The Valkyrie (The Saga of Edda-Earth Book 1) Page 14

  Sigrun’s very faint snort suggested that she was not an adherent of this particular philosophy. “And you?” Fritti asked, biting her lower lip.

  “I think bad things happen to everyone, and that bad people make them happen, most of the time. Even, sometimes, good people, who make mistakes. Have bad judgment. Almost everything that happens to people, is the result of other people. Nothing more.” He kept the words in Latin as simple as possible. The girl’s grip on the language just wasn’t good enough for complexity.

  Sigrun leaned her head back against the chair as the girl turned. Fritti’s eyes were bright with tears as she asked, “Is he right, æðelinga?”

  Adam caught the wistful half-smile that crossed Sigrun’s face. “I don’t know,” Sigrun told Frittigil, and he saw the girl’s eyes widen. He was surprised, himself. He’d have thought that certainty was one of the primary traits of someone who was in the direct service of a god.

  “You don’t know? But . . . you are god-born!” Frittigil seemed to share his reaction.

  “That does not mean I have any more answers than anyone else, little one.” Sigrun walked slowly back over to the table. She clearly still ached. “I can tell you what I believe. Maybe you will believe it. Maybe you will find some other answer that you like better.” She put a hand on the girl’s shoulder, her diction softening. Contractions and light slurs in the clarity of her Latin, but still speaking slowly enough for the girl to understand. “For me, it’s. . . simple. Bad things happen, because the gods don’t control everything. There’s wyrd, but there is no fate, no matter what people like my sister may believe.”

  “You have a sister?” Adam said, mildly. This was the first he’d heard of this, and Sigrun’s face shuttered. “Nevermind. What’s wyrd?” Adam asked. He’d heard the word before, but he really wasn’t clear on all the nuances.

  Sigrun made a flicking gesture with her free hand. “Some people translate it as fate, but that’s not right. It is . . .” She frowned. “We all have a path that we’re born to. Part of that is family. Where we start, our condition. But what steps we take along that path are our own. Sometimes we make good decisions, and sometimes, we’re just fortunate, and we rise. Sometimes we make bad choices, or our feet slip on a stone. And at the end of the path, the gods reward us for doing right and punish us for doing wrong. But what we do in life . . . that’s our responsibility. We have a choice about how we walk that path, and with whom. And our companions’ choices along the path . . . shift the path under our feet, just a little. But it’s not controlled by the gods. Or there would be no point in existence at all.” Sigrun stifled a yawn with her fingertips. “But now . . . it is late. And I’m too tired for philosophy. There’s a cot in my room for you, Fritti.” She lowered her head to Adam. “Rest well.”

  “Sleep sound,” he returned. “I’ll try not to make much noise.”

  He didn’t sleep much, himself; he finished his prayers and his reading, and sat up in a chair, dozing lightly, but mostly standing guard. He didn’t think that anyone would really risk coming after the girl again, but a retaliatory strike against the propraetor and his entourage wasn’t out of the question. And yes, there were other Praetorians guarding Livorus, and one on this floor of the hotel, watching over them . . . but Adam’s sense of responsibility wouldn’t let him rest. Livorus had chartered a direct flight from Ponca back to Marcomanni in the morning. There would be time enough to sleep then.

  As such, he heard Frittigil muttering in her sleep several times, and, cautiously checked on both of them from the doorway, only venturing in to cover the girl with her blanket, which had slipped loose. And, so long as he was there, anyway, he pulled up the blankets over Sigrun’s still form, too, before padding back out of the room on silent feet.

  It was thus a shock to hear Frittigil’s voice calling frantically for Sigrun, around five antemeridian. Adam lunged out of his chair, drawing his gun, and making it to the connecting door between the rooms in three strides. He flicked on the light and canvassed the room, hurriedly with his eyes, looking for intruders . . . and found none.

  Fritti knelt on the floor, covering her face with her hands, as Sigrun, looking just as awake as Adam himself was now, tried to tug the girl’s hands back from her face. “What’s wrong, little one?” Sigrun asked gently. “Was it a bad dream?”

  “No. No, it was . . . strange.” Fritti let her hands fall from her face, and managed to switch to Latin. “I saw a star on the western horizon drop down and become a woman. She wore leather clothing, all beaded and beautiful, but she was very sad. And a man of my people walked out of the darkness and joined her, and he told me not to be afraid. To come to them.” Fritti was pushing her Latin as far as it would go. “So I walked to them. And I knew the man was Baldur, the shining one. The god loved by all, but hated by Loki, who was killed by the mistletoe, and who was and will be reborn after the end of all things.” She raised her face, an expression of awe suffusing her features, and Adam felt his jaw go slack. Fritti’s eyes had been dark blue yesterday. It had been in her physical description in the Praetorian files, for god’s sake. Right now? The blue had darkened to the blue-purple haze of twilight, and dozens of tiny stars seemed to fill the night sky that surrounded her pupils. I’m not sure how that should be recorded as on her driver’s license, whenever she gets one, he thought, numbly. Star-shine blue? Galactic glory? Milky Way magenta? The humor helped him stabilize his thoughts, somewhat. He was looking at someone who had been marked out by a god.

  Sigrun, however, simply nodded. “And what else did they say to you?” Her voice was gentle. “They had a task for you?”

  Fritti looked confused. “Not . . . not as such . . . the woman told me she was sorry I had suffered for her sake. That she never had wanted the ritual to be performed on anyone else, and that her people were supposed to bind themselves to her, not to use other people for that. And that she didn’t want blood. And then she reached out and put her hand on my head, and I felt so much better. . . and she faded away. And Baldur said while the Evening Star had bound me, I was his now, too, because I’d died and come back. Just like he did. Well, like he will, anyway.” Fritti looked a little uncertain now. As if she weren’t entirely sure how to feel about any of this. “Æðelinga, what do they want me to do?”

  Adam’s mouth finally clicked shut. I will never get used to how their gods just . . . talk to them directly. Does it make them weaker, to have that guiding hand always at their elbow? Does it make my people stronger to have to make every decision on our own? Who’s to say, really?

  ____________________

  Sigrun nodded to herself. She’d wondered if the girl would be marked out by someone. While Frittigil was frightened, and clearly scarred by the experiences of the past few days, the girl hadn’t been babbling, or a catatonic wreck. There was steel in the girl’s heart, and her metal had been proven in a fire that most people would never face in the whole of their lives. Sigrun reached out to put a hand on the girl’s arm, lightly, and told her, “You must decide for yourself, young one, what you are to do with your life. Choice is the burden of every god-born of Valhalla. You know of the choice of the valkyrie, yes? Who on the battlefield lives, and who dies?” At Fritti’s nod, Sigrun squeezed her arm, gently. “You already had great gifts within you. A good mind, and a strong heart. The gods may have given you other gifts, besides the sign of their favor on your face.” At Fritti’s confused look, Sigrun reached under her bed, and pulled out her charred spear, so that the girl could see her own reflection in the polished metal. It was the closest thing to a mirror that Sigrun owned, and she didn’t look at the reflection on the side facing her, keeping her gaze locked on Fritti’s face, instead.

  She could feel the muscles in the girl’s thin arm go rigid as Fritti flinched back from her own eyes. “Be at peace,” Sigrun told her, setting the spear aside. “Baldur is a gentle god, and the Evening Star seems to be a benevolent goddess. Whatever their gifts are, the Odinhall will see to it that you are trai
ned in their use. You will not be a danger to yourself, or to others. That, I can promise you.”

  She wasn’t sure if her words helped at all. Sigrun had been born what she was. There had never been a time when she wasn’t god-born, and when it hadn’t been impressed upon her that she was different from other people. Not better. Not worse. Different, with different expectations. But after a moment’s thought, she understood why Fritti had pulled back. “The eyes are different, yes. But they are a lovely mark of favor. One easily covered with the smoked lenses that are so popular these days, if you so wish it. No one more than twenty feet away will even notice them.” Sigrun raised her eyebrows, and felt Frittigil relax, incrementally.

  “Will . . . will I have to go to the Odinhall?” Fritti asked, her voice thin.

  “I do not know. You have been marked by two very different gods. For you to be trained solely at the Odinhall might be an affront to the Evening Star.” Sigrun shrugged, and helped Fritti back to her bed, feeling her eyes burn a little with tiredness. “I doubt you will be able to sleep anymore this morning, little one. We can order breakfast, and you may shower first.” Sigrun paused. “You will doubtless like to put on some clothing, I am sure.”

  Fritti looked down at herself, and her sudden expression of embarrassment was acute. Other than in the very coldest climates, most people in the world slept naked, with eiderdowns in winter for warmth. Fritti had apparently not been entirely comfortable with Adam’s presence and had, as such, kept on her heavy tunic from the hospital gift shop . . . which still skimmed her upper thighs. Every essential was covered, but she still yanked the hem down and scuttled rapidly for the bathroom, mumbling excuses under her breath.

  Sigrun herself hadn’t stripped down; she had wanted to be prepared if there were any disruptions during the night . . . though this wasn’t quite the sort of interruption she’d expected.

  While Fritti was in the shower, Sigrun put in a call to the Odinhall, to confirm what the girl had experienced. Adam looked surprised, and muttered something about the wheels of bureaucracy being the same everywhere. “It’s best to make sure that this really was Baldur and the Evening Star, and not a . . . very convincing spirit,” Sigrun told him, grateful that the sound of the water covered her voice from the girl.

  “It’s interesting that you don’t take revelation at face value,” he told her, his eyebrows arching.

  “I could see that there were no lies in her eyes,” Sigrun told him, simply. “But that does not mean that someone did not lie to her.” At that moment, the line she was on, was taken off hold, and she heard a voice on the other end. “Brandr?”

  The voice that came in response was a low bass rumble. “Waes hael, Sigrun, my old student.” Brandr had been one of the lead instructors in Sigrun’s time at the Odinhall. “I checked upstairs with Dvalin. The Keeper of the Runes says that her name was indeed inscribed in the rolls of the god-touched last night. She is a valkyrie, now . . . of a sort.”

  “Am I supposed to make arrangements with her and her family to send her to Burgundoi? I think it would be unwise to tear her away from her family immediately. She needs them, and they will need to hold her tightly to them for a year or two.” Sigrun addressed her old mentor with respect.

  “Not until she is sixteen. But she will need a pedagogue, a mentor, of some sort, in the meantime. I’m not sure who will be sent, if the family cannot afford the training. And of course, there will be the need for her to be . . . conversant with the beliefs of those who follow the Evening Star, apparently.” Brandr sounded grim. “Her life just became incredibly political, poor thing.”

  “Only as much as she chooses for it to be,” Sigrun returned, and heard Brandr’s roar of laughter on the other end, before they both said their farewells, and hung up. Catching Adam’s glance, though the Judean man had turned away, politely, during the spate of Gothic speech, Sigrun smiled a little. “She’s very young,” Sigrun said quietly, hearing affection in her own tone, which surprised her. She usually took longer to warm up to people. But Fritti was, after all, young, and easy to like. “But she’s strong. She’ll be just fine.”

  ____________________

  Several hours later, they boarded their small chartered plane at the tiny Ponca airfield, along with Livorus and two of the regional Praetorians they’d been assigned, temporarily. Livorus had taken one look at Fritti, raised his eyebrows, and moved to take Sigrun’s hand and now held it lightly in both of his. “You’re quite well, my dear?”

  “Much better this morning, sir. Thank you.” Sigrun’s spine snapped straight. There was only a trace of excess pink to her skin this morning, as if she’d suffered a bad sunburn a few days ago. No other evidence of the previous day’s fight remained visible to the eye.

  “Is our young guest’s current condition any concern of the Empire’s?” Livorus asked.

  “Only in that it suggests that my gods and the gods of the Chahiksichahiks may be taking a direct hand in attempting to better relations between their peoples.”

  “That is, in fact, above my pay-grade. I endeavor to repair relations between nations, but am singularly ill-suited to negotiate with gods. I will leave that to the Emperor and whichever of his sons he intends to make the next high priest of Mars or Jupiter. . .” Livorus glanced off into the mid-distance, and then shrugged. “Young Hadrianus, no doubt. Though it is difficult to imagine the twelve-year-old he is now, in the stately robes of a priest of Mars Pater.”

  Livorus released Sigrun’s hands, allowing her to sit down and buckle herself into place. Adam took the seat beside her, directly behind Livorus, who seated himself beside Fritti, and the two final Praetorians took the row in front of the propraetor. Even though the plane was chartered, it was still remarkably cramped. Adam gave the vehicle and the single steward they’d have for the flight a final careful once-over, and then, as his gaze returned to his own row of seats, was highly amused to note that Sigrun had gripped onto the arms of the chair, and that her knuckles were already white.

  They had yet to leave the ground.

  “Would it help if I held your hand?” he offered, leaning closer to lower his voice, needling lightly.

  A flick of her steel-sheen eyes, and she muttered something under her breath.

  “What was that?”

  “I said that you may bite me, ben Maor.”

  Adam laughed out loud.

  As the plane lifted off, Frittigil, in the seat ahead of them, turned around, her eyes wide with amazement, and chattered excitedly at Sigrun in her native tongue. “What was that?” Adam asked.

  “This is wonderful!” Frittigil told him. “Is. . . exciting! To be free, like a bird, yes?”

  Adam grinned at her, and found that the expression came easily, for all the girl’s changed eyes. The young woman probably needed, more than anything, for everyone to act normally around her for the next several years. And he determined to do precisely that for the rest of the trip. “I’ve always liked flying, yes. I wanted to be a pilot, when I was young. Actually. . . I wanted to be an astronaut. I wanted to be the first man to walk on the moon.”

  That, he realized, had gotten Sigrun’s attention. She’d turned to look at him, and frowned now. “So why are you not a pilot?” the Cimbric woman asked him.

  Adam shrugged. “When I went into the Judean Defense Forces for my required two years, I asked for pilot training, and got special forces instead.” He leaned back in his chair, relaxing visibly to help Sigrun calm down as the plane began to bank and rise higher. He could feel the pressure change in his ears already. “Turns out my superiors were right. I was a lot better at fighting on the ground than I ever thought I’d be. I got done with my required two years, and felt I should. . . I don’t know, keep protecting my people, so I stayed in for another two. I was in the middle of deciding whether I wanted to go to school for an engineering degree, to try to get into the space program that way, when the Praetorians came calling.” He included them both in his wry smile, feeling the plane dip and sw
ay as a wind gust caught them. “I thought about it. And I decided that half the reason I wanted to go into space was the thrill of exploring. Seeing new things. I could do that with the Praetorians. And I could meet new people that way. Hard to meet new people on the moon.” He said the last to Frittigil, who laughed shyly, ducking her head down behind the seat.

  Of course, the other half of him had argued that the stars were their destiny, and that having his name written in them, forever, as an explorer, an achiever, a dreamer, would be a wonderful thing. But he’d reflected on it, and decided that he could do a lot of good in the Praetorians. Could protect people. And he could cheer on the space program from the sidelines, and they’d take his heart to the moon and beyond. Someday. But that part, he didn’t mention.

  Sigrun volunteered, unexpectedly, “I personally believe that in a galaxy with so many stars, there must be other life out there—oh, Hel’s teeth.”

  That last, as the plane dipped into an area of thermal disturbance, and turbulence began to vibrate through the frame. Sigrun dropped her hands back onto the arms of her chair, looking resolutely straight ahead.

  The best part of their job, Adam mused, several hours later, was getting to see things like Frittigil running into her parents’ arms. The joyous tears in her mother’s eyes, the way her father lifted the girl clean off the ground, holding her tightly. It made up, in part, for the insane hours, the daily danger, and the knowledge that people out there could be targeting Livorus, or them, with bullets, magic, or both. The expressions of dumbstruck awe on their faces, and on the faces of Fritti’s sisters, however, as they caught sight of her eyes, made him distinctly uneasy. They didn’t drop to their knees in homage, however. Merely touched her face, and kissed her again, chattering rapidly in their native tongue.