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“Last item,” said Darryl. “Still no leads on where Mjölnir went.”
Duncan frowned. “None at all? Isn’t that rather worrying?”
Darryl shrugged. “It’s not as though the exhibit was Fort Knox, mate. Practically begging to be heisted, if you ask me.”
“Darryl,” Duncan said patiently, “security on the Mjölnir exhibit was light because, to the best of our knowledge, only two people in the Universe can lift the wretched thing. Hence the worry when a weapon like that goes walkies.”
“I concur,” said the Valkyrie, from the head of the table. “Keep looking.”
“Understood, boss.” Darryl stood, and slipped his tablet into its satchel. “Will we be seeing you at the theatricals tonight?”
“If I can’t find some spawn of Niflheim to end me first.”
Darryl winced sympathetically. “Well, if you do, be sure to save me one as well. Otherwise, curtain’s up at seven.”
“Were theatricals a Thing, back in Asgard as was?” Duncan asked, as he followed the Valkyrie out of the boardroom. Duncan was the Valkyrie’s Chief of Coms. He had studied the tongues of old Midgard at a lorehome called “Cambridge”, set in a stark and sombre fen across the seas. It was agreeable to have an employee who was less impressed by your magic rainbow-surfing horse than by the fact that you predated the Iliad.
“No. There was singing. Of a sort. More, in fact, like cadenced shouting. Sakaar had little to recommend it, but there was, at least, a decent dearth of eddas.” The Valkyrie turned to look at Duncan. “What do the people truly think of the theatricals?”
“They think it brings the money in, and keeps us of Midgard happy with our refugees. They worry, a little, that Asgard has sold its soul.” Duncan hesitated. “I know I’m not telling you anything you haven’t heard yourself.”
“I would be a poor King if I had not. But thank you for the confirmation.” The Valkyrie frowned. “I believe, still, that this course is wise. But, as you just said, Duncan, I am old…”
“Pretty sure that wasn’t what I said. Few Coms officers are suicidal.”
“… as you just implied, I am old. It’s harder to worry about the sale of Asgard’s soul when you remember the times before it had one.” The Valkyrie shook her head. “Perhaps I am out of touch with my people.”
“I think you’re being hypercritical of your leadership, Your Majesty. A regimen of Shakespeare’s history plays will do that to anyone.”
“Perhaps. Go gird your loins for the theatricals, Duncan.” The Valkyrie contemplated the sea. “I wish to walk.”
***
During the long, malleable centuries in Sakaar, the Valkyrie had missed the oceans. Midgard’s grey garment was not the same as the galactic cataracts of the Realm Eternal; it boasted its own beauty, all the same. The Valkyrie found her footsteps leading her back to the patch, near the sea, where the old Mjölnir exhibit had been, before its recent despoilation. Once in sight of that, she stopped, and frowned. An unknown woman was standing there.
The woman was clad in the war-armour of the Odinson. There was a hammer in her hand.
“Who are you?” the Valkyrie asked, approaching. Up close, she saw that the surface of the hammer was crazed with cracks. She caught her breath. “Is that…?”
The newcomer followed her gaze, and nodded nonchalantly. “Mjölnir? Uh-huh.”
“You need to put the hammer back.” The Valkyrie was aware that she was enjoining the return of the mightiest artefact in the Nine Realms with the tone of voice one might use on a Midgard child caught shoplifting, but she had never claimed a mastery of diplomatic nuance.
Dark eyes challenged hers. “Make me.”
“I don’t want to kill you.” The Valkyrie reached down and slipped a dagger from her boot into her hand. Wearing, as she currently was, her Phantom of the Opera t-shirt, she otherwise felt underdressed for theomachy.
“Cool. I don’t want to die.” The stranger bit her lip for a moment, as though that last banter had soured on her tongue. Her face cleared. “But we’re both big girls, here. We can stop when one of us cries ‘uncle’. ‘One of us’, in this context,” she hefted Mjölnir, “meaning ‘you’.”
The stranger hurled the hammer. The dagger was knocked from the Valkyrie’s stung hand, as Mjölnir returned to the stranger’s.
The Valkyrie grimaced. “Very well. You asked for this.”
***
The Valkyrie surged forward; the stranger charged to meet her. Bowl the interloper over quickly, she reasoned, that the truth of the matter may readily be determined when the felon is in custody. No dagger in hand now to countervail the hammer, but no matter. Brawn will succeed where Uru faile…
Unnghh…
The force of the collision drove the breath from the Valkyrie’s body. She tottered, grabbing desperately at the wrist of the hand that held the hammer. Her adversary bent the Valkyrie’s arm back, forcing her further off-balance. The stranger used the opening to send two solid lefts in succession to the Valkyrie’s jaw.
Hits harder than I do. Hits like Thor. The Valkyrie stumbled away; groggily threw up an arm to block the hammer’s swing. The impact shook her stance; exposed her anew. Another hard left rocked her; blackness toyed with her vision. Don’t… don’t pass out.
Success had made her opponent reckless. The stranger grunted as she walked into the Valkyrie’s flailing haymaker; staggered back a step or two. Respite, but for how long? The Valkyrie, with shaking hands, pulled the dagger from her other boot.
The stranger rolled her eyes and muttered: “Rinse; repeat.” Again, Mjölnir jarred the knife from the Valkyrie’s grip. The stranger had misjudged the power of the throw. Mjölnir flew on, far out to sea, furrowing the foam beneath its flight.
The rival closed. A blizzard of artless blows. A journeywoman fighter, the Valkyrie realized blearily, for all her strength and speed. Were I not already groggy, I could win this.
But I rushed in, and made my jaw a welcome gift. Too punchy, now; too slow. Can’t dodge, can’t block, can’t string anything together, when her blows have already scattered my wits across Ginnungagap. I am no King. I am a fool.
The Valkyrie swayed, blinking, into a right hook, that dropped her to her knees.
A vanquished foo…
The rival poised the punch above the Valkyrie’s bowed head that must surely end the bout. She shuddered for a moment; hesitated. Then, she unclenched her fist and held her arm aloft. Mjölnir slammed back into her hand.
***
The Valkyrie had scrambled to her feet. She mulled over the reprieve; it made no sense. The stranger needed no Mjölnir to finish her; she must know how heavily her punches landed.
Unless…
The Valkyrie backed off hastily; took steadying breaths. If this was to work, she would need to claw back some of the speed she had lost in that first costly sally.
“Retreating?” The stranger sounded annoyed. “That isn’t very Valkyrie.” Again, she raised the hammer. “I prefer using this just to disarm. But if you won’t stand and fight…”
Mjölnir hurtled through the air. At that range, Thor would not have missed, given the state of the King’s battle-blunted reflexes. But the Valkyrie had already noted how annoyance befouled her adversary’s aim; she overthrew when she was nettled. The breeze of the hammer’s passing stroked her cheek as she – just – managed to sway out of its path. Mjölnir was almost immediately lost to the view, out in the long medley of sea and sky beyond the brawl.
The Valkyrie leapt once more into the fray. Her opponent was still distracted and off-balance from the throw. This time, the clash of powerful bodies fell out in the Valkyrie’s favour. She worked quickly, grimly, to establish a hold.
“That’s more like it,” the rival gasped, elatedly, as she found her footing, and leaned into the grapple. “If you don’t mind a note, I think we’re meant to quip at each other when we’re locked up like this. But you strike me as the strong and silent type.”
Silent? Sometimes. Strong? The Valkyrie gritted her teeth; roused more power from her shuddering thews. The next seconds will tell us both that the truth of that. Once you discover what I’m doing.
***
Held, at close quarters, by a grip of iron, the Valkyrie could see the emotions chasing each other across her opponent’s expressive face. The stranger’s dark eyes had been intent on the Valkyrie’s. Now, just for a moment, their gaze darted sideways, to where a returned Mjölnir lay upon the ground. Glee gave way to consternation. The stranger knew, now, that one woman must break the other, if she wished to free her hands.
The stranger scowled. She strained, and the Valkyrie followed suit. Muscles bulged beneath tan and ivory skin, as the rivals sought each other’s limits. The Valkyrie’s were discovered. She lost ground.
“Give up,” the stranger said quietly. “You know that you can’t win this. I don’t want to hurt you more than I have already. Just give up.”
The Valkyrie did not answer. She winced as her body began to bend. She shut her eyes to her opponent’s earnest face, to their knotted, shaking thews, to the kingdom her own recklessness might have put at hazard.
“Give up. Please. I can feel what this is doing to you. You’re exhausted. Why won’t you give up?”
The effort. The strength of her. All the brawn I can muster just slows her down. Agony and defeat await me, within scant seconds, if I am wrong.
I am not wrong. She outmuscles a woman who can push-start starships; folds the last Valkyrie like the merest stripling. But she’s the one with pleading in her voice.
“I… I give.” The stranger’s accents were low, defeated. “You’ve won, OK? Is that what you need to hear? You’ve won.”
The intolerable pressure of those limbs, like the mountains of lost Asgard bearing down, was gone. The Valkyrie released her own grip. For long moments, there was no sound but shuddering breaths, and the ancient disgruntlement of the sea.
***
The Valkyrie opened her eyes, and stared. Her erstwhile rival lay huddled on the ground, near at hand. No armour, now; just garb of Midgard make. The dirty blonde hair was brown, and shorter. The muscles that had matched and all but mastered hers were gone.
The stranger began to reach out a tremulous hand towards Mjölnir. The Valkyrie lunged, and grabbed the wrist. Some instinct mitigated the force of her grasp now; she was glad at once that she had done so. The wrist that had been steel in the grapple felt like bird-bones.
“Let me hold the hammer, please,” the stranger’s voice remained quiet and defeated. “Even with Mjölnir, there’s not enough in me for Round Two. When I said you’d won, I meant it.”
The Valkyrie held her gaze for a long moment; nodded; and released her grip. The stranger called Mjölnir to her hand. The armour; the blonde mane; the physique bloomed again, like zephyr lilies after rain. The stranger rested the hammer on her lap.
“Thank you.” Her voice, too, was clearer, stronger. “You asked me a question before we threw down, which I didn’t answer. That was rude of me.”
“Yes,” said the Valkyrie. She shuffled to sit beside the stranger. “And an answer might have saved us both some bruises.”
“Uh-huh. But where’s the fun in that?” The studied gaiety dropped from the stranger’s voice. “Seriously, that tussle… it was an experiment. This look is new for me; I wanted to test myself. See how, well, this,” she awkwardly flexed the sinewed arms, “stacked up against one of the most powerful women on the planet.”
“You won your spurs.” The Valkyrie drew a finger along her jaw, and grimaced. “But you have yet to answer that first question.”
“I’m Jane Foster.” The pale cheeks flushed, and not, this time, from the heat of battle. “Thor may have mentioned me.”
“He has.” The Valkyrie went on probing her chin. “I did not expect the great loremaster of his tales to hit so hard.”
***
“I think Mjölnir called me,” Jane Foster continued. “When I came to this place first, it reassembled; flew into my hand.” She looked down at herself. “And made me this.”
“But you cannot maintain this form for long, without the Borson’s hammer in your grasp.”
“I’m getting better at staying strong. But even with Mjölnir, I can’t remain this all the time. The comedown is kinda rough.” Foster dropped her head. “And getting rougher.”
“I see.” The Valkyrie looked at the pensive expression, the dark downcast eyes. “May I ask you another question, Jane Foster?”
“Shoot.”
“When Mjölnir does not empower you, you do not look… hale. Is that so?”
Foster nodded.
“Does Thor know?”
“No. Please don’t tell him, if you see him.” Foster lifted her head again. “That’s for me to do.”
“Understood.” The Valkyrie cast about for another topic of conversation. “Did Mjölnir also teach you how to fight?”
“No.” Foster huffed contentedly. “Those moves were 100% mine. I learnt self-defence when Thor and I were together. He’s a warrior; I’m a scientist. It’s good for couples to understand each other’s passions.”
The Valkyrie’s eyebrows lifted. “You taught physics to Thor?”
“Uh-huh. He was actually one of my better students. Thor wears ‘smart’ better than he thinks he does.”
“I can believe that.” The Valkyrie thought for a moment. “Your combat skills are adequate. But you need to become more.”
“Do I?” Foster looked piqued. “It was smart of you to stonewall me in our fight until I ran out of batteries. All the same, you were mostly on the ropes.”
“True,” the Valkyrie conceded. “But only because of my arrogance before I knew your mettle. It’s an Asgardian flaw…”
“Really?” said Foster. “I hadn’t noticed.”
“… but not every foe you fight will err in a like fashion.”
“‘Every foe’.” Foster repeated. “Sounds as though you think there will be more of those.”
“I am sure of it.” The Valkyrie shivered. “Much as I despised the Borson, his implements of might do not call vainly. If Mjölnir summoned you, then something comes.”
“‘Something’ can bring it.” Foster masked uncertainty with braggadocio. That was more Thor, the Valkyrie reflected, than merely wielding his hammer would ever make her. “You’ll train me, then?”
“It would be my pleasure,” the Valkyrie said, and meant it. The prospect of pitting herself against that body again with a clearer mind appealed, on several levels. Good thoughts, for another time. She nudged Foster’s strong shoulder with her own, and stood. “Lesson One. Tonight, I will show you that even one who boasts the power of the Odinson can yet feel pain.”
Foster rose to her feet as well, looking wary. “How so?”
“You will be my plus one at the theatre.”
FINIS