Vár had been watching their training the whole time, yawning. Just after a successful defense, she stood, shouting.
“What do you hope to give the boy? A sense of accomplishment?” She started toward them, Göll turning to face her. “How long is it you imagine they will sit idle? Do you imagine I’m some valkyrie repellent?”
“Training is slow work. I won’t hear criticism of how I perform it from one of Hel’s animals.”
Vár was unimpressed by the comparison. She didn’t seem likely to start a fight outright, but Erik didn’t want to wait to find out how far they were willing to go.
“What do you mean?” He looked over to Göll. “What does she mean?”
“I’d gladly show you.”
“No.” Göll’s protest was immediate. “No, I won’t have you laying a finger on him.”
Vár snarled. “When did it become your say, valkyrie?”
“And if you kill him?”
“It’d be far worse for me than him if I was fool enough to do it.”
They’d largely forgotten about him until he interjected. “Fine. I might as well learn to fight someone human. Or, was human.”
Vár smiled. “Near enough.” She looked at Göll. “Happy with that?”
Göll relented with gritted teeth and walked maybe a dozen paces away before turning back to them. The glow of her spear was more than enough of a message that she didn’t trust Vár. Trust wasn’t really something Erik felt like considering at the moment. There was a vast ocean of questionable motive between him and either of the two in the empty lot with him.
“Pick up your sword if you want.” Vár was stretching her arms, backing away from him.
He did and readied himself. “Okay. Show me what it is I’m missing.”
Vár smiled.
There was a pale blur across his vision and he felt his stomach compress. All at once Vár appeared in front of him, her fist buried in his stomach. His feet left the ground as the image reached his brain, but the center of the punch was low in his gut and that traveled out behind him faster than his face. He could see the rough concrete of the lot rushing past below him. His arms hit first, dragging the rest of his body down. He slid sideways and rolled, finally coming to a stop thirty feet from where he’d stood with a feeling like his intestines had exploded.
Göll rushed over to him, kneeling down at his side and pulling his hands away from his stomach. He realized he was screaming sometime after Göll put her hands on his gut, pressing to see that everything was intact. She stood, turning to Vár to yell at her. Erik could hear none of what they were saying over the sound of blood rushing through his ears. He could hardly see through the water pooling in his eyes.
The food he had eaten exiting his mouth at speed was enough to draw their attention. Vár came over and squatted by him.
“That is what you are missing. Her softness will make you a victim. Understand that.”
Göll came up, shouting, telling Vár to leave him be and she went back to kneeling beside him.
“You’ll be fine.” She put a hand on his arm. “This is not how you are meant to die.”
He spent hours lying on the pavement, motionless except for the occasional involuntary spasm. It was sunup when he managed to move again, even then it was only to sit up. Göll stood beside him the entire time, watching. Vár had returned to her spot at the edge of the yard. It was mid-morning when he finally stood himself up.
“You must not rush these things, Erik.”
He smiled, almost laughing before he felt the pain in his stomach. “No, I asked for it. Very literally.”
The walk back to the motel was slow and excruciating. Even small steps up an incline were enough to weaken his knees to the point of collapsing. Then it was another ten minutes dragging himself up. He’d refused any help, trying his best to save some measure of dignity. He regretted it as he rolled on the lumpy bed.
Vár came in a few minutes after he’d gotten himself onto the bed and rubbed her strange medicine onto his stomach and the places the skin had been removed from his arms. It burned fairly horribly for a minute but subsided. There must have been a decent amount of guilt in her somewhere since she quietly insisted on handling lunch before leaving the room.
Göll stood beside the bed rather than near the window, but she still kept her attention focused toward the outside.
“She was wrong to do that. No living human could stand against a valkyrie.”
He wanted to ask why she was bothering to teach him then, but the only outcome he imagined was her returning to cold and silent.
“She is a child, unable to understand the difference between teaching and training. I had not sought to teach you what it is to fight a valkyrie.”
She was quiet after that for the better part of a half hour. The salve was beginning to numb the damage done to his stomach. Moving was not outside the realm of possibility, it felt like. He sat himself up in the bed and Göll turned to look at him.
“You’ll only irritate your wounds that way.”
“Ehh.” He waved a dismissive hand at her. “This stuff is pretty magical. Maybe actually magical. I mean, my hand is healed up and that was pretty severe.” He tried to take a deep breath but ended up coughing. The pain broke through the numbness when he did and he grabbed at his stomach. “Learning experience,” he croaked.
Erik rolled his head back against the wall behind him, waiting for the pain to calm. When it did he adjusted himself on the thin pillows that were beneath his back.
“So, you can’t tell me how I die?”
