The Valkyrie (16 page)

“No not at all.
Do you like music?”

“Yes, I love
music. Excuse me, I think I’m gg…” Glory tailed off as she fell
asleep on Apollo’s arm. When in doubt abduct the girl.

Apollo picked
Glory up and carried her in his arms. He always had a little bit of
something on him which eases sleep. As he took her to his chariot
she snuggled into his shoulder. He could hardly bear it she was
that adorable. He drove off with her at speed, setting down in his
sanctuary of Delos. No one would dare interrupt them there. There
was a great precedent of abducting girls: their uncle Hades had
abducted Persephone to be his wife after all. Plus their father had
been known to do it for mere one night stands, let alone for the
big one. Apollo carried Glory over to the shade of a tree beside
the ruins of his temple. He settled down with her and held her for
hours, waiting for her to awaken. Her hair smelled of flowers.

***

Glory woke to
strange surroundings: unlike home the sun shone and it caressed her
cheek. She could smell the sea, not the bitter North Sea or cold
Atlantic that she was used to, but the warm Mediterranean. She felt
a pair of strong arms around her and her face was pressed into the
torso of a god. She breathed in his scent and felt the true jolt of
love. Unbeknownst to Glory sly Eros had shot her in the heart.

“Where am I?”
She asked looking up in to those bright blue eyes.

“Delos.” Apollo
leaned in and kissed her neck. She lost it under that tree.

***

Zeus hadn’t
seen Apollo for a good five days. This meant one of two things he
was shagging someone or he was rebelling. There had been reports
coming out of Asgard of some sort of kerfuffle but as of yet
nothing had confirmed the nature of the disagreement apart from the
involvement of Britannia. Zeus thought little of that scheming sea
nymph, every now and then and he thought perhaps he should have
taken in the daughter what’s-her-name that they had together but he
had concluded that between Britannia and Hera the girl would be
more trouble than she was worth. Zeus decided that he had best send
Hermes to investigate. Poor Hermes was essentially his dogsbody.
Off Hermes flew to return with upsetting intelligence: Asgard was
all aflame because Thor’s intended bride, who was none other than
Zeus and Britannia’s daughter Glory, had disappeared a week before
the wedding and had not been seen since. The most upsetting element
was Britannia’s blasé attitude towards her daughter’s
disappearance. She clearly knew where she was but Britannia was
more than happy to renege on the promise of her daughter’s hand.
Zeus had a pretty good idea of where Glory was too.

“Hermes, where
is Apollo?” Zeus asked his son. Hermes had the ability to locate
anyone at any time.

“He’s in
Delos.”

“And
Britannia’s daughter, where is she?”

“Oh, she’s in
Delos also. I guess that solves that then.” Hermes smirked. “The
old fox.”

“It does
indeed. Hermes, you know nothing of this. Someone, anyone, prepare
my chariot.” Zeus dismissed Hermes with a wave of his hand before
setting off for Delos.

***

Setting foot on
that once floating hunk of rock Zeus scanned the surroundings for
his roguish son. It was not long before he found the couple.

“What do you
think you’re playing at?” Zeus asked, interrupting their happiness.
He hadn’t planned to lose it but there was something about the two
of them as a couple that unnerved him deeply. They just looked too
damned good together and he already distrusted Apollo.

“Ah there you
are. I wondered how long it would be before someone rocked up.”
Apollo said, the two gods squaring up to each other.

“If the
Asgardians were to know what you had done then you would throw us
into the midst of a war that we are woefully unprepared for and
enormously unlikely to win, and all because you can’t put your cock
away.” Zeus invented a pretty sound explanation for his irrational
anger. The skies above the island began to turn. The clouds were
tumultuous and the wind howled like a mad wolf.

“Because you’re
the one to talk about being a functional sex addict?” Apollo
said.

“You little
shit.” Zeus punched Apollo in the lip, splitting it. Immortal blood
dripped down his chin.

“You” Zeus said
pointing at Glory “Get in my fucking chariot now, you’re grounded.
This never happened you understand, you have never had a
relationship with Apollo. There is no way on this earth I am going
to let my daughter marry into Asgard, no grandson of mine shall
call those halls home. You are going to go to Odin to beg
forgiveness and tell him that you can’t possibly marry his
disgusting son. In all likelihood he’ll demand that you become a
handmaiden there or something in penance which you will do and you
will never fucking moan about having to do it. If I ever hear
anything about the two of you like this again I will slit your
little throats, do you understand?” Zeus knew to watch Apollo.
Apollo was wilful and strong. Of his children he had thought that
Apollo along with Athena and Ares were the ones who were more
likely to try and depose him. This daughter of his, on the other
hand, he had never considered but something in his gut told him
that Apollo and Glory were a bad combination. He couldn’t put his
finger on it. He knew now that he needed to watch Glory also.

***

Eros turned up
for his clandestine meeting five minutes early. He had to promise
Hermes a love arrow of his choosing to get him to swear on Styx
that he wouldn’t tell anyone where he was that dusk. Eros was
waiting outside the city walls of what used to be Londinium for
Glory. He saw her approach from a distance: a tall elegant figure
wearing a cloak moving towards him.

“Thank you for
agreeing to meet me.” Glory said. It was obvious to everyone that
the girl was broken with heart sickened grief.

“Not at all.
What can I help you with?” Eros asked.

“Rip out my
heart and take my feelings away. Let them blow in the wind like
tree blossom in breezy May.”

“That was very
poetic” Eros said “I wonder who you learnt that from. That is not
innate to you.”

“You know full
well. Take my feelings.”

“What’s in it
for me?”

“I won’t
fucking kill you.” Glory drew out this metal thing that Eros had
never seen before.

“What is
that?”

“It’s a gun.”
Glory said “They have much the same effect as an arrow but they are
far more efficient. The mortals won’t widely use them for
centuries. So what do you say?”

“You’re a mad
bitch.” Eros was trying to buy himself time.

“Yes I am.”

“That’s a
pretty hard thing to achieve. You can’t destroy emotions from your
being. You can forget events perhaps, but I doubt you want to
forget him? You just want to be detached. Aphrodite would notice if
I took your memories.”

Glory cocked
the trigger. “That isn’t a good enough answer.”

“I can put them
in a box though.” Eros said, this girl meant it. If she couldn’t
stop loving then she’d kill love.

“Perfect. Now I
trust that I need to pay recompense. I owe you one.”

“I swear that I
will keep your feelings for Apollo hidden and out of sight from
all. It won’t stop you from loving Apollo or anyone else for that
matter but you won’t feel any pain when you reflect back on this
period of your life. You will most likely feel like a part of you
is missing which might make you drink or something to fill the
void. It could cause you emotional problems further down the line.
You may even come to despise Apollo. I also swear on Styx that no
one but us shall know of this agreement.” Eros said looking Glory
squarely in the eyes. Who was this girl really? He had considered
her to be meek before, but she had changed into something more,
more, more cool. “He’ll always love you, you know. For Apollo you
were it.”

Eros took out a
small box with a mother of pearl inlay and in they flew, all of
Glory’s feelings for Apollo. The lid snapped shut and Eros gave it
to Glory for safe keeping. All the pain that she was feeling fell
away and she felt detached from the world. Eros didn’t bother to
warn her about the health implications of opening the box all in
one go but hey, there was a warning sticker on the bottom.

Glory had been summoned by Odin to give a
quick briefing before the Battle of Seoul got underway. She left
Hackney promptly at 4.30am and arrived in Valhalla ten minutes
early for the meeting with a lovely little booklet explaining the
conflict in such basic language that even Freya would understand
what was going on. Glory was dressed in her uniform and she
palpably felt her own cold blood as the action began. She waited
outside the meeting room that she’d booked; it was down the hallway
from her cubicle so if she needed it there was her ‘secret’ stash
of coke. She swigged from the bottle of ambrosia she had brought
with her and waited patiently for Odin to rock up, he was usually
fifteen minutes late. Glory quickly rang Valour again but it went
straight to voicemail. She was staring at her boots and trying to
figure out whether to ring Valour’s parents if she couldn’t get
through to her this afternoon when a voice startled her.

“I’m sorry but
my father is hung over this morning so he asked me to step in. I
hope you don’t mind.” Thor said holding open the door to the drab
little meeting room.

“No not at all”
Glory picked up her ambrosia bottle and the booklets. The room had
a scandi-chic grey table and an ergonomic yet stylish chair either
side. Glory took the seat closest to the door in case she needed a
quick exit.

“Right now
where do you want to start?” Thor asked.

“From the
beginning is usually best.” Glory said with a smile. “So from the
top, our core aim in planning this war was to put an end to the
relatively peaceful period following on from World War Two. Now we
chose to begin it in Asia Pacific as the region is pretty rich,
it’s densely populated and there are a lot of egos thus it has the
greatest potential to escalate. Plus I think we’re all a bit bored
with the Middle East now. Another war in the Korean peninsula would
permit the Buddhist, Dao and Shinto pantheons to flex their muscles
which would eventually embroil the Olympians through America and
thus my mother’s dominions. Next thing you know we’ve got the
world’s largest economies geared towards total war. Do you have any
questions?”

“So far so
good.” Thor said.

“Brilliant, in
terms of weaponry we expect it to start off along cyber warfare
lines but the situation will intensify quite quickly into
standardised warfare. Although, considering the technological
developments of the last 60 years it won’t be a slow burn so we
expect some interesting atrocities.”

“What level of
casualties are we to expect?”

“1,983,214, of
course not all of them will be eligible for us to reap due to the
death agreements that dictate the proportion of the dead that each
pantheon receives.”

“That’s a quite
respectable number and Valhalla needs more men.” Thor said flicking
through the leaflet.

“Why?”

“What?”

“Why does
Valhalla need the numbers?”

“Well for the
Ragnarok of course.” Thor looked at Glory rather confusedly.

“Right, I see.
I’ve always wondered whether you believe all that or whether you
put up with because your old man is so fervent about it.”

“If you think
it’s nonsense then how do you do your job so well?”

“Because I’m
hiding from any real responsibility and this job allows me to
continue maintaining the delicate balance between existence and my
alcohol and drug dependencies mostly in peace; that and the fact
that I’m sort of doing penance for blowing you off on our wedding
day.” Glory said twiddling her hair.

“That was
candid of you.”

“As you’re
skirting around my line of enquiry, I am inclined to believe you
think the Ragnarok is bollocks too.”

“Well you seem
to be all over this Second Korean War, well done. It’s a shame we
never got married. My wife bores me.”

“Am I supposed
to say something to that?” Glory asked “You’re looking at me
hopefully.”

Thor breathed
in deeply “Why did you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Break it off.
Why did you break it off?”

“Because I was
in love with someone else.”

“Who was it?”
Thor asked, pausing “Even now it would seem. I regret not abducting
you when I had the chance. How different things would have
been.”

“And then I
could have developed Stockholm Syndrome.”

“I see what you
did there.”

“You don’t
understand women at all do you?”

“No, of course
not.” Thor said and with that he got up, shook Glory’s hand and
left the room.

Glory, Honour and Bea all
traipsed into their house in Hackney at 1am after a long day
valkyring. Honour sat on the stairs and took off her boots with a
groan – she couldn’t remember the last time she had worked so hard
– before going up the stairs and running a long bath. Glory and Bea
walked into the kitchen. Glory was going to raid one of the fun
draws for a decent narcotic. There they found Liberty sitting at
the table surrounded by hundreds of invitations. That Daphne vase
from Save The Children was still sitting in the middle of the table
creepily.

“Hello, how did
it go? I’ve got to get all these invitations finished tonight.”
Liberty said not looking up from the stack of envelopes she was
addressing to deities the world over.

“Not bad.”
Glory rifled through a few of the drawers looking for the right
combination of pills. She was still all het up from being so close
to the conflict. Today she had smelt blood.