Luxor. But activating that vision had weakened the völva. With both Bridget and Mimi locked in battle with the jötnar, he couldn’t afford to do that.

A crystalline arrow shrieked through the air next to Gunnar’s head and caught a jötunn in the eye. The monster pitched back into the crowd, pushing its allies back a few inches. Another arrow found its mark, then another, and another. Ray’s battle cry pierced the din, as clear as a hunting raptor’s call.

Mimi emerged from the mob to Gunnar’s left, and Bridget from his right. The wounded völva give him a lopsided grin, her split lips oozing blood as her battle axe lopped off jötnar limbs and heads.

“Do it!” she shouted, velvet light pouring from the dot on her forehead. “This is the moment. I have foreseen it!”

Gunnar rammed his spear’s tip into the ground, smeared blood from his wounds onto his fingertips, and began drawing the blood rune. First an uppercase Y with the center stroke extended up between the forks. Then a diamond, sharp and angular, drawn with the Y’s stem bisecting it. The runes Algiz and Inguz, runes of healing and growth.

Nothing happened.

“What the fuck!” Gunnar roared. “Why is it—”

“Put it on!” Mimi shouted.

Gunnar had been so caught up in the heat of battle he hadn’t even considered that. He slipped the golden band around his right ring finger and clenched his fist.

The hamingja they’d stolen from the jötnar rushed into Draupnir and erupted in a circle of devastation. Blood and bodies flew into the air, and the jötnar died screaming. The corrupted runes etched into the bones scattered around Arthur’s base went up like fireworks, exploding in sprays of blackened shards and green flame.

The shamans gathered around the fire wailed