One Night With The Valkyrie. Jane Godman

town called Warda. They were the reason he was now crouched in the corner of a half-ruined, empty office building with all hell raging outside. His arrival had coincided with an intense new outbreak of fighting.

      Yussef had brought him to this building, the deserted workplace of one of his friends. The terrified guide had advised Adam to hide here while he attempted to negotiate a way out of town. He explained that Warda was the center of an ongoing battle for supremacy between ultrahardline government fighters and radicalized rebels.

      And you walked into the middle of this place before you checked that out. Nice going, Lyon.

      That had been an hour ago, and Yussef had not yet returned. Adam might have known the guy for only two weeks, but Yussef didn’t seem the type of person to run out on his responsibilities. Apart from anything else, Adam hadn’t paid him for his services, and he knew Yussef had a young family to feed. No, he had a horrible feeling about the reason why Yussef had not come back. His only hope had been killed, injured or captured. Which left Adam on his own. Not a new situation, but not one he had ever faced with bombs and bullets going off all around him.

      As an American in Syria, Adam had known all along he was kidnap fodder for both sides in the ongoing conflict. He hadn’t entered into this trip lightly, and hadn’t gotten into this country easily. It had been a question of weighing his own safety against the need to find his brother. In those circumstances, Danny would always come first. A year ago, Danny had volunteered with a medical charity and come to Syria. Now, as the ground beneath his feet shook in time with the explosions just outside the building, and his ears rang in protest, he realized that kidnapping wasn’t his most immediate problem.

      I am in so much trouble here. Now there are two missing Lyon brothers, and no one back home knows where either of us is.

      The thought galvanized him and he got to his feet, pleased to find his legs were steady. There was no point sitting here waiting for death. May as well head on out and meet it face-to-face.

      As he staggered toward what remained of the front door of the building, the shooting outside intensified. Something else happened at the same time. Everything got suddenly darker and a whole lot weirder.

      Automatically assuming the change was caused by dust from the explosions, Adam rubbed his eyes to clear them. It didn’t help. If anything, his vision darkened even further.

      This is it, he decided. I’ve been hit. They say you don’t always feel pain.

      He was about to grope around his body for a bullet wound when the door flew inward and a black cloud filled the foyer.

      “What the...?” Chemical weapons. I am so screwed.

      The amorphous mass of darkness that had poured into the space began to shift. Within the quivering cloud, Adam could make out three winged figures. Although their features were indistinct, they were female and they were on horseback.

      Hallucination. But what a way to go.

      One of the figures moved slightly ahead of the others, materializing more fully. Her voice echoed in the small space. “I seek the American Lion.”

      Adam decided he may as well go along with his own delusion. That whole lion joke between him and Yussef had clearly taken a grip on his imagination. “That makes two of us. If you find him first, tell him his brother said ‘hi.’”

      Fascinated, he watched as the forms manifested themselves completely. His senses seemed to be heightened to the point where he could observe every detail of the illusion in front of him.

      The horses’ coats shone like satin as they plunged and reared with restless energy. Adam was only mildly surprised when each animal unfurled giant wings at the same time as it snorted steam and pawed the ground. This was all going on inside his head, after all, so why should anything that happened come as a shock to him?

      The woman who had spoken dismounted and took a step closer to him. Adam took a moment to congratulate himself on the quality of this fantasy. Two weeks of enforced celibacy had clearly done wonders for his imagination. It also seemed he might have a previously unexplored warrior-princess fetish.

      This tall, slender vision possessed silken skin, impossibly blue eyes and flowing, gold hair. She and her companions were dressed in identical silver helmets adorned on either side with decorative wings, and a tight scarlet corset over which was fastened a fish-scale breastplate. Each of them wore a cloak made of feathers so pure and white they could only have come from the breast of a swan. They carried shields and spears, and had short swords in sheaths strapped at their waists.

      In other circumstances, Adam might have spent more time enjoying this visual feast. Since Armageddon seemed to be unfolding in the street outside, he didn’t have another minute to waste. It couldn’t be wrong to barge past a figment of your own imagination, could it? As he took a step forward, the woman placed an unexpectedly solid-feeling hand on his chest, halting him.

      “I am Maja, Valkyrie shield maiden.” She spoke clearly enough to be heard over the sound of automatic gunfire. The echoing note had gone and her voice sounded almost normal, although her accent was hard to place. “I must take the bravest of the fallen back to the great hall of Valhalla.”

      As Adam gazed into Maja’s incredible eyes, trying to decide how his mind had endowed a make-believe creation with so much detail, one entire wall of the building collapsed.

      Although his body was intact—there were no bullet wounds, after all—this shock-induced delusion hit him hard. Dark spots danced at the edges of his vision as dizziness overtook him and the dust scented floor rose up to meet him as he sprawled at Maja’s feet.

      * * *

      The man facing her with an expression of bewilderment clouding his handsome features was not a warrior. He was clad in pants made from a faded, heavy-duty blue cloth and a lightweight, khaki jacket, under which he wore one of those garments she had heard described on other earthly visits as a T-shirt. On his feet were scarred and dusty boots. Not combat clothing, Maja decided. He carried no weapons. More importantly, he was alive.

      Maja wasn’t interested in living people. Her task was simple. Odin the Allfather wanted the souls of the bravest warriors who died in battle. They would join his army-in-waiting. The role of the Valkyries was to swoop into the scene of conflict and escort those souls to Valhalla, the great Hall of the Slain, within which Odin’s elite fighting force lived.

      This land called Syria had recently become a scene of such great strife that even the Valkyries had turned their attention in this direction. Although their chosen warriors were usually Norsemen, Odin wanted the finest for his army. If that meant widening their search, then his shield maidens must follow the Allfather’s will. Brynhild, the Valkyrie leader, who was also Maja’s older sister, had been at the end of her wits as she planned this mission. There was desperate fighting going on in two places at the same time and Odin’s demands were becoming more difficult to fulfill.

      “The American Lion.” Brynhild had shaken her head as she pored over her charts. Finding the bravest warriors wasn’t an exact science. Brynhild could predict where each fighter would be; she had an idea of the danger they would face, but she couldn’t be certain who would die. Odin remained insistent. Only the best would do for his army.

      “One name crops up over and over in the stars. The Allfather is determined to have the warrior known as the American Lion. The Norns tell me he will be here in the town of Warda—” Brynhild had pointed to a dot on her map “—and there will be intense fighting there today.” She had moved her finger to another location, also in Syria, but many miles away. A frown descended on her face. “Yet there will be ten other warriors, all of whom Odin wants, in this other town at the same time. Each of them is less likely to survive than the American Lion. Do I risk the chance at ten warriors on the gamble that the American Lion will die today?”

      “Why don’t I go to Warda, while you take the other town?” Maja had said.

      It would be a chance to prove herself. To step out from beneath the shadow of her older sisters. The skepticism in Brynhild’s eyes as Maja had made the