Story: Valkyrja (all chapters)

Authors: Crimsonlotus`

Back to chapter list

Chapter 1

- VALKYRJA -

Black smoke crested the horizon. The sun was dying behind it, sinking low over the shattered trees. In the Southlands ringing the Middle Sea, forests were nothing but a thin scrubland of skeletal trees and thorny bushes - an ardent furnace by day and utter desolation by night. The gunner clasped the cool sandalwood grip of her jezail and drew a laboured breath.

If the blast had been just a few hands closer, it would have rent her body in two. Instead, the force of the detonation had sent her rolling like a child’s marble down a steep incline. Dry, red earth coated the segmented leather plates of her cuirass. There, it mixed with fresh blood, forming a dark paste, smelling of iron.

Blood, she thought. Slowly, deliberately she removed a leather gauntlet and inspected her side. She knew from experience she wouldn’t feel pain until a little after the wound had been produced. It took a few moments of inspection, but finally the dreaded spasm of churning agony lanced through her, travelling like quickened lightning through her spine and between her ears. The cut was deep, the blood flow staunched only by her undershirt and the accumulated dust.

Shrapnel. The gunner exhaled. Coppery blood welled in her mouth. Something was broken inside. Perhaps a rib. She sat up, leaning on her healthy side, using her jezail like a staff to support her weight. A dull ache arced through her shell shocked limbs.

Women endure pain better than men; women endure pain better than men; women - the inane litany helped her concentrate long enough to stand. That was what they told her when she volunteered to join the Order. The Grand Mistress’s seneschal herself had pressed a half-mark of silver into her palm. You will serve us and see the world.

The ringing in the gunner’s ears had stopped. The bitter taste of bile mingled with blood coated her mouth. She knew that if she was to survive, she had to move. Her company had been scattered and she had left a blood trail. With nightfall, it would attract predators. Tawny dire wolves or even the scorpion-tailed wyverns that cried each night from lonely hilltop nests.

The gunner hastened across the scorched earth, only slightly cooler in the early evening than it had been in the torrid inferno of the afternoon. Each step renewed the agonising twitch in her side. She pulled her tattered yellow cloak tight over her shoulder, instinctively shielding her wound. Memories began to bubble through the red haze of her thoughts.

The sandalwood perfume of her jezail’s grip; the hard, metallic tang of its silvered barrel, longer than she was tall. It reminded her why each step was vital. Hildr - the scent of leather and metal and the starched sheets of an officer’s tent. Starched sheets cocooned her, held her close to Hildr’s sleeping form at the first light of early morning. Counting hairs, counting red-flecked blonde hairs on Hildr’s wiry arms. I know every single hair on your body - I know when even a single one is stirred by the wind or by my somnolent touch.

One, two, three, four - the gunner bit her lip and forced herself to stay alert. Her mind wandered to the leathern pouch strapped close to her belt. She estimated she had enough powder for two, maybe three shots. Should a beast or Inhuman scout cross her path, all she needed was one clean strike. It was her calling; the art she knew best, her aim truer than a veteran of seven campaigns. She had always known her jezail would become her life. The Order would never have allowed one like her to become a squire, much less a cavalrywoman. The gleaming breastplates and heavy labrys axes with platinum filigree belonged to those like Hildr - pure Ortho ascendancy, bloodline traceable fifteen generations back.

The gunner forced her burning muscles to a quick march. In direction of the setting sun, she spied a thick cluster of low, spiny bushes interspersed with the fleshy, spiked plants that thrived on a soil of cracked stone and shale. She knew they would bear fruit at this time of the year and that their fleshy leaves could be split open and pressed for water. She had been in Southlands long enough to learn its rhythms. After all, such was the art of a gunner: observe, learn and apply.

The sun had almost finished its descent into the trackless edge of the world. Slumped by the rough trunk of a silver-leafed tree, the gunner paused to flush her wound with the warm, brackish remnants of her waterskin. The bleeding had subsided, but dry blood now crusted her belly and thigh. She wiped her lips with the back of her hand and found her spittle flecked with pink.

In that instant, a cold, creeping fear seized her. It was not the prospect of death – for she knew that accepting the inevitability of death came with being a soldier - but the acute terror of disappointing Hildr. Hildr had ordered her to return and a good soldier always followed orders. Her mother’s platitudes bubbled like fermenting liquid in the back of her mind: work hard - harder than they imagine possible and one day you’ll see them eye to eye. In a literal sense, the gunner mused, that was unlikely. Careful breeding by Hildr’s ancestors had ensured optimal height and musculature, so that she stood at least a head above the rank and file.

Still, Hildr had chosen her. Chosen her above statuesque, highborn cavalrywomen; above fierce, impeccably elegant Southern condottiere. Me, the gunner thought, with enough bravado and a bit of luck I could bluff my way through a brigade of Inhumans. Just say: I am Sevastie - I mean Basti, First Adjutant of the Arquebusiers of the Order of the Radiant Path. Whatever you do to me, you can be sure Lady Hildr will make you pay sevenfold. The line between irony and reality, she hoped, was very thin indeed.

The sun had set and the milky curtain of the Cosmic Sea now draped itself over the darkening sky. Selene loomed radiant overhead, though her sister was still half-obscured, presenting only an ochre crescent behind the veil of night. The gunner forced herself to steady her breathing. The sharp spasms in her side had become a mere state of mind. If she could survive the night, a patrol by early light would find her. If the Vigilant Maiden held her in favour, her wound would not become putrid.

Far away, an intermittent clicking echoed behind ranks of ancient trees lining the hills like decrepit legionaries. Clicking like the metallic ring of her jezail’s intricate wheel-lock mechanism each time she fired it. She clutched the gun closer to her, forefinger pressed against its trigger, its butt propped against the roots of the tree. Her position was defensible. Anything in her field of vision at three hundred paces could be brought down with reasonable accuracy.

In training she had been the best. Sharp vision and a steady hand were two of the few gifts her bastard bloodline had bequeathed her. Like other aldi from the marches in the deep north, her heritage was fey-marked by mingling with wild Wood Elves. If her sharp, elfin features did not betray her, then her eyes and hair would - nightbloom dark and a colour no pure human, whether Northwoman or Southlander could possess.

Why did you take up the Path? Hildr’s sonorous contralto echoed silently. The gunner remembered she had studiously declined to answer. She felt she needed to defend the sanctity of the intimacy she shared with Hildr - the warmth of bodies and voices still exultant after needful, rough and tumble passion. But then Hildr had insisted - a soft, but authoritative question demanding an answer: Basti?

To have the privilege of dying on my feet, rather than living on my knees, the gunner mouthed the words into a darkness that was, in her mind, both the darkness of Hildr’s tent and the crepuscular penumbra of the sun-baked maquis. Living on my knees - the gunner thought of her mother, thin and haggard at the sky-burial, worldly possessions all bundled up tight with worn linen, washed countless times over.

Her reverie thinned out into darkness and was replaced with the sensation of wind stirring, bringing with it a damp, rotten scent and an ever-louder clicking. The gunner sat up, eyes alert, piercing the shadowy night. With practised patience she slipped forward, balancing herself on one knee, her jezail sliding into its familiar position perpendicular to her body. Something had tracked her; followed her over expanses of stone and baked earth, trailing behind streaks of dried blood seeping into the soil like the blood of a sacrifice seeped into the altars of a hecatomb.

The clicking intensified. The gunner reached for her powder and loaded the black dust into the priming pan. Her breath had slowed to the methodical rhythm she knew from many a battle. Long, deft fingers slipped into her bullet pouch and touched cold, alchemical silver. Shimmering in the dull light, she placed the bullet into its chamber and the mechanism locked it in position.

One shot - the gunner pondered. She knew her sudden movement had opened the wound again. Fresh, hot blood trickled down her side, thick and malignant, drawing life force away from her. Life, the gunner inhaled. The familiar scent of gunpowder, metal, leather - familiar, comforting scents. The neutral scent of Hildr’s soap, the taste of her skin, all leather and metal, her hungry lips, her cunt like sea-salt. Live for her, the gunner’s mind raced and with each memory the clicking drew closer.

Something uncoiled, dark and serpentine in the dusty earth perhaps four hundred paces from the gunner’s position. Propped up on a multitude of legs it moved in an eccentric, winding pattern, as if inking Elven calligraphy on the earth itself.

As it neared, a rush of memories welled in the gunner’s mind. Thoughts roiled like an angry sea, drawn out by an unseen storm. A phantom wing of silver armoured cavalrywomen streaked onto a battlefield riddled with smoke and ash. She saw Hildr gallop by, stern blue eyes ardent like those of the golden water-nymphs engraved on her helm.

The gunner fought to distance the fountain of images flooding her mind. The logophage closed in, obsidian-sharp mandibles snapping, drawing closer to the wellspring of thoughts it hoped to consume.

Remember the firing range, the gunner’s thoughts centred on an image of her kneeling, striking each distant cymbal, Hildr’s approving hand on her shoulder. Just one shot. The logophage was at seventy paces. The gunner released the wheel mechanism and pulled the trigger.

A sharp report pierced the night, followed almost instantly by the tearing crack of metal against chitin. The logophage faltered, slumped forward, and lunged, a dark liquid, bitter as gall, streaming from its armoured flank. The gunner dropped her jezail and drew the cinquedea hanging from her belt. She waited till the logophage was almost upon her and then struck, thrusting the broad, triangular blade into the nest of the beast’s eyes. The clicking came to an abrupt end.

The gunner slumped back and everything coalesced into a single point of swiftly expanding darkness.

***

When she awoke, night had passed its peak. A clean, white cloak was draped over her. Her mouth felt dry, but the taste of blood was almost gone. Her side felt stiff, but the pain had subsided and was now a manageable, dull throb. She reached under the cloak and felt dry bandages drawn tight against her belly.

A crackling campfire burned at the centre of the clearing where she lay. Lambent flames pure like starlight. A dark figure moved from the gnarled trees into the light. The gunner recognised the fine, light leather armour worn by the fierce skirmishers of the Southlands near where the Pillars of the World marked the boundary of the realm of mortals.

“You must be thirsty,” a serene, female voice whispered, “Come, I have brought water.” The strange woman knelt by the gunner’s side and placed a waterskin to the wounded woman’s lips. Water, cold and sweet soothed and calmed the bitter heat in the gunner’s mouth.

The gunner felt herself propped up by strong arms. The strange woman was slender, but her body was hard and built like a runner's. Olive skin pressed against the gunner's pale hand, eyes like the core of pure jade flashed under long, dark lashes.

“Easy, Basti," the woman chided and drew away the waterskin, "you can drink all you want later. You fought well and earned your rest."

“Was I delirious?” the gunner asked. Her head felt light, yet she felt her fatigue fading with each passing moment.

“Have no fear," the woman said with a musical laugh, "you gave nothing away. I have known your name for a long time."

“And how should I address you?”

“Pallas - I think."

“You think?” Basti leaned forward, supporting herself on her elbow, seeking to meet the stranger’s gaze.

“It will do for now."

“I have to rejoin my unit. They’ll send scouts out in the morning to see if there were any survivors from the ambush.”

“Yes," Pallas agreed, "with me that is a choice you may make."

“A choice?” Basti mustered the strength to pull herself up to a sitting position. The pain in her side had all but disappeared and her muscles felt light, almost weightless.

Pallas nodded and remained silent. She was armed. Basti noted the sharp, double-edged Southern shortsword at Pallasfs side. The image of the blade burned bright in Basti's mind. The new sensation she felt was not fear, but a sense of attachment that put her at ease. The seeds of the same fervent loyalty she felt for Hildr.

They sat in silence. Pallas remained kneeling, watching over Basti with tender reverence, almost as if she were praying at a firelight vigil.

Then Pallas spoke, her voice lilting with the intonation of the Southlands, "Are you hungry?"

Basti shook her head. Her belly felt as tight as a drum. Her thoughts occupied themselves not with food but with battle and sacrifice. Hildr called to her.

“I must return to my encampment," Basti insisted, "she needs me. Hildr needs me."

“She is your commander,” Pallas said, not questioning, but stating a fact.

“Yes, and much else besides."

“So you fight for those who hold you in disdain,” Pallas mused, “loyal unto death to women who confuse purity of blood with valour.”

“No. I fight for her. If she were to die, I would die by her side."

“She is not the Order,” Pallas’s eyes seemed to look beyond Basti, reaching into the recesses of memory, coaxing out that which the logophage had sought to force.

“To me she is," Basti replied, "the Order, my homeland - these are all principles that exist in abstract. Words on paper, or drawings on map-parchment. She is real; in her reside all the virtue and the goodness of the Order. She and it cannot exist independently of one another. So yes, I fight for those who despise me because the one I love cannot exist separate from them."

Pallas lowered her gaze. She stroked Basti’s cheek with a deft hand. It was the kind of airy caress that quickened Basti’s blood.

Then Pallas rose to her feet, “Your faith is powerful,” she said, “I feel its fire. Will you not at least rest here until first light?”

“Yes,” Basti conceded, “your hospitality honours me“. The reflection of the fire dancing over the oiled leather of Pallas’s armour entranced her. The workmanship was flawless and not a single scratch marred its surface. Where did this woman come from? And how did she avoid battle here on the borderlands? thought it best not to ask, lest additional cryptic answers inflame her thoughts.

Pallas turned to face the fire. She loosened her cuirass with the knowing dexterity of a warrior and set it down by her travelling pack. Where Pallas lay down her armour, Basti now saw her jezail and cinquedea, cleaned and oiled, lying like temple offerings at the far end of the clearing.

Once the quiet ritual of laying down her arms was completed, Pallas stripped off her loose undershirt and folded it with ceremonial precision. The tremulous firelight played over her skin. Between the sharp peaks of Pallas's shoulderblades, Basti could make out a mark, a single rune tinted a red so dark it seemed like arterial blood.

Sigel. Victory. Basti exhaled. Her heart battered her chest. She searched for words but her throat closed up, allowing her to exhale only a plaintive breath. Pallas rose and returned to kneel beside Basti.

Basti cleared her throat. The thirst for battle and glory simmered in her and fused with the same ineffable need she felt for Hildr. Love forged in blood. Her heart seemed to beat in unison with Pallas's breath, exalting the profound sisterhood that bound Basti to her unit and to the Order.

“Are you a Chooser of the Slain?" Basti croaked. Her voice trembled with emotion.

“That is my name amongst your people, yes.”

“A spirit?"

“No,” Pallas’s eyes flashed with quiet indignation. “No, here, feel.” Her hands reached for Basti’s, “Touch my cheeks, know that I am flesh.”

Basti touched warm, smooth skin with her fingers. The powder stains left a grey streak on Pallas's cheek - a dark tear. Her touch grazed the delicate outline of Pallas's jaw, her thumb arching to trace the shape of the dark woman's lips. Soft lips, moist and alive with heat, parted. Basti let her thumb be drawn into Pallas's mouth. A sensuous heat and then Pallas's tongue, soft as ripe plums, dancing over her skin.

Basti heard a dim echo like clashing metal in the fevered chambers of her mind. Her touch strayed lower. The swift pulse of Pallas's heartbeat danced beneath the skin of her neck, strong shoulders and small, taut breasts, crowned with big, dark nipples, plump and swollen, ready to be plucked by hungry lips.

“Is this the choice you offer," Basti breathed, "the choice I should accept?"

“My body and soul are yours for an eternity you could not even dream of,” Pallas replied, her voice now a soft sigh, “but all that binds you to this world, your name, your memories, everything - this you must set aside.”

“But if you were dead, surely you could not be of flesh," Basti said, even while her forefinger traced the tight turtle-shell pattern of muscle on Pallas's belly. She paused at the leather girdle holding the white half-tunic wreathing Pallas's thighs in place.

“I am of another flesh, but I breathe, speak and love all the same.”

“Why?" Basti edged closer. The familiar perfume of metal and musky desire surrounded her. No spirit would excite the same raw passion now throbbing in Bastifs breeches, aching and wet against dampening leather.

“There are other worlds above and below this one where we fight for the glory of the Vigilant Maiden and, should we fall, we will be restored to continue our crusade until time itself comes to an end. I have known your soul and have judged it worthy. I will give myself to you, but you must give yourself to me, body and spirit.”

Pallas cradled Bastifs wandering hand in her own and pressed the gunner's fingers against the buckle of her girdle. "I yearn for your mouth and your hand, just as my tongue burns to taste you. Take me and our bond will never be broken."

Basti mastered the fires of her need long enough to speak, "Did you have one you loved when you still lived on this plane?"

Pallas paused, her gaze distant and pensive. "I think so."

“Do you remember her?"

“No - sometimes I see a phantasm. A silhouette of light traced in the darkness and then my mind falls silent. Perhaps - if she ever existed at all - she has joined me in the Vigilant Maiden‘s eternal service, but bonds made in this world cannot be brought into others.”

“Has my time come?" The icy grip of the plunging unknown gripped Bastifs heart.

“Do you think you would be offered a choice if it had come?”

“So if I chose to remain -" Basti trailed off.

“Such a choice would be honoured, but know that in time we will meet again. In worlds that lie beside this one, time is immaterial. I witnessed your first breath and I have already witnessed your last.”

“In battle?" Basti breathed.

“I would not have come otherwise.”

“Then I have chosen."

“So be it,” Pallas rose and pressed her lips against Basti’s forehead. A chaste kiss of parting, but with a fondness that made Basti realise their separation would only be temporary.

The clear flames of the campfire danced and then faded, dying like the last glimmer of the stars as their brightness was overwhelmed by the burning visage of the sun. First morning was coloured a sombre blue, infused with the redness of the new dawn.

Basti scrambled to her feet, her first steps hesitant. In the distance, hoofbeats battered the parched earth and familiar banners floated through the canopy of the low trees.


-- END --


Back to chapter list