April, 1980

Norn's Chamber, All-Father's Hall

Valhalla

i"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches. … Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies … and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the DarkLord knows not … and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives. … The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies. …"/i

Skuld spun on her stool to stare at the well of prophecy, where the voice of one of Chotho's descendants echoed. Raven feathers scattered unnoticed on the floor as she pushed away from her workbench and stormed over to the tapestry. Looking at the half formed pattern, she saw a snarl of ugly dark threads twist ahead into the weave, tainting the pattern with a disgusting foulness.

The change would be bad, she knew it even before she found her granddaughter's thread. Her life would be cut short, all the paths lead to it, but in most every outcome she would die with courage. Her husband though, he would fail his test, and would never enter the feast hall. Worst of all, the as yet unborn baby would live a life nearly barren of love. Skuld's hand gripped the hilt of her sax, white-knuckled.

Verdandi, grabbed her wrist. "Don't do anything foolish."

Skuld relaxed her grip, and shook herself free of her sister's hand. She pointed at the snarled threads. "You can see what that she-dog has done." Skuld pinched a trio of threads between her fingers. "Look at this, she's made this one immortal unless one of the other two kills him."

"No way to tell which one it is either." Verdandi slapped her hand away. "Plucking at them won't help either. Find Urd, have her tell Father what's happened, then take Gudr and Róta and ask Clotho why she did this..." she gestured at the changes to the tapestry, "this... thing."

"I know why she did it, she did it for that pack of boy-lovers. She doesn't care what happens as long as those twisted threads..."

"Stop!" Verdandi's voice echoed in the hall, drawing the attention of several serving maids, who blushed and whispered as she waved them away. "She wouldn't do it for that, not just for that anyway. Go ask her, and ask her properly. If you cause trouble for Father..."

Skuld frowned and folded her arms. "Why doesn't Urd go talk to Clotho then?"

"Because if I do that, you'll pester Father to fix things before he knows all the details." Urd interrupted. She must have heard the prophecy, or perhaps the argument and come to take charge like always.

"But I..."

"You know you will, and you know he won't help if you push him." Urd pointed at the tapestry. "The oracle may be one of hers, but look where she is, look who it affects."

Skuld looked at the tangle, knowing there was something odd, but what... "Why would she care?"

Urd ran her hand along the last three centuries. "Almost all of Clotho's speak here. What they speak influences these threads. In all this time her children hardly ever touch on Britannia. The closest is nearly a hundred years ago when they were fighting the Turks."

Skuld muttered an oath under her breath. "Decima. It has to be Decima"

Verdandi stood and traced threads back a thousand years, studying them carefully. "Is she still mad about Erik?"

Skuld shrugged. "She might be, It took her nearly five hundred years to get some of hers over there, and she was still mad enough to send that evil Spanard Walking Grove to spread the pox."

"What you did killed hundreds of hers..." Urd said.

"I killed a few hundred, but they died in battle and they wouldn't have died if she hadn't sent them there with a prophecy."

"You started it." Urd insisted.

Skuld glared at her sister. "I killed hundreds," she hissed "and that... that... female killed millions. She sent the pox and kept them from a clean death."

"Stop it!" Verdandi stepped between them, grabbing a handful of Urd's woolen tunic in one hand, and Skuld's silver-steel mail in her other. She pulled them close and turned her head so she was nose to nose with Urd "You go to father and tell him about this new prophecy, tell him the whole story starting with how Decima started the last war. Don't bring up anything before that unless he asks. He already know about it so it's not like we're hiding anything." She turned to Skuld, with eyes concerned but commanding. "You go to Clotho. Be polite, be demure. Ask her what she intended to happen when she sent the words."

Urd snorted with laughter. ""Demure? Skuld?"

Skuld couldn't help laughing herself, despite the rage within her. "I don't think I can do demure."

Verandi hugged them both. "No, you probably can't. Just don't threaten her. Besides, you know she how she is... You could..."

Skuld turned up her nose. "Eww. No, just, no."

Urd laughed again, argument forgotten. "Go on little sister, I'll tell Father all about it while you talk to Clotho. Probably better you than me anyway. After I got drunk with Sappho that one time..." She shook her head, turned and headed for the great hall.

Belladonna dodged another stunner, then blocked a bone-breaking curse with her rowan shield while banishing a spray of loose rocks towards her sister. Marigold must have expected her to dodge the curse as well, because she didn't get her Protego off in time to stop one of them from catching her between the eyes. She spun behind a blasted tree and sent off a silent stunner that Marigold staggered into.

Adam yanked her to the ground as her Uncle Jeremy's shouted Reducto blew the tree into splinters. Belladonna rolled left and fired a pair of stunners in her uncle's general direction before crawling back to Adam's side. Uncle Jeremy had called up a Protego in response to her stunners, but Adam cut him down with a burst from his rifle. The new runes must have helped, because the sheild only deflected the first two bullets. Adam sprang to his feet and ran bent over to a nearby gully where a small stream flowed bright in the midday sun.

After casting a cutting curse to make sure Marigold stayed down, Belladonna followed him.

They crawled up the slope of the ravine, stopping just below the top, where she disillusioned them both. A few moments observation didn't reveal anyone in the ruins on top of the hill, so she whispered "I don't see anything, Adam."

Adam moved so he could whisper in her ear. "Go to the second pillar and whistle, I'll cover you."

Belladonna moved as quietly as she could, avoiding several patches of loose stones mixed with gravel from the crumbling mortar. Crouching behind the pillar, she quietly cast Homenem Revelo, then still seeing nothing, whistled, soft and low. She didn't hear him until he was almost close enough to touch

Adam spoke in a soft murmur. "See the second tallest tower?"

"I do" she said.

"Let's take position there. You guard the stairs, and I'll go up and see if I can spot anyone. If I do, I'll shoot them and we'll run back to that stream, then see if we can make it to the stone farmhouse."

She nodded, then realizing he couldn't see her, said "Wilco" meaning both that she understood and that she would comply with his orders. In the five years since she had died, she had picked up a lot of vocabulary from the Americans Skuld had grouped her family with for training. She had become good friends with some of them, particularly with Adam. Being dead was a lot more fun than she had ever thought it could be.

Adam's rifle barked twice, then twice more, then a burst of half a dozen shots followed by silence and someone screaming in pain. Then she heard a whoosh as something flew past her position, and the top of the tallest tower exploded. As the stones of the tower rained onto the overgrown courtyard, Adam fired a pair of three round bursts then hurried down the stairs, grabbed her arm as he passed, and half dragged her towards the trees. Just before they reached the bushes at the edge of the woods, the battlefield dissolved and they were back in the All Father's hall.

"But we were winning.." Belladonna complained.

Adam shook his head. "No, we were about to lose." he gestured to a group of men. "It wasn't just your family, there were some of the 'Black Devils' helping them."

"It wasn't that bad," one of the men interrupted. He wore an O.D. green uniform with a red 'USA/Canada' arrowhead patch, along with a red beret with a crossed arrows insignia. Like the rest of his group, he carried both rifle and wand. He put out his hand to Adam. "There were twelve of us in that, and you got five before the end. Robert Addams, I knew your father and grandfather both. Fought with them on Attu and at La Difensa, good men."

Adam took Robert's hand and shook it. "Another twenty minutes and you would have had us cold, I didn't think there was a time limit on this exercise."

Belladonna pointed with her eyebrows. "I don't think there was one, here comes Skuld and she looks mad."

She did too. Skuld strode across the great hall, followed by Gudr and Róta, bow in her hands and cloak billowing behind her. "Valkyries to me!" she shouted. "I want a full score, with their bonded." All across the hall, the Choosers of the Slain flowed towards their leader.

As they approached, Skuld pointed to them and called them out by name. "Sigrud Svensdottir!" A woman in her thirties, in dull iron chain sax belted to her waist and carrying a lance. "Freydis Eiriksdottir!" Bright-blond hair in wolf-furs, with sword and rowan-sheild. "Gwenllian ferch Gruffydd!" Raven-black hair with longbow and belt-knife. "Blenda Smaland!" Who bore an axe in one hand and thowing-spear in her other. "Rita Rourke!" In U.S. army uniform with an M-1 carbine and a .45 pistol. "Mary Fields!" A tall black woman with a lever action rifle. "Brita Olofsdottir!" In a calvary uniform Belladonna didn't recognize. "Hannah Snell!" In the uniform of the Royal Marines a couple of centuries superseded. "Dorothy Lawrence!" Who had disguised herself as a Muggle soldier in the Great War, spillover from the earliest days of the rise of the Dark Lord Grendlewald. "Kenitay of the Erie!" Dark skin and dark hair in buckskins with a hickory bow, a brace of tomahawks in her belt and a long knife in her moccasins. "Kelda Vatnsdottir!" Pale skin and freckles with red hair and dressed just the same, but for the addition of sword and shield on her back and a wand in an arm holster. As Skuld continued to call out names, Belladonna watched the women.

As each of the Valkyries were called, they were joined by their men, who usually bore similar arms and armor. Although Kelda had waited nearly five hundred years to bond with a muggle who had died in the same war as her Adam. And when did he become 'her' Adam anyway? Lost in thought, she missed several names until finally Skuld pointed directly at her and called out "Belladonna Figg!"

Her? but she wasn't a Valkyrie, she wasn't even bonded... at least. She looked up shyly into Adam's eyes. If she were still alive, she would have turned eighteen by now, but sometimes in her heart of hearts, she was still the fourteen year old girl she had been when she had died. "Will you... will you come with me? be my bonded?"

Adam smiled and took her hand, "Of course I will."