The Valkyrie (5 page)

“I’ve got to
say Bea, you were a little crazy out there. How did you take out
thirty berserkers in a row like that? Where did you become such a
pathological killer?”

“Cheers mate,
just a natural I guess. That was fun. I need to work on a few areas
though. These guys regenerate before we get sloshed tonight right?
I feel bad. Those were some really bad axe wounds.”

“Yeah they’re
already dead, besides they were only human before.” Honour watched
another Valkyrie walk in from the training arena and go straight to
her locker. The girl was tall and slender. She was also pretty,
pretty useless and pretty mean.

“Astrid, how
are you? I haven’t seen you since D-Day. Heard you’re leading the
212s now?” Honour asked.

“Alright mate?
Yeah, yeah I am. It’s not a bad unit. We’ve jurisdiction over
firemen throughout North America. Nice little gig, not much going
on though at the moment what with all this health and safety
nonsense. Anyone would think the mortals don’t want to die.” Astrid
said shrugging her delicate shoulders “How’s Glory by the way,
still a mentalist? I heard she started a bar fight amongst some
rock giants the other week.”

“Centaurs
actually but she will be pleased that a variant has gotten around.
Awfully proud she was. Forgive me for being rude. Astrid this is
Bea, Bea this is Astrid. Bea just started in the 401s today.”
Honour said, trying to be polite.

“Nice to meet
you.” Bea said.

“Yes” Astrid
said. That yes was a blunt instrument uttered whilst she stared Bea
down. “You look familiar.”

“Do I?” Bea
asked.

“Yes. Mind you
all you water nymphs look pretty damned similar.” Astrid said
pausing for a moment “Well I’ve got to be off I’m getting a new
helmet fitted. Toodles.”

“Bye” Honour
said.

“What a bitch.”
Bea said as Astrid walked into the showers and out of earshot.

“Never could
stand the cow. ‘All you water nymphs look pretty damned similar.’
Sylphs are always snooty cows. Maybe she’s colour blind?” Honour
said sarcasm spitting out of her mouth.

“Great arse
though.”

“Yes it’s not
fair is it? Mean girls have great arses. Liberty has dubbed it
‘Aphrodite’s Disorder’”

The pair of
them finished getting ready to leave in relative silence. Honour
was too busy thinking about what she had seen that day to ask Bea
any further questions. She was sure that both Glory and Liberty
were both equally capable of such an exhibition as Bea had made but
neither of them freely admitted to being that talented. It was
dangerous to be outstanding. Gods are particularly prone to tall
poppy syndrome. It was better to keep your head down and keep quiet
than to be a shining light. There would always be someone there at
the dimmer switch ready to turn you down or off entirely. Valkyrie
Unit 401 had a reputation as exceptional but no one other than a
select few really knew all the details and that was how they kept
it. No one needed to know how much of the show they ran. The girls
had all seen what could happen when you were just too damned good:
Liberty’s father Prometheus being a pertinent example.

Liberty was fascinated by
shopping. She loved watching the mortals going out of their way to
acquire goods that they certainly had no need for. She also rather
enjoyed public transport as humanity is at its worst and best when
confined in small metal tins with their fellow passengers. Getting
on the bus to the high street was her favourite thing to do bar
redheads and cocaine. Liberty sat pride of place in the seat –
according to the sticker anyway – reserved for the elderly or those
people with small children on their persons at the front of the
bus. From there she could see all of the highs and lows of limited
human emotion upon their faces as they got on the bus, tapping
their adorable little oyster cards as they went.

A woman with
straggly hair and baggy purple parka with a fur trimmed hood was on
her way to Morrison’s. Liberty looked at her and using her
abilities saw her trouble. Susannah, the purple parka person, was
in the process of divorcing her husband Mitch. Mitch had met a
dental hygienist in a Wetherspoon’s – on curry night incidentally –
six months earlier and had left her. This had unsettled Susannah
and Mitch’s only child Dan, who was studying for his GCSEs. As
things stood Liberty could tell that this would set the lad off on
a spiral of destructive behaviour, but this was not yet set in
stone and Liberty could influence the situation and set him on the
straight and narrow. She looked again at Susannah and decided that
what was really necessary in this situation was for Susannah to get
a bloody good haircut. A nice bob wouldn’t rectify the situation
but it would make things more aesthetically pleasing for Liberty’s
third eye. Susannah, Mitch and Dan all had the freedom to fuck up
if they wanted to and that was how Liberty left them: with only
themselves to blame for the whole mess. There was no divine
intervention on the bus that day, well apart from Tony & Guy’s
Sergio and his deft hand later that afternoon. That man was very
talented with a pair of scissors and a can of hairspray, it was a
goddess-given gift, and everyone knows that a good haircut will
make almost anything seem a little less awful. Besides all the
mortals ever begged for was the liberty of choosing their own
destinies.

Liberty rang
the bell. The bus pulled into the stop right at the bottom of the
high street and she scampered off, not waiting for the woman with a
buggy to take the break off the back wheels, as any good soul who
suffers from queue anxiety would have done. Liberty always got off
a stop earlier than she needed to. She walked past the shops taking
in the changes that had happened over the past fifty years. Gone
were the greengrocers, the fishmongers and the butchers, wholesome
scenes that would have been at least recognisable to a mortal from
two thousand years ago and here were the bookies, the chicken shops
and the pound shops. She kept walking for a few more minutes before
she reached her usual destination, a Save The Children charity
shop. Liberty found charity shops bewildering. Here was a store
filled with things that people had bought and hadn’t used or no
longer wanted being sold to raise money for a cause. Did the
mortals not realise that if they did not over consume on these bits
of crap and instead redistributed the wealth they would have
wasted, then they could have eradicated the disease that the child
in the poster was suffering from decades ago? Did they not see the
humour in it all?

Liberty entered
the charity shop and mooched around the paperbacks. There were
seventeen copies of Fifty Shades of Grey on the bottom shelf. She
thought they should send them to the orphans in Syria and they
could use them for kindling. That was the most practical
application for them. She then prodded around the clothes, glanced
at the bric-a-brac before she started trying on those hats that
mortal women buy for weddings that obscure views and act as a
safety barrier against leering best men. She was wearing one
particularly ugly monstrosity, when she saw the real purpose of her
visit enter from pricing up figurines of shepherdesses out back:
Nora.

Nora was a
small lady who moved with grace. “Hello dear, nice to see you
again. We got given some history books on Thursday that I kept out
back in case you fancied any. Quite a nice selection there was.”
Nora was pleased to see Liberty.

“That was very
kind of you Nora. Did you enjoy the biscuits I bought last week?”
Liberty asked. She earnestly cared whether or not she liked the
biscuits.

“Oh yes thank
you, that was very sweet of you dear. I’ll go out back and fetch
those books for you love.” Whilst Nora toddled into the back
Liberty turned to look at the bric-a-brac shelves again. All the
usual culprits were assembled: conch shell paperweights, painted
fans, old teapots and a vase. The vase startled Liberty. More than
startled, it scared her. She went over and picked it up practically
shoving a man over en route. Liberty was adrift at sea clinging to
the vase like a life raft.

Nora came back
into the shop with six books. “Right let us have a look, now we’ve
got one on Napoleon, two on The British Empire, one on The Battle
of Jenkins’s Ear, one on The Zulus, forty four volumes on Hitler,
oh and one on Troy. I left the Hitler books out back, as there were
too many to carry.”

“Troy it is
then as I had nothing to do with it. I know everything there is to
know about the others, I helped orchestrate them.” Liberty said
without thinking.

“Oh Liberty you
do have a wicked sense of humour. You’re only about twenty two
love.”

“Well I am
wicked. I’m in a shock Nora. What do you think of this vase?”

“Well it’s a
bit of holiday tat someone bought back from Corfu. I suppose you
know more about it, you always do.”

“It depicts
Daphne, a virgin nymph who turned herself into a laurel tree to
escape the Olympian god Apollo’s attentions, only for him to wear
her leaves as a crown. It’s a genuine antiquity from the Hellenic
golden age itself. So pristine.” Liberty said before distracting
herself “How’s your hip doing?”

“Not too bad
love, I can’t complain.”

“No I suppose
you can’t, not when none of your fellow intelligence officers made
it out of Berlin alive whilst you got a mere shrapnel wound to your
right side. The resulting chronic pain of which threw your posture
marginally off kilter leading to the said excessive wear on your
left hip.” Liberty said anxiously.

“I signed the
Official Secrets Act.”

“I told you, I
started the war. I invaded Poland. Nora this vase is it a real sign
or is someone messing with my head? Who brought this in? Nora?
Nora? Oh it’s no use asking for your opinion. You’re only ninety
six.”

Nora stood
there and didn’t know what to do. The beautiful and kind girl who
popped in every now and then had appeared to have had some sort of
breakdown and had guessed at Nora’s greatest secret that she would
otherwise have carried with her in her casket.

“Nora, do you
know why I’ve come here every week for the past three years? On the
odd occasion I take pity on a mortal. I took pity on your father at
The Somme, and I promised on the river Styx that I’d come and check
on you every now and then. I have been demonstrably crap, bar
Berlin, and I am making up for lost time before Styx yells at me
for not keeping my promise as I am bound to.” Liberty paused for a
moment. “I bought you some ginger snaps this week. I know they’re
your favourite.”

“Ginger snaps,
how lovely. Would you like a cup of tea dear? The book is £2.50 by
the way.” Nora said. She really wasn’t sure what to do other than
offer the poor girl a cuppa before she did herself any harm.

“How much is
the vase?”

“It’s nine
pounds love because it’s quite a big one.”

“Alright”
Liberty said as she magicked some money and walked out of the shop
without saying another word.  

Liberty walked in a stupor for some
time. Under her left arm she had the book on Helen of Troy (Liberty
had met her and had never understood what all the fuss was about)
and in her right hand she held the offending vase. After some time
she stopped and sat on some steps. A familiar presence was at her
side seconds later. There was no one else who she would rather see
at that moment than her father Prometheus. He stood over her
looking as distinguished, composed and collected as you would
expect from a titan. He wore an impeccably tailored three piece
suit that had a double breasted jacket with leather buttons. It was
made out of tweed that could have almost been heather. Prometheus’s
tie and pocket square had been selected perfectly, as had the
cufflinks in his crisp white shirt. He was pulled together. His
dark eyes and furrowed brow were those of a godly titan who had
seen too much and had felt the need to overthink it too. Prometheus
thought and saw three steps ahead of nearly everyone else.
Prometheus’s wife and Liberty’s mother, Asia was a river nymph.
There wasn’t a particularly large amount of love between the pair,
they had little in common. They had met many years ago when
Prometheus had been chained to a rock by Zeus to have his liver
pecked out daily by his giant pet eagle for “challenging his rule”,
or light sarcasm to everyone else. Asia used to go and chat to
Prometheus at least once a day. She had a captive audience after
all, and over time he grew affection for her or rather he was worn
down by a not so ill looking nymph.

“Child, stop
and breathe.” Prometheus said.

Liberty looked
around her and recognised the place she had wandered to. It was the
Hawksmoor in Spitalfields Market. She couldn’t remember which
bloody saint it was supposed to be dedicated to. Liberty rose from
her seat and followed her father into the church before they sat
side by side in a pew facing the altar.

“Forgive me
father for I have sinned.” Liberty said.

“When haven’t
you? I’m never going to tire of that joke.”

“How are you
old man?” Liberty was still very much distracted.

“Not too shabby
child of mine. I have just been here waiting for you. Oh your
mother says hello.”

“Oh right,
hello back to her. Dad, my sight is messed up; I’ve developed a
blind spot where I’ve never had one before. I can no longer see
Valour.”

“Now that you
mention it I cannot either. She’s the fae girl in your unit right,
one of Oberon’s kids?” Prometheus said as he tried to use his
vision again “This should be impossible. Someone must have entered
into the equation that has always been a blind spot but never a
factor before, blocking your friend from a clear view. That’s an
impressive amount of power to shield her from both of us like that.
This is not good, not good at all. Metis used to be able to pull a
trick like that but she is long gone.”