“What do you hope to give the boy? A sense of accomplishment?” She started toward them, Göll turning to face her. “How long is it you imagine they will sit idle? Do you imagine I’m some valkyrie repellent?”
“Training is slow work. I won’t hear criticism of how I perform it from one of Hel’s animals.”
Vár was unimpressed by the comparison. She didn’t seem likely to start a fight outright, but Erik didn’t want to wait to find out how far they were willing to go.
“What do you mean?” He looked over to Göll. “What does she mean?”
“I’d gladly show you.”
“No.” Göll’s protest was immediate. “No, I won’t have you laying a finger on him.”
Vár snarled. “When did it become your say, valkyrie?”
“And if you kill him?”
“It’d be far worse for me than him if I was fool enough to do it.”
They’d largely forgotten about him until he interjected. “Fine. I might as well learn to fight someone human. Or, was human.”
Vár smiled. “Near enough.” She looked at Göll. “Happy with that?”
Göll relented with gritted teeth and walked maybe a dozen paces away before turning back to them. The glow of her spear was more than enough of a message that she didn’t trust Vár. Trust wasn’t really something Erik felt like considering at the moment. There was a vast ocean of questionable motive between him and either of the two in the empty lot with him.
“Pick up your sword if you want.” Vár was stretching her arms, backing away from him.
He did and readied himself. “Okay. Show me what it is I’m missing.”
Vár smiled.
There was a pale blur across his vision and he felt his stomach compress. All at once Vár appeared in front of him, her fist buried in his stomach. His feet left the ground as the image reached his brain, but the center of the punch was low in his gut and that traveled out behind him faster than his face. He could see the rough concrete of the lot rushing past below him. His arms hit first, dragging the rest of his body down. He slid sideways and rolled, finally coming to a stop thirty feet from where he’d stood with a feeling like his intestines had exploded.
Göll rushed over to him, kneeling down at his side and pulling his hands away from his stomach. He realized he was screaming sometime after Göll put her hands on his gut, pressing to see that everything was intact. She stood, turning to Vár to yell at her. Erik could hear none of what they were saying over the sound of blood rushing through his ears. He could hardly see through the water pooling in his eyes.
The food he had eaten exiting his mouth at speed was enough to draw their attention. Vár came over and squatted by him.
“That is what you are missing. Her softness will make you a victim. Understand that.”
Göll came up, shouting, telling Vár to leave him be and she went back to kneeling beside him.
“You’ll be fine.” She put a hand on his arm. “This is not how you are meant to die.”
He spent hours lying on the pavement, motionless except for the occasional involuntary spasm. It was sunup when he managed to move again, even then it was only to sit up. Göll stood beside him the entire time, watching. Vár had returned to her spot at the edge of the yard. It was mid-morning when he finally stood himself up.
“You must not rush these things, Erik.”
He smiled, almost laughing before he felt the pain in his stomach. “No, I asked for it. Very literally.”
The walk back to the motel was slow and excruciating. Even small steps up an incline were enough to weaken his knees to the point of collapsing. Then it was another ten minutes dragging himself up. He’d refused any help, trying his best to save some measure of dignity. He regretted it as he rolled on the lumpy bed.
Vár came in a few minutes after he’d gotten himself onto the bed and rubbed her strange medicine onto his stomach and the places the skin had been removed from his arms. It burned fairly horribly for a minute but subsided. There must have been a decent amount of guilt in her somewhere since she quietly insisted on handling lunch before leaving the room.
Göll stood beside the bed rather than near the window, but she still kept her attention focused toward the outside.
“She was wrong to do that. No living human could stand against a valkyrie.”
He wanted to ask why she was bothering to teach him then, but the only outcome he imagined was her returning to cold and silent.
“She is a child, unable to understand the difference between teaching and training. I had not sought to teach you what it is to fight a valkyrie.”
She was quiet after that for the better part of a half hour. The salve was beginning to numb the damage done to his stomach. Moving was not outside the realm of possibility, it felt like. He sat himself up in the bed and Göll turned to look at him.
“You’ll only irritate your wounds that way.”
“Ehh.” He waved a dismissive hand at her. “This stuff is pretty magical. Maybe actually magical. I mean, my hand is healed up and that was pretty severe.” He tried to take a deep breath but ended up coughing. The pain broke through the numbness when he did and he grabbed at his stomach. “Learning experience,” he croaked.
Erik rolled his head back against the wall behind him, waiting for the pain to calm. When it did he adjusted himself on the thin pillows that were beneath his back.
“So, you can’t tell me how I die?” He received the quiet he expected when the question formed in his head. “Why not? Oh! Do you not really know?”
He was disappointed. After his grievous wound, Erik was convinced she’d offer up a little more than normal. He’d underestimated her devotion to the job title. Or maybe overestimated her kindness. Both were possible.
“What do you think Vár’s going to bring us to eat?”
“Poison.”
It was so unfair of her. She stone-faced him for two days and then dropped a joke after his stomach had been destroyed. Erik couldn’t hold back the laughter. The salve had only half-numbed his stomach but the pain was enough to stop him.
“Why? Why would you do it to me, Göll?” He sucked in a deep breath. “Oh maaan. Ugh.”
She hadn’t even turned around to look at the damage she’d brought on.
“Tell me you at least smiled at my suffering.”
“I’ll tell you nothing of the sort.”
Erik smiled.
Göll ran to the window before Erik heard a familiar hiss. It was louder than it had been in his apartment. The sound of concrete shattering came next and he could see the room shake as the wave rippled under them. Göll ran to the door and whipped it open, a hissing sound like the others coming from her back as she left the room.
The salve had done its job and, though Erik hardly trusted it, he found his feet underneath him without much in the way of pain. He ran to the door, looking out. Hild and Thrúd stood in a small crater in the parking lot. They wore armor now, matching Göll’s. He heard Göll speak to the blonde. She was taller with sharper features than her brown-haired partner.
“Hild, this is fight without honor. He is meant to have a month. Why is it always this way when I have chosen?”
Hild ignored her. Erik saw her mouth move, but couldn’t hear her from where they were. A pair of blurred lines flew in opposite directions. The line that had been Hild crashed against Göll and flew up into the sky. Thrúd had continued on toward the far side of the lot, chasing Vár who wouldn’t meet her head on as the other two had done.
Hild came back down, readying another charge, but her eyes found Erik standing by the doorway. She flew at him and on pure instinct he flattened himself against the ground. She plunged through the wall behind him, sliding on her feet into the bed in the next room. It barely seemed to slow her, crumpling and flipping away from the force of her body. He remembered how h
is fist had felt running into Göll. It hadn’t been the armor he realized.
Göll appeared in front of him, throwing him to the side just as Hild flew headlong at him. He saw a glowing short sword in her hand before a wave of heat and pressure forced him to close his eyes. Göll caught Hild at full force and slid back, dragging deep lines through the concrete as she went.
Hild fled, keeping herself outside of a sweep of Göll’s weapon. As her opponent landed a dozen yards away on the open parking lot, Göll’s weapon shifted to a hammer on a medium staff and Hild’s did the same.
Without looking at him, Göll shouted, “Get to the covering. Go!”
There was a small outcrop from the building for cars to park under while they checked in. Erik spun himself over and ran for it as fast as he could. He’d made it just under the edge when Vár landed beside him, sliding on bare feet.
“Fun, isn’t it? Exciting, even! Ha!” She was manic, voice higher and faster. A blur was coming from the far side of the covering. “Die well!”
Vár smiled as she said it and leapt back, forcing Thrúd to give chase up and over the covering. A half second later, the valkyrie came crashing down through the covering, staring at Erik. She’d remembered her quarry was not one of the girl she’d been chasing.
“Look, I get how this is supposed to go, but—”
Vár appeared behind him as Thrúd charged. She spun him to the side, out of harm’s way. Thrúd wasted no time stopping and doubling back, sending chunks of the driveway up into the side of the motel. Vár pushed the back of his knees and leaned him back. She frowned down at him. Thrúd turned but did not charge again. She’d missed twice and there was plain exasperation on her face.
“It seems they want you more than me.” Vár yanked him up to his feet. “I’ll help. Try not to move too much on your own.”
He could hear the sounds of fighting across the parking lot as Thrúd charged at him. Vár pulled him out of the way, but only barely.
“What use is my effort if you won’t even try to strike one?”
Erik was in a panic. “How the hell and I supposed to punch that?”
Vár let out an annoyed sigh and moved herself in front of him. “A different method, then. Clench your fist and raise your elbow.”
Thrúd was wary. She shifted her weapon to a short sword and paced back and forth a few times.
“Ha! Look, Erik. The valkyrie is scared of a few humans.”
Vár’s barb had been enough. Thrúd charged them at speed, screaming in a rage. The sword she’d aimed at his chest did not connect, but he felt a hand push the elbow he had cocked and ready. His fist came around, pulling his shoulder along behind it, and planted squarely into the side of Thrúd’s face. He felt the bones collapse as a pain rolled up his arm. He saw the skin compress behind the force.
Thrúd stomped the ground, stopping herself. She stood upright, letting her sword arm fall as her other hand came up to her lip. Erik saw Göll and Hild stop and stare from their places across the parking lot. A shimmering trickle of red came up and over Thrúd’s lip, silver flakes in a pool of rose blood.
“Oh my.” Vár had moved behind him. “That will do very, very nicely.”
He heard Göll scream something as he felt a prick in the center of his back. The pain came as the dark grey, immaculate blade pushed its way through his chest. Erik tried to exhale and the lung she’d pierced collapsed. His body spasmed as it realized something had gone horribly wrong. The spasm wrenched him to the side and the blade moved effortlessly sideways, pulling more of his insides apart. Vár pulled the blade out of him. Blood rushed out of the hole and down the front of his body. He dropped to his knees and slumped over, all his strength gone.
“No! Not like this!” Göll shrieked the words, but she was behind him and he couldn’t see her face. He felt his heart shudder and stop and as the world became a blur, he saw Vár flee into the night.
chapter|5
Erik shot up to his knees, sucking in a breath as fast as his lungs could manage. He slapped at his chest, front and back, frantically feeling for blood, but there was nothing wet or even odd feeling about the area where he knew he remembered a blade going through.
He noticed the ground below him was covered in grass and decided that it might be worth looking at his surroundings. He came to his feet, and aside from a stiffness in his chest there was no pain. He looked around idly, finding himself next to a very old looking well in a thin forest of oak and spruce trees. Erik looked down at his shirt. There was a hole through it, but no blood that he could see. Checking his pants, he saw the same. His shoes, somehow, had gone missing. A cursory look around showed that they weren’t in the area. Looking back to his clothes, Erik lifted his shirt, checking his chest for wounds. There wasn’t so much as a scratch where the blade had gone through him. The bruises on his stomach were gone as well. The only blemish at all was a small scar on his side where a piece of fencing had cut him as a child. He rubbed his hand over it, not quite sure what to make of the situation he now found himself in. It wasn’t Valhalla. At least, he didn’t think so. Valkyries were nothing like what he’d been sold in stories, so maybe Valhalla was just a stupid forest with a well where he waited for something to come and kill him. There were no weapons around and so, though the air was warm, he decided that it was best to go somewhere else.
He took his socks off, not entirely comfortable walking around with them on but no shoes. The grass under his feet was pleasant. Soft, and on loamy soil that felt more like walking on a cushion than ground. There was a trail nearby that he headed for, reasoning that trails usually led somewhere. The trail seemed clean and smooth but dirt paths weren’t exactly in Erik’s wheelhouse so that could have meant just about anything. He flipped a mental coin to decide which way to go and, not liking the outcome, decided to go left instead.
The trail wasn’t unpleasant to walk. Only a few small rocks pressed into the bottom of his feet from time to time. The worst part of it all was the quiet. There was nothing except the sound of his feet falling and the occasional sound of hooting from the forest.
He’d been walking for what felt like a mile at least when it struck him that Göll had not been near him when he woke up. Something must have gone wrong. Or maybe it hadn’t. He vaguely remembered her screaming when Vár stabbed him. Maybe he hadn’t died as he was supposed to. If he could find other people, they might know. And they might have food.
In spite of apparently having died, he was starving. Somehow, noticing that he was hungry made it all the worse. Another hour had gone by when the trees thinned and the babbling of water could be heard somewhere off the trail. He could see the moon for the first time. It looked different, somehow. A ball of light that he couldn’t really see features in, even squinting. The clearing went on for ages, but at least the moon was bright enough to show him the shapes of buildings in the distance. He was so happy that there were signs of human existence that he almost broke into a run. As soon as he jogged his first step, it occurred to him that a strange man running into a small village at night was probably not received well, regardless of the level of advancement of the people living there.
He kept his pace steady, nerves building the closer he got. Making it to the edge of town without being attacked by anything with a sword or bow and arrow was something Erik was willing to consider a success, considering how he’d ended up in the woods to begin with. Remembering the fight in the parking lot sent a shiver down his spine.
There was more noise in the small town than there had been in the woods. He could hear people talking behind the walls of wooden buildings. He’d spent a few summers in Iceland as a child where his parents forced him to stay in one of the earthen walled long houses that the vikings lived in and these were decidedly not those. They looked more like things built later. Stave churches, only they were simple houses rather than anything meant to revere gods. There were dim, flickering ligh
ts from behind some of the shutters and some of the buildings had two storeys to them. There were signs on those, but not enough light for him to be able to read them easily. He wandered through the town, sticking to the main road, such as it was. It wasn’t paved, but it was level with the smaller roads leading off to the sides. They were wide enough to walk but they didn’t seem like the sort of place he’d like to be found.
There was no strong center to the town, but he heard the noise of people as he came close to a small cluster of buildings that looked more like they were for business than for people to live in. He passed a small stable and an open stall holding a forge and anvil before entering into a small square, where the buildings all faced the center. There was some stone paving, but no fountains or trees or stalls or anything he might have expected. One building was well-lit from the inside and had shutters opened to the square. Inside were maybe two dozen men and women, drinking and enjoying themselves. Erik stood in the square, watching them, not sure if he should enter or what their reaction would be. They wore loose woolen clothing nothing like what he had on. A large man with a deep brown beard came from behind the bar and served drinks in large clay mugs to people near the open window. His eyes crossed the square and stopped on Erik.
Erik took a step back and the man leaned his head out the window.
“Hey! You there!”
Erik started to turn, fully intending to run.
“Stop! Hey! You’ve only just come, haven’t you? May as well have some drink!” The man was gone from the window in the next instant and the door opened, spilling light across the square. He turned behind to the patrons who were all suddenly deeply interested and waved a hand at them. “Don’t all make a fuss, you’ll terrify the boy.”
Erik walked hesitantly toward the open door. “I, uh, this will sound a bit odd, but I don’t know where this is.”
The man came out of the building to meet him, offering a hand. “Not strange at all. I’m called Gerhard and this is my alehouse in the town of Kvernes in Helheim.”
From Death to Valhalla (The Last Einherjar Book 1) Page 4
