Of Gods & Valkyries: Book Three

Forgotten Plains

– T A Y A H –

Our stolen Scarfell horses rode valiantly. Which only turned my sadness into flame-born anger that twitched my red cloak into sparks that matched the horses strides. Kára remained silent, she knew too well why my energy raged. 

But the landscape was shifting in that familiar way. The one that a girl once knew. That once stood drenched in fear and useless to those around her that saw no mercy. All for pitiful amounts of iron ore that the village once sat upon.

We slowed the horses. Or I did subconsciously and my Valkyrie followed suit. 

Either way I saw the shadows of decades past conflict. Scavenged yes. But history always showed itself.

Blood slapped my face in a vicious red spurt from what remained of my neighbour's head. The headless body collapsed upon my frozen form as mercenaries rushed past with torches. The weight took me off my young feet and into the mud.

The thatch caught alight first.

There were hardly any clashes of iron and steel. We were farming folk. Pitchforks and scythes were our only experience with blades.

Not that it bothered them. It was easy coin.

I almost drowned that night under a mixture of blood and mud. As luck would have it, a horse kicked us both over onto a harder patch of ground. I sucked in a lungful of smoky air and pushed my small hands into the grass. They were covered in red.

I was looking hell in the face. It wore the face of shadowed mercenaries lighting every home they passed and ensuring  their paying clients that they would mine whatever pitiful amount of iron it was they wanted, would go unhindered. A night of blood and fire and countless lives for coin.

So I ran.

Under wagons. Dodging the swipes of swords and spears alike from galloping horses lost in chaos of shouting and dying. I had no scream in me, all was shock. Voiceless realm shattering shock this was happening in the now. In my reality.

I did not even get close to my home. Because it was a ball of fire. And my family. My valiantly honest, gloves to ground, hard day and night working mother and father. They swung from the fence posts to the entrance of hell. Their eyes staring at nothing in particular. Perhaps even the Valhalla my father had described to me. Maybe that's where he had gone.

I became a shadow.

There was nothing left for me. Not here and perhaps not anywhere. At least I had the fear. The fear was of more use to me now than the emptiness and despair. But children didn't quite understand death. Not fully. It was more of a shock and distant affair than present and permanent. The present was running. Running fast. And my fear pushed me fast enough to break the threshold of the village and over the last broken fence into the wheat fields. 

The rest was the history I chose to remember.

All of that history took but a few breaths while I rode through the skeletons of that village. Our horses snorted and their hooves clacked unevenly against unevenly covered cobble. But there was no blood now. That had long ago seeped into the ground giving way to overgrown grass and moss. Even a few snow drops. 

But it was obvious what had happened. Either through decency or common looting, the bodies were gone. The remains of the thatched houses were uneven planks of wood and stone scattered around the area.