The Valkyrie (The Saga of Edda-Earth Book 1) Page 13

“I didn’t think that they had. But the doctors have to document everything.” Sigrun squeezed the girl’s hand, lightly. She didn’t want to explain it, but the whole point of the Morning Star ceremony was to re-enact, symbolically, the rape of a virgin goddess, and thus the sacrifice of innocence. Raping her would have unfitted her for the sacrifice. But the doctors and the Praetorians needed documentation for the upcoming trials, however summary they might be.

  Then the nurse came back in, all gentle, non-threatening questions, and took down the girl’s information. And put the rape-kit to use. “Can I go home now?” Frittigil asked, forlornly, once the procedure was over.

  Sigrun looked at the doctor. “There’s no need to keep her here for observation,” the doctor said, shrugging. “Her wounds are completely healed. I would have thought the scars several years old, if I hadn’t been told. Your wounds, on the other hand, domina—”

  “Don’t require any assistance,” Sigrun told him, hastily. “Don’t trouble yourself on my account.” She paused. “Frittigil? We’ve already called your parents—”

  “Are they coming here?” The look of pure relief in the girl’s eyes caught at Sigrun’s heart.

  “It’s a ten-hour drive,” Sigrun reminded the girl, gently. “While they want to see you, and you want to see them, we thought it best if the Praetorians escorted you home tomorrow.” And Livorus thought it might be a good idea to keep this all as quiet as possible. Any reporters following the story of Fritti’s disappearance in Marcomanni will just see her returned to her parents, and the matter of a neighboring petty kingdom attempting to revive forbidden practices thanks to what appears to be a small group of extremists. . . doesn’t need to get blown out of proportion. It didn’t happen. “For tonight, as the doctor just said, you can stay here, or you can stay with me, in my hotel room. Or you can have your own room at the hotel, with Praetorian guards. It’s up to you.” She kept her voice even as she outlined the choices. Giving the girl agency in her own life right now was extremely important.

  The girl looked at her, and nodded, frantically. “With you, please. I don’t want to stay here alone.”

  I’ve become a security object, Sigrun thought. It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it would have helped to have had some of the girl’s family here from the start, but that once again raised the specter of the news media. Livorus had reasoned that if Fritti really were here, the presence of Frittigil’s family and possibly reporters, following along behind the family like vultures, could have heightened tensions, and, if the tip as to her whereabouts had been wrong, they’d have had her family drive seven hundred miles for nothing. “All right. Let’s get you some clothing. I’ll send my partner to the gift shop for you, if that’s all right?”

  An hour later, the girl was dressed in a light cotton tunic with the words Ponca Metropolitan Hospital on it, with a stylized image of the Gallic god, Grannus below it, healing the sick. A nurse had donated a skirt from her own locker, as well—one so large, that they’d needed to give her a length of rope as a belt. Her outfit was completed by a pair of hospital slippers. She looked a waif, which couldn’t be helping her mental state, but it beat a hospital robe.

  Sigrun caught the girl watching Adam cautiously as he drove them back to the hotel. “We’re going to have to leave the door between our rooms unlocked tonight,” Adam told Sigrun, pragmatically. “If I hear something, I don’t want to have to break it down to get in there.”

  Sigrun considered that, and then nodded. “I will probably sleep like the dead tonight,” she admitted. “Just as soon as I eat something.” Her chest and shoulder still ached, which wasn’t a good sign. She’d had to heal a lot of damage today, and her body, while an excellent conduit for Tyr’s will, was still mortal. More or less.

  Some days, a little less than more.

  They ordered room service meals, and Sigrun told Fritti, calmly, “We’ll all eat together.”

  Another rapid glance from Frittigil to Adam. “Do. . . do we have to?” the girl asked, in the regional Gothic dialect of Marcomanni. Every major city in Nova Germania had been settled by a different tribe, and over the centuries, there had been linguistic drift. The Gothic dialects spoken on this continent differed from those spoken in Europa, and every city here had a different dialect, as well. The advent of the far-viewer and radio had helped to stabilize the dialects of Nova Germania, at least. They were close enough that someone from one city could usually pick up the other dialects quickly, but they were different enough that, spoken quickly, an ear unaccustomed to a dialect would have picked up nothing more than sounds. Nuances were often completely lost. Most Goths born on the continent defaulted to Gothic, Cimbric—Sigrun’s own dialect—or Latin, as a bridge language.

  “Géa.” Sigrun kept her voice gentle, but firm, as she went on, quietly, in Gothic, “Adam is a good man. He is my partner. He will not hurt you. You have had a bad experience, yes, but you must learn to see again, as you saw before. Not everyone is a threat. This is why we will eat together.”

  Frittigil turned and stared at her. “You say partner, but you do not say witan.”

  Sigrun blinked. Opened her mouth to reply, and realized that she was flushing. Every dialect of Gothic had the same pronouns as most other languages of Europa: I, thou, he, she, it, we, you, they, and the formal second-person mode of address: you. All branches of Gothic also had another pronoun: witan. We two.

  Witan was used between two people who were as close as kin, as close as lovers. Between two people who’d fought together, bled together, nearly died together, or between husband and wife. It was never used on any other occasion, and Sigrun had never in her life actually employed this word. “Ah, no. I did not mean to make you think that.” Sigrun rapidly debated how much honesty would be helpful here. Saying that Adam had only been on the team for three months would not incline the wary girl towards much acceptance. “Master ben Maor has been a Praetorian for two years. He also performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation on you, when you were wounded.”

  “Oh! Oh . . . I’m. . . I’m sorry.” Frittigil looked down at her feet, and slid cautiously over to the table to perch, uneasily, at the edge of her chair. “I didn’t mean to sound ungrateful. . . .”

  “I heard my name in there. Do I even want to know?” Adam asked, smiling at them. “My Gothic isn’t worth much yet. Gallic, well, I can ask for directions to the local bathhouse, and that’s about it.” He rolled his eyes. “Nimes-on-the-Pacifica dialect only, at that.”

  “Nothing. It’s not important.” Sigrun shook her head. There was no sense embarrassing the girl by revealing Fritti’s lack of trust.

  Still, the young man’s eyebrows rose. “Oh, and now I am consumed by my curiosity.”

  “Then be devoured by it, Adam ben Maor, and may you give it indigestion.”

  He laughed and took a seat, breaking the bread apart and murmuring something complicated under his breath in his native tongue as he did so, bowing his head, before giving a piece to Frittigil and another piece to Sigrun. Sigrun tucked into her food hungrily. She needed protein, and a lot of it; she’d used a lot of her body’s reserves today. Steak, therefore, was on the docket again, along with mashed potatoes and green beans. The potato was a distinctive dish of Caesaria Aquilonis and Caesaria Australis. They’d been unknown in Europa before the colonization of the new world. Unfortunately, the hotel’s cutlery turned out to have a very dull knife. In annoyance, Sigrun dug in her luggage for a moment, and found her cadena; this was a personal kit in which someone carried their own knife, fork, and spoon. She still carried it with her, mostly as a habit and a courtesy. In Nova Germania, one didn’t expect everything to be supplied by a host; it was considered good form for a guest to bring their own utensils.

  As for the others, Adam had managed to find an inoffensive chicken dish on the menu, and they’d let Frittigil order whatever she wanted, and she’d picked bison klopse in white sauce with mushrooms and mashed potatoes. “Don’t eat too fast,” Adam warned the girl, g
enially. “You don’t want to be sick.”

  “They . . . they fed me.” Her Latin was a schoolgirl’s. She obviously didn’t use it in everyday conversation much. “Maize. Squash. Dried meat. Had crackers at hospital.”

  Meat, because she was to be treated very well before the sacrifice. Privileged foods. Sigrun’s lips curled down.

  There was a busy silence as they all ate, but they all eventually slowed down, and Adam pushed his plate away first. “So,” he said, leaning back and tilting his head. “The regional Praetorians brought your armor to the hotel while you were at the hospital.”

  Sigrun grimaced. “Yes. I had to take it off. The fire the sun-born one used on me was . . . quite hot. And the metal only trapped the heat.”

  “It melted in places. The rings are congealed.” Adam stood, and obviously noted how Frittigil started back from him as he did, but didn’t change his movements. Just headed over to the far-viewer stand, and took a satchel from there, handing it to Sigrun. She opened it, and sighed. He was accurate in his assessment; the rings had run together, beading in places, as they’d melted.

  “This will need repairs,” she muttered. “Or just will need to be melted down and made new.”

  He sat back down, raising his eyebrows. “It won’t stop a bullet. Obviously, it doesn’t stop fire.”

  “It would not have slowed the meteorites hurled by the god-born of the Morning Star, either,” she allowed, equitably. “It does stop blades and arrows.”

  “I could order you a very good flak jacket. Would definitely stop bullets.” He arched his eyebrows, smiling at her.

  “Yes, but as I asked earlier, will it stop knives?” Sigrun shrugged.

  “No. But we could put your ring mail on top of that.”

  “Then I would be slowed by the extra weight. My best defense really is my speed.” She looked down at her plate, feeling a wave of tiredness pass over her. “And neither will stop fire.”

  “An asbestos coat over the top of all of it, then. Like a firefighter.” He nodded soberly, and they were both a little startled to hear Frittigil giggle, quietly. “Oh, wait, you’d be slowed even more, then.” Adam’s tone was pragmatic. “The chain mail is heavy, and does you very little good.” He paused, and added, reflectively, “Three months as your partner, and I didn’t know you could heal like that. Why wear armor at all?”

  Sigrun leaned back in her own chair, watching Frittigil eat, before turning to look at Adam. “Three reasons. First, I wear it when it is Tyr’s day. Respect. Second. . . I heal, yes. But it still hurts, and I prefer not to endure it if there’s no reason. And third. . .” She shrugged. “I can still die, Adam. I’m not a goddess.”

  Of course, every one of my people knows that gods can die. That they will die. That Ragnarok, someday, will happen, and that then, the world will be renewed. But it will take the lives of many of the gods. And of course, there are the legends of the godslayers . . . .

  Adam leaned forward. “I’m your partner, Sigrun. I need to know things like this. I need to know when I’m supposed to be worried, and when I can and should step back. You keep secrets, Sigrun. We all do—it’s what we’re paid for. But you keep things in that you really should tell people on your team.” The junior agent was evidently both irritated, and fascinated at the same time. Sigrun had seen the look of interest in many other eyes over the years. She’d gotten used to deflecting it, as it tended to make her feel like a bug on a plate. Though Adam’s interest was less threatening, somehow, than some of her previous partners’ had been. Now, Adam tapped a finger against the table for emphasis. “So. What does it take to kill you?”

  She looked down at her plate. “I am a valkyrie.” Sigrun shrugged slightly, only feeling the ache faintly now in her shoulder. “That means, largely, that I will die in battle, Adam. No sickness will claim me. And even in battle, it would probably take an immediately mortal wound. Decapitation, or complete obliteration of the heart. Almost anything else . . . it might take a while. But I’ll heal from it.” She shrugged, smiling a little wryly. “I just won’t enjoy the process.” She was very aware of the girl watching them as they spoke in Latin.

  “And the way you healed Frittigil here?” Adam sounded . . . almost a little angry about that, and Sigrun’s eyes snapped up, startled. “Why?” He tapped the side of his fist against the table for a moment, evidently looking for the right words.

  “Why what?” she asked, after a moment.

  “It’s a gift from your god, right?”

  She nodded, not understanding where the quiet anger under his words was coming from. “Then why,” Adam asked, clearly leashing his temper a bit, “does your god require that you take the wound? Why not just heal someone directly?”

  Sigrun blinked again. “Ah. . . I see where you’re confused. Tyr is not a god of healing. He is a god of justice. His gift is . . . tempered. He requires that I understand the suffering of a victim, in order to restore them.” She swallowed, and then admitted, more quietly, “Also . . . blood binds. It is a sacrifice. Of sorts.” She shrugged. “It’s not a mercantile arrangement. But there is a saying: ex nihilo nihil fit.” Nothing comes from nothing. “You have to give, if you wish to receive.”

  ______________________

  Adam shook his head and turned away. He wasn’t entirely sure why he was so irritated by this, but it seemed deeply unjust for a god to inflict such pain on a loyal follower, and for no other reason than that she wished to help others. But . . . it wasn’t his faith. And it wasn’t his business. But he knew it irked him to see the slowly-fading wound in Sigrun’s upper chest. Still dark red, still livid against her skin. It seemed so completely unnecessary.

  And yet, on the other hand, an hour outside of town, as they’d been? If she hadn’t done precisely what she’d done, the girl would be dead now. Her family would be in mourning in Nova Germania, and any number of outraged people would be trying to come across the border, looking for revenge. “Explain something else to me, then?” he said, leashing his irritation for the moment.

  Sigrun’s brows rose as she began clearing the plates, and Adam settled in to his nightly routine, cleaning his gun, since he’d fired his revolver today. “What troubles you?”

  “It’s not so much troubling, as . . . I already knew about the lightning and the wind. And the spear. And the flying.” He had the Velserk completely disassembled now, and was working a bore brush with solvent through the empty barrel. “How do you even train to fight god-born?” His words weren’t entirely born of frustration. He’d dealt with the god-born shaman in his own way, using just his own training. But short of carrying ground-to-air missiles, he wasn’t sure what he could possibly do to help when Sigrun was ten thousand feet in the air above him. Even Ptah hadn’t had the range to assist.

  Sigrun blinked a little at the question. “Like most things. You learn by doing it.”

  Fritti’s head moved back and forth as if she were a spectator at a Nahautl ollamaliztli ball game. Adam just looked at Sigrun, patiently, and the woman relented. “I spent four years at the Odinhall undergoing rigorous training against and with other god-born. My instructors were all valkyrie and bear-warriors. There were lessons in understanding the basics of magic and illusion, overseen by a two-hundred-year-old valkyrie, born of Loki, named Reginleif Lanvik.” Sigrun’s tone was rueful. “None of us could ever quite live up to her expectations, which were very high.” She shook her head, her eyes distant. “Basic medical instruction, from valkyrie of Eir and licensed physicians. Combat strategy and tactics from bear-warriors twice my age. And everyone I sparred with, was another god-born. Learning to control our powers, instead of being controlled by them.”

  Fritti’s eyes shone with interest. “Everyone has heard of the training of the god-born at the Odinhall,” the girl said excitedly, but still with a hint of shyness. “They say that the first lesson is understanding pain.”

  Adam grimaced, but Sigrun nodded. “Understanding and accepting, yes.” Her eyes flicked to Adam. “I
crashed into the sun-born one today, doing close to my top flight speed. I was braced for the impact. He was not. That doesn’t mean that the impact did not hurt. If I were anything other than a god-born, I’m sure that my bones would have shattered. You have to accept that sometimes, what you do, will hurt. But if it’s worth doing, you do it anyway.”

  Adam had a feeling that those words weren’t directed so much at him, as at Fritti, but he snorted anyway. “I’ll accept that, in part, but the best combat doctrine is one that does maximum harm to the enemy, and no harm at all to yourself.”

  Sigrun’s smile was very faint. “As I said. . . I heal.”

  The conversation dropped there, as Sigrun found a seat across the room and settled in with a book. Adam continued to work, Frittigil watched him break apart the gun, wide-eyed. “Why . . . why does it have the round. . . thing?” She frowned, obviously hunting for the right word in Latin.

  “The cylinder? So that it can hold six bullets at once.”

  “Why do you need so many?”

  “Because sometimes, I’m fighting more than one bad person at once.” He broke the words down simply for her. “Like today.”

  She put her head down on the table. He’d noticed that she was acting much more comfortable around him, and that was a relief, but he was worried that she’d remember that he was male and freeze up again. He didn’t like seeing the beginnings of scars in this young psyche. After a moment, Frittigil asked, not looking up, “Why me?”

  Adam passed a brush through the barrel of the gun, which he’d removed entirely from the rest of the mechanism, and looked at her. “What do you mean?” He kept his voice neutral, knowing it was important to let her talk things out, at least a little.

  “Why did the gods let this happen to me?” Hurt, bafflement, anger. “I was good. I never got into trouble, not like my sisters. I believe in the gods. Why would they abandon me?”

  Why do bad things happen to good people? The quintessential question most thinking people came to, sooner or later in life. Adam looked up at Sigrun, who was watching from across the room, over the top of her book. “I don’t know what answer Sigrun would give you,” Adam told the girl, quietly. “Some people believe that everything happens for a reason. That bad things are a test, a challenge.”