An Epic of a Knight and Valkyrie

Chapter 1

Author's notes: A big admirer of cultural epics in literature, I have to write one for myself, naturally XD It's not easy to play favorites with which culture I like, so I just took the route less traveled and decided to collaberate them a bunch of them into one story. Sadly, I won't get to some of my favorites in order to keep the plotline in perspective...

Since everyone knows about medieval England in general, I decided to start off with it and get it over with from the beginning, going into the more dynamic stories later on. Enjoy ^^

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“Oi, Sebastian.” Roy waved me over so I strode toward him, pulling Reggie, my mare, along by the reigns. Roy hadn’t dismounted yet—he was overlooking the sea from the cliff leisurely. If you looked at him, you’d assume that he just had too much free time.

“What is it?” I asked as I pulled Reggie’s reigns to keep him quiet as he shifted restlessly.

“Those pirates we’re looking for, wouldn’t they have a ship moored somewhere?” Roy asked as he frowned. “We’ve been asked to search town for them, but we haven’t even seen their boat. And they wouldn’t have brought it around to the docks because then they’d be found prettily easily.”

“True, but they may have some special means of camouflaging such a big vessel.” I replied. “This is just a guess, but they may have moored much further away from the shore, too far to see, and set anchor. Then they just rowed the rest of the way in smaller boats.”

“Hmm…” was all he said in response. He probably thought that such a method would be too shameful to do, but didn’t want to tell me so. He overestimated pirates.

“In that case, we should head straight to town then.” He decided suddenly. “We’ll corner them there and arrest them.”

 “But we were told that recovering the smuggled goods is priority.” I disagreed.

“We’ll ask them where it is afterward. Now mount your steed, Sebastian. We don’t have time to waste.”

 I sighed, but didn’t argue. As soon as I was settled in the saddle atop Reggie’s back, we were galloping across the road at a speed close to that of those who race their mounts for sport. Reggie was faster than Roy’s stallion, Ceil, but Ceil had more tenacity and stamina by a long shot.

We were halfway to the town when Roy made one of his sudden decisions, without a word toward me. He lashed his reigns and pulled Ceil off to the side, heading down the rocky slope toward the beach below. I came to a halt and sighed in exasperation.

“What the devil are you doing?” I demanded, but he didn’t reply, just focused on making it to the sand steadily. I pulled Reggie around to find a safer, less reckless route toward the beach, and didn’t find one for a ways. By time I caught up with him again, he had already dismounted to stand in the sand, his cloak billowing in the sea breeze.

“What the devil are you doing?” I repeated as Reggie trotted over. “We have business we need to take care of, remember?”

“Well I couldn’t very well leave this behind, now could I?”

 He pointed down below his feet and I leaned dangerously over Reggie to get a proper look. Lying on the floor was a suit of armor, occupied by a foreign looking woman with hair too blonde to be real. She had a cloak lying on top of her and a large axe in the sand beside her. The axe surprised me. Why would a woman be going around in armor and with a weapon like that? It was so heavy; it sunk into the sand nearly an entire inch. Also, her cloak and armor showed signs of being frozen. Pieces of solid ice remained, though evidently melting and breaking off. A rowboat had washed onto the shore as well, but not one like I’d ever seen. It had a dragon’s head on the front and oars for three people to row at once, also showing signs of being frozen. Had this woman operated it all on her own? She was certainly bigger and more developed than any other woman I had seen before.