The Mercenary's Valkyrie: Book One

The Answer

I stubbled into a world at war with itself. There was no time to recall how I had found myself here or whose side I fought for, but the instinct was alone to fight and survive.

Daggers gleamed in my fists. They winked in the sunlight, asking my permission to draw blood. 

I obliged them.

I ducked under the broad swing of a metal club and thrust a blade under the chinstrap of a soldier's helmet. Blood sprayed his companion and he pulled a glove back to take it off his eyes. I did not give him the chance. I drove the second blade through his hand and into his eye.

He screamed out and swung blindly. I dashed right, spun on my heel and drove a quick stab into his heart. The two fell in a matter of moments. More soldiers flooded across the large stone wall towards me and what I assumed were my allies.

They fired arrows and the enemies took them to flesh and shield. Dozens fell off the fifty foot wall. Others raged in war cries and rushed to close the distance.

Before the song of death could continue a bolt of pure white light struck the space before them.

Both sides clattered to a halt before the dividing brightness. Then the light vanished and a Valkyrie remained. She rose as swiftly as she had appeared. Spear in one hand and shield propped below it.

She danced forward two steps and lunged. A man did not raise his shield in time. The spear ran through his head and snapped back out. Another move to the right and she took three swipes to the shield before dipping low and slashing the legs of four men with the spear.

I shook out of my daze and jumped to her side. We stood shoulder to shoulder now facing the enemy. Whose enemy? What war? Those were mere questions for a later time...

Dodge, lunge, twist and parry. Kick and turn, thrust with strong leg planted. Use attack to the right to add momentum to counter strike on the left. Blood coated my arms, my legs, my face as bodies crumpled and fell and broke before myself and the immort—no. Two immortals.

I felt the unearthly power and ability of the very being that stood beside me.

We were turning the very tide of this war with the sheer swing of steel. Dozens fell at our feet as we continued our dance of death.

A horn echoed out suddenly and I saw the fire before I reacted.

"DOWN!" I shouted as I yanked the Valkyrie off her feet and threw her into the side of the stone wall.

We collapsed against it, along with the bodies of men and women that did not move in time. Arrows had been tar dipped and they burned brightly in the bodies of their victims. I shook my head and the helmet I hadn't noticed I wore clattered loosely into my vision.

I tore it off.

My dark hair ripped free and tangled in the winds like a wild thing. The Valkyrie watched me wordless from the ground. Those silver eyes betrayed nothing. No fear, no anger, no concern for anything around us but me. I found the war could suddenly wait. The bodies that fell around us could go on to the underworld. The flames of the arrows could burn.

Shouts of pain and agony became as distant as the winds over the forests. She remained still as death. Still as the stone that she was lying against.

I drew up her shield with my eyes still locked in the silent war we held ourselves. I crouched low and dropped my knees slowly on either side of her. The silver eyes darkened ever so slightly as they burned into my soul. The distant horn called again and with half a thought I deflected the next shower of arrows that rained upon us.

It continued like a hail storm. Trapped beneath the circular shield, I remained over the immortal, protecting someone who did not need it. I could feel my own breath coming out heavy from the exertion and blood that was not my own, drip from my chin.

The immortal blinked and then moved under me.

Her arm ripped the shield from my hand and flung it over the wall's edge. I stared after it in shock and was ready to run from the open position but the goddess took both my shoulders and pinned my back to the stone ground.

Death too, could suddenly wait. Her body was flush against my own in a closeness that was more than intimate, more than... Gods. Her eyes hovered but inches from my own and her lips... They held no smirk or frown or any form of emotion. But I wanted no distance to remain from them at all. The heat tearing its way through me could have been a fire arrow. But I knew myself better than that. 

Any confusion or fear melted away. I watched as the dozens of arrows became ash the moment they touched her. This was my protection, nothing more... the goddess thinks of military strategy and reason—

Which is why I completely lost my logic and sense of time and place and everything when she decided to crash those very lips onto my own.

It was an impossibility. All of it.

War rages around me. Arrows burning to ash inches from me. Bodies choking in their last breaths. Yet I wrapped my arms around a Valkyrie's neck as she claimed my lips again and again. The force and need was unparalleled to any mere mortal.

The very feel of power and lust was more potent than any moment I had ever experienced. It was more than desire. It consumed and burned down cities. It was the power that felled kings and edited the pages of history for its own will.

This was her. This was the Valkyrie.

I felt the hands that had ended thousands of lives roam my own body. I relished the sparks of raw energy they gave me as they moved. They drifted to my waist and gripped tightly. There was no distance left. No room to escape any inch of her body. This was not consuming. It was building. It was—

"TAYAH!"

I snapped upright in bed.

My heart rate was going through my chest and my breathing was chaotic. For reasons entirely different than Kaden's shout.

"You were having a nightmare again. Writhing all over the damn place." He said, thick with understandingly beside me.

I shot him a quick look and I knew my skin was flushed red. Thank the gods it was still night. I took a second to calm my ragged breathing and then nodded quickly at him.

"Yes. Another nightmare. Thank you, Kaden." Damn you.

He nodded and then rolled onto his side in the giant bed. "I hope good dreams find you until morning." He said through a yawn.

They had found me... Gods had they found me. I thought, with my blood singing in my veins as I lay back down carefully. That was strange I had never... Then I recalled the moments before sleep.

The Valkyrie. No, that dream was entirely my own. Besides she is not even in this room. Gods... that was once again my unreliable subconscious that is dangerously creative. I had asked her for answers this night. Thank Valhalla she had decided to remain outside my mind.

But there was such a nagging, death rendering feeling that was not sincerely the case.