Austin Wyrd by Steve Curry

Author:Steve Curry [Curry, Steve]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-07-30T22:00:00+00:00

17

I understand almost everyone has their own belief in what happens in the afterlife. There’s Nirvana, Heaven, Elysium and many more. Those are the more positive outcomes. There are numerous neutral and negative outcomes as well. I don’t know a lot about most of them. However, I am pretty sure that very few people expect to wake up to a full and fruitful day of torture after being shot. Of course, this wasn’t the first day. As a matter of fact, I’m not sure what day it was. They tended to blend into one long, delirious, gut wrenching battle of sadistic pain in direct competition with a weak but determined will.

Each morning was the same. I woke to find myself already at the feast table. My old brothers would stomp in and settle around the table to hurl good natured insults at each other and hilarious dire warnings at me. They altered the warnings with suggestions to my captor and his assistants. The Ravens were bad enough. They were much more creative than the wolves. But neither furred or feathered torturer held a candle to the Valkyrie Kara, or Kara the Stormy. She possessed rarely dark hair and eyes of a tumultuous grey and blue mixture. But that wasn’t why she was Stormy. No Kara had an almost limitless capacity for vengeful violence.

She was also my “handler” for several centuries. You might say she took it personally that I evaded her and everyone else from my old life. She took it very personally indeed. Most days she didn’t get her chance until later. Old one-eye would give her a shot at me during the feast after everyone had fought and trained and had a full day of typical Viking “stuff”.

By then the wolves both had a bite or two. The ravens usually took an eye. Just one. They liked me to be able to see what was coming. They’d take bits of lip or ear but never the tongue. I needed the tongue to beg for mercy. That was after all the point. That was the one thing I concentrated on every day. I was determined, utterly committed, to not give them the satisfaction of a sob or plea for mercy. If I held on long enough, or managed to make one of them mad enough, then I’d either pass out from the trauma or simply keel over to start reaching room temperature.

Death was a boon in that it meant the end of the pain and degradation. For that day. That after all is the lot of Einherjar. Training, fighting or simply engaging in typical acts of random bravado and stupidity often ended in a fatality. Valkyries always awakened their chargers after any fatality. If they didn’t perform adequately, they might awake the next morning, weeks or even years later to start all over. If they performed admirably they would wake for the feast and have a raucous joyful evening of good natured banter and random violence along with a

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