Chapter One

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Chester

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I was dead. And I mean dead. Not in trouble, not a social outcast, not laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe, but actually, literally dead. At least, I was pretty sure I was. I’d never been dead before, so I couldn’t be absolutely certain, but as I looked at my arms, I could see right through them, and even as the madness of what was happening rushed through my mind, the world around me was becoming less and less real. It was still there. I could still see it, sort of. But the hard lines were blurring and the people felt further away. All, that is, except one. My best friend. Freya.

She was walking towards me, the sun shining through her, her footsteps so light on the ground that the leaves didn’t crunch beneath her feet. The sounds of the living world had faded to a distant murmur, but she was still as real to me as she ever had been, and when she spoke, her voice rang out in the new quiet.

“I don’t know if I like this new look on you, Chester,” she said. “You need to go and get yourself a tan.”

“You’re a bit pale yourself,” I replied. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost!”

She laughed, but there was a hollowness to it.

“Are we…dead?” she asked.

Freya was the strongest person I knew. We had travelled in time together, fought vikings together, stolen ships and freed slaves together, and through everything, her resolve hadn’t shaken. She had been scared, of course – we all had – but her courage and thrill of adventure had always won out. But her voice in that simple question cut through me, because for the first time, she sounded almost broken. There was a pleading behind it, as if she wanted me to tell her that everything was going to be okay. And I couldn’t.

“I think so,” I said, stepping towards her and putting my arm around her shoulders. “But at least we’re still together.”

We stood in silence for a long moment, unsure of what to say, but when she broke it, Freya’s voice had found strength again.

“My mum’s going to kill me when she finds out I’ve died!”

I laughed, and the joke broke us out of our despair.

“Where are we?” I asked.

We’d been at school, hadn’t we? I was sure we had, but now there was no sign of the building at all, or anything else that I recognised, for that matter. The familiar buildings of my home town had faded away, so slowly I had barely noticed it, until now we stood in an open field, boundless grass and rolling hills to and beyond the horizon.

“Is this….heaven?” I said.

“I really hope not,” said Freya. “If it is, it’s way lamer than we were led to believe. But it doesn’t feel hot enough to be hell, either. What’s the other one? The betweeny place?”

“Purgatory?” I suggested. “Maybe…”

It didn’t feel right, but then again, nothing about this felt right. What had happened? How had we come to be here? How had we died? Murky images played at the edges of my mind, but I could grab none of them. We’d been at school, of that I was quite sure, but beyond that, I remembered nothing.

I began to give voice to my worries, to ask Freya if she remembered anything at all, but before the question could form on my lips, I spotted something. Something which began as a tiny speck in the clear blue sky. I nudged Freya and gestured towards it, and together we watched in silence as the speck grew and turned into something we almost recognised.

I say, I almost recognised it, because it looked very much like a horse…except that this horse seemed to be flying. In fact, it was flying straight towards us, its rider’s eyes locked onto the spot where we stood.

“Is that a… Valkyrie?” Freya asked.

“If it isn’t, then she’s doing a very good impression of one,” I replied.

A valkyrie is like an angel. Except these angels are viking angels, so they carry swords and shields. They wear armour and fight in battles, and gather the souls of the bravest dead to escort them to the afterlife. My friend Rollo had regaled me with tales of them the previous year when Freya and I had accidentally gone back in time to the Viking Age. But that’s another story.

The valkyrie’s horse touched down onto solid ground and skidded to a halt just in front of us, and she was dismounted and on her feet in one fluid motion. At 13 years old, I had finally had a bit of a growth spurt the past summer, but still she stood more than a head taller than me, and beneath the shirt of chainmail she wore, I could see her muscles were tight and strong. I got the impression that that if I were stupid enough to attack her, she’d be able to grab hold of me and throw me across the field faster than I could blink.

I didn’t attack her – obviously – but I couldn’t help but stare as she stared back at us. She was beautiful. Fair skinned and fair-haired, and utterly self-assured. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail and beneath the maille, she wore a padded tunic, trousers, leg-wrappings and boots. The kind of thing I’d seen vikings wear back on our ancient Norse adventure, except hers weren’t torn and covered in blood.

“…yet,” I muttered, spotting the sword that hung by her side.

Freya nudged me – she doesn’t like it when I start sentences in my head and finish them out loud – but the word seemed to bring her out of her appraisal of us. It seemed like we’d passed whatever she was looking for because the slightest hint of a smile touched on her lips, and she nodded to each of us in turn.

“Freya,” she proclaimed in a formal, commanding voice. “Chester. You have done honour to yourselves and your families. You have died in courage and battle, and as your reward, I am here to escort you beyond the world of the living.”

My mind was reeling. How exactly had we died?! In battle? The last thing I remembered, I was in a science lesson. Okay, so there might be some gaps after that, but I felt like I’d remember if the Saxons had attacked. At the same time, I did remember Rollo’s stories. The valkyries didn’t come to everyone, and not everyone went to the same afterlife. The Norse believed that the greatest lands of the dead were reserved for the brave – for people who died courageously in battle.

The valkyrie continued, “As is decreed, half of the dead shall rise to Odin’s hall of Valhalla, and half shall-”

She faltered, and for the first time, she looked unsure. Freya and I exchanged a nervous glance. It looked like she was listening for something, though I had heard nothing, and then, suddenly, her eyes flicked up and focussed on something behind us. She bowed her head just a little, as if in deference to her superior. Beside me, Freya whipped around, but I was rooted to the spot, stuck between confusion and terror, because, although I still hadn’t heard a sound, I knew that someone was standing behind me. I could feel them. They felt like something I had only ever felt once before. Like power. Like magic.

“Hello, Brunhild,” a voice spoke behind me, and it was the most wonderful voice I had ever heard. It was soft and powerful, almost musical, and in just two words, it washed away every fear that I had. The valkyrie – Brunhild – bowed again and then, almost in a whisper, spoke a single word.

“Freyja.”