The Valkyrie (The Saga of Edda-Earth Book 1) Read online

  The same group of hunters who’d escorted them in, approached him now. “The chief wants to speak with you,” the leader told him.

  “With the greatest of respect to your chief, he will have to speak to the propraetor. I’m not permitted to speak on his behalf.” Adam took refuge behind this solid excuse, and met the man’s eyes calmly, having to look up a bit to do so. “We’re taking the girl back to her family . . .” he saw the man’s eyes shift to the side, and the faint shadow of a grimace touch the lips, and thought, You knew, and you didn’t like it . . . but you also didn’t do anything about it, did you? How much of it was that the god-born frightened you? How much of it was that it was just easier to go along with their ideas? That . . . I’ll never know.

  Adam cleared his throat, aware that he’d paused a little too long, and pushed onwards, “So, yes. We’re taking the girl home. And we have injured people who require medical attention. I’ve been directed to fetch our vehicle to facilitate that. I hope you’ll permit that.”

  Another eye-shift. “The shaman has said that the motorcars are filled with evil spirits, and that allowing them onto our lands would permit the evil to come here.”

  Adam exhaled. “I think it’s fairly clear . . . that the evil spirits were already here. Don’t you think?”

  The man stepped out of the way. “Go. Bring your machine. And tell your Roman that the chief would speak to him.”

  “I’m sure the propraetor will be happy to speak with your king . . . once he is sure that his lictors and the girl are comfortable.” Adam was proud of that one. He even managed a perfectly polite tone throughout, and moved past the group of hunters, his hand itching for the grips of his revolver, and feeling the center of his back practically tingle. But he didn’t turn his head to look back. He was neither Orpheus nor Lot’s wife, and he knew that looking back would mean showing weakness here. Something he absolutely couldn’t afford.

  About fifteen minutes later, he drove the Arma back towards the field, detouring around the mound village and its gardens, bumping and jolting over the rough terrain, and hearing the undercarriage scrape on stones. He stopped, and then he and Ehecatl loaded Ptah into the backseat, though Ehecatl’s aid was necessarily one-handed. Once they got Ptah in, Adam re-dressed the Egyptian’s wounds, asking, “What hit you?

  “Meteorites.” Ptah swore, as Sigrun, Frittigil, and Livorus all approached the vehicle now, Sigrun actually leaning on the girl’s shoulder, and her body curving inwards, shoulders hunching, then straightening again, with every step. The Egyptian looked up at her as they all gathered around the car, and said, “Heh. Guess their . . . god-born . . . weren’t total traditionalists. Son of a whore, ben Maor, be careful—”

  “I am. You’re barely even bleeding. The wounds are perfectly cauterized.” Adam was rattled. He’d seen plenty of strange wounds in battles with Persia, but nothing like this before. “Best I can do here is to put on real bandages, not pieces of shirt, and make sure they’re not quite so tight.”

  Sigrun leaned against the car, and, clearly, trying to take Ptah’s mind off his pain, asked, “What do you mean, they weren’t traditionalists? They wanted to perform the oldest sacrifice known to their people. How much more traditional can someone be?”

  Ptah grimaced as Adam finished tying off another bandage. “A hundred years ago,” he said, from between clenched teeth, “I’d be willing to bet . . . by the disc, ben Maor, that hurts . . . that that arrow trick he did . . . would have been nothing more . . . than lines of light. Energy. Because . . . a hundred years ago . . . all anyone really knew about falling stars . . . is that they were . . . streaks of light.” He exhaled. “These weren’t.”

  “They sure looked like full meteorites, though I think we’d need a chemical analysis to find out if they actually dropped from space,” Adam confirmed. “Rocks, red-hot from atmospheric friction, and accelerated to near terminal velocity.”

  “It’s lovely to know that the cause of natural philosophy is of benefit to all mankind,” Livorus muttered.

  “Couldn’t catch them,” Ptah said, closing his eyes again. “Too fast. Kinetic energy should be just kinetic energy . . . but I just couldn’t react in time. And while I could feel . . . nickel-iron in them . . . there wasn’t enough to grab. I’m just not as good with rock as I am with metal.” Ptah grimaced as Adam finished the last bandage. “Some of the young tyro technomancers coming up would roast me for saying that . . . .”

  At that moment, Adam became aware of movement at the periphery of his vision, and spun, half-drawing his gun, just as Ehecatl’s knife cleared its sheath . . . only to let his hand fall away from the weapon once more. One of the Chahiksichahik women was drawing closer, her hands up, so that they could see she meant no harm. “Yes?” Livorus asked, turning towards her. “Are you here to attend to the body of your priest?”

  “That is . . . that is what I told the others. That I would tend his body, and the body of Shiriki. And . . . I will do so.” she said, looking at the ground. “But I also . . . ask for the protection of Rome.” She glanced up, and then down again, rapidly. Adam thought she might have been beautiful, if not for the lines of a very hard life on her weathered face. “I am the daughter of Kuruk, our shaman.” Her little gesture directed their eyes towards the body on the ground nearby, and they all stiffened a little. Her tone was not what Adam would have expected from the daughter of a man whom he’d just killed. A stab of guilt went through him. It didn’t matter that a review board would probably rule the kill justified. It was very hard to look at the woman’s face, knowing that his was the hand that had ended her father’s life.

  But there was no hatred in her face or eyes. Just . . . resignation. “I am called Dyani.”

  Livorus said, very gently, “You were the one who called the Praetorians, weren’t you?”

  Her only response was a hasty nod, and another sidelong glance at the area around them. Checking for any of her people who might be listening.

  “That was very brave of you,” Livorus told her, inclining his head. “If I may ask . . . ?”

  Strands of her long hair had worked their way free from her braid, and covered her face now. “For as long as I can remember, my father has spoken for the gods. He was the oldest and wisest of the shaman. The other shamans of our people travel the lands. We stayed here, at the holiest of sites, the seat of the chief. Everyone always . . . listened to him. The other elders might have disagreed with him . . . but everyone respected him.” She shook her head. “Twenty years ago, there was a young man of the people who thought that there could be a balance between the old ways, and the ways of the outside world. That we could still respect the gods, and the world, and not have to live entirely as our ancestors did.” She sighed. “That young man was my brother. My father exiled him, and the youngest children were forbidden to learn Latin shortly thereafter.” She turned and looked at her father’s body, no anger in her face. Just weariness. “Shiriki was my brother’s best friend, but he did not speak for the new ways, or for my brother.“

  Adam blinked. The god-born of the sun-god had looked no more than eighteen. But Dyani’s words suggested that the hot-head had been close to twice his own age. Livorus nodded slowly, absorbing the woman’s words, and said, quietly, “And you were given as a wife to this friend of your brother, weren’t you, my dear.” It wasn’t quite a question.

  And the woman nodded, rapidly, and Adam could only stare in shock. They’d killed both her father and her husband, in one day, and while there was sorrow in her face, there was no vengeance at all. Either the strongest woman I have ever seen, or the most worn, he thought, stunned.

  “They hated Rome,” she said, after a moment. “They hated everything about the world outside our lands. They hated that my brother left our people for the sake of Rome . . . even though I knew that my brother left not because of Rome, but because he wanted a better life for himself. And for everyone around him.” She shrugged a little. “Everything continued as it always had,” the
woman told them, lowering her head again, and even Ptah sat up to listen more carefully now. “Until last year. When the crops failed, and the hunts brought back barely enough food to feed each family. They conferred together, and consulted the omens.” She sighed. “Shiriki had the dream weeks ago. The elders argued, and argued, and argued. My father had become convinced over the years that there needed to be a great spiritual awakening among all of the people of this continent. And now he kept saying that the gods needed more power than they had, and that the Morning Star, the best hunter of them all, needed to be made more powerful. That all our people would die without this sacrifice. Shiriki believed it, too. He believed the dream.”

  Livorus glanced over at Sigrun. “My dear, you’d be able to tell the difference between a dream sent by a genuine god and a random emanation through the gates of Morpheus, wouldn’t you?”

  Sigrun tried to shrug, and winced. “Sir, my gods don’t deal in dreams. When Tyr needs my attention, he speaks to me directly, or sends word through the Odinhall.” She looked from Frittigil, huddled against her side, to Dyani, in front of them. “He believed what he believed. And he acted based on that belief. Why did you risk stopping them?”

  Dyani’s dark eyes rose. “For two reasons. First, I believe as my brother once did. That change must come, or our people will surely die. And second . . .” she shook her head, “I cannot believe that the Evening Star enjoys watching young women suffer as she suffered. Every life is already filled with pain. Every life is already a sacrifice to time. We don’t need more.” Though quietly spoken, barely above a whisper, her sentiments, in the gender-segregated society ruled by elders like her father, would have sounded revolutionary, indeed.

  “Come with us, then,” Livorus said, nodding. “Their bodies will be . . . retained as evidence, shall we say? And you can come with us to ensure that they will be treated with the proper respect. Once the investigation is done, they can be returned to your people for . . . burning or burial, whichever is your custom.”

  Dyani huddled in on herself, nodding, and turned away to go towards her father’s body. Sigrun patted Fritti on the shoulder, and stood, wearily, sucking in a breath as the broken bones in her shoulder blade grated on each other. And walked after the woman, gritting her teeth as every step now brought fresh pain with it. The adrenaline of combat had long since turned to a chemical ghost in her veins. “I’m sorry to intrude upon your sorrow,” Sigrun said, as gently as she could, as the woman turned towards her, startled. “But would you permit me one, very intrusive question? I will respect it, if you choose not to answer.”

  The woman turned back towards Sigrun, and inclined her head, a faint light of curiosity coming into her weary eyes. “You may ask.”

  Sigrun hesitated. She had a decent grasp of human nature. “You said that you were given in marriage to Shiriki. And that he was the friend of your brother. Did you ever love him?”

  Expressions flickered across the woman’s face, fleeting with her thoughts. Mild affront, tiredness, a hint of cynicism, and resignation. “I loved him before I married him, as everything that my people ought to be. Brave, bold, and as bright as the sun itself. He watched my brother exiled, however, and only spoke of him with bitterness afterwards. He did not believe as I did about the future of our people, and I . . . held my tongue.” Sigrun could see a faint flash of resentment and anger, deeply sublimated. “I watched him stay ever-young, however, always hot-headed, as I grew older. As my father, though also god-born, grew older.” Not resentment this time, but bone-deep weariness. Some god-born aged more or less as humans did. Some, like Sigrun, did not age physically at all. And some remained the emotional and mental equivalent of their physical age for far longer than they should. “He was a good man, in the main. A good enough husband.” Another weary shrug. “He was faithful, and he did not beat me. But I would not call what I felt love. More the memory of it. Love’s shadow.” She looked at Sigrun, and then down at the corpse of her father. “Love dies.”

  Sigrun felt she should do something to help the woman, but she was one-handed at best, at the moment. And though the old priest, Kuruk, and the younger god-born, Shiriki, had done their best to kill her and her companions, it seemed . . . respectful . . . to incline her head for a few moments, and honor them both as warriors in a cause she both understood, and completely opposed. Who wouldn’t give their life for their people, after all? But . . . involving the girl? Beyond the pale.

  With Dyani to take into protection, and Frittigil to take with them, the motorcar would have been overcrowded even if they didn’t need the entire backseat for Ptah, who couldn’t walk. Livorus had to change his own plan, and kept his lictors together, until the Praetorians from the closest office arrived, hours later. It was a small number of people, but all were well-armed, and carried medical supplies with them.

  With several vehicles and drivers at their disposal, they were finally able to leave the area. Adam took Livorus aside and argued, strongly, that Ehecatl should now be sent to the hospital with the rest of the lictors. Livorus agreed, immediately, and Adam thus took charge of the fresh detail of Praetorians, and Livorus prepared to negotiate with the elders. “Without two god-born present to both force his hand, and guard his back for him, Lesharo may be more . . . amenable to the gentle overtures of diplomacy.” He ducked his head down into one of the motorcars, and told Ptah, “You’re not to bleed on the upholstery, you understand? That will come out of your salary.” A quick lift of the eyebrows conveyed the real message.

  Ptah chuckled, and then groaned and reached for his shoulder. “I’ll . . . do my best.” He settled back again. “Be careful, sir.”

  “You tell me this? Not a scratch on me? Obviously, I have not forgotten how to duck. Or perhaps it is merely that you never learned to do so.” Livorus turned and looked at Ehecatl. “What are you waiting for?”

  Ehecatl thumped a fist to his chest, lightly, around the sling. Then he got into the car, moving Ptah-ases’ feet and dropping them, gingerly, back down again. “So . . . you’re not going to tenderly cradle my head in your lap?” the Egyptian sorcerer asked, putting on a grin.

  “Do I look Hellene to you?” Ehecatl asked, dryly, trying to buckle himself in. “Stop moving around, Ptah. If you kick loose bone marrow into your blood stream and give yourself an embolism, I think Sigrun may ride to the afterlife and beat your ghost with a stick.”

  Sigrun, sliding into a different car with Frittigil, turned to give them both a diamond-hard stare. Adam snorted, while Ptah-ases actually chuckled at that, then groaned and put a hand to his shoulder. “Don’t . . . don’t make me laugh.”

  “It’s only funny because it’s true,” the Nahautl man assured him, solemnly. “All right, let’s get a move on. I’m rather looking forwards to my pain-killers. At least, once someone with enough clearance to listen to my classified babbling is present to stand guard over me.”

  “At least you get some pain-killers. Sorcerers can’t—”

  Livorus closed the door on their amicable, though pained bickering, and tapped a hand on the roof, and the driver turned the key in the starter. The engine caught, and purred to life, and then they were off, slowly trundling over the fields once more, followed by a larger truck, into which Dyani and the bodies of her kin had been bundled.

  Adam watched them go, and then trailed Livorus with the new Praetorians, back to the mounds of the village. He stood, his face an impassive mask, behind the Roman as he and Lesharo, who’d regained some of his composure in the past hours, began to fence once more with one another. This time, however, Livorus took a decidedly more aggressive negotiating stance. “As I said before, when you speak to me, you speak to Rome,” Livorus began, without any further preamble, on re-entering the mound, pitching his voice to be heard across the whole of the enclosed area. There were few people in the mound now. Just the elders, none of the families who usually dwelled here. “What do you have to say to Rome, I wonder?”

  Adam watched the leader’s nostrils
flare, slightly, as the man sank down into a crouch at the fire pit, which was dark and cold now. “I give you my word that I never intended for it to go as far as it did. They spoke of a need to re-awaken our people. To re-awaken all the tribes of this land, and bind us more strongly to our gods. The need to hold to the old ways. It seemed a . . . good message. A worthy one. I agreed with it. Until they brought the girl here. Then, it was too late to stop them. They had too many allies.”

  The words of kings and leaders are rarely more lasting than those traced in water, Adam thought, cynically. They say what needs to be said, at the moment it needs saying. Survival is all. But that is, I suppose, their job.

  Livorus’ brows rose. “King Lesharo, your people have violated not one, but several treaty agreements with Rome and your neighbors. You are the leader of your people.” Livorus held up the fasces, which he’d tucked into the folds of his toga at some point, and now gripped once more. “I ask you, what apology you are prepared to make to Rome and the nations around you.”

  Lesharo raised his head, a world of weariness in his expression. “What apology would Rome accept?”

  Livorus regarded him steadily. “In times past,” he said, meditatively, “other representatives of Rome would have demanded nothing less than your immediate crucifixion, along with all those responsible.”

  No reaction in the man’s face, besides resignation in the eyes.

  Adam wondered what Livorus was thinking. Impossible to tell, really. The propraetor went on now, smoothly, “Times change, but only in so much, King Lesharo. This is what I would have of you. First, a formal apology, on your behalf, to Rome, to her allies, to Frittigil Chatti, her family, and the province of Nova Germania. Second, I require that every single man and woman who was involved in the attack on her be put to death. I will make an exception for the children who were onlookers at the sacrifice site, and those who provided food and comfort to her, or merely guarded her during her captivity. Punishment will be reserved to those who were directly involved in her kidnapping, those who fired on her, and those who fired on us when we were attempting to effect her release from her unlawful captivity. I will require them to be turned over to local authorities for summary execution. However, I will forgo the traditional crucifixions, in deference to local custom. I believe Novo Gaul still employs, on occasion, the wicker cage and the fire, but Nova Germania has adopted the more merciful public beheading, and I’m assured that they do not permit the headsman to drink alcohol before the proceedings.”