Chapter 52: The Problem with Couch Men

It had happened to him, and though it had nearly driven him mad, Björn was proud of his time with the Valkyrie, for it meant he was one of the finer specimens on the battlefield, desired by the sword-witches themselves. He said as much.

“So…a thousand women raped you for a thousand years?”

Put so plainly, Björn was hit by the sudden feeling of sickness and despair that had come from their endless torments and he bristled. “It wasn’t rape. It was a great honor.” After all, when he had returned afterwards, his friends had laughed and slapped him on the back and said as much. To be chosen by the Valkyries, of all of Odin’s Chosen… Very few could claim such a thing, and very few had escaped the distinction, once made.

“Sounds horrible.”

Surprised, Björn twisted to face the human, surprised. “It does?”

“Well…yeah. I mean, did you want to be there?”

“No.” He’d spent most of it chained to a bench, a plaything for women stronger than him. It had been humiliation at its greatest.

“And they had sex with you?”

Remembering how many times they’d had sex with him, Björn felt ill. He looked away. When he spoke, his voice was not as strong as usual. “I was a virile male and the vǫlur had the power to make my shaft hard at the slightest touch. Of course they had sex with me.”

“Why did no one stop them?”

Björn made a disgusted sound, remembering the hopelessness. Even a full assault by all of Odin’s Chosen wouldn’t be enough to bring Guðrhöll and its sword-witches to heel. He’d spent centuries accustoming himself to this, knowing that his friends weren’t coming to rescue him. “They’re too afraid.” Again, his voice was too quiet, almost a whisper. He must need something to wet his throat. He coughed, trying to clear his larynx. Blood. Yes, he needed to wet his throat with blood. Maybe they could stop at another burger shop…

“Why are they afraid to stop something like that?” Jessie asked.

“You can’t stop the Valkyries once they get something in their heads,” Björn snapped. “They do as they wish. They are sisters to the Norn. Even the gods fear them. Why do you ask these stupid questions?” Reliving those memories were making him agitated and angry, and he didn’t know why. It was all he could do not to rip off the offending human’s head.

Jessie’s look was one of painful understanding. “Did they really have you for a thousand years?”

“Seven hundred and sixteen years and eighty-two days and three hours,” Bjorn said, automatically recounting the number by heart. He had been forced to leave his best friend Eirik behind, chained to Brynhilder’s throne in the Valkyries’ Guðrhöll, in order to make his escape. And, as far as Björn knew, Eirik was still there, a daily plaything for the entire hall, and it raked rot through his guts every time he thought of it. He looked back out the window, dropping his hand from the door as he remembered the pain in his best friend’s face as he’d watched him flee from Brynhilder’s throne, the shame in his own heart as his friend had nonetheless kept silent as Björn crept over the vǫlur’s sleeping bodies so he could escape without him.

Björn had loathed his time in Guðrhöll, but he had simply been an amusement. Eirik had been the favored pet, and as such, once captured, he had never been allowed to leave Brynhilder’s sight. When he thought of what the she-demons had done to Eirik, Björn’s bowels twisted with self-loathing that he had allowed it to happen. That he had left him there, helpless to the advances of the she-demons…

It was an honor, Björn told himself. To be chosen by Valkyries is an honor, one most men are never afforded. He remembered how his friends had laughed and toasted him at his return, how he’d been congratulated…

“Like I said. Sounds awful.”

Björn’s lips tightened in a line. “You’ll never understand the ways of a warrior, weakling. It’s beyond the grasp of a meat-fryer like you.”

“Probably true,” Jessie said. “But nobody likes to be used like that. That’s pretty universal, I’d think.”

Björn’s mouth opened to argue, but then he closed it again with a grunt. He hadn’t enjoyed it, it was true. In fact, it had changed the way he made love to women afterwards, made it difficult to look them in the eye as he copulated, when he even took it upon himself to enter into such an act. Nowadays, he usually didn’t bother. Since the Valkyries and their games, the sight of female flesh often had the opposite effect on him than it had on his brethren in Valhöll, and while his drinking companions were bouncing wenches on their knees and spanking or groping comely asses or bosoms that happened to wander by in the mead hall—or fucking chained Valkyries they had captured in war—Björn was often in his corner at the dicing pit, pretending he was not trying not to be sick.

It was why he had been so surprised when Odin had ordered him to take a mate. He’d shown no interest at all, for centuries.

And, if he were truthful, Björn had gone to the ceremony that night thinking that he would find the sorceress as unappetizing as the rest of the female species, so he hadn’t even bothered to tell Odin he wasn’t interested—he figured he’d simply sell her to one of his brothers for a good set of armor or a nice drinking horn. Instead, when Freyja led her delicate female form up to the snowy valley shrine separating their two kingdoms and he’d seen her willowy body for the first time, he had been totally struck dumb by the innate passion he felt towards her. The instinctive drive to touch her, to feel himself inside her, had been almost unbearable…

Freyja’s gift to Odin had been a peace offering, a way of mending some tear that the constant battles of Hjaðningavíg had ripped into the tapestry of Fate, probably because her Valkyrie had been responsible for beginning the tusen dødsdager, as both sides had begun to call it. The Thousand Death Day. When a man or Valkyrie was singled out and forced to die, over and over, as gruesomely as possible, until his tormentors got bored or her compatriots could rescue her…

Björn shuddered at those harsh memories, of finding his best friends babbling incoherently on the ground, no longer even attempting the call for resurrection because they were too mindlessly afraid. And then, for the cowards’ sin of breaking during battle, Björn had been called to destroy them with Skofnung before they could pass their cowardice to others. He had relinquished the magnificent blade to Odin when he left Valhöll, unable to perform his duties as the slayer of his brothers any longer. And now, hundreds of years later, even despite the exquisite blade’s power and the great honor it was to carry it, the memories of using it on his own brethren continued to burn in Björn’s heart like a seductor’s poison and he still found no urge to reclaim it. He doubted he would ever hold the gods’-blade in his hand again, such was his despair for having to use it.

Björn bit back the grief of that, of watching his comrades for several Ages of Man beg for eternal nothingness at his hand, then froze when he realized that Jessie had been watching him throughout his reverie. Immediately, Björn straightened and hid his revulsion, just as he had a hundred thousand times before. After all, it was war, and war was not glorious if not bloody.

Jessie, who had quickly turned back to face the road when Björn had noticed him watching, cleared his throat. “So this Valhöll you keep talking about…” Jessie offered, “They made you fight every day?”

“While I was there, yes,” Björn said. “It’s expected to defend your lord’s house in the great game.”

“And this game is…war?”

Björn chuckled at the human’s ignorance. “Of course.”

“Did you like it?”

Björn twisted to frown down at the little man again, incredulous. “What?”

To his credit, the weakling only cringed a little bit. “Did you like making war?”

“What kind of stupid question is that?!” Björn cried.

“I don’t know, I mean, seems like it’s kinda brutal.”

“Brutal?!” Björn cried, remembering the power of his killing rage, “It soothes something in a man’s soul to bash the brains of his enemies across the earth and to grind them into the cold morning ground like bloody porridge beneath your boots.”

“Huh. So…getting resurrected hundreds of times… Was that fun?”

Björn’s mouth closed suddenly and he felt his heart harden, remembering the times he’d been caught in the Valkyries’ tusen dødsdager. There had been no sport in it, no opportunity for glory or honor. Just humiliation, agony, and death. Over, and over again. Shamefully, he’d wanted to die in truth on those days, for it hadn’t been a battle so much as an ambush, and less fighting than organized torment, where a group of Freya’s followers would surround a man who had strayed from the main battle and wait for him to resurrect, then kill him again and again, in ever more grotesquely painful ways. Björn felt his gorge rising, remembering some of those ways. “Of course it was not fun,” he muttered. “Any man who tells you he enjoys dying is a liar.”

“Sounds like some horrible things were happening in that place.”

Björn snorted. “It was why Freyja gifted her sorceress to Odin in the first place.” Thinking of his lost companions, he added bitterly, “She was righting a wrong that can only be soothed with blood.” And his sorceress would be made to pay the price, skewered by his shaft for seven hundred years.

“Ah.” Jessie gave him a long look. “You don’t look happy about it.”

“I told you. She belongs to me, for the wrongs committed by Freyja’s forces. I’ll do as I wish with her.”

“Is that why she’s in Eagle River?” Jessie offered. “She ran from you? From…what, Valhalla?”

Björn made a disgusted snort. “Mardöll tries to fight the will of the gods.”

“Did she run from you, Björn?”

“I said she did,” Björn snapped. If they hadn’t been driving, he would have plastered the man’s brains across the windshield. As it was, he was having trouble not crushing his skull with a white-knuckled fist. “What is with all these damn questions?! Is this what you do with your life as a meat-fryer? You ask pointless, inane questions as you needlessly fry meat?”

Jessie met his eyes, looked like he wanted to say something, then must have thought better of it. His eyes fell on something outside the limo and his face lit with an idea. “Hey, you kept mentioning how badly you wanted mead… That’s a liquor store right there. I think it’s 24-hour. Wanna hop in and buy a few bottles?”

Björn frowned. “You mean kegs?”

Jessie’s face fell a little. “Erm… Kegs, yeah. It’d be my treat, considering how it’s my debit card and all.”

Björn made a face. “Very well. We can postpone your death a few more hours while you gift me with mead and I regale you with stories of my many battles.”

“You got it,” Jessie said, pulling the limo off the road and into the large, mostly-empty ‘parking lot.’ Without another word, Jessie unhooked his seatbelt and stepped out into the hazy light of early dawn. Björn made a face, but followed him. He, unlike most nightlanders—especially barghest—could withstand a bit of sunlight. It hurt, but he was Odin’s Chosen. He’d been trained to ignore pain.

The weakling hesitated and glanced behind him, gaze catching on his smoking skin uncertainly. “You, uh, are coming in?” He didn’t seem enthusiastic about the idea. Of course not. Because he was trying to run from his fate. Like a coward. Björn actually looked forward to ending the man’s stupid questions with a few girly screams and spurts of blood. After the irritating memories that the burger-flipper had dredged up, it would be a pleasure...