Rise of a Valkyrie

Part 3

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Wide-eyed and covered in mud, eight-year-old Kayla Barnes listened intently from her hiding spot in the bushes as the truckers described the attacks. The men stood in a roadside rest area, draining canisters of coffee, and sharing the latest rumors. They talked of terrifying shrieks in the night from animals they had never heard before, and the mutilated cattle carcasses littering the fields in the mornings. In hushed voices, they said it would only be a matter of time before the strange new creatures killed someone.

Kayla said nothing, though she was bursting with questions. Even a slight movement would reveal herself. She breathed slowly, kept her body still, and listened patiently for more news about the monsters. She liked to daydream about fantastic creatures, and how she would hunt them down. The stories didn't scare her because her father would certainly keep their village protected. He wasn't afraid of anything.

"The Brunnard boys formed themselves a militia," a tall man with a thick beard said.

"People are carrying guns everywhere they go now," a shorter, bulkier fellow pointed out.

Kayla's imagination wandered. Maybe a militia would recruit her and give her a rifle? Probably not. Her father wouldn't let her touch a gun until she was older. On her back, alongside her black ponytail, was slung the homemade bow she carried everywhere, and used to harass birds and vermin. The thin branch she had made it from wasn't very strong, but in her fantasies, it could punch through steel. She pictured the amazed expressions on the faces of her fellow villagers as she dragged a monster's dead body through the streets by herself.

"I just can't think where these cursed things came from," the bearded trucker said. "Fifty years since we settled on this planet, and never seen animals like this."

"I can't wait to catch one, cut it open and figure it out," the short man said.

"It's a Helvetic plot, I tell you," another voice called from behind one of the trucks.

"Shut your mouth, Tom," the bearded man replied. "Everything's a Helvetic plot to you. The solar flare last month, which you said was one of their space lasers? And the drought the year before? Nature's harsh is all. These things probably migrated here from one of the unmapped territories."

"So why don't they eat what they kill?" the voice said.

The bearded man waved a dismissive hand and moved back to the cab of his truck, while his shorter friend grinned after him.

A fly landed on Kayla's nose, but she didn't dare swat it away. She'd crawled slowly and patiently through the bushes to get the actual story from these truckers. The attacks were accidents, her father had said. Like he had told her that there would always be enough food. And meteors never struck the ground. And they would one day be free of the Helvetic League, even though no-one pretended to believe it.

She waited until the men returned to their vehicles and drove off before she crawled back through the bushes. In the hedgerows and forests of the Lanstead farming plain, she was the Huntress of Caldera. No animal could hide from her, or dodge her arrows, though she was only allowed to have blunt ones. When she smeared mud over her face and vanished into the long grass around her house, she could even give the local cats a fright.

Kayla snuck through the hedgerows to her family's farmhouse. When she hid, she could go wherever she wanted, and do whatever she wanted. When she was seen, she got into trouble for sneaking out.

"Oh Kayla, you're so filthy!" snapped her mother, as Kayla returned to the house. "And in the nice new dress. I only bought it last week! Why can't you behave like a normal child?"