Valhalla

by Jennifer Willis

  * * *

  Sally stood alone, about halfway between the bulldozers and the Yggdrasil. Her left arm was rigid at her side, her index finger pointing sharply at the ground, and she held her right arm in front of her with her palm flat to repel the bulldozers. Uruz burned bright on the pad of her right thumb.

  After hitching a ride with Loki and Rod into the forest, she’d dashed ahead of them as soon as she’d heard the bulldozers. With her aged skin literally hanging off her bones now, she wasn’t sure how she’d managed to outrun the god of chaos. She guessed Loki and Rod now stood behind her with the others. She wasn’t really sure. Sally just concentrated on standing her ground.

  She felt the flash that ignited the branded rune on her thumb, and a hot tingling raced down her arm as the rune mingled with the magick of her own blood. Pure power spiraled up her left arm from the ground below as she drew in energy from the Yggdrasil’s massive roots. She had no idea how she was doing it, but a blue-white force shield projected out from the palm of her right hand, and it had stopped the front bulldozers in their tracks. Smoke rose from their engines.

  Five more bulldozers moved out from behind the first line and fanned out around the three frozen dozers, forming a wall of heavy machinery. Sally held her breath and curled her toes inside her shoes, and the gears of the five new bulldozers also seized up.

  Sally started to hyperventilate with the effort of holding the shield. She closed her eyes and breathed as deeply as she could. She imagined the soles of her feet anchored into the soil, sending down tendrils of light to connect with the Yggdrasil’s root system.

  A searing pain shot through her chest. Sally’s eyes flared open as she cried out, shocked to find the shaft of an arrow embedded in her flesh just below her left clavicle. Ahead of her, David climbed down from one of the dead bulldozers and was training a crossbow on her.

  “David! No!” Sally clutched at the arrow in her chest, trying to pull it out, but that just sent more spasms of excruciating pain through her body. Crying out for help, Sally fell to her knees.

  The bulldozer engines sputtered back to life. They started moving forward, bearing down on Sally and the Tree. Sally was vaguely aware of being lifted into the air, and she looked up into a suddenly familiar face.

  “Freyr!” Sally gasped weakly. “I know you!” She gestured back toward the bulldozers. “You have to let me face them . . .”

  Without a word, Freyr deposited Sally by the base of the Tree. Then another familiar face appeared over her.

  “Frigga!” Sally whimpered as the goddess examined her. She wasn’t star-struck for long. Sally glanced down to see blood oozing out of the wound, and when Frigga touched the flesh around the arrow shaft, Sally screamed.

  “Shhh,” Frigga cooed to her. “Quiet, child.” In a swift motion, Frigga pulled Sally forward to take a look at the exit wound where the arrow head stuck out between Sally’s shoulder blades.

  “How, how bad is it?” Sally stammered through gritted teeth.

  With a motherly smile, Frigga cupped Sally’s face, and Sally felt instantly better. She could still feel the hot, throbbing pain around the arrow shaft that had penetrated her body, but a soft, soothing warmth flowed from Frigga touch. Sally managed a weak smile.

  Frigga looked solemnly to Freyr. “Hold her.”

  Sally felt Freyr’s strong arms wrap around her, and the angry drone of the bulldozers suddenly roared up again in her awareness. Sally clutched at Freyr’s forearm and tried to get her bearings. “Wait a second! What’s going on? What are you about to—”

  Frigga slipped a leather strap between Sally’s teeth. “Bite down on this.”

  Sally nodded dumbly and looked anxiously into Frigga’s eyes. Before she could even formulate another question, blinding pain seared through her chest. Her eyes watered as she bit down on the leather strap in a muted scream that seemed to come up out of her toes. Sally panted in agony, and there was a wet, sucking sound coming from her chest. She shut her eyes tight and swore she saw stars against her closed eyelids.

  Then suddenly, Sally’s wound felt almost pleasant and cool. Her body was still shaking from the shock of pain, but Sally opened her eyes to find Frigga pressing a clump of herb-covered moss against the hole just below her clavicle. The damp leather strap lay in her lap, bitten almost completely in half.

  Freyr ripped one of the sleeves of his shirt into bandages to bind the moss compress into place. Frigga held up the blood-smeared arrow for Sally to see.

  “Modern sporting equipment,” Frigga commented. “Aluminum construction. So no splinters to worry about.” She tossed the arrow to the dirt and touched her chest lightly. “I am Frigga. I am pleased to meet the Moon Witch.” Frigga studied Sally’s face and started to frown. “I see all this has taken quite a toll on you, young one.”

  Sally nodded as her eyes filled with tears. She hated that she was crying all the time, but she simply couldn’t help it. “I, I’m so sorry—”

  “How did you arrive here?” Frigga interrupted.

  Despite the life-and-death battle raging around her, and her own wounds, Sally nearly laughed. “I, I caught a ride here with Rod and Loki. Loki made Rod stay in the car when we got here. But, the way Loki found me was actually kind of funny. He was tracking Fenrir—”

  “Save your strength,” Freyr cut her off. He glanced darkly at Frigga, then nodded toward the bulldozers which continued to advance on the Tree. “It’s not over yet.” He finishing tying off Sally’s bandages and was immediately on his feet to stare down Managarm’s attack.

  Frigga squeezed Sally’s hand. “Remain here by the Tree. It may help to speed your healing, and your blood—flowing freely or not—still contains powerful magick.” She rose to her feet. “There will be time for talking and explanations once we’re out of this mess.”

  Sally nodded meekly. If she lived through the morning, she wasn’t looking forward to having to explain herself to Frigga. She watched her fall into step beside Freyr as they strode in the direction of Managarm’s forces. Sally’s eyes widened as she saw them catch up with the others—Odin, Heimdall, Freya, Saga, and Bragi—to march side-by-side toward the bulldozers. A fiercely attentive white-and-gray husky kept pace with them.

  “Sally!”

  Sally looked up in a startled daze to find Opal kneeling by her side, and Baron rubbing his head against her knee and purring. “Opal?”

  In deference to her injury, Opal patted Sally’s knee instead of giving her a hug. “I’m glad you made it,” she said with a smile.

  Sally watched Baron scramble up the Yggdrasil’s trunk and start sauntering up and down one of the lowest branches like he owned the Tree. She laughed. The whole situation was completely ridiculous. She was sitting beneath the World Tree itself, with an arrow wound in her shoulder and her friend and cat suddenly back from the dead, while the old Norse gods stood together against a fleet of bulldozers in a dark forest that wasn’t marked on most maps. She gestured toward the line of deities standing in front of the advancing machinery.

  “I saw this, in a vision,” Sally blurted. “Only, it was Fenrir they were facing. Not bulldozers . . .” She shook her head and felt the pain in her shoulder flare. “Opal, I’m sorry I got you into this. “I’m sorry about everything. You have no idea—”

  “Sally,” Opal interrupted. “Look!”

  Sally followed Opal’s pointed finger to watch as twelve bulldozers spread out into a semi-circle aimed directly at the Yggdrasil.

  Sally gasped, but Opal placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Wait . . .”

  Sally saw Heimdall turn his head and smile, and her heart leapt into her throat when she realized what he was looking at. A pick-up truck led a line of motorcycles through the thirty-foot-wide swath Managarm and his warriors had cut through the forest.

  “Is that . . . ?”

  Opal smiled and whispered. “Einherjar.”

  Sally knew she should be outraged by the destruction to the forest—hundreds of
years of old-growth trees being felled, saplings ripped up by their roots, and the ground getting shredded by bulldozer treads. But as the motorcycles spilled into the stand of young White Oaks and started tearing up the earth beneath their wheels, she felt her heart pound with excitement.

  “Vikings!” she exclaimed with a painful cough, then laughed. “Vikings!”

  Sally made Opal help her to her feet so she could see better. The biker gang was driving circles around the bulldozers, and Sally laughed out loud when Opal told her their name.

  “The Valkyries.” Sally pressed her right hand to her chest and felt Uruz flash hot and tickle the skin on her thumb.

  “That guy there,” Opal said, pointing toward an older man in black leather who sped past the Tree toward the nearest bulldozer. “He’s the leader. Ted.”

  “Hey, mangy-headed whore monkey!” Ted jeered at one of the Berserkers hanging onto a bulldozer cab. “Aren’t you a sad-looking excuse of a weasel!”

  The Berserker—a wild-eyed girl in spandex with a sparkly green boa wrapped around her neck—snarled and tried to grab Ted as he drove by. But Ted sped out in front of the bulldozer, then circled back and slowed as he came up alongside again.

  “Just going to sit there, huh? Some fearsome warrior you are!” Ted taunted, gunning his bike as he rolled alongside the advancing bulldozer. “You don’t look so mighty to me, little pup! Not so tough, eh, puppy? Puppy chow?”

  The Berserker growled and bared her teeth before leaping off the bulldozer. Ted sped up as she launched, so she only briefly caught hold of his back fender. The Berserker jumped to her feet and stormed after Ted, who kept his speed just high enough to stay safely out of reach. He lifted a fist in the air and howled. “Valkyries!”

  “Valkyries!” came the full-throated response from the rest of the gang as all twelve motorcycles tore around the slower moving bulldozers.

  “You’re a little long in the tooth to be fighting, eh, granny?” another Valkyrie shouted at a silver-haired woman in an apron who sat at the controls of one of the bulldozers. She spat at him and diverted the machine to try to take him out, but the biker wove easily to the side.

  “Maybe I should trade in my Suzuki for an old lady scooter so it’d be a fair fight? You any good without your walker?” The Valkyrie pulled a fist-sized rock out of his jacket pocket and heaved it at the bulldozer, striking the cab window dead-on. With a blood-curdling scream, the senior woman abandoned her controls and leapt out of the cab toward him.

  Sally could have sworn the biker swerved closer, deliberately allowing the woman to fall on him, but if it was an act of chivalry, she guessed the biker regretted it as soon as the elderly Berserker raked her fingernails across his face and tore through one of his eyes.

  “Holy . . . !” he yelped as blood poured down his cheek. The old woman reached around him to take control of the bike, steering it directly into one of the White Oak saplings, and then another. The branches of a third sapling shot through the spokes of the back wheel, and the bike skidded sideways, trapping both the Valkyrie and the Berserker beneath it.

  The Berserker continued to slash at the Valkyrie with her sharp fingernails. Holding one hand over his destroyed eye, the biker balled his other hand into a fist and punched her in the face until she was unconscious.