The Valkyrie & The Viking

Chapter 1: The Start of an Adventure

10, 467.

That was the number of men Svipul had killed in the last year.

112 was the number of women.

            Some of those 10,579 stood or ran or fought in front of her while she danced around them, waiting to serve the fallen warriors at a moment’s notice. Her movements were fluid and graceful, not out of joy or a sense of peace, but because such nimbleness was required in order to avoid being pierced by the flying weapons around her.

A sharp, echoing bark signaled the warriors to stop, and Svipul took the opportunity to duck out of the training session and join her friend a short distance away.

Mist* sat resting amid the wildflowers, weaving a gown of pure scarlet silk. Speckled bloodworms relaxed by her feet, providing her with the fine threads she absentmindedly intertwined to create what Svipul could only describe as a work of art. As was often the case, Mist’s battle armor was shed just out of reach rather than on her body as it was supposed to be.

Svipul nodded toward it. “You keep taking that off here and someday you’re going to wind up dead from a stray spear.”

Mist looked up from her work, noticing her friend for the first time. With a wry smile she said, “Would that make you jealous?”

“Death?” Svipul laughed. “No, not quite. I have no desire for death just yet.”

“Good. If you died, all the nine realms would be destroyed in your absence.” She emphasized this with a twirling descent of her fingers, symbolizing the crumbling of the worlds.

Svipul playfully pushed her into the flowers. “You wish. At least then you would be given a day off.” Then she sighed. “No, if I was gone, still nothing would change. Life would just continue on without me.”

“Wow, that’s a depressing thought. You’re going to make the bloodworms cry. But do you want to know what’s worse?”

“What?”

“Dawn is rising.”

Svipul, facing the west, turned around and for the first time noticed the soft, matutinal glow that had seemed to almost instantly surround her. The golden sky of the morning never failed to take her breath away, but with the rising of the sun came a burden she feared, yet was forced to face each dawn.

She let out one, slow breath of Valhallan air. “Things would be so much better if I could just run away,” she said wistfully.

Mist, returning to her weaving, whispered, “You will.” But when she glanced up one last time, Svipul was already gone. Mist wished she had said goodbye, because her final comment wasn’t an idle reassurance. It was a prophecy.

Svipul flew over the battlefield, this one being terribly, painfully real. The humans below were still alive, though any one of them could pass beyond their limited lives at any moment. In the time it took for her to formulate that thought, three men were slaughtered. One lay on the ground, pinned to the earth by a spear shaft left in his lifeless corpse. Another was now unrecognizable, his skull and facial structure having been completely shattered by the hilt of a sword in a mess of blood and brain matter. The third was cleaved completely in two by the blade of the same sword.

            It was Svipul’s responsibility to govern who lived and who died on the battlefield, along with her other Valkyrie* sisters scattered about the blood-soaked plain. She hated her role in ending so many lives, felt a sharp pang of guilt with each death, not matter how many times she had to choose someone. The guilt was not because of the death itself—this was a natural process that, if not interrupted earlier by her, would catch up to every human sooner rather than later—but because of what was left behind. A shipwreck of grief followed in the wake of her every decision, crashing about in a storm that she caused.