One of the Amazons bathing Jan let out a tiny yelp when the Wolfen did something under the water, no doubt pinching her someplace private. She gave a shake of her head and smiled at the impish wolf girl.
“Be at ease, Valkyrja, no one shall harm you here, or seek to take what isn’t freely given.” The Amazon working his stiff shoulders said with a warm smile.
“Indeed, I have dishonoured myself enough for one day! Look upon your wives. See how relaxed they all are? Well, almost all of them.” Myrina shot a concerned frown at Nina.
The Gigas apparently did not like the idea of anyone but her master and bond-sisters touching her with such familiarity. The two Amazons who intended to bathe her had failed to even get her into the water, and both were panting from the effort of tugging at her shoulders while the tiny naked girl simply crossed her arms and looked on in amusement, one leg crooked against her hammer.
At last the naked pair threw up their arms in defeat and stomped away while Nina gave a private smile and jumped into the water of her own volition.
“I’m told it took Yana and several of her warriors, not to mention a grove of Dryads, to subdue her.” Kala remarked, her eyes were hooded as her own back and shoulders were massaged.
“Truly? You were an enemy of the Aegis little warrior?” One of the Amazons tending to Ophelia asked.
Nina frowned at being called little but let it go as she doggy-paddled in the water and settled in Nameless’s lap with a happy sigh.
“Not exactly. Don’t remember it much. Ask him.” Was the only explanation she offered as she took the soapy cloth from Myrina and began to bathe herself.
Myrina frowned at her rudeness, but quickly realized that Nina was beyond such things. Then she gasped as another realization struck her.
“She was one of the Tenebrae that you saved.”
“Er, yeah, a bit.” He mumbled into the water, while his arms encircled the little red girl in his lap, hugging her self-consciously.
Kala called out again.
“A bit? Ha! Her stone was black as pitch when he went after her! Even the Lady Essig had given up hope. I was there, I watched with my sisters as he held her hour upon hour until he finally managed to pull her out of the darkness.”
He kind of wished she would stop talking.
If the looks he was getting were awed before, they were well and truly thunderstruck now.
The silence lasted for nearly a full minute before Myrina broke it.
“Her stone held no light, and yet you saved her?” She said solemnly, before bowing her head to him. “Now we know your worth, Valkyrja. And our own deeds pale in comparison.”
Around the shallow pool Amazon heads were bowed towards him before resuming their task. All the while Nina ignored the conversation around her, focused on her bath. Until abruptly she turned in his lap and kissed him hard.
“What was that for?”
“Cuz.”
She shrugged, then sniffled a bit and quickly wiped away a single tear from her cheek as she turned back and settled in his lap once more, her butt cheeks resting against his penis.
Sometime later they finished their bath and were briskly toweled off by their hosts. All except Nina, who snagged the towel away from the helpful girl and when she made to object the giant absently took her hammer in one hand while her other grabbed the Amazon by the ankle and threw her far out into the water.
Nameless drew in a sharp breath, but the Amazons found the incident hilarious.
“Be wary sisters! A true giant is in our midst!” Laughed one of the other girls.
Ophelia sighed.
“Nina dear, you are being quite rude.”
“I am? To who?” The giant wore a confused look.
Ophelia struggled for a moment, then just hung her head and sighed again.
“Nevermind.”
“If you say so.” Nina went back to toweling her legs dry.
After that they were clad in flimsy robes and led to the center of the village where Myrina gestured grandly in invitation for them to sit around their stone-ringed fire pit.
“Honoured guests, our husbands and wives gathered much of the forest’s bounty for you, and our hunters speared a wild boar that I am told has been roasting all day.”
The wide variety of nuts, berries, mushrooms and juicy pork was a nice change from their standard traveling fare and the group tucked in heartily.
They ate and drank for a time, and as night fell a great fire was lit and they sat around it in a big circle.
Alcaia and Miranda had rejoined them by that point and the Amazon leader turned to Nameless in his place of honour to her right.
“Aegis Holt tells me that though you are an Empath, and a powerful one at that, you are fairly ignorant of my people?”
“Uh, yeah, I wasn’t much good in school.” He mumbled awkwardly.
Alcaia nodded with a serious expression.
“Then the honour shall be ours to tell you of one of the most important events in our history, as we saw it.” She stood and looked around the fire as the conversation halted; “Sisters, a telling is needed for the Empath. Who will speak now of the loss of the golden ones?”
Something in her tone seemed rhetorical, as if she already knew who would answer. And sure enough a somber hush fell over the crowd as all eyes turned to a single girl, a young Amazon who bowed her head at the sudden attention.
She stood, and Nameless was struck by her eyes: every other Amazon he had met had various shades of blue, but hers were such a light hue as to be nearly white.
“I will tell it, if he will hear it.” Her voice was melodic and soft.
Alcaia looked at him, clearly waiting for something.
“Um, sure?”
She nodded at the young girl whose demeanor shifted utterly as she leaned towards the fire and spoke in a ringing tone.
“Hear me sisters! And hear me, honoured guests! I am Escrya, daughter of Alcaia and these words were passed to me from my mother’s grandmother as was her duty, and is now mine. I speak to you of our fallen sisters; the light-givers, the righteous swords and shields that defended us all in our time of need. I speak of the noble Valkyrie!”
Nameless and the others were suddenly rapt with attention as her voice rose and fell in cadence; she leaned down and turned from side to side, addressing the entire crowd around the fire.
She was a gifted orator.
“Before the calamity, before the great ashfall when magic and fell-science ruined the world, the long war had hit its peak. The death-machines that man had created to match our strength belched fire and spat steel on every battlefield. But we endured, because we were strong! We stood with the other warrior tribes and together our numbers were beyond the count of the stars above!”
She took a moment then to offer a nod of respect to Jan, Nina, and surprisingly Milly, who blinked several times in astonishment.
“But even then, we could not be everywhere, and too many times our enemy would slip though our lines to kill or enslave our helpless sisters.”
She paced around the fire, making a point of meeting the eyes of everyone in her audience, however briefly.
“On one such occasion, a vast host of death-machines outmaneuvered us, and in this failure was wrought the doom of our beloved friends. The men directing the machines were cruel and unrelenting in their goal, and they were intent on filling the holds of their metal beasts with slaves.”
She spoke of the machines in a hiss, and Nameless found himself hating these men who had been dead for centuries.
“By the time we learned of our error, the men were well beyond the reach of our spears. And it was on a night far colder than this one, in the mountains to the north and west of here, that they found their prey. Alas, time has forgotten who lived in that village, all that is remembered is that they were innocent, exactly what the dark hearts that drove the machines craved.”
She began to stalk around the fire, crouching slightly as if to imitate men sneaking in
the night.
“They made to surround the village of unsuspecting girls, to cut them off from any hope of rescue. But as they took their places, the night’s stillness was shattered by a trumpet call from the heavens above and golden light lit up the sky! The Valkyrie had come!”
She leaned her head back and threw her arms out, and more than one Amazon raised a balled fist in the air, though none dared break the silence the girl had wrought upon them.
For his part, Nameless had to stop himself from leaping up and pumping his own fist, he at least knew, or thought he knew, how the story ended.
“Can you picture it? Sisters? Friends? Can you imagine the sight of the heavenly warriors heading into battle? Their glorious wings spread, their shields held before them as they flew in perfect order into the fray.”
Her tone turned morose.
“But war is costly. And above all else, the warriors of light believed in sacrifice. Throughout the bitter conflict, Valkyrie after Valkyrie had given up their lives in exchange for others. This whittled their numbers down until all that remained was a single golden host. Barely a thousand took to the sky that fateful night.”
She looked him straight in the eyes, having paced around the fire to loom over him, and he swallowed at the intensity of her gaze.
“They threw back one assault after another, outnumbered and cut off, even as the warrior tribes ran through the night to reach them. The death-machines were not unbreakable, and a single Valkyrie was worth a dozen of them! But each Valkyrie that fell was an irreplaceable loss, and as the night wore on the field was littered with the dead and dying. The Valkyrie had never before been pushed so far, but retreat meant the lives of those they had sworn to protect. So they fought on, well past the point that any other warrior would have given up or fallen back, they fought on…”
She paused, before tilting her head back to stare into the starry sky and all but scream into the night, a mixture of pride and grief choking her voice;
“Even as their daughters and mothers and sisters died around them, they fought on!”
Around the circle every Amazon leapt to her feet and threw her arms out and recited the three words, tears streaming down their faces.
Even through the emotional haze Nameless saw that Kala had joined them in their recitation, and realized that what he was witnessing was a ritual passed down through the generations that was shared by all Amazons.
He was humbled that they had deigned to share it with him.
But Escrya was not finished.
“They fought and bled and died, and they knew that their doom approached. With so many dead how could they not? But our enemy’s numbers dwindled as well and the men had nowhere to retreat, as our people were nearly upon them. But alas! If only we had arrived even an hour sooner! When we finally came upon the field of battle the metal beasts had all been vanquished, and the enemy? Dead to a man. The Valkyrie? Gone.”
She nodded continuously as tears stood out on her cheeks.
“You know the story: the rise of the Aegis, the nameless hero who bore the shield of the one Valkyrie said to have survived the battle…” Her voice dropped to a whisper again; “But do you know what it was like for us? To come upon that field and see all of our beloved friends lying dead in the dirty snow? Their bodies piled amongst broken machines and twisted metal. What it was like for us, to see their golden feathers hanging in the frozen air...”
She seemed ready to collapse, and Nameless realized that it wasn’t with grief.
It was with rage.
“Imagine it, friend.” She spoke through gritted teeth as her eyes locked with his once again; “Imagine our pain, imagine our grief, our fury… now imagine what we did with it.”
Nameless swallowed, more than a little afraid in the face of her anger.
“Always before we fought with our heads, we fought with tactics and goals. Our objectives were clear, because the Valkyrie made them clear: protect our sisters. But on that night we failed to protect them, the ones we loved the most.”
She broke away from him and began to pace up and down the line of standing Amazons.
“And so we cast aside reason! We cast aside doubt! In our anger we cast aside everything good that the Valkyrie had taught us, and we embraced the only thing that made sense in the face of so much pain: we embraced vengeance!”
Once again the Amazons raised their fists into the night sky and spoke the single word in unison, their voices an angry chorus.
“None of our foe remained on that bloody field, for the Valkyrie had spent their lives well. So we sought out another, and when they were all dead there, we sought another after that! We were heedless of our own losses as we pressed on, for every warrior that fell only fueled the fire of our rage. And so the war that had dragged on for a century or more was decided in a matter of days as we tore through the ones responsible for the fall of our golden sisters!”
She stopped her pacing and began to breathe heavily, her cheeks puffing out with each exhalation as her fury finally overcame her.
She all but snarled as she continued.
“We tore down their towers!”
She kicked a log over.
“We tore down their citadels!”
She flipped the massive table full of the remains of their dinner.
“We tore down their cities!”
Amazons were jumping out of her way, letting the girl vent the rage of her ancestors on another log as she brought both of her fists down and broke it into splinters.
“We tore down their world!” She screamed.
The girl whirled from the wreckage around her, her blonde hair flailing about her head as she searched through the crowd, looking for one face, his face.
Blood dripped from her hands as her mad eyes locked on his and as she stalked towards him, he couldn’t help but take a step back.
“And at last-” She gripped his shoulders with her bloody hands and leaned against him; “At last-”
She shuddered and bowed her head in front of him, and he distinctly heard her sob as her tears flowed once more. She gathered herself to speak again, her face downcast.
“And at last, we tore down their emperor.” She spoke quietly now.
She raised her face to meet his wide eyed stare, her grip on his shoulders relaxed and she shifted her hands to hold his neck, her embrace was almost intimate, even with the blood she smeared into his skin.
“But our grief remained, and the Valkyrie… were still dead.”
She leaned forwards and pressed her forehead to his as she wept.
There was a long silence as they held that pose, broken only by the occasional snap from the fire.
Then Alcaia spoke.
“Well told daughter. Come, drink and recover from your exertion.”
Her voice was gentle as she coaxed Escrya away from him and rubbed her hand briskly over her shoulder while the teller drank from the offered mug, draining it in one long draw.
Nameless let out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding, and then turned to look at his friends and lovers. Tears marked their faces, even Nina’s eyes welled, though she fought against it.
As Escrya drank, silence settled around the fire again.
Until Miranda’s gravelly voice broke it.
“From their sacrifice, a better world was born Escrya, daughter of Alcaia. Take solace in that.”
Like most of the circle, she was standing with a drink in her hand and she raised it in salute to the young Amazon. She still wore her dusty grey uniform, the emblem of the Aegis glinting proudly in the firelight.
Escrya turned to her and looked her up and down with tears still in her eyes, then her gaze fell on the emblem on her breast and she nodded in agreement.
Nameless was in awe. Even he had known that the Amazons were close with the legendary Valkyrie. But to have it explained to him, in such intimate visceral detail, was illuminating to say the least.
He now had some sense of just how close they had been.
>
“So when Yana called me Valkyrja…” His eyes went wide.
“She paid you the highest compliment an Amazon can give.” Myrina said, before quaffing her own drink; “But come, Alcaia! This is not the good time that we promised our guests! Let us drink the ambrosia draught and make this a night they will remember for the rest of their lives!”
Her tone had turned playful as she sought to lift the heavy mood that had settled around the fire.
Alcaia gave her a long look, and then nodded in agreement, matching her smile.
“You are right. Daughter?” She turned to Escrya with a raised eyebrow.
The young Amazon shifted away from her and wiped one last tear from her cheek before she too smiled.
“Yes, my auntie is right! We drink the ambrosia draught and we revel, for though our golden friends are gone, we yet live! We have good food in our bellies and drinks in our hands, and we have new friends to entertain! Not to mention lovers to keep our beds warm! Sisters! We revel!”
Once again she demonstrated her gift for oration as she urged the other Amazons out of the funk that she had created with her telling.
“Shit.” Miranda muttered.
“What’s the ambrosia draught?” Milly asked innocently.
“A stupid fancy name for a mixture of Amazon brandy, Blomma nectar and some other crap.” Miranda said with a resigned sigh, then she poked her finger at Nameless; “And you at least have to drink it, it would be a horrible insult to refuse.”
“But isn’t Blomma nectar…”
“Yeah kid, you’re in for a long night.”
He swallowed nervously.
Chapter 15:
Too Much
The following morning, Nameless woke with the worst headache he’d ever had in his life, worse even then when the man hit him with the butt of his weapon a few days prior.
His mouth was dry and tasted foul as he worked his tongue and lips over his teeth in an attempt to moisten it. He let out a rasping groan as his eyes opened, the light spilling in from outside was a terrible spear being driven into his brain.
“Gah! Blurg- Bright!” He moaned.
Blearily and with great care he sat up.
Legacy of the Valkyrie Page 21