“It is an Uiun-bair,” Madalena said, and I turned to see that we were both alone in the waiting room.
“Looks fucking scary,” I said as I turned back to the stuffed monster.
“It is more fearsome than it looks. I killed that one on my fourteenth birthday. He sliced open my stomach with the claws of his left paw before I drove my spear through his mouth.”
“Fuck, you killed that thing? With a spear? When you were fourteen?” My tone of voice must have been a bit disrespectful because the beautiful woman’s eyes narrowed.
“Yes,” she said sharply. “I will show you the scar when we are in bed later tonight.”
“No, that’s fine,” I replied quickly as I held up my palms to her. “If you say you killed that monster, with a spear, when you were fourteen, I will believe you. You are the Prime Valkyrie after all.” I smiled a little after I finished speaking, but the woman only nodded.
“Would you like a refreshment?” she asked as she gestured to the table. “We had spoken about eating together. I will serve you.”
“No, I’m fine,” I said, but then my eyes settled on the food, and my stomach let out a roar that was almost as loud as one which would have escaped from my shifted tiger-man mouth. “Yeah. I guess I could eat, and you’ll answer my questions. You don’t need to serve me, or whatever.”
I moved to the couch in front of the fire and sat down beside one of the food covered tables. Before I could reach for some cuts of what looked like salted salami, Madalena’s fingers caught my wrist, and she gently moved my hand away from the plate.
“I will serve you.” Her eyes narrowed, and the light from the fire seemed to give them unexpected life.
I hadn’t even seen her hand move to grab me.
“Fine,” I sighed. Then she released my wrist, and I sat back on the couch. “Lux said you father intends to kill me. Or he’ll want me to submit to him so he can still control you. If I submit to him, I’ll be expected to follow his wishes and not look for my friends.”
Madalena didn’t reply. Instead, she busied herself carefully picking slices of meat, cutting fresh chunks of cheese, and pouring me a glass of dark red wine. As soon as she filled a plate, she sat next to me on the couch and handed me the glass.
“He will try one of those, yes,” she finally said as she put a piece of cheese and meat together before raising it to my mouth.
“Uhh. What are you doing?” I asked as I pulled my face away from her hands. The side of her left leg was touching my right, and my left side touched the armrest of the couch. There wasn’t much room for me to shift away from her without making it obvious.
“I am serving you, my lord.”
“Look, you don’t have--”
“It is part of the process of submission. I must feed you during our first meal together, and whenever you ask me.”
“What about you?” I asked, but then I felt my anger flash through my chest. What the fuck did I care? Here I was, about to be murdered by this woman’s father because I tried to help her, and I was concerned about when she would eat next. Zea was right, I really cared about women too much.
“I will eat after you,” Madalena said.
“You take a bite after me, and you will answer my damn questions. Got it?” I opened my mouth to accept her fingers, and she set the meat and cheese on my tongue.
“Yes,” she said after I started eating, and then she took a bite for herself. In any other situation, this would have been incredibly romantic, but I had too much shit to worry about.
“Did you enjoy that morsel?” she asked after she finished chewing her food.
“Yeah,” I admitted. The meat and cheese were really damn good. “So, with your--”
“Drink some wine,” she promoted, and the look on her face convinced me that I should just stop arguing with her if I wanted our conversation to progress.
“It’s good,” I said after I took a sip of the red wine.
“Of course, it is,” she replied as she took the glass from my hand. Then she drank from it and passed it back to me before she reached for another piece of sliced meat.
“But I’m sitting next to this fire with you, eating your food and drinking your wine while my friends are on a Magate Order starship. I need to finish this shit with your father, get back to Queen’s Hat, and then go find them.”
“I will help you,” she said with a nod. “I understand your urgency.”
“It doesn’t seem as if you do,” I replied as I took another sip of the wine. “Lux explained that--”
“Lux was correct,” Madalena cut me off, and then placed another morsel of food in my mouth. “My plan was thwarted by Goran. He’s paid the price for disobeying me, and I am considering our next course of action.”
“What was your original plan?” I asked.
“I have submitted to you. I planned to do what you required of me. First by going to Queen’s Hat and then finding your friends.” She took another bite of food and then took the wine from my hand.
“But now we have to deal with your father,” I said.
“I would need to deal with him, eventually. The situation however, is more difficult for you now,” she said after she took a long swallow of the wine. “He might have found mercy if I had given you a child by the time we returned. He would have still demanded you submit to him, but he has the power to waive the rites of passage and just adopt you into our clan.”
“Didn’t you already adopt me? Or do something like that by giving me your name?” I tried to not mentally trip over Madalena saying ‘given you a child.’
“Yes,” she said as she passed me back the wine, “but my father will deem it wasn’t appropriate since he did not approve. He is the only one in our Clan who has authority over me. The situation isn’t as simple as I am making it sound. There are nuances of our culture I don’t have time to explain to you.”
“It sounds plenty fucking complicated,” I said with a sigh.
“The Prime Valkyrie is the strongest warrior in all the Nordar clans. If my father wasn’t the King of Vaish, I could take his throne and rule our people. I would be able to leverage my power and unite the clans easily.”
“Isn’t that what you said you wanted to do?” I asked as I recalled the conversation we had while I was trying to rescue them.
“Yes. It is my father’s goal as well.” She nodded, but her face still lacked any emotion.
“So, I don’t understand what the issue is--”
“He would have to either die in combat to me or step down,” she explained.
“Ahhh,” I sighed. “Now I’m getting it.”
I had never met a king, but I knew plenty of history. Kings liked stepping down from their throne just about as much as they liked getting killed by their children.
“Yes.” Madalena gave me another bite of food, and I wondered how much more I’d have to eat before she was satisfied that she had served me.
“And now I’m here,” I said after I finished chewing. “It makes a complicated situation even more complicated.”
“Yes,” she said. “Drink more wine, my lord.”
“Ha,” I laughed dryly. “So, this is my last meal then?”
“No.” She shook her head. “I can always challenge him to combat. He might fear that.”
“Wait,” I said as my stomach dropped. “You’d kill your father for me?”
Madalena stared into my eyes for a few moments, and a slow smile spread across her lips. It looked sincere, and the beautiful woman suddenly turned into a goddess. I was conscious of how close she was sitting to me, but I didn’t have any room to wiggle away.
“I do not wish to kill my father,” she said, and it almost sounded as if she sighed.
“So that mean’s I’ll die,” I said. “I understand why Goran took us here instead of Queen’s Hat. Fucking asshole.”
“No. I do not wish for you to die, either,” the warrior woman said plainly.
“Seems like you will have to choose o
ne or the other,” I replied as I tried to fight down my anger. Part of me was angry for helping them, but I also knew I would probably do it all over again if I had to. I wanted to help people who needed it. It was part of Eve’s mission, so it was now part of mine.
But didn’t Eve, Zea, Kasta, and Paula need my help?
“Our purpose is to die in battle. Only then, can we join Odin in Valhalla. The war between our clans is just the beginning of our battle. There are dark things in the universe, Adam, and they will be coming to feast on us.”
“I know about dark things,” I whispered.
“Oh?” She raised her eyebrow.
“Yeah, fuckers that live off the agony of others. They are superpowered vampire assholes.”
The smile faded from her lips, and her eyes opened.
“You have seen the Draugr?” I heard the amazement in her voice, which was a bit surprising since I normally couldn’t hear any emotion when she spoke.
“If you are talking about the pale skinned vampire fuckers sleeping in the stone tubes in their dark temples, yeah. We killed one on a planet named Uraniel, and we know there are more coming there in a few hundred days. There are millions of people on that planet, and we think they are all going to be killed when the dead fucker’s friends come.”
Madalena’s eyes grew larger after I spoke, and the cold steel color of her orbs seemed to catch fire. It almost looked as if she was angry, but her emotions were impossible to read.
“Odin…” her mouth moved, but I almost couldn’t understand the word, even with my advanced hearing. “It is as I thought.”
“What you thought?” I asked.
“Yes,” Madalena said as she stood from the couch. She walked over to the table and set my plate of food down, then she grabbed a full bottle of wine, ripped the cork out with her teeth, and then turned to face the fire. “My crew swore to serve me, and I am responsible for them. Our lives are worth nothing if we do not reach Valhalla. Your voice sounded tired and hopeless. I imagined I was submitting to a tired old man on a junker ship. When I saw the Shadow Eagle, I wondered if Odin brought you to me.”
“What brought us together was actually a shit-talking police officer on Queen’s Hat,” I said. “Not a god.”
“No,” she said before she took a long swallow of wine from the bottle. “I have served him faithfully. You have a Shadow Eagle, you have killed one of the Draugr, you are a warrior, you are handsome, and you came to me exactly when I needed you.” She turned to face me, and the firelight caught her chestnut colored hair in a way that made it look like silk. “Odin’s work is clear. I was meant to submit to you. We were meant to be together. Now I need to consider what this augurs for my father, and my clan.”
“I didn’t want any of this, Madalena. I fucked up, and my friends were kidnapped. I need to find them. Then I need to gather together a crew, and maybe some other ships, so we can defend Uraniel. I didn’t need you to submit to me. I came looking for you because I had questions about your ship and what you were doing on Queen’s Hat. I didn’t come on a mission from your god.”
We stared at each other for a few moments, and then she slowly walked toward me.
“Did your questions have to do with fighting the Draugr?” she whispered.
“More about your ship. I don’t know much about Persephone, and I want to learn more. We also pulled a file from Queen’s Hat that we think you retrieved. It was a video of the planet Parnarta. There was another ship on that world, and the kid in the video was killed by--”
“It is the video I wanted. I was searching for another Shadow Eagle.” Madalena lowered herself onto her knees in front of me and set her hands on my armored legs.
The warrior woman’s touch reminded me that we were waiting to meet her father, and I turned my mind away from the video of Parnarta so I could focus on the obvious threat. I needed to get through this meeting alive.
“Let’s talk more about it later. How soon until we meet your father?” I asked.
“It could be any moment,” she said. “I have thought of a plan which I believe will be your safest avenue. It will require that you follow my instructions, my lord.” The woman laid her head down on my left knee and then ran her fingers over the armor of my right leg. Her eyes closed for half a moment, and she let out a sigh.
My heart had been hammering into my chest ever since she turned away from the fire to look at me, and I closed my eyes to steady my nerves. She was obviously expecting way more from our relationship than I was going to be able to give her. I needed to tell her about Eve and Zea, but then I thought about the potential repercussions. My life was in the warrior woman’s hands now. Did I really want to tell her I was in love with two other women and that I had no intention of performing any sort of romantic duties she might want?
But if I didn’t tell her, it would be like I was lying to her, myself, Zea, and Eve. It didn’t feel right to me.
“Listen, Madalena, you don’t need to call me ‘my lord.’ I know you have submitted to me, and that you said we were joined, or bonded, or married, or whatever the fuck you said, but I am in love with two other women. I’ve said that I didn’t need you to submit to me. I don’t need you to be my wife. I could just use your help to find my friends.” It felt better to get the words out, but her cold eyes opened to stare at me.
“You can have as many women as you want,” she answered. “I am submitted to you.”
“I’m not--”
“But you will not want another after you and I lie together,” she interrupted me. “I am the Prime Valkyrie, and we are bonded through my submission. I will give you pleasure that you have never experienced before, and I will bear you strong children who will serve you in our war against the Draugr.”
“Uhh, fuck me,” I said as I rubbed my tired eyes with my armored glove. “What do I need to do to live through the meeting with your father?”
“I will try to get him to adopt you with you performing the rites of passage, if I cannot convince him, then I will argue for you to be tested after we return from searching for your friends.”
“What are the rites? Do I have to fight him in combat or--” I stopped talking when the door on the far side of the waiting room opened.
Four tall women stepped into the room. They each wore decorative body armor that was a slimmer fit than the suits our other escorts wore. They did not have helmets, and they wore their long blonde hair in high ponytails. There were swords on their left hips, small shields on their backs, and what looked like plasma pistols holstered on the outside of their right thigh armor. The addition of the advanced plasma weapons made the swords and shields look a bit ridiculous, but all the guards I had seen so far carried ancient style melee weapons, so it could have been something to do with tradition.
Madalena said something as she lifted her head from my lap, and one of the other women answered her with a nod. I didn’t need to speak the language to know what they meant.
It was time to meet the king.
“What is the plan?” I whispered as I rose from the couch and grabbed my shotgun.
“I will speak to him. Once he knows that Odin has sent you, he will not wish to kill you.” Madalena’s words were soft, but I could feel the strength in her hand when she gripped my bicep.
“That sounds like wishful thinking,” I growled as we stepped toward the four guardswomen. The women looked as if they were genetically engineered to be perfect specimens, but their cold eyes followed my movements in a way that lead me to believe they were bred for combat.
“You will need to trust me, my lor-- Adam,” Madalena said. “Agree with what I say. I want you to live through this. It is Odin’s will.”
I almost made a snarky comment about how Odin could fuck off, but the words were something Zea would have said. Her memory and the realization that these people probably wouldn’t take kindly to me talking shit about their god made me swallow the words.
The four blonde guards spun on their heels and escorted Mad
alena and me out of the waiting room. We walked down more brick hallways before we reached a large set of wooden doors. They stood some four meters high, and a pair of heavily armored and helmeted warriors guarded them. The two helmeted sentries let their plasma rifles drop on their slings as they each grabbed onto a door handle. When they pulled the doors open, I could see a half meter wide hunk of metal sandwiched between a thick wood veneer. I presumed that the metal was probably the same stuff they put in the hulls of starships, and it would probably be able to hold up under fire from hand held plasma weapons.
The four blonde women stepped inside the doors, and I had to catch my breath when I followed them. I expected a throne room of sorts or some kind of space fortress command bridge, but what I saw instead were trees.
A grove of birch and ash trees that grew out of a metal floor.
The roots of the trees dug into the ground as if it was actually made out of dirt, and their leaves blew as if there was a gentle breeze, even though I could not feel one. The trees looked and smelled real, but I saw no leaf on the ground, or speck of bark, or any proof that they were alive besides their scent.
The blonde women were escorting us down a narrow path through the grove, and I turned my head to give Madalena a questioning look. Her eyes met mine, but she just shook her head and then nodded to the back of the women leading us. I took it to mean she didn’t want me to talk, so I held onto my question.
Then the grove cleared, and we stood before a wide metal dais. On top of the dais stood a tree made of rhodium colored bark. It was stripped of leaves, and its branches stretched out to the ceiling of the massive room as if it was saying a thousand prayers.
In front of the tree crouched a giant black metal throne decorated with sculptures and etchings of ravens. A man in an extensive suit of armor sat upon the throne, and his sharp features looked like a masculine version of Madalena. His hair was long, thick, and gray. His face was cleanly shaven, but dozens of scars decorated his cheeks, neck, and forehead. The man’s armor was crafted like the same suit that Madalena’s crew wore. It was etched with silvery designs of ravens, feathers, and skulls. He grasped a long spear in his left hand, and his right hand rested on the head of a massive wolf. The creature had to weigh a good hundred and fifty kilograms, and the beast fixed his yellow eyes on me with the same intensity the broad-shouldered man in the throne did.
Prime Valkyrie Page 2
