VaLkA

mare / five / chestnut pangare / yakut / 13.0 hh

In the snow-muffled silence of the Bay, the shuffling sounds of a large creature approaching resounded in Valka’s small red ears like a cavernous echo.

There was a handful of seconds, perhaps, between what the skjaldmær heard and what she smelled. Certainly it was no longer than the time it took her to exhale the warm breath from her body in a vaporous plume. And it was not long enough - this instant - to allow for the dull gleam of hope that Solomon might be approaching with her wayward son in tow. No, her heart was still focused on its own beating - though instinctively, at the familiar scent, its tempo increased. The Yakut paused mid-stride, her right foreleg lingering in the air for a moment as awareness caught up to instinct. But Valka’s senses - normally honed to a fine edge that served her well in combat - were slow, and her thoughts sluggish.

By the time those precious seconds had passed and the Bay’s protector understood, her enemy was already upon her.

To the credit of her warrior’s body, it did not leave her gaping and vulnerable to face the Icelandic stallion. Even before the truth struck her like a solid kick to the chest, her stout legs clawed furrows in the soft down of snow where they danced her away from the oncoming figure. It was only after she’d sidestepped this presumed charge that Valka realized - her dark eyes perplexed - that it was no true charge at all. Instead, the clever ormr of a stallion walked with his head drooping and limbs threatening to buckle beneath him - as if he could scarcely muster the strength for each stride that he took. And yet he still came - as dogged and relentless as he had been when they’d clashed in a previous life.

He came, and in his coming undoubtedly hoped to end the line of her tribe with the finality only death could ascertain.

A flash of anger heated the chestnut skjaldmær’s blood, dispelling the ashen horror that had held her in its thrall. She had been the greatest sort of fool to believe that she might escape the eternal conflict that had once defined her very existence. If there hadn’t been enough evidence of her survival in the trail she’d taken no care to conceal when departing the himenbjörg, then she had all but proclaimed herself in her rise from anonymity to infamy on the islands. And in response, her people’s foes had sent an adversary whom she could not hope to defeat alone. Even with the prideful ability to claim one or two of the scars that marred his coat, Valka had only ever faced him with another at her side. She had been a polinitsa, then, and could always count on the support of her battle-sisters.

Now she was both greater and lesser in the eyes of the gods. A defender with no monarch, a skjaldmær whose purpose was to ascertain the safety of her self-built family here in the Bay. And though those lives would have once been considered expendable against the safety of her King,, they were now infinitely more precious to the Yakutian mare. Perhaps this was the reason that - even in the face of hopelessness and certain defeat - the fluffy mare threw herself suddenly forward. Screaming a shrill battle-cry, Valka drove for the brute’s shoulder just as he lifted his opposite foreleg, hoping that the force of the sudden attack would topple him.

From there, his execution would be as simple and swift as a crushing blow to the skull, and her future - and family - would be secured, if only until the next figurative finger was sent probing into the Bay.

Of course, when such attempts continued to fail, the hand of her ancient foe would form a fist and force its way through the last remaining obstacle that stood between them and victory.