It took nearly three hours for Oliver to extricate himself from the fallout of the fight in Dietrich Marby’s home. The police, who arrived shortly after the paramedics, were especially irate that he had not responded to any of the emergency services operator’s requests for information, but Evelyn’s repeated assertions that he had saved her life dissuaded them from pressing him too hard for answers. After that, the ambulance had carried them both away to a local hospital, where the wound in Oliver’s arm had been cleaned, patched with liquid stitches, and he had been released into the custody of two waiting detectives. He had answered their questions in a cramped hospital conference room while sipping bitter coffee from an automated dispenser, answering in terse German as they questioned him in clipped English and smiling to himself each time he detected a gleam of frustration in their eyes. 

Oliver took a taxi to his hotel, a three star Regent located mere blocks from the Munich train station, and closed his eyes as the car threaded through late afternoon traffic. He allowed the events of the afternoon to play out behind his eyelids. He hadn’t even seen the bandages beneath the deep hood of the intruder’s cloak, let alone recognized a face, and the voice had been an unrecognizable rasp, but there had been something familiar about the intruder. Something in the turn of its body or the cadence of its guttural voice.

The taxi eased to a stop at the curb outside his hotel. Oliver paid the driver and hurried through the lobby and up to his room. The door locked behind him, Oliver shrugged out of his torn jacket, wincing as the stitches in his arm strained with the movement, and collapsed into a chair by the window. Outside and several floors below his window the fading sunlight had set the autumn leaves on fire. He gazed out at them for a while as his mind paced a slow spiral around the problem of the day. 

His fingers traced the edges of the cut in his leather jacket. It had been sliced cleanly, with no sign of tearing, except at the corners where he had stretched it in the hours since the fight. The blade had been extraordinarily sharp and the cloaked figure had been remarkably strong, if a little unbalanced by whatever injuries had caused him to bandage his face. There had been something eerily familiar about the stance of the figure as it stood silhouetted in the doorway, but Oliver couldn’t place it. He was accustomed to facing danger in his line of work, and to fighting for his life against a wide variety of foes, so it might take him days to recall the identity of the swordsman. And that was assuming that he hadn’t just fixated on some common feature of sword-wielding madmen. 

Oliver had come to Germany looking for clues in ancient manuscripts, but had now crossed paths with someone else who was seeking a specific document. Whether the intruder was a mad collector, a supernatural guardian, or something altogether stranger, he could not say, but Oliver could feel a jealous hunger rising up within him. It would be several days at least before he could return to the Marby residence to view the collection, and that was assuming that Evelyn was willing to help him again, so there was time to consider an alternative course.

He pulled his phone from the inside pocket of his jacket and tossed the jacket to the floor beside the chair. A few flicks and taps later and he was waiting impatiently for Hank to answer his phone.

“Did you find anything?” Hank asked, the moment he the call connected.

“Somebody is impatient,” Oliver said, smiling to himself. 

“I’m finally involved in one of your adventures, of course I’m impatient to see how it worked out. That, and I’ve got a few people over, so if we could get to the point...”

“Dinner and a movie at Hank’s place?”

“What else on a blustery Saturday evening? Tonight it’s ratatouille and Ratatouille.” Hank paused, as if he sensed Oliver’s wry smile over the cracking phone connection, then said, “Everyone had to bring their kids along this week, so we decided to... anyway, why am I defending my taste in films to you of all...” He blustered incoherently a few more times, then fell silent.

Oliver waited. 

“So, did you find any clues or not?” Hank demanded.

“No. I don’t want to say too much over the phone, but I’ll send my cousin an update and you can get the details from her. Listen, Hank, I’ve got another reason for contacting you now. I need your help with something.”

“Oh, what would that be?” The phone cut out as it squelched a loud creaking noise. Oliver could picture Hank settling his bulk into one of the heavy old wood and leather chairs in his library.

“I don’t know for sure yet, but I think this search just took an abrupt turn towards Wagner, and since I know you’re a great fan of his works, and already in the know on this particular quest, I thought that you could provide some background for me.”

“Certainly. What do you need?”

“Whatever you can get me about Wagner and German mythology.”

Hank spluttered and began to laugh, the hearty expulsions of mirth cutting out as his phone attempted to filter the volume. He laughed for so long that Oliver first rolled his eyes, then shook his head, then jumped to his feet in exasperation as he shouted, “Hank, get a hold of yourself. I just want a little help here.”

Hank stifled his laughter just long enough to say, “Oliver, you do realize...” Then he started laughing again. Oliver paced the hotel room a few times, then settled down on the foot of the bed and began to remove his boots while he waited for Hank to collect himself. As Oliver was pulling off his second boot Hank finally said, “Oliver, that’s like asking me for a brief summary of how Ansel Adams influenced landscape photographers, or what Stanley Kubrick had to do with American cinematography. It’s a really big question, Oliver.”

“I know that. Remember that I investigated the possibility of a shard being behind elements of Norse mythology years ago. I encountered Wagner’s works then, but considered them too modern to be worth my time. Now I’m rethinking that assessment.”

“So where should I start?”

“Anything you can give me on Wagner’s source material should be a good start, as well as information related to any particular obsessions of his.”

“Give me a few days. I must get back to my party tonight and I’m in the middle of a delicate Polaroid reconstruction project at the camera shop, but I should have something for you before long,” Hank said.

“Thanks. Just call Amber when you’re done and she’ll come by the shop to pick it up.”

“And you?”

“I’m going to Neuschwanstein castle.”

Oliver disconnected the call and switched to his Twitter app. He selected the secure account that he used for communicating with Amber while out in the field and send her a direct message: 

In Germany. Need you to transfer data from Hank to me at some point. New leads on the Norse shard.

It might take Amber some time to reply if she was busy, which was more often the case these days, but Oliver knew he could rely on her to reply. His cousin had grown less involved in his adventures since they had returned together from the jungles of South America. That quest that had been Oliver’s first, and Amber’s only, adventure to recover a relic, and it had had vastly different effects on the two cousins. Amber had returned with the mystery of her parents’ death resolved and a strong impulse to settle down into suburban comfort, while the deadly thrill of the journey had kindled a fiery hunger for exploration in Oliver and set him on his quest to recover the remaining shards. Since then Amber had been both Oliver’s contact in America when he went off on wild adventures across the globe and his touchstone for when a quest showed the potential of going overboard.

Oliver stepped into the cramped bathroom and cranked the shower to full heat, then began undressing. The stitches on his shoulder ached as he pulled his undershirt shirt over his head and, with frustrated glance at the bloodstained fabric, threw it into the trash can beside the bed. Normally he would have been more circumspect about disposing of bloodied, or otherwise suspicious, gear, but both his presence and injury during the attack at the Marby home were on record with the Munich police, so he wasn’t overly concerned about the maids reporting the discovery of a bloody shirt in his room. By the time he finished undressing steam was beginning to billow out of the bathroom. He checked his phone, still no message from Amber, and strode through the steam to wash the aches and filth of the day from his abused body.

Next Chapter: Neuschwanstein