The Einherjar

CHAPTER 1- The Raising of Lord Alarick

The wind was gone, the air was stale, and the sky above was thick with a dreary grey overcast. A lone man, clad in scaled plate armor lay flat out upon his back, his lifeless eyes fixed upward, starring up into the clear blue sky. The man was awake and aware of his surroundings, yet for some reason, he found himself utterly paralyzed. His neck grew stiff, and as it did, the incapacitated warrior noticed that he was now without his helmet. Somewhere in the fray, a lucky blow must have knocked it clean off. All at once the man decided to try his luck moving, and to his surprise, he sat up without so much as feeling a strain in his muscles. He felt for the straps of his helmet, that he might adjust it, but realized again that he hadn't been wearing one as soon as his fingers touched his silvery hair.

"Get up Alarick." A woman's voice carried on the wind. The man scrambled to his feet and glanced about in all directions, but he could not find who had spoken his name. "Your kin call out to you, Alarick. It is time to rise. It is time to take up the sword, the shield, and the axe." Alarick was frantic to locate the speaker, but in the moment, he thought he found her, that very same voice drifted in from another way. During his unease, the armor-clad Norseman noticed the single strangest thing before him. Alarick remembered how he got here, how he had lost his helmet, but this couldn't be right. He slew two men and more than that; these two men had killed his friends. He suddenly recalled the ambush, the clashing of metal, and the screams of the fallen. Alarick had fallen from his horse. Where were his friends, his foes, and where had the horses gone? None of this made any sense.

"You are not so bright as I imagined, Lord Svenson." The woman's voice came again, this time distinct, and this time from a direction the norseman could discern. "What a dedicated warrior you must be if you haven't accepted the fact that you've already died." The woman chuckled, and it was then Alarick finally looked upon her. To his surprise, she was tall, with hair near so golden as the dawn. She wore a solid steel suit of armor which made his own protection seem rustic by comparison. She hadn't the need for an introduction, it was clear what she was, but the woman proceeded anyhow. "Lord Svenson, my name is Brynhild, Highest of the Valkyrie, and Captain of Valhalla's host. I've come a long way to collect you." Alarick could hardly believe his eyes and ears.

"Collect me?" the warrior's voice cracked wearily "You cannot collect me yet! If my column has been annihilated that means that the road to the King's camp goes unhindered." Alarick began to look about for his weapons as if he alone would make the twenty-mile run toward the King's encampment.

"That is a mortal concern for a mortal war Alarick. You're no longer a mortal." Though he heard the word's she spoke, Alarick could not imagine them to be true. It was curious, on the other hand, to find that he was no longer in any sort of pain. He could recall the blow which sent his helmet sailing from his head and the arrow which knocked him from the horse, but above all, he remembered the pain. It was a pain that by all his reckoning should have remained present. Brynhild the Valkyrie stood in silence and watched the fallen warrior slowly come to grips with what fate had given him. Alarick appeared to get it, but his face was still too determined to be swayed. "You should not fear for your friends, for I know their names as well. Should they fall today, they will be lifted to Valhalla beside you. Why fret over their lives when death is surely a paradise?"

"Diedrich is a good King!" Alarick declared as he finally collected his lost helmet and sword. "If you are who you say you are, then you must know that the Gods desire a unified Midgard! If Diedrich and his forces are ambushed today, he will perish, and all of the good he can accomplish will be lost." The Norseman appeared to be perilously frustrated. "Midgard can finally have peace! By the Gods, we must have peace" Brynhild openly scoffed at such hope.