//------------------------------//
// Chooser of the Slain 
// Story: An Equestrian Edda 
// by LordSpur 
//------------------------------//

An Equestrian Edda

Takes Place in the Chessgame of the Gods ‘verse, as created by Rust and Blackwing.


Chapter One: Chooser of the Slain
 
“Almighty Lord we have come to your hall, Do Glatem Live, Creator of All!  Open your heart and you will find a way! Paradise calling, and enter you may!(Falling Down!)”
-Sabaton, 7734 

“Grenade!” one of the men to the left of me shouted. The call was quickly followed up by a slightly muffled explosion. Bullets whizzed past my head, pinging off the rocks and houses around me. I swore, leveling my M4A1 assault rifle and letting off a controlled burst in the general direction of the enemy. Suppressing fire is a very real concept in a firefight. Sometimes you don’t have to actually hit the enemy, you just have to put them on their ass so they can’t fire back.
        “Where the hell’s our chopper!?” I screamed into the comm. One of the bastards on the other side of the street lifted his head up above his cover, and quickly had it turned into chunky salsa. Seeing more movement inside the same building, I unhooked a grenade from my web gear and pulled the pin. “Frag out!” I called, lobbing it through the window. The explosion threw up a massive cloud of dust, puffing out through the doors and windows of the building. Another armed enemy stumbled out, and I put a trio of rounds in his chest, dropping him.
        “ETA seven minutes,” a voice called over the comm. I huffed. About damn time. The unit commander’s voice followed it up. “Alright everybody, let’s fall back to the south side of the village, it’s just flat enough for the bird to land. Mendez, you move your team first, secure the LZ. Geatsen, you’re going last. Keep those jihadis off our asses.”
        I gave a terse, “yes sir,” and kept my eyes on the lookout for further movement. I had better make it out of here. Like all the other jarheads who signed up back home, I hadn’t left for Afghanistan expecting to die. I had a wife, and a two year old son I had never met, back in Minnesota.
        I wiped the sand from my forehead. My US Marine Recon unit had come into this ass-end-of-nowhere Afghani village to extract a former Taliban commander who claimed he wanted to defect to the US. Of course, the village was in the middle of Taliban country, and now our unit of fifty was surrounded by what appeared to be half the towel-head army.
        It was a tense seven minutes, punctuated with sporadic gunfire. As soon as I heard the distinctive whine of chopper rotors, I breathed a sigh of relief. I heard the commander issue orders for our guys to board, along with Mr. Defector. Then I saw it, and my blood turned to ice.
        One of the bastards had an RPG, specifically some type of surface-to-air missile. Dammit! He was planning on shooting down the chopper! I let off a burst, making him scurry down behind cover. Another terrorist ran out from behind the same rock, and I perforated him with a hail of lead. The distinctive click of the fire mechanism not finding a bullet followed.
 Shit.
        I was out of ammo for my M4. I had already blown through my other three mags. Gritting my teeth, I let my rifle fall on it’s sling around my back, quickly unholstering my Beretta M9. That bastard wasn’t going to kill my friends or shoot down my chopper.
        I heard my commander telling me and my squad to retreat. “Sergeant Geatsen, fall back! I repeat, fall back to the LZ!” I sighed into the comm.
        “No can do, sir. There’s a hostile out here with a SAM, if we let him go he’ll blow us all out of the sky.” I heard a frustrated grumble from the other end.
        “Dammit! Do what you have to do, Sergeant. Just make it out in one piece.” I replied with the affirmative. I switched the comm to my squad.
        “Boys, get your sorry asses to the LZ. I’m going for a walk.” They gave me their affirmatives, and started making their way back. I took a deep breath. I could hear my heart beating. Breath in. Thump thump. Breath out. Thump thump.
        I ran from behind the cover, charging towards the rock the hostile with the SAM had dived behind. I saw a couple of heads peek out from behind various boulders and ruined houses, followed by the distinctive crackle of Kalashnikovs. 
        Running towards the boulder, I laid down my own suppressing fire. These bastards had no fire discipline, and terrible aim, but one of them still managed to graze my hip. I bit down on the sharp, hot pain and kept going, giving him a double serving of lead for his trouble. I was twenty yards from the rock. Fifteen… ten… five.
        I lept and slid over the top of the rock. Two jihadis were behind it, cowering under the bulletstorm. One of them was my boy with the rocket launcher. I shot the other one first, the one with an AK-47. BANG! BANG! click.
        The one with the rifle was down, but I was out of ammo for my pistol. So I improvised. With a shouted Marine “Hooah!” I smashed the barrel of the pistol across his skull. With my other hand, I grabbed and flipped open my combat knife and buried it in his ribcage. Gurgling, the man’s shrouded head lolled to the side.
        It was only then that I noticed the thirty or so other Taliban fighters charging towards my position. They were screaming in arabic as they rushed, and soon bullets were clacking off the stone all around me. Shit, I thought to myself. If one of those guys got his hands on the launcher, it would be the same as if I hadn’t killed the guy who already had it. There was only one thing to do. 

I grabbed the SAM.

        As I raised the tube over my shoulder, a bullet struck me in the left leg. Blood spurted over my pants, and I fought down the pain. Another bullet tore through my stomach. It didn’t matter.  I flipped on the firing mechanism, pointed into the center of the group. At this range, it would kill me too, but that was the point. If it left behind a functional missile launcher, this would have been pointless.
        Catherine, I thought silently, I’m sorry I couldn’t keep my promise. I’m sorrier I couldn’t have raised our son. Make sure he finds a good dad.

I grit my teeth and fired.

From off to my left, I would have sworn I saw a blonde woman look at me and smile. She wore a black, medieval style cloak that obscured her body. She nodded my direction, as if in approval. What the hell? Must be bloodloss.
        The missile leapt towards the mass of Afghan soldiers, and my life ended in a flash of fire and the loudest crack of thunder I had ever heard.
***
        I awoke what felt like some significant time later, and the first thing I noticed was that I could feel the grain of whatever wood my face was resting on. Touch? That was unexpected. Let’s try sight.
        My eyes opened, and I was in a smoky, dimly lit room. I blinked a couple of times, then lifted my self upright. I had been slumped over some kind of table. My hand rubbed up over my forehead. What? Where am I?
        “Need something, handsome?” A husky feminine voice asked from over my shoulder. I turned, and beheld an absolutely gorgeous blonde woman, with her hair done up in a long braid that went over one shoulder, resting beside her distractingly ample breasts. I had to force myself to look up into her eyes. Dammit man! You’re married!
She was dressed like a German stereotype, you know the kinda dress I’m talking about. She had a blonde eyebrow arched up in apparent amusement. With a figure like hers, she must get looks like that a lot.
        “Um… yes, can you tell me where I am?” Her red lips broke into a slightly condescending smile, as if she was laughing at the fact that I didn’t already know.
        “Ah, so you’re the new arrival.” She straightened herself up, pulling a waiter’s notepad and pencil out from god knew where, and stood like she was going to take my order. “So, what’ll it be?” As she spoke, I noticed a slight accent to her tone that reminded me vaguely of my grandmother.
        I raised my own eyebrows in confusion. “What do you mean?” I asked, so confused that words weren’t even applicable.
        The woman simply rolled her eyes at me. “To drink, or to eat. We’re pretty flexible around here.”
        I dropped my head into one hand, and began to rub my eyelids with my thumb and forefinger. “Uh, do you have Bud Light?”
        That got a laugh out of her, and she put her notepad and pencil away, and turned slightly over her shoulder. “Hey, everybody! We’ve got an American over here!” It was the roar of raucous laughter that made me realize how crowded the room was. I looked up above the “waitress”, and saw the high, arched wooden ceiling above, slightly obscured by smoke, an indeterminable distance away. I looked to my right, then to my left. The building seemed to be one single room that went on forever. It was filled with tables, each one surrounded by men in such a wide variety of clothes they may as well have been tropical birds. Chainmail and furs, steel plate, silk robes, seventeenth century overcoats of various colors (though mostly red), Civil War uniforms and various sets I couldn’t place. Soon, a group formed around my table, lifting me out of my seat, enthusiastically patting me on the back. “Hey, we saw you on the screen, right good show, that was. Right good,” an English voice sounded in my ear.
        I turned, scanning through the crowd to the woman who had spoken to me first. “Wait!” I called, “You never answered my question.”
        She simply laughed again. “Isn’t it obvious? You’re dead! Welcome to the Hall of a Thousand Shields, the Mead House of the Slain! Welcome, noble warrior, to Valhalla.”




Achievement Unlocked! Heroic Sacrifice
Location Discovered: Valhalla
Faction(s) Met: The Slain
The Valkyries