Teeth & Claws_A Paranormal Space Opera Adventure

by Michael-Scott Earle

  I lowered my hand to my side and then kneeled on her rifle just in case she was playing possum, but it only took me a moment of inspection to realize that my rifle’s butt had punched her right in the center of her forehead and broken her skull. Yeah, she was unconscious, but she’d be dead in a few minutes if she didn’t get medical attention.

  “She needs help!” I shouted and waved my arms at the crowd. I was a bit turned around in the arena, so it took me a second to find where Madalena, Sivaha, Lux, Calisto, and the other five members of the valkyrie leadership were standing.

  A group of white robed women ran from the seating area with medical packs and a stretcher, and I moved out of their way so they could begin treatment of Hildr’s injuries. In a few moments, they had loaded her onto the stretcher, injected some sort of drug into her neck, and then wrapped her skull in a bandage. The women in white nodded a quick thanks to me, and then they lifted up the valkyrie and carried her out of the grassy center of the arena in less than fifteen seconds, and the whole time the rest of the valkyrie leadership hadn’t even bothered to leave their seating areas.

  I grabbed the two rifles on the ground in each of my hands, walked across the battleground to where the other five of The Six sat beside my wives, and then tossed the two rifles at their feet.

  “One down, five more to go.”

  “Ha!” Sivaha cackled, and the older valkyrie leadership turned toward her with disapproving looks.

  “Gondul,” I said, and the eldest looking of The Six turned to me. “Are you ready?”

  “I have been ready all my life, King,” she spat as she stood and rested her hands on her twin revolvers. They were silver in finish, with pearl handles that were etched with the same stylized bold wings that I saw on the valkyrie guards’ armor.

  Lux stood and then surprised me a bit by buckling my gun belt around my hips for me. As soon as she finished, she saluted me and then returned to her seat next to Sivaha.

  Gondul was already walking toward the field, but I gave Madalena and Sivaha a quick embrace before I followed the other woman into the colosseum.

  I was a bit less nervous this round because I carried a pair of weapons that I was somewhat comfortable with. Granted, I had only shot these new revolvers once, but they felt more comfortable in my hands than my previous massive revolver, and they were gifts from two women who loved me. The bullets that left their barrels would fly true to my aim, so all I had to worry about was Gondul being a faster shot than me.

  And very few were.

  “Face each other!” Skuld shouted, and we followed her directions.

  I bowed to the pistol wearing valkyrie, but she didn’t even tilt her head. Instead, the left side of her lip curled up into a snarl of contempt, and her hands moved down to touch her weapons. I expected a grunt from the crowded audience, but a wave of surprised murmurs filled the arena, and I guessed that Gondul’s lack of respect had surprised the audience.

  “Face away from each other!” Skuld shouted, and I turned away as my hands rested on the twin grips of my revolvers. They felt as comfortable in my grip as Sivaha and Madalena did in my arms, and a warm feeling of peace filled my chest.

  “Begin at the chime!” Skuld shouted, but her voice sounded as if it was kilometers away.

  But the chime rang, and its sound filled my mind as I spun with both of my revolvers out.

  Gondul was a bit slower than me, and my two massive hand cannons barked thunder at the same time. My shots should have turned her chest into vapor, but the older woman was surprisingly spry, and she was in the process of throwing herself backwards when I fired, and my bullets must have missed her chest by half a centimeter.

  She fired her revolvers as she threw herself back, and I felt both of the shots cut past each of my ears like angry wasps. The woman had been arrogant enough to attempt a headshot while she dodged both my shots, and I didn’t know whether to think she was an idiot for gambling on such a risky shot, or to respect her for almost taking my head off.

  I was still standing though, and she was rolling backward across the grass as she tried to adjust her aim, her legs hooked up through the air to complete her roll, and her shoulders flexed backward so that her torso would whip her back on her feet. It was the movement of a ballerina dancer, and I’m sure it would have worked perfectly.

  But then the crowd gasped as a bullet from the golden gun in my left hand tore her right leg off at the hip.

  Blood sprayed across the grass as Gondul completed her movement, but she only had one leg to stand on, so she threw herself sideways and landed behind one of the waist high stone barriers before I could get another shot off at her.

  I expected the battle to be over, but she surprised me by punching her revolvers over the top of her cover and shooting at me. I was already twisting to my side, so the bullets missed, but her aim had been incredible, and I would have been dead if I was just a half a hair slower.

  “You’ll bleed out!” I shouted as I ducked behind a stone pillar. “Just surrender! You’ve lost!”

  “No!” she growled, and then one of her bullets grazed past the stone right where my head was.

  “Fucking idiot,” I sighed as I ducked down to my left and aimed the revolver Madalena had given me at the waist high barrier. The stone there was thick, maybe a meter or so, but my single shot cracked the rock like it was an ice cube, and I heard the woman gasp with pained surprise.

  I had no idea if I’d hit her, but I had eight shots left in my revolvers, and I figured it would only take another four to chew apart the stone. I fired both revolvers again, and two fist-sized holes appeared on the rock and cracked the stone between the earlier shot.

  I guessed that Gondul was laying down, so I made one more shot placed a bit lower on the stone. This crumpled half of the rock away like it was made out of sand, and my next bullet turned the rest of the barrier into gravel

  Then I saw what was left of Gondul, and I relaxed my grip on my weapons.

  My penultimate shot had hit her at the shoulder and separated the top half of her torso from her lower rib cage. The valkyrie had probably died instantly, and I shook my head as I sheathed my revolvers.

  “I’m sorry, Gondul, but you should have surrendered.” I knew she wouldn’t hear my words, but even though I hadn’t liked the woman, I still wished her well in the afterlife and hoped she had a place by Odin or Freyja’s side.

  The women in the white clothes ran out onto the field as soon as I put away my revolvers, and I walked back toward the remaining four of The Six with my eyes narrowed.

  “Two down, four more,” I said as I looked at Skuld.

  “I will admit that I am impressed,” the blonde woman sighed as she stood. “You did an honorable thing when you asked for her to surrender.”

  “I don’t want any of you to die,” I said as I looked at the remaining four women, “but I will not be thwarted.”

  “And we will not bow before someone who is not our better,” Geirskogul said as she shook her head. “We are valkyrie.”

  “Can’t you be valkyries and not be idiots?” Sivaha asked from her seat at the end of the row. “My husband has easily taken out two of you, and he will continue to do so. He has not even broken a sweat. Know when you are beaten before the war starts.”

  “You would not understand, Queen Vaish,” Skuld said, and then she gestured to my gun belt.

  “Oh, right,” I said as I reached down, but Lux had already wrapped her arms around my waist, and unbuckled the belt before I could.

  “Your arrows,” Skuld said as she handed me another belt with twenty arrows in a quiver.

  “Thanks.” I moved to reach for it, but then Madalena touched my arm and grabbed it instead.

  “What are you doing, Prime Valkyrie?” Gunnr growled.

  “Giving my husband half a moment’s worth of instruction,” Madalena said as she wrapped her left hand around the arrows and tossed the quiver to the side. “Give him the longbow.”

  “So be it,”
Skuld said as she handed me a wooden recurve bow.

  “Test the pull,” Madalena instructed me, and I held the grip in my left hand and pulled back on the string with my right. I had never shot a bow before, but the pull was pretty easy.

  “It is fine,” Madalena said, and then she gestured for me to follow her out into the field.

  “You cannot--” Skuld began, but Madalena interrupted her.

  “You have picked a weapon my husband has never handled before, so I will teach him, Skuld. Take your position.”

  The blonde woman didn’t reply, and I followed my wife out to the circle of stones on the arena floor.

  “Hold your hand around the bow and arrows like this,” Madalena instructed as she took the bow from me, clutched it inside of her left palm, and then squeezed it. She also held the cluster of twenty arrows with the feathers up at a slight angle toward the sky.

  “That makes sense,” I said. “Then I can grab the arrows easily and then just drop them on the string.” Every movie I’d ever seen always had the archer using a quiver on their back, but Madalena just brought her right hand to one of the arrows, pulled it out of her grip, and then set it against the string with an unbelievably smooth movement that took less than half a second.

  “See how my left hand pinches the arrows?” she asked, and I nodded as I looked at her hand. “This will let you pull the arrows free easier. As soon as I get one free, I roll my palm slightly to ready the next one.”

  “Got it,” I said, even though my heart sank a bit. It was obvious that my wife had spent thousands of hours with the weapon in her hand, and I’d just seen movies.

  This was going to be a difficult battle.

  “Pluck the arrow from your grip with your fingers hooked like this,” Madalena said as she repeated the motion again. “That will allow you to set it against the string in one movement. If you pull it with the arrows in your hand like so, then it will automatically position the nock of the arrow correctly against the string.”

  “I think I got it,” I said. “Is this what you learned in Valkyrie School?” I asked.

  “No,” Madalena said. “I learned this when I was six years old.”

  “Well, shit,” I chuckled.

  “Yes,” the Prime Valkyrie agreed. “Remember our strategy. She will try to keep you within twenty or thirty meters. She is still deadly accurate at greater ranges, but you won’t be able to dodge at closer ranges. Take the bow.”

  Madalena passed me the weapon, and I held it in my left palm just like she had. Then she handed me the cluster of arrows and I manipulated my fingers so that I was holding it as she did. My hands were much larger than Madalena’s so it was actually pretty easy for me to hold it, and I practiced the rolling technique with my fingers a few times to familiarize myself with it.

  “Pull an arrow and nock it,” she ordered, and so I did. My movement wasn’t nearly as fluid as her’s was, but following her technique made it much easier than I had expected.

  “Good, now make sure that you keep the arrows grasped in your hand at that angle,” she said as she made a motion with her hand where the arrow sat against the shelf of the handle. “Otherwise your arrows will get in the way of your shot.”

  “Yeah, no shit,” I said as I winked at her.

  “It is an unfamiliar weapon,” she sighed. “I do not want you to get caught up with mistakes.”

  “No, sorry,” I said as I lowered the bow. “You are doing fine. Thank you for showing me. I’m making light of my situation. This is a bunch of bullshit. I might as well shift and fucking charge her.”

  “If you do, make sure she is almost out of arrows,” Madalena cautioned. “She can put an arrow through your skull just as easily as through your chest.”

  “Prime Valkyrie!” I heard Skuld call out. “Is your husband ready? He was the one who challenged us.”

  “Yes,” Madalena replied, and then she put both her hands on my cheeks and gave me another passionate kiss.

  “I’ll be fine,” I reassured her, but the beautiful woman’s concern flowed from her like an avalanche, and I knew she was beyond worried.

  “Face each other!” Geirskogul shouted as Madalena jogged away from my side, and I turned to Skuld. We each bowed low to each other, and then the blonde woman gave me another nod.

  “Face away!” Geirskogul shouted, and I turned away from Skuld and turned my eyes down to my bow.

  The arrow was still set against the string, but I could see that my hands were shaking. I willed it to stop, but my hands just seemed to vibrate faster, and the tiger in my soul growled with a hostile rage.

  I didn’t want to shift now, since it would add a ticking clock to the rest of the challenges, but nothing would matter if I died this round.

  “Begin at the chime!” Geirskogul’s words actually calmed my hands, and I felt time began to crawl to a standstill.

  Then the chime rang out for the third time.

  Chapter 10

  I knew better than to turn and shoot at Skuld. I only had a rough idea of how to aim the bow, and my opponent had once been the Prime Valkyrie. Madalena had started training with the weapon when she was six, and I guessed that Skuld was the same. She probably had forty or more years with the weapon, and there was no way I could win by exchanging shots with her like I had done with Gondul.

  So I fucking ran.

  The closest place for cover was the waist high rock to my left that I had used when I fought Hildr. But it would be difficult to shoot my bow back at Skuld when I was crouching on the ground. So, instead, I picked a vertical column to my right that also had a foot barrier coming out of the bottom. It would be a great place for cover since I’d have a side protected, and my lower body if I pulled out to take a shot.

  Unfortunately, it was a good thirty meters away.

  I heard her bowstring snap and threw myself down. I felt an arrow scrape across my back as I rolled on my shoulder and I popped up on my feet at exactly the same time as her string sang again.

  This arrow hit me in the left calf as I juked right, and I let out a growl as my leg threatened to buckle. If I had been a normal man, I might have fallen, but I was used to pain, and I managed to keep sprinting toward the pillar.

  Her bow string snapped again, and pain tore through my back, chest, and the lung in between.

  Then I was safe behind the column for the moment.

  I looked down at my chest and saw the arrow sticking out of my ribs. Blood filled my mouth, and my vision spun like I was drunk. I let go of the arrow I had pinched in my right hand, grabbed the arrow in my chest, and then yanked it through my body with a hiss of angry breath. The tiger in my soul screamed as I yanked it out, but I resisted the urge to shift, and I took the blood covered arrow and pushed it into my left hand where I held my other nineteen arrows.

  There was a hole in my calf, but I didn’t see an arrow anywhere, so I guessed it had passed through my leg and buried itself in the grass. I was already starting to heal from that wound, but it would take a minute or so to recover, and maybe a bit longer for my lung to regrow.

  But at least she only had seventeen arrows now.

  I pulled back on my nocked arrow slightly and fought against the agony in my chest. It was going to hurt even worse to bend the bow back all the way, but the pain wouldn’t cause me to faint, so I just gritted my teeth, turned around the corner of the pillar, and checked for Skuld’s position.

  The woman who had once been the Prime Valkyrie was following the exact strategy which Madalena had expected. She was standing behind a waist high stone barrier so that her lower half was protected and calmly aiming at me with her bow. The string cracked again as I glimpsed her location, but I ducked back in time to avoid taking an arrow to the face.

  Sixteen left.

  I swung out of the side of the pillar again, but this time I had my arrow pulled back against the string. Unfortunately, Skuld had taken the half a second to nock another arrow, and she let hers loose before I could even aim. The arrow
slammed right into my abdomen, tore through my stomach, and then exited out my back right beside my spine.

  I didn’t even register my pain. I just let go of my own arrow and prayed that it would hit her.

  My missile almost did. I was just a bit to the right, and it was probably a few centimeters outside of her shoulder. We were about ten meters apart, so it wasn’t a bad shot for my first time using a bow, but I had needed a hit. Now I was dealing with three injuries that were really going to mess me up if I didn’t end the fight soon, or buy myself more time to heal.

  I threw myself behind the pillar before Skuld could put another arrow in me and then gasped when an arrow seemed to curve around the pillar and brush past my cheek. I figured that she was probably moving to the side so she could aim at me from a new angle, and I decided that the best thing to do was to buy myself more distance.

  She had fourteen arrows left.

  I picked another vertical column about ten meters away from Skuld’s location and pushed myself to sprint. My calf screamed with the effort, my lung seized with agony, and my stomach pumped what felt like a gallon of blood out onto the grass as I ran. I heard Skuld’s bow thump behind me, and I ducked down low as I ran. I got lucky, and the arrow flew over my head.

  Then I heard another thump, and I dove toward the new pillar.

  I didn’t feel this arrow hit me but I heard the sound of it smacking into something soft. I rolled to my right like a barrel of rum, tried to keep from crushing my bow, and then forced myself to my feet with a groan. The arrow she had just shot was in the grass next to me, and I moved my hand out to yank it free, but then pulled back at the last second. There was another thump, and a blur of feathers separated the air where my arm had been a half moment ago.

  I made another quick attempt to grab the arrow and yanked it free from the ground as another one of her arrows scrapped along my arm. I added it to my collection in my left hand and then forced the pain into the back of my mind as I debated what to do next.