Freida Minos the Viking was one of the smallest of all the Vikings. It was said that her father had been a sailor from a foreign land who had washed up on their shore as a youth, and like most sailors, hadn't fared well when he had gone to sea again and his second boat had sunk.
So it was that Freida was stuck with a less pale complexion, a more slender frame, and less busty chest. Worst of all was the fact that she wasn't as tough as her peers. All of her cousins and aunts laughed at her comparative daintiness.
"Freida must be the worst warrior around!" they complained at all the log-hurling tournaments. Freida did not like ale, she ate too many vegetables, and worse she cut meat off the bone instead of just tearing it off with her teeth. So at a loss of what to do with her, her aunts and uncles sent her to the Shaman.
"Please do something with her. Please!" Her guardian Milt had said after his sons had to rescue her from a pile of pawing sheep. Even animal husbandry seemed beyond her ken.
"Very well," said Shaman Jorgreg. He was tired of meditating on the spirit realm anyway. That and he could use someone to collect the eggs from the chicken coops. "Send Freida Minos to me." So her relatives packed a bag full of extra wool, furs, thread, and bone-needles for Freida. They put her on a boat and rowed her round the other side to the isle on which they all lived. Then they climbed its largest hill to find Shaman Jorgreg.
"Please teach Freida how to use magic," they begged. So Freida stayed.
Many winters passed. Freida Minos was now a warrioress twenty-five winters old. Her hair was long and willowy when let out of its tresses for washing, but ordinarily it was bound up in leather braids to make make brunnette, u-shaped knot behind her head. Freida made her boots herself from animal hides she had tanned. Her gown, too, she had woven on a loom from the wool of wild sheep she had snared on the mountain's highest meadow. But for her warrior's armor and helm, Freida wore a chainmail vest and a battered helmet she had found hidden amongst the gnarled roots of an elm tree. Freida carried with her, also, a staff of knobbly sacred-tree wood such as all druid mages use, for she had been apprenticed to Shamen Jorgreg to learn spells. But the unhappy truth was that Freida had mastered none of them. She had only a small gift of magic- enough to start a campfire but not enough to throw fireballs. So it was that Freida seemed destined to be a housekeeper for all eternity.
"Freida!" Master Shaman Jorgreg grumbled as he tottered out of his chair and looked down to see where he had gotten himself wet when he had fallen asleep and his drinking horn had spilt on him. Like all Viking warriors, the Shaman prided himself in drinking copious cups of mead although he was far from any king's hall.
"Freida!" her instructor yelped. "Come here, girl! Do you have your weapon on you, Freida?"
"Yes, Shaman," Freida acknowledged with solemness. Shamen Jorgreg pulled his fingers through his beard.
"Good! Alright girl! I have a task for you!
"Make an omelet?" Freida asked. Because that was what she did every morning. Make the old Shaman his breakfast.
"Not just any omelet!" Jorgreg blurted out. Out of the blue, his face had taken on an excited lividness instead of its usual strained patience. "Girlie, I just saw a small hen dragon fly over the hill! So go on over there to the top of the mountain and look for a dragon egg, will you? It's been over a decade since I've had dragon-egg omelet surprise! I'd go myself but I'm old and my feet won't keep my footing if I scale the cliffs," the old man muttered in mock lament.
"A dragon?!" Freida blurted out. "I can't fight a dragon for its egg! I'll die!"
"Oh, nonsense!" Shaman Jorgreg muttered out. "The hen dragon can't be any bigger than an ox! If it bothers you, just bash its skull with the top of your staff! That's what you always do! It's not quite magic, but it works, doesn't it? Oh, and stay away from the Cursed Isle!"
"Right. Sure. I'm certain that technique will work on a dragon," Freida said leaning on her trusty staff but not believing a word of it. She narrowed her eyes at the old man.
"Now go on Frieda!" Master Jorgreg said shooing her away with a wave. "This will be a good test of your magic! If you haven't learned some by now, you never will. Go on!" Freida reluctantly left the cottage.
Tangling with a hen dragon seemed like a way to invoke certain death. But Freida was nearly bored to death living on a mountaintop with a cranky old man, anyway. So she snuck towards the side of the mountain where the mountainside fell away, not in one long leisurely slope as on the southern side, but on its northernmost tip. There, the land fell away as one gigantic cliff where the ocean eroded the landed away from below in one white wall of crashing waves. On the crumbling cliffside were ledges and on one of these ledges, birds like to land to build their nests. Apparently, dragons did, too, because a stout-nosed green dragon as big as a bull had taken up residency on one of the large cliffs. The difference was, that instead of rocks or sticks, the dragon had built its nest out of the bones and skulls of humans. Freida shuttered at the sight. But then she peered down at it with ferocity. She did, after all, have her trusty staff with her and it was true she had managed to dispatch large beasts with it before by channeling a small bit of magic into it. But mostly it was by sheer strength she had dispatched her foes. After all, her work of chopping firewood and dispatching demon-possessed wolves from the chicken coop had helped her to develop biceps so burly that she might have been a sailor lad.
Still, to play it safe, Freida tossed a pebble down the slope with hopes the dragon might go after it. The beast craned its head away. But then, nostrils flaring, it twisted its head around towards Freida. It lifted itself off its nest and lumbered up the slope to level ground. Freida plastered herself behind a rock. Then, eyebrows lowering, Freida prepared to launch herself from behind her hiding place as the hen dragon's large scaly feet reached the soft green turf of level ground.
"Ya-ya-ya-yahhh!" Freida called out in an imitation to one of the warrior berserkers of her old village. "Glory or Valhalla!" which was to say, glory or their version of heaven.
It was not as though Freida intended to go to the Viking heaven, however. She tried. Despite her efforts, her heavy, bludgeoning strokes were avoided by the nimble dragon. When Freida did manage to land a hit, her wooden staff simply snapped against it brow. Freida paused, dumbstruck.
"Oh," Freida muttered out as dread embraced her heart. Then she did a very un-Viking-like thing. She ran. Hopping and stumbling, she swung herself down a stony-trail. She ran south along the face of the cliff-precipice, back towards the more pleasant part of the island, but still winding down to the shore. Freida dodged behind trees as she sprinted, the hen dragon knocking the trees over in her rage. Yet, somehow, Freida managed to keep ahead.
"Bahh!" a lost sheep belted out, happy to find a friendly human in the wilderness. Perhaps she would lead it home to a nice warm barn? But Freida simply scooped the hapless sheep up and tossed it at the dragon to collide with its back. "BAAH?!" the sheep yelped out as the dragon shook a favored food off its neck to continue its pursuit of Freida.
Freida gained the waters of the bay and dove into the cove that hugged the island's west. The village she had been born in was not far from here, being on the southern-most tip of the cove. Maybe, by chance, she could make to a nearby fisherman's boat? Freida anticipated that the dragon would stop its pursuit of her when she entered the water, but it entered the water in a soggy splash.
"Odin's bowels!" Freida cursed out loud. She heaved herself back up the shorebank in a soggy splash. A discarded sword lay on an island and she leapt forward to grasp hold of it.
"Hey! Stay off the Cursed Isle!" an observant fisherman shouted out at Freida. By the looks of it, he had no intention of coming between Freida and the dragon. Freida stood her ground on a tiny island with a tiny circle of upturned stones.
"Raaawr!" the dragon said. As it snapped for Freida, she snapped the front of the blade against its nose. This time, the small green dragon hissed and recoiled as a brilliant blue light of magic illuminated the sword. With a hiss, the dragon slunk away back towards the nesting cliffs.
"Wow! I can use magic!" Freida shouted with joy. She looked at the glowing blue sword in her hand. But then she heard a voice.
"No you can't actually!" the voice said. A red-headed youth spoke while sitting cross-legged in the damp sand. "That's MY magic powering the sword! Magic as good as this doesn't come from mortals!"
"And just who are you?" Freida grimaced at the young man.
"I'm Orveon. I've dwelt here on the island for decades. Well, since I've been stuck here."
"Why are you stuck here?" asked Freida.
"I can't get back to Valhalla. There hasn't been a winged horse on this island since Selphy got eaten by a sea monster. I could get back, probably, if I found my brothers. But they are cursed and sealed on another island."
"Sounds tragic! Well, thanks for saving me. Can I keep the sword if you're not using it? It's cool. And a little better than a wooden stick."
"No," said Orveon. "That's not a toy for morals! That's a Valkyrie sword."
"So that means you're a Valkyrie? That makes it even more valuable! I'll bet I could sell it for three whole flocks of sheep!" Freida said admiring the blade even more.
"No you can't because it's mine!" grumbled Orveon. "But you can keep it if you do something for me. You can have the sword only if you unseal my brothers and help us find a magic horse to return home."
"So hang around some burial mounds!" Freida complained. "Winged horses and Valkyries hang out there all the time, or so the saying goes."
"Have there been any battles around here?" Orveon asked.
"No, not for a long time," said Freida. "This is fisherman country. All the warriors are on the mainland. If people die here, we chuck 'em in the ocean for the sea monster to eat."
"That goes against all Valkyrie tradition," Orveon complained. "No wonder there are no other Valkyries are around here."
"Oh, too bad. But the fishermen here are practical folk. Burial mounds take a whole army to make. That's too much work."
"Um-hum," said Orveon, thinking hard.
"Well, you look like you are a bit of a mage. You are wearing Shaman amulets around your neck and in your hair. Are you in training, then?"
"I am but I haven't really been successful in it," admitted Freida. "Why? IS there a way you can make me really be a Shaman?"
"Not directly," said Orveon. "But if you make a pact with me, then I could use my magic to enhance your own."
"But I wouldn't really be a Shaman would I?" asked Freida.
"It's not cheating if you have a blessing from a divine source, is it? " said Orveon. "The Valkyrie prefer the term, 'blessed warrior'. That's what our job is, to determine who lives and dies on the battlefield."
"You also take souls to the afterlife," observed Freida. "Creepy!"
"Not all of us are born human," Orveon grumbled.
"And Valkyries talk to ravens. Also creepy," observed Freida.
"Am I to blame for your sense of decorum?" Orveon asked. "Maybe you're just jealous you can't talk to crows!"
"Hm," said Freida looking at Orveon. She observed his clothes made of a cloth as featherlight as a swan's feathers. He was golden-armed with a fine sun-tan. He had a white throat and sparkling blue eyes.
"Hm!" observed Freida, speaking her thoughts out loud. "You remind me of that old poem about Valkyries."
"Which one? The Helgakvioa Hundingsbana?"
"That's the one," Freida nodded. "And if my memory is correct," said Freida admiring Orveon's butt with bit of drool hanging from the corner of her mouth. "Then if you want to make a pact with me, then I can demand something in return! I want you to be my boyfriend!"
"Really?" Orveon declared as he threw up his hands in disgust. "If I have to make a pact like that it has to be with a girl who looks like a flat-chested boy? Odin must really hate me! Fine, then, I'll be your boyfriend if you succeed in the quest. But I reserve the right to get a makeup box for you."
"What's makeup?" Freida wondered.
"Well, that explains a lot!" said Orveon. "And while we're at it, let's get you out of the used men's clothing line and get you into a gown befitting of a Valkyrie. I can hardly stand looking at your rags any longer."
"Hey, I made these clothes myself!" Freida barked out. But new clothes didn't sound too bad to her, either.