The Goddess Embraced Read online

  Step by cautious step in a low crouch. No sound. Solinus hunkered at the corner of the building, his back against it, feeling his partner for this expedition move up beside him, ducking under a windowsill, and then standing beside him, back also to the wall, scanning the north-south street directly to their west, as Solinus himself used a mirror to peer around the wall, surveying the intersecting east-west street.

  This neighborhood of eastern Palmyra was something out of Tartarus. The Persians had taken the city center last week; the Romans had retaliated by bombing the area from the air, and civilians had been trying to flee at night ever since . . . only to be captured by Persian patrols, or killed, as they fled. Every building was either collapsed in on itself from a bomb blast, showed signs of previous scorch marks and bullet holes, or was currently on fire—the Legion had softened the area over the course of the afternoon and early evening with further aerial and artillery strikes, and had just tapered off so that his team could go in, redirecting their attention to about a mile west of here. The ground shook periodically, and the scream of shells going by was attenuated by distance, but still distinctly audible. Screeeeeee-WHUMP . . . whump, whump, whump. The only light, currently, was the dull glow of the burning buildings, and the trees in the common areas behind them. It had been a nice area, once. Upscale shops that backed onto green space. What looked like the remains of a café up to the northeast, across the street. And they had, so far, encountered almost no movement. No one was out, dousing the fires. Looking for survivors. In Solinus’ experience, that was a bad sign.

  He spotted what Artensius had seen, almost immediately. “It’s a little boy,” he said, quietly. “Standing in the middle of the road. Crying.”

  “This has to be a trap,” one of his men hissed into the radio.

  “You don’t say,” a junior centurion muttered.

  Solinus stared at the child. His own son, Astegal, was under a year old; his daughter Shiori was almost three. This little boy looked about six or seven, was dressed in a dirty pair of trousers and a long caftan, Carthaginian-style, and was wandering around the road, looking up at the houses. In between the whistles and thumps from the west, Solinus could hear the boy calling for his mother. Oh, gods. Yes, it’s a trap. Yes. I’m going to spring it. “I’m going to go get him,” Solinus said, quietly.

  “Sir, the mission objective—”

  “Is past him. I know.” They were actually here to try to recover a senior Roman official who had last been heard from after barricading himself into his governmental villa at the east side of a plaza down the road. He’d had Praetorians and a handful of legionnaires with him and his family, but the last radio contact with them had been three days ago. Solinus did not give any of them good odds for being alive and uncaptured. If the official and his people were alive and holding out, there should be Persian troops in this neighborhood, ringing the house, firing on it. If they were alive inside the villa, and being held and interrogated there, and the house itself used as a command post . . . again, there should be sentries. Instead, there was nothing. No movement in the houses and shops around them, the motorcars were smoldering, burned-out husks that lined both sides of the street, and . . . a crying little boy, wandering from building to building.

  Solinus moved around the corner, hunkering down behind the blackened remains of a motorcar, and whistled, softly, trying to catch the boy’s ear. “Tinok!” he said, pitching his voice to carry. The word was common to both modern Hebrew and contemporary Carthaginian. Child. He whistled again, but kept an eye on the buildings around him. There were entirely too many sniper perches for his liking, up on the ruined second floors, where the windows had been shattered by flame or shrapnel. “Hist, over here.”

  The little boy stopped moving aimlessly, and turned. Solinus’ radio crackled in his ear. “We have movement in some of the other buildings. Due north of the boy—”

  Of course we do. “Human?”

  “Can’t tell yet. Looks humanoid. Movements are erratic, though.”

  “Movement! Trees, north of the road!”

  Solinus swore, mentally. “Move up, find cover. Let’s see what we’re dealing with.”

  The little boy moved closer to him, the small face limned in orange light from one of the nearby burning buildings. Close enough now, that Solinus could see the tracks that his tears had cut through the soot and the grime on his face. “Ave?” the boy said, tentatively, walking closer. “I just want to go home,” he called, plaintively. “I won’t talk about the bad things. I promise. I just want to go home. You promised I’d see my mama again . . . .”

  Oh, gods. He was captured. This cannot possibly be good. Solinus used his mirror again, and caught sight of something moving, with boneless grace, from building to building across the street, and his stomach tightened as the first surge of adrenaline hit. He reached out, fast, and caught the boy, clamping a hand over the child’s mouth and recoiling back behind the car again, trying to muffle the scream. “Shh,” he told the boy. “Shh. I’ve got you. It’s all right. You’re going to be fine.”

  He could feel tears leaking down over his hand, and shifted his grip. “Roman centurion,” he whispered. “Calm down. Don’t scream. And we’ll get you someplace safe, all right?”

  A shaky nod, and Solinus released his grip, and guided the boy around, so that now, the child had the car for cover on one side, and Sol’s own body on the other. “What’s your name?”

  “Hannibal. For the general.”

  “Good name. My little boy’s Astegal. You’re going to be brave like a general for me, right, Hanni?” He got a nod for that. “All right, I’m going to take you back around the corner of that building. When I say to go somewhere, you go, you understand me?”

  “Yes . . . .” The answer wavered.

  Solinus got a hand on the boy’s shoulder and prepared to hustle, when his radio crackled again. “Ghul!” came the snapped word from Artensius. “Northwest and northeast!”

  Boneless shadows melted out from between the buildings, scampering on three limbs, or four. One of them leaped up on top of the motorcar in front of Solinus and slashed down at him and the boy with long claws covered in dried blood and old fingernail lacquer. The boy screamed. Solinus dodged the swipe, caught the ghul’s forearm in his hand, and ignited his fingers around it, clenching as he turned and threw the creature down in front of him. He saw the look of terror on the boy’s face transmute to awe as the bones in the arm he held carbonized in a reek of burning flesh and bone, and Solinus’ internal fires licked at his own hands and forearms. There were reasons he usually rolled up his uniform sleeves to his elbows, and showing off his clan tattoos wasn’t chief among them. Replacing burned uniforms got expensive.

  It had taken seconds, and Solinus wasn’t done, dropping to a crouch to punch down into the chest cavity. Ghul decayed. You could tell how long they’d been dead by the bloating, the rigor, the flies, and the maggots. Solinus had long since been able to fight down his gag reflex. Flame purifies, he thought, as his fist slammed through the sternum, scorching through to where the heart was. His fingers opened, then clamped shut on the mass of cold flesh, and he tore it out, hearing the ratatatatatatatat of his men’s automatic weapons firing all around him. He spun again, in time to see three more ghul coming for him and for the boy, and part of his mind noted, clinically, They weren’t touching him before. They were all around us, and they didn’t go after him at all . . . .

  “They’re in the buildings!”

  “Eyes up, eyes up!”

  “Watch your backs, watch your backs!”

  “Coming from behind—”

  “Backs to the walls, and throw them in the fires!” Solinus shouted, not bothering with the radio. Just parade-ground volume, and enough authority in his voice to get everyone moving again. And then the three ghul that he faced were on him, one leaping for his throat while the second tried to circle in at him from his right . . . and the third, dim mind of the malevolent spirit inside it clearly ca
lculating, finally went after the weaker target. The boy.

  Solinus’ entire body became flame. He wasn’t lava or magma, like the cherufe of Tawantinsuyu, nor was he wind and flame, like an efreet. His clothing vaporized, the radio earpiece liquefied, and his rifle, safed for a reason, fell to the ground as his shoulder strap burned away. Light radiated out from him, blindingly, and the ghul all shrank back, even the one who’d tried to latch onto his throat. Solinus didn’t hesitate. Both hands, entirely comprised of flame, speared into the chest cavity of the creature in front of him, and he ducked and spun, using the creature’s own ribs to throw it into its companion . . . and then his foot lashed out, becoming a whip of flame that scythed off the head of the ghul that had just seized the boy. Cautery ensured that no blood splattered the boy; it would have been clotting in the lower limbs by now, anyway. Solinus flipped, letting his own momentum and a hip twist carry his second leg into the ghul’s torso, as his first leg reformed and hit the ground; the ghul’s body fell backwards, and Solinus flowed forwards, catching the boy in hands that reformed from flame to flesh, though the rest of him remained fire. Are you all right? Solinus knew better than to try to speak the words out loud in this form. No lungs. No larynx. Just pure intention.

  “What are you?” Panic and glee at the same time.

  Legionnaire. Twenty-fifth Legion, levy force. Solinus spun as ghul leaped down from the building behind him, snarling and hissing as they poured down from the second floor, and surged out of the doors and windows of the other broken buildings in the street. Too many. Too damned many. There’s a hundred, at least. Fall back! He scooped up his assault rifle with one hand, flame once more, knowing that the barrel would be cherry red inside minutes, and propelled young Hannibal with the other, little light taps, to avoid burning the child. Whenever he wasn’t directing the child, he was punching, kicking, and scything his way through the crowd of ghul. The rotted extremities left no corruption on his form, and he shoved the boy around the corner, even as his men began to form up around him. Take the boy. Give me covering fire, and keep falling back.

  “What about the governor’s assistant?” one of his men called back. No muzzle-fire to light the night; flashless powder had been the norm for over thirty years in most firearms.

  I’ll come back and scout the ruins in my phoenix form. He concealed the following thought, which was his grim knowledge that he probably should have just done that to start with, but he had no sorcerers for backup at the moment. Masako was home with the children, though he’d cheerfully have killed to have her here at the moment; his wife was the best combat-sorcerer he’d ever worked with. She’d have peeled the poured-stone road up and rolled it on the ghul by now, like the lid of a tin of sardines, propelled by its key, and the melted poured-stone would have been both a cleansing fire and a fitting tomb for the bodies, while the spirits inside fled. If our people are in there, we can come back with more force. Keep moving!

  They retreated, making their way back through neighborhoods that were only marginally under Roman control. Solinus sent Hannibal in with two of his men, with instructions that they take him to the medical evac center . . . with a stop at the Office of Counter-Summoning, first. “Glad to hear it, sir,” Artensius muttered. The man was from northern Italia, from the foothills of the Alps. Now he lifted his helmet to wipe sweat out of his eyes. “They weren’t touching him. They weren’t harming or hunting him.”

  I know, Solinus replied, quietly, looking back over his shoulder at the boy, who was being kept occupied by another of his men, for the moment. Being shown how to load bullets into a clip. None of the summoners on staff here are on par with my father, but they’re competent enough. They should be able to figure this out.

  He bade Hannibal farewell, still not having returned to his fleshly form . . . it was just easier, once he’d gone flame, to stay that way for a while. It avoided him having to borrow trousers from any of his men, for starters. In spite of the fiery nature of his current form, the boy actually tried to hang onto him, much to his surprise. I will be in to see you as soon as I can. I have to make a report to my superiors, and I may be sent back out to do some reconnaissance. But the good news is, I think you’ll have my sister as your doctor. She’s been posted to the medical evac hospital closest to Palmyra. You’ll like her. Her name’s Latirian.

  Solinus disentangled himself, found his pilus prior centurion, and made his report. “I see you’re out of uniform again, Matrugena,” came the dry words of the Roman centurion as he looked up from his field desk. “What happened?”

  He relayed the whole of the engagement, and the pilus prior swore under his breath, rubbing at his chin. “The whole neighborhood was ghul? Where are their summoners getting the power to make that many bargains? Half the spirits our arcessitors deal with won’t set a toe out of whatever their misty realm is called, thanks to the mad gods, but the Persians seem to have unlimited fucking resources.”

  I don’t know, sir. These were unusually focused, for ghul. They chased us a good two miles. Usually, that only happens when the arcessitor controlling them has very good locks on them all, or if they’re extremely hungry. Solinus shrugged. I don’t think they were hungry, sir. I think they were either guarding something, or part of a trap.

  “They expected us to go for the villa?”

  Perhaps. Solinus was dubious. The boy was also possibly bait. I can return and scout aerially.

  “Hmm. I’ll give you different backup this time.”

  I trust my men, sir.

  “I know. But you’ve worked with Lokison before, and the two of you can slip through unseen where a dozen or twenty men trying to cut their way through won’t be able to pass.”

  Rig? Outstanding.

  “Yes, I’ve heard you two are brothers-in-law.”

  Yes, sir.

  “Go get cleaned up. Try to find a uniform that you can keep on for more than an hour. And check in on this orphan. I don’t like this, Matrugena.”

  Neither do I, sir.

  Two hours later, Solinus was in the medical evac center, two miles further south, behind the Roman lines, in a small anteroom with Dr. Latirian Eshmunazar, Solinus’ sister, a Chaldean Magus named Shin Ilam, who wore a Roman uniform, and Rig Lokison, who’d just made his way in from another section of the bigger enclave. “I did a thaumaturgic analysis of the boy,” the Magus reported, and rubbed at his eyes. “His aura, to use the layman’s term—”

  “None of us are exactly unfamiliar with magic,” Latirian said, shifting her white over-robe as she perched on the edge of the desk. “You asked a spirit to use its vision. I can’t do it myself, but I know people who can.”

  “I can see that way,” Rig noted, quietly, folding his arms over his chest. “I can verify your results, if needed. Please, go on.”

  The Magus looked rattled, and shook his curly hair out of his eyes. “Very well,” he noted, fussily adjusting his sleeves. “There is a fairly deep fissure in the boy’s spirit. The spirit I asked to observe him suggested that it looked as if he had been run through.”

  Solinus swallowed, chilled. He could look through the window of the antechamber out into the main medical ward, and see little Hannibal perched on the edge of a bed, looking lost and very alone in a hospital gown far too big for him. “Tiri?”

  Latirian grimaced. “My initial examination revealed signs of recent surgery to his abdomen. I don’t know how he was able to walk so far on his own, Sol.”

  “He was alone, and he was desperate. One of my men carried him most of the way from where we were.” Solinus swallowed. “So, surgery. Did they take something out of him?”

  “It’s not the right location for a kidney removal if they were looking for an unwilling organ donation. And I doubt they’d let the donor wander off, if they could still use him for spare parts, in that case. I’m far more concerned that they might have put something in him.” Latirian grimaced. “I was going to start with an X-ray, but he’s afraid of the machines. I thought maybe you coul
d talk him into it, Sol. He seems to trust you.”

  “I’ll go out with you,” Rig volunteered.

  Ilam frowned at him. “How will that help matters? He’s a child, and he’s frightened. Another stranger will hardly be a help.”

  Rig shrugged. “He won’t see a Roman soldier.” His form appeared to shift, and Solinus suddenly found himself looking down at Rig, who looked precisely the way he had, when they’d first met. When Aunt Sophia had been taking care of them, back in 1970. Long, dark brown hair, left loose, not the much shorter, Roman-style cut Rig used now. Softer features, of course . . . but the selling point was the innocence in the eyes. Rig had seen far too much to wear eyes that gentle anymore.

  “Now that is a look I haven’t seen in a while,” Solinus said, wryly. “I’ll have to remind my twin how cute you were when we were young.”

  “She has all the family pictures to remind her.” The voice was piping, but the grin was adult. “She still bitches about the hair, but I think that, altogether, she prefers me grown.”