Author’s Note: “Valkyrie” will be a weekly serial coming out Fridays, and then become a perma-free novella.  Couple of notes: Ilona Andrew’s online fiction, particularly “The Inheritance“, inspired me to try posting a serial. Second, yes, I’ve done a lot of re-enactment, starting with the Society for Creative Anachronism in the late 90s. Later, while teaching English in Moscow, my husband got into live-steel Viking reenactment, and yes, he does have the x-rays to prove it! I like mead, camping, and occasionally commenting about random poisonous plants around the guys who broke his leg, so that worked out. Since leaving Russia, I’ve also done a lot of event photos for German LARP groups. So, this may not be precisely accurate to the SCA, but it shouldn’t be too far off. Enjoy!
Photos & art by me. -Kira

 

Near Oslo, Minnesota, 2042

Once upon a time, long ago and a good six-hour drive from home, I got wildly underage drunk while camping with Vikings. I helped fight off a redcap slaver raid, decided I’d become a superhero, and lost my V-card to a girl who could dual-wield throwing axes. This is a story about when I was a crazy kid, not a story for kids! —Aisling, many years later

“The draugr’s out there somewhere,” Ragnar said, scanning the darkness. He sipped from the communal mead horn, passed it on, and checked his watch. The man had perfect Viking chieftain looks – dark hair, trim beard, chain-mail, leather – but this was the Society for Creative Anachronism. Eighteen years after the apocalypse, they’d gone from history hobbyists to part-time monster hunters. Sometimes it takes a sword to save the day… or, I thought, biting my cheeks against a grin, a seventeen year old girl with good footwork and absolutely no common sense.

“We’ll hold a watch until dawn, just in case,” he continued. If he hadn’t been so old – like, mid-thirties and kinda grizzled, eww – he’d have been incredibly hot. “Then return to the hunt after the warband’s had a few hours of sleep. Should be bright enough by four a.m. that we don’t need to worry about an attack.”

You don’t have to worry about an attack at all!

Frogs and crickets sang over the Red River’s distant burble, twining through the sounds of camp. Campfires crackled, bottles clinked, and a lone singer with a guitar crooned tunes from the world Before. These days, the SCA did two things: keep pre-industrial skills alive, and kill those monsters bullets couldn’t touch. Midsommer Fields 2042 aimed to do both.

Small Paul, a gentle giant in a utility kilt, armed mainly with bottle openers and corkscrews, passed me the mead. He really, really wanted to pull off a barbarian look, but was only managing “scruffy homebrewer”. I took the honey wine and downed a big gulp, using the horn to hide my smile.

I dropped the draugr last night, before anyone pitched a single tent, I wished I could say out loud. You’re safe. The dead dude’s defanged and sulking in his crypt, so I’m free to drink as much of this lovely meeeead as they’ll let me!

I passed the horn to the next person and let myself remember the night before.

No moon had lit the sky.

I stood under starlight, alone in the dark with a monster.

Exactly where I belonged.

Low fog curled around his grave mound. Locals had long assumed it was a Native burial from the Mound Builder era… until magic reared its ugly head in another interestingly horrible new way. The Red River flooded extra high in spring, with gods-know-what leaking from some chemical storage tanks it overwhelmed. First the flood caused some weird poisonings, and then, when the water receded, an undead Norseman stumbled out of his barrow and started slaughtering dairy cows.

These things just happen, though, since the world broke.

Shadows thickened around the tomb, forming something like a passage into it. Two green lights flickered into being and blinked at me. A malignant stare, empty but for rage and ancient pain, turned my way. Darkness uncoiled and stalked forward. The stench of a waterlogged grave hit so hard I flinched.

It paused just inside the tumulus, watching me, slowly lowering into a predatory crouch.

Sweat slicked my palms, sliding down the hilt of my mother’s sword.

“I challenge you, dead thing,” I said, voice trembling, and banged my blade against the round shield in my left hand. I’d matched his Norse vibe to make sure he saw something recognizable, even though sword and shield are not my preferred armaments. Now to say something dumb and cocky. “Go back to your tomb and sleep… or face me in battle!”

His laughter was an old, cruel thing, sharp as sleet on a blizzard wind.

“Foolish child,” his voice whispered, echoing like it passed through the veil between life and death. I had the sense he wasn’t speaking English, even though I somehow understood him. “You think a little human girl can defeat me?”

My breath came fast and high.

You’ve got to sell it, Coral had told me while we were prepping, and if anyone knows how to draw in creepy old dudes, it’s her. Nothing pulls in a predator like fear. Tremble. Make your voice shake. Flinch like it’s reflex. And then…

The draugr lunged, dropping to all fours and moving in a blur no human eyes could track, out of his grave and straight for me.

I stepped lightly aside, stabbing into his hamstrings as he passed. The dry cords snapped like worn out guitar strings.

“Yeah, seems unlikely,” I said as he spun, eyes wide with shock, one leg giving out beneath him. “Also, my mom was faster than you while she was doing chemo.”

He growled like a bear, yanked an ancient blade from its rotting sheath, and stabbed towards my torso. I skipped sideways and slammed my shield into his face. A greenish molar went flying.

Eww. Is it that color from undeath, or centuries without dentistry?

“No human maid are you,” he hissed, slashing his rusty blade at my belly.

“Hey, I’m half,” I protested, leaning just out of reach. “I’ve never even met anyone from Mom’s side of the family. ‘Cept her, I mean.”

He lunged again. I spun away, pivoted around him, and stabbed deep into his torso. As I’d half suspected, attempted organ damage did just about nothing.

Aim for his joints. I’ll take him apart piece by piece if I need to.

I smashed my shield into his sword hand with my other arm, and his blade went flying.

“And as for being a maid… well, if you saw the guys at Stinkwood high, you’d be one too!”

My sword feinted for his eyes and I kicked out his good leg. His kneecap went flying.

“Show me your true face!” he snarled.

Go time.

I dropped my glamours and let him see what my mother’s blood had given me, pointed ears and all. Light leaked from my skin, the strange radiance of her people’s magic flaring bright against the rot that had claimed him.

Something resisted. Something rose in the dark, dank, ancient, and hateful, and turned its gaze towards me.

“Child of the elves,” the draugr rasped. “You think to come here as a hero, bright as the dawn?”

“Ha. I wish,” I said. “These days, they call the Elsecomer sidhe beautiful monsters. Nobody thinks they’re heroes.”

“Genocidal alien invaders” is the usual phrase.

He lunged again, faster this time, slashing with yellowed fingernails that had grown into claws.

I laughed and slipped aside… almost.

Pain lanced through my ribs as one hooked nail caught skin. I stumbled back, clutching my side. Blood welled hot and sticky beneath my fingers.

Okay, doing this without armor is good reflex training, but maybe I should take this a bit more seriously.

Something like slime mold pulsed across his rotted flesh, glistening and alive. It reeked like a bait bucket left too long in the sun. I gagged, throat heaving. That low fog thickened around us.

Oh yeah. Not letting him touch me again!

“Like you, this magic that animates me?” he asked.

“Oh my gods, the smell,” I gasped. “Are you gonna skunk me next?”

He smiled, a dry, corpse-thin stretch of lips. “Power came with the flood. For seven hundred years I slept, uneasy, never given proper rites. Then wyrm-bile set my veins afire, and I woke. Voices of the drowned whisper I must hunt… and now, I have found them worthy prey.”

Behind him, a shadow slunk low across the grave mound. Starlight glinted on red hair.

“Do you know what a spoonie lure is?” I asked, circling him, casual as a breeze, keeping that shadow at his back. “They’re my dad’s go-to for trolling northern pikes. Real shiny things. You drill a couple holes in a polished spoon, cut off the handle, add some hooks, et voilà: perfect northern bait. Then Dad wakes you at four in the damn morning, on summer holidays, and makes you paddle a canoe while he drags the lure behind it. Catches more pike than any pricey Rapala.”

I faked a stumble. He lunged for me, claws extended. I met them with my shield, and heaved, knocking him backwards.

Time to set the hook.

The shadow on the barrow stood up and screamed.

My sword and shield dissolved into swirling golden dust and reformed as a boar spear, long and brutal, one end braced against the earth. Mom’s nanotech armor shimmered around my head and sound-dampening plates sealed over my ears.

Coral’s banshee wail ripped through the mist. The draugr recoiled, hands flying to where his ears had once been, shrieking in raw, instinctive agony. I planted the spear like a pole vaulter, launched forward, and smashed into his chest with both feet. His ribs caved with a sickening crunch.

We hit the ground hard. I spun the spear and drove it straight through his sternum, shoving the blade through his chest and all the way down to the crosspiece. He was pinned him to the ground, twitching like a frog in biology class.

“Point is, I’m not the hero. I’m the bright, shiny bait,” I said, stepping back and dismissing my ear guards. Coral wove forward, all crimson hair and deadly curves, beautiful and hungry. “You reek to me. That magic animating you, though? My friend here says it smells like caramel apples and barbecued ribs. Hunting things like you is a pain in the butt, but only a certain class of monster feeds her Hunger.”

Coral dropped to her knees beside his shoulder, graceful, lovely, and his shriveled eyes went wide.

She had pale blue-green eyes, like water under a cloudy sky, red hair and the face of a fallen angel – by far the prettiest girl in our school, maybe even the whole state.

Until she smiled.

Her teeth shifted, lengthening into a nightmare tangle of glassy deepwater fangs. She leaned toward his throat like she meant to kiss him.

“Daughter of the hungry waters,” the draugr whispered. “Take your due.”

Coral’s hands slipped around his chest like a lover’s, and then her mouth sank into his neck. The slime-mold magic, the rotting swamp-glow that had clung to him, twitched, then began to stream into her like smoke sucked through a straw.

I looked away, gagging.

Coral hummed through her anglerfish grin, delighted, slurping up the monster’s magic like a county fair milkshake.

What the hell is she turning into?

To be continued! Episodes post on Fridays.
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