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

  The elders were stirring, grimaces of anger and resentment on their faces, but also traces of relief, which were wiped away by Livorus’ next words. “As for you and your elders . . . ” Livorus stared grimly at the leader of this small nation, and let the silence hang there for a moment, before continuing. “I believe those who are chiefly guilty are already dead. I will not require your life, King Lesharo, in repayment for the crimes against this girl and against our nations, but I will require that reparations be paid to the girl and her family directly.” He held up his free hand, forestalling any words from the chieftain and advisors. “I know that you have nothing among your people that the family of a Marcomanni girl would find of value. You barter with outsiders, and trade goods for your muskets and metal knives. You do not use coin. In times past, I might have required that some of your people be sent as slaves to the girl’s family, but Nova Germania and Novo Gaul have outlawed that practice. Instead, I require that one child from the family of each man who is executed for having taken part in this conspiracy, be sent to a boarding school in Novo Gaul. Close enough to visit their relatives, but they will be expected to improve their minds, and learn Latin. Roman ways. Roman thoughts. Roman ideas. They will attend for a total of three years, and will learn a useful and productive trade in so doing. What they do with it, at the end of that term, will be up to them.” Livorus stared at the king. “You may now thank me for my mercy.”

  It was heavy-handed, but it could have been far more so.

  The other Praetorians now began the work of taking pictures of the crime scene, taking Adam’s descriptions of where the various shooters had been standing, and so on. They took the various men of the kingdom into custody. Adam didn’t envy them that work, or having to listen to the despairing wails of the men’s wives, or having to separate the men who’d willingly (or less willingly) walked out to shoot a thirteen-year-old girl, in the name of their gods, from the families who loved them.

  It wasn’t, however, thankfully, his job today. He opened the door of the last spare car that the other Praetorians had brought with them for Livorus, closed it behind the man, and got into the driver’s side, and started them off for Ponca once more. “Sir?” he asked, after a few miles of silence had passed.

  “Yes, ben Maor?”

  “You could have marched a garrison in there. You could have had the entire village executed, every man there crucified, and then moved in bulldozers to level the houses and tamp it all back down for the prairie grass to cover again next year.” He looked in the rearview mirror; Livorus was, once again, reading reports in the backseat. The man never stopped reading them, it seemed.

  Livorus looked up from the papers, and took off his reading glasses. “Yes. I could have. And if I had, I’m quite certain that someone back home would have put forward a motion in the Senate to have my name chiseled on a marble plinth somewhere. Tastefully. In letters about this high.” He held up his fingers, illustrating. “On the whole, I think that the days in which the Empire had to rule by force are mostly behind us. I prefer to use reason, when I can. And in sparing their lives, and seeing to it that some of their children are educated in things other than hunting and gathering, I might have secured Rome a long-term ally, rather than a graveyard. Perhaps the son of the late high priest, if he truly lives in exile, might be found. Might be convinced to return to his people, and help advise them.” He shrugged. “Certainly, their leader will owe me, personally, his life. That’s a string that can be pulled, in the future, if needed.”

  Adam kept his eyes on the road. “So that was the reason, then, sir? Practicality?”

  “Lives are valuable, Adam ben Maor. It takes eighteen years and more to build a man or a woman worthy of the name. That’s an investment that the world cannot afford to squander. And I will not willingly throw them away.” Livorus settled his reading glasses back on his nose. “Admittedly, some of the conservatives back home will undoubtedly suggest that I’ve gone soft, and that Emperor Caesarion should replace me with a younger, more aggressive man. Then again, I’m a political appointee. I don’t have to run for office. I can do things that aren’t popular.” A faint, wintery smile. “I find that rather freeing.”

  Chapter III: Scars

  Akhenaten ruled for seventeen years before his death, under mysterious circumstances, between 1336 BAC and 1334 BAC. His reign was turbulent, and marked by many changes to Egyptian culture. In year 5 of his reign, Akhenaten apparently grew discontented with the political power of the priests of Horus, which constrained his ability to rule. He broke with tradition, taking a new name and dedicating himself to the sole worship of the Aten, then depicted as both the sun disc and as a hawk-headed god. For a time, he permitted the worship of other gods to continue.

  More radical changes came in year 9 of his reign, in which scholars prior to the eighteenth century AC were only able to ascertain that an unknown event caused the pharaoh to order an end to the worship of all other gods. Records recovered in the tomb of his wife, Nefertiti, however, now suggest that the priests of Horus attempted to assassinate him.

  In retaliation, he directed that the images of the gods be destroyed, their statues and relics brought to his palace, their names effaced from all monuments, and that even the plural form of the word ‘god’ should be stricken from all public writings. Only the stylized sun-disc of the Aten would be permitted to be worshipped, and he, as the divine son of Aten, was the only intermediary through whom prayers to the Creator-God of All could be passed.

  Every pharaoh before Akhenaten had insisted that they were in fact, gods, but this was largely a matter of politics. While god-born traits passed through their complex family lineages, they were not present in every child of a given dynasty. Certainly Akhenaten, who, from his highly naturalistic portraits and statues, appeared to be deformed, even disfigured from some genetic condition possibly caused by inbreeding, had never shown such powers, according to all records of the time.

  However, after receiving the idols of the various gods, and destroying them in his palace, Akhenaten’s behavior became increasingly erratic. He began to dress in public wearing wax breasts, to suggest he held both male and female powers of generativity, and there is widespread scholarly debate as to whether or not he began a sexual relationship with his son Smenkhkare at this time as well. While incest was common and accepted within pharaonic families, it was generally restricted to marriage between siblings.

  The truth of the matter will never be known, but what is known, is that Akhenaten moved his family, including his wife, Nefertiti, their six daughters, and his lesser wives, including the mother of his son, later known as Tutankhamen, to his new temple city, named Akhenaten in his own honor. And he began to effect miracles to demonstrate that he was, indeed, the son of Aten.

  Nefertiti had been appointed his co-ruler in year 15, under the male name of Neferneferuaten. There is evidence that she attempted to check the worst excesses of his ‘reform’ movement, and became responsible for much of the day-to-day ruling of the kingdom, taking over control of taxation and other such mundane matters, while her husband continued to serve as the conduit to the divine realm. Much of this information, as well as information on the mysterious death of Akehnaten, comes from three relief panels in Nefertiti’s tomb. These hieroglyphic panels are much debated, and are in a remarkable state of preservation. Most of the artwork is in the unusually naturalistic style of the period.

  The first panel shows the executions of the priests of Horus, who were fed to the crocodiles of the Nile. It shows the anger of foreign kings, to whom Akhenaten had sent poor gifts, statues of gold plated over wood, but from whom he had demanded richer gifts in return. It shows these kings preparing for war, and shows the workers in the fields, holding out sheaves of grain that have only a few stalks in them. Signs of famine, most scholars agree. The final image on this panel shows officials bowing to Nefertiti, begging her for assistance, but the figure of her husband clearly holds her back.

  The central
panel is the one in most dispute. It shows the pillared great hall of the palace and Akhenaten seated there, his family around him. It also depicts a huge figure—larger even than the pharaoh, whose divinity was customarily demonstrated by giving him larger size than all other figures in a composition. This figure is the center of the debate. It is armored, but the armor covers the entirety of the body, in a manner highly atypical for the period, and the style of this anomalous armor is not recognizable as Assyrian, Hittite, or Egyptian. Every joint and seam appears to be adorned with highly ornamental hooks and spikes, and the face is concealed except for a slit in the helmet, which reveals eyes, that the artisans used flakes of gold to depict on the tomb wall. The rest of the original pigmentation on this figure is black, not a normal color in which the bronze armor of the period was typically depicted.

  Some scholars believe that the figure is meant to be depiction not of an individual, but of divine retribution. Unfortunately, the iconography does not match that of any known god, Egyptian, Sumerian, or other. Scholars who believe that it represents divine retribution refer to the figure as “the god-beast.” Those who believe that it represents some sort of creature summoned by sorcerer-priests of the era refer to it as “the Assassin.” The more histrionic class of historian refers to this figure as “the godslayer,” allying the creature, rightly or wrongly, with the supposed god-slayers that ostensibly wiped out much of the Babylonian, Assyrian, and Hittite pantheons, almost nine hundred years before the events of Akhenaten’s reign.

  The bottom of this panel shows Nefertiti and the royal children escaping, as the Assassin and Akhenaten confront one another. Magic surrounds Akhenaten’s hands, while the creature tears at a one of the massive pillars that supports the roof of the palace. In the next image, the ceiling collapses, and Nefertiti turns to look behind her. The only thing visible under the rubble is a pair of golden, stylized eyes in the darkness beneath the stones.

  The third and final panel shows Nefertiti reigning as a regent for Smenkhkare under the name of Neferneferuaten, and then for Tutankhamen, as well. She oversaw restoration of the worship of the other gods, although it was clear that many of those gods were now dead. She was overthrown by the treacherous priest Ay, who, in turn, was supplanted by the common-born general, Horemheb. The pantheon now consisted primarily of Aten, Amun-Ra, Isis, Thoth, Sekhmet, Horus, and Set, along with a handful of minor divinities.

  The cult of the Aten died until the eighteenth century AC, when the recovery of the tombs of Akhenaten, Nefertiti, and Tutankhamen led to a revival of the beliefs, and wide-spread rebellion against the Roman emperors who maintained control through their descent from the Ptolemies, and thus, from Isis, Amun-Ra, and Horus.

  It is not known by what mechanism Akhenaten ‘killed’ the gods. It is not even known if they died by his actions, or by the actions of the Aten. That does not prevent people from referring to the pharaoh—slain, supposedly, by a godslayer!—as a godslayer himself. His name remains an anathema to this day, except to the followers of the Aten, to whom he is a hero. But then, for many, Atenists are also anathema. Only the Edict of Diocletian II has prevented the revived Atenist cult from being wiped out, several times over, in the past several hundred years.

  —Ra-Apeppi, Ancient Egypt: The Dynasty of Akhenaten the Godslayer, “Introduction.” University of Novo Trier Press, 1956 AC.

  ______________________

  Martius 6, 1954 AC

  Sigrun tried not to move at all, feeling the dull aches in her shoulder, chest, and abdomen, as she sat in a chair beside Frittigil’s bed, watching the various doctors and nurses poke and prod the girl. The girl’s thin hand clutched hers as the physicians took pictures of the healed arrow wounds—little more than thin white scars. Took her blood-pressure. Took blood. They were definitely the taking sort, and the various Gauls twitched under Sigrun’s watchful eye. “You’ll dispose of it once you’ve tested it?” she asked, pointing at the glass vials of blood.

  The nearest nurse, a rangy Gallic woman with golden-brown hair tied in a knot at the nape of her neck, held up gloved hands. “It must be preserved as evidence, domina. Hospital policy, and standard procedure. But all tissue and blood samples are kept under secure guard, and labeled only with numbers. Someone would have to know the numerical system, in order to know whose sample was whose.”

  Sigrun lined the toes of her boots up with the cracks in the tile. “Very well,” she said, quietly.

  Hospitals bothered her. Part of it was the smell, she knew; the floor polish, the antiseptics, the whiff of effluvia from a cart filled with used bedpans, the aroma of sickness and pain on people’s skins. The sounds. The chill, persistent beeping of a heart monitor. The squeak of gurney wheels on the tile floors. And part of it was simply bad memories. She’d never been sick, herself; never had measles, mumps, rubella, chickenpox, the flu, or even the common cold. But her first memories, dim and indistinct, were from the age of three. Sitting at her mother’s bedside in the hospital, staring at the tired face. “Where did all your hair go, Mama? It was so pretty long.”

  “It fell out, little valkyrie. The doctors gave me medicines to make the disease go away, but they made my hair fall out, too.”

  “Those must not be good medicines.”

  “They’re. . . the best. . . we have.”

  Looking at her mother’s face, and feeling shadow over that bright spirit. Knowing that the coldness meant something, was dangerous and scary, and she tried to make it go away. But she couldn’t. “Fæder said you were too sick for me to come here. He said I would tire you out.”

  “You don’t tire me, little one. It makes me happy to see you here.” A gentle hand on Sigrun’s little head, but truthsense twinged. Mama had never lied before. She was happy to see Sigrun, but Sigrun did tire her. And the little valkyrie had hushed, in the face of the first lie she’d ever sensed from her mother, and the cold darkness that was . . . somehow inside of her.

  “Ragnhildr?” Her father, tall and wide as an oak, came into the room. Took her mama’s hand very gently in his big one. “There’s one more option. I found a god-born of Eir. She’s going to try to help you.”

  Her mother had nodded against the pillow, her face pinched. And then Sigrun had looked up as the figure, wearing a white cloak and hood, entered the room. Hope had filled her, for a moment. She can make the shadow and the cold go away. I can’t. But she can.

  The woman had pushed back her hood, revealing coppery hair, and put a hand to Ragnhildr’s head. White light radiated out from her, but the older god-born had looked down at the younger one, and they’d both known that the shadow wouldn’t pass. “I can make her more comfortable,” the older woman said, quietly. “I can make sure there’s no pain.”

  Ivarr had put his head down on the bed beside his wife’s hand, and wept, openly, as her weak, frail hand combed gently at his long hair. And her mother held out her other hand to Sigrun, and had told her, “Be brave, little valkyrie. I love you.”

  That had been the last time Sigrun had seen her mother, before they’d taken her to her pyre. The only clear memory after that was watching the flames dance around the shrouded shell that was all that remained of Ragnhildr Caetia.

  In the here and now, Frittigil sat up in her hospital bed, once the nurses were gone again. “Shouldn’t they be looking at you, æðelinga?” the Marcomanni girl asked, her voice thin. “You. . . you’re hurt, aren’t you? B-because of me?”

  Sigrun shrugged the question away, trying not to let the wince at the motion show on her face, and let the memories fade. She didn’t dwell on them often, but the hospital was an inescapable reminder. “I heal very quickly,” she told the younger woman, quietly. “Given a good meal and a night’s rest, I probably won’t feel it in the morning. The cuts and punctures have sealed over. The burns are fading. The bone will take a little longer, and the deeper muscle tissues.” In the meantime, it hurts like Hel’s seized me with her claws, but you don’t need to know that, child. Her healing did not funct
ion as a human’s did, entirely. It functioned continuously, but more quickly and effectively when she was able to concentrate on it. And it worked from most life-threatening to least life-threatening. Staunching bleeding was almost always the first order of business for her body, unless breathing was compromised. “They will bring in a woman who will ask you questions, and conduct a physical examination. It will be a little personal. I can leave, if you want, or stay, if you like.”

  The girl’s dark brown hair slid forward over her face, like a veil. “What do you mean, personal?” Her voice edged upwards in pitch.

  Sigrun kept her voice gentle. “She will ask you questions about how the men treated you while you were a prisoner. And she will need to use some swabs in your private areas.”

  “Why?” The girl’s voice slid up another half-octave, and Sigrun reached out, once more offering a hand for Frittigil to take, and felt the almost desperate clasp of the girl’s fingers.

  “Because we need to know if they did anything to you. Well, anything else.” Sigrun kept her voice as gentle as she could. She knew she wasn’t good at this part of the job.

  “They didn’t!” Frittigil whispered, shrinking further in on herself.