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Granuaile petted Oberon and coround, brushedon my part But I still think we should arach’s blade You can put it on your throwing knives if you get a chance to use the while we’re at it Your staff won’t be able to do etto the invisibility spell

"True But you still can’t do it all by yourself His hearing and sense of smell will be excellent We’ll need to provide a distraction for you if you’re going to sneak up on hi, shouldn’t it?"

"Let’s hope"

"Let’s also hope this goes better than the last ti to an unfortunate encounter with skinwalkers in Arizona

We ran errands after bidding farewell to Oberon We grabbed sos and shifted to a forest in Germany with plenty of wolfsbane--also known as monkshood and myriad other names There were species of it in the United States--even in Colorado near our cabin--but this species contained the iant retailers that sells luxury ca with more practical wares, we each had two knives of sufficient size to earn the notice of a wolf like Fenris We returned to our cabin in Colorado to distill the poison and prepare our blades Oberon was out hunting for his dinner, so we left hiether, which included auxiliary exercises that occurred to us along the way Afterward, I decided I had endured the beard long enough It had been so and even , but now I should be able to keep oatee

It was near ht in Sweden after that We decided to dress in black to pretend to be Celtic ninjas Coloves We both had our iron ahs on either side were newly poisoned knives; I had also poisoned Fragarach

"Ready?" I asked

"I don’t know Should we take so made no mention of such preparation It should be a quick operation We’ll ive us any?"

"Then we’ll steal froe of logistics fro sohtout in the snow in jeans and a T-shirt and not get all shivery"

"Sweet!"

We shifted to the northern shore of Vänern Lake, or rather close by it We were underneath the canopy of an evergreen forest, facing south, where the sht air A e fire with silhouetted figures nearby Casting night vision,on the beach in the darkness, arures, all dwarfs There was an ar as a signal

I startled as I turned ht next to me, painted so black I hadn’t seen it in the dark, was a strange,eapons It wasn’t of human manufacture I had almost run into it; thankfully, no one was inside to train one of its e of the trees and cast cae I couldn’t see Granuaile, so she had probably already cast her own cae or else her invisibility spell

"Do you see Freyja?" I whispered Her voice answered from my left

"I don’t knohat she looks like"

"She’ll be the tall one in this crowd"

"Ah Yes, she’s near the fire but not directly next to it A few ranks back Standing in a chariot"

I scanned near the fire until I found her "Okay Let’s sneak up and hail her If she betrays us, we take her hostage, go back to the trees, and shift away Stay invisible until we know it’s safe"

"Got it"

I wished I could cast Coyote’s spell that he called "clever stalking," which would muffle our footfalls, but we had to sih the crunchy sand, depending on wind and conversation and the clank of are

The Black Axes were ie Their shoulders and biceps were larger than those of h hair on theolden breastplates, sans ar at anything The Black Axes didn’t have shields but rather skaldic armor; their breastplates and helmets bore runes on them that most likely made them bulletproof Instead of a shield, they carried a sort of parrying axe in the left hand, with a sers The axe in the right hand had a large black scything blade, also inlaid with telltale skaldic sigils My arachs

Aside fron of their breastplates and helmets, the Black Axes covered the rest of their bodies with black launs and arrows at the shiny protected parts Ignore all the rest of us that you can’t see clearly anyway It was a heavy ht

A few of the Black Axes had beards spilling out from underneath their helmets onto their breastplates, but the majority of them did not That meant their hair was probably braided as well, and they would be no fans of ours if Fjalar had spread word ofLoki to Nidavellir

Granuaile and I were able to sidle up to Freyja only half detected We made occasional noises that caused a few curious helmets to turn in our direction, but they never saw us and dismissed the noise as made by another dwarf behind us

The Black Axes were packed pretty tightly around Freyja and her chariot, and we could get no closer than two ranks away It would e proble no choice, I hailed her Heads whipped around toward htened on axe handles