VaLkA

mare / six / chestnut pangare / yakut / 13.0 hh

Valka hadn’t expected her victory over the Wolf-King to feel so hollow.

In the first moments after, it made sense that the thrill of adrenaline should bury everything else. But hours later— following the inward curve of her home’s shore— the skjaldmær still felt more like the landscape around her than living flesh. She was the Bay, bleak and cold and forsaken; the edge of a world tipping into oblivion. What have I done? As she paced, this question circled endlessly through the maelstrom of her thoughts, clung to her heels with every step. What have I done? And it wasn’t Rougaru’s hard expression that troubled her, the promise of vengeance beneath the resignation of his gaze. It wasn’t the limp that had plagued her since as an old injury in her shoulder flared up anew. It was the very concept of the stakes they’d fought for, the prize that she had won.

The fact that— for the first time— the chestnut woman had willfully stolen another’s freedom.

Pivoting abruptly, the Yakut began to retrace her steps, heedless of the wind’s bitter bite. It had turned the moisture beading her shaggy coat to ice, but Valka scarcely noticed the stiffness of the hairs or the way they hung heavy and low along her sides. Such discomforts were minor; a burden she’d borne countless times before and would bear countless times again. But this betrayal of self was new, a raw wound instead of an old scar. And each time it might have scabbed over, she picked it open again— wondering, worrying. Was it too late to go back and change the future’s course? It wasn’t, it couldn’t be, but the risk of showing such mercy was great. Rougaru would not forget what had happened regardless, and without one of his children, she would have nothing to forestall his reprisal. No shield with which to guard her own.

Had any skjaldmær wielded such a shield before, she wondered? One built not from their own determination and courage, but from the body of an innocent child? A grown child, to be certain, but that distinction did little to stave off the guilt and self-disgust that chased her back up the beach. Past the snow-covered bluff that held Bacardi and her daughter, past the huddled figures of the Bay’s small herd. Past the place where she’d met Bjorn, and to the spot where she’d driven Ironclad back into the waves. Here the red mare finally paused, her stocky body pointing north. Wondering at the strange silence that pervaded the Inlet before she batted the concern away with the flick of one ear. An ear that then tipped backwards, half-expecting to hear the familiar, insistent call of Tinuvel’s King...or perhaps even the gentler call of her Huskarl. Either stallion might have known what to say, but she couldn’t bring herself to turn to them now.

To do that would feel too much like a choice— too much like the answer to a question she couldn’t understand.

Turning again, the pony-sized creature began her circuit anew. But only a few steps into it, she halted again, this time to watch a dark figure pull itself from the sea. Bristling with anger and aggression (and grateful to feel something, anything other than her inner turmoil), Valka began to stalk forward when the creature ducked around a boulder, disappearing from sight. Heartbeats later, the summoning-call eased the tension from her body, if not her expression. Struggling to bury it as she looped around to meet her pound of flesh, the Yakutian mare was drawn up short by the sight of the stallion all but curled in upon himself against the piercing cold, and felt the corners of her lips twist into a frown.

“You are Rougaru’s son?” She asked, the syllables brisk, almost harsh, in the effort to conceal the stab of remorse that sunk deep into her belly.