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

  He was never going to get used to the scale of things on this continent. You could fit Asia Minor, Byzantium and all, into one small corner of Nova Germania. Judea, including Samaria and Jerusalem? Would rattle in the panhandle area of Novo Gaul, far to the southeast of here. The Aeturnus might not be as long as the Nile, but a river it took ten or fifteen minutes to cross by car on a wide bridge? Got one’s attention.

  Adam sighed, and shut the curtains before flicking on a light, feeling out of place. But, he was here to do a job. He went where the Empire told him to go. And in this case, he and Sigrun were supposed to be protecting a propraetor, and hopefully preventing a diplomatic disaster of monumental proportions. Not to mention, the murder of an innocent thirteen-year-old girl.

  He tossed his cloak at the desk in the corner of the room before pushing the room’s thermostat higher. The radiator under the window creaked a little as more steam poured through the pipes that snaked across the outer wall to its accordion-like metal surface. He took his revolver out of its concealed-carry harness, and tucked it in the nightstand beside the bed. Sat down in the chair by the desk, and took out a scroll and a skullcap from his suitcase, along with a white prayer tallit. For a moment, he looked into the depths of his clean laundry and hygiene supplies, and debated the phylacteries. It wasn’t like him to hesitate. He didn’t normally use them when at prayer, but some Judean sects believed that the phylacteries, and proper attendance on the rituals of his faith, offered a certain amount of additional protection from ill-intended magics and the powers of the god-touched. However, the incident in the restaurant downstairs had affected him more than he’d acknowledged. For the moment, he was self-conscious of his faith, the way he usually wasn’t.

  Then Adam shook his head and tied the talismans on. They weren’t going to do him any good in his suitcase. If, in fact, wearing them did any more good than saying the words, and meaning them. He read from his scroll, quietly, and fifteen minutes into his devotions, he became aware of a brilliant white light seeping under the locked door to Sigrun’s connected room. It sometimes seemed a little unfair. Sigrun had met her god. She had absolute assurance of his existence. Adam, on the other hand, only had faith. He’d never met a priest or a rabbi who’d met the god of his fathers, face-to-face. To be honest, he didn’t actually want to meet the god of Abraham on a personal basis. That was the sort of thing that turned someone into a judge or a prophet, and that was really not a burden he wanted to carry around.

  But it would still be nice to have some of the serenity that came with assurance. To be able to speak to one’s god, and hear a voice in return. But that was the point of faith—to believe without evidence. He preferred science, evidence, and natural philosophy, by and large, but did his best with faith from day to day. Sigrun, on the other hand, for all that she was god-born, didn’t have faith. She didn’t need it. She had assurance. Two very different things.

  Now, the locked door between their rooms let in various noises from her side; the sound of water splashing as she turned on the bathwater, for instance. The harsh zzzzz as the zipper of her overnight bag opened. The rustle of clothing, and at that point, Adam let his scroll roll up, and turned on the far-viewer. He was sure he’d never get used to the fact that the spherical ley-powered devices projected images in three dimensions, when the conventional square tube devices of Judea, which were electrically-powered, produced two-dimensional images.

  There were only three channels in this largely rural area. One featured a gladiatorial competition held in Rome last week. Another featured a ritual game of ball played this morning down in Tenochtitlan, with the great stepped pyramids of the city center in the background. And the third was a droning report on the politics of the Senate, and Consul Tacritus’ condemnation of the recent fighting between Raccia and the Mongol Khanate, and the Separatist Movement in the Quechan provinces.

  The Roman Senate was an interesting institution at this point in history. It was still entirely made up of patricians from old families in Rome proper. Roman citizens had, therefore, representation. Citizenship throughout the empire had certain qualifications, and there were differing levels of it, as well. Merely coming from some city on the Italian peninsula wasn’t enough to qualify someone as a full citizen of the empire. A full citizen was born in Rome, and, in this day and age, could be either male or female (an influence, Adam knew, from the Gallic and Gothic tribes that had become so much a part of the Empire). That being said, in antiquity, a requirement for citizenship had been enough income to own and maintain at least one slave for a household. Today, slavery was still legal in much of Europa, Africa, and Caesaria Australis, though not in Germania, Britannia, or Gaul. Here in Caesaria Aquilonis, it had been officially abolished in . . . 1943 AC, he thought. Something like that.

  So there were patricians in Rome, represented by the Senate. There were non-noble citizens in Rome, who mostly represented by the Plebian Council and their elected Tribune. And then there were the provinces. People who lived in provinces, such as southern Italia, Sicily, Gaul, Germania, and Australia, had limited, regional self-rule, with Roman-appointed governors to hold the laws of the Empire in place. They were represented on the imperial level through the Plebian Council, to whom they sent elected or appointed delegates on a yearly basis. Subject kingdoms, such as Britannia, Judea, Egypt, and Carthage, had, over centuries of negotiation, won larger degrees of autonomy, but their people were still nominally subjects of Rome. They, too, sent delegates to the large and fractious Plebian Council. Nova Germania and Novo Gaul had been directly settled by Germanic and Gallic tribes under the auspices of Rome; they, like Britannia, had been permitted limited self-rule, and were on the Plebian Council. Tawantinsuyu had negotiated an alliance, and had a Roman governor, but some degree of autonomy, while Nahautl and the Quechan provinces had been conquered, hundreds of years ago, and were under the direct administration of Roman governors to this day, with significantly less self-rule.

  Adam was aware of the grumbling all through the Empire, that it was hardly fair for half the world to be under the control of fewer than a hundred old patrician families who happened to have been born inside a tiny region on a small peninsula in Europa. But the truth of the matter was that the Senate only had so much power. The Emperor had more in many respects, and, over the centuries, the Plebian Council had accrued quite a bit. The Senate in its current incarnation existed as an . . . intermediary of sorts . . . between the Emperor and the Plebian Council. They existed to check the power of the tribunes, had the power to rubber-stamp most imperial appointments, and certain positions. . . such as the aediles for Rome itself. . . could only be held by a patrician. Outside of Rome proper? Anyone could be an aedile, depending on local laws and ordinances. If local law said that the person in charge of distributing tax revenues to public works was open to anyone, and that it was an elected position, that’s what it was.

  It was an odd, cobbled-together system, one that sat atop centuries of precedents and evolutionary turns, but it allowed regions of the Empire breathing room . . . while everyone still contributed to the whole. There were the core Roman Legions, for example, but every subject nation contributed levies of troops to the Foreign Legions. Judea’s Legion levies were sometimes distributed through other Foreign Legion units . . . always a possibility, when doing one’s required years of service, as it was considered good for there to be some cross-pollination of cultures between the various legions . . . but the bulk of their levy forces remained in Judea, in the Judean Defense Forces. They had legion ranks, and were considered a part of the Legion, as a whole, but they were typically called the JDF by people within their province.

  Rome still had a strong bias for nobility among its officer corps, but nations like Judea and Britannia and Gaul and Germania made merit and education the standard for determining who an officer should be. Adam had been one himself, during his years of service on the Judean border, on Domitanus’ Wall—one of only two structures on the planet large enough to be se
en from space. It ran from Judea, walling them off from the lands of Assyria and Media, up along the border of Persia and Rome, up through Asia Minor, along the Mongol border, as well. On the northern border, where Rome butted up against Raccia, Rome had decided that it was more cost-effective in the long run to put together a string of forts without walls. They couldn’t continue the wall far enough north that the Mongols couldn’t just ride through Raccia and swing around to the south and attack Asia Minor . . . so the best option simply became manpower, communications, and even minefields, as technology developed. And enough mages to counter the Mongol shamans, as needed.

  So Adam sat and watched the news with a slightly jaundiced eye, shaking his head over the protestors in Xunantunich, all holding signs in Quecha and Latin, demanding an end to a Roman occupation that had already lasted for centuries. “Yes . . . that’s going to get results,” he told the far-viewer, and turned the device off, preparing to go to bed. As he’d told Sigrun, an hour or two before . . . they’d have a very long day tomorrow.

  ______________________

  Martius 5, 1954 AC

  Frittigil Chatti huddled in the small lean-to into which she’d been shoved after being removed from the motorcar’s trunk, in which she’d spent the last several hours of her trip . . . wherever she was. The thirteen-year-old was colder than she could ever remember being. The shed was made out of branches, and had been covered with canvas and some sod to keep out the wind, but was so low that she couldn’t have stood up, even if her hands and feet hadn’t been hobbled together by lengths of braided sinew. The tough leather cut into her wrists, and she couldn’t tell if her fingers were numb from the cold, or from the loss of circulation.

  She’d peeked out, cautiously, an hour ago, to see what she could see, and had found the backside of one of her guards positioned right at the entrance. She knew they had guns. Muskets, but a bullet could move a lot faster than she could. She’d inspected the back and sides of the lean-to, looking for a way that she could dig her way out, but as soon as she’d started scraping at the dirt, the guard had come in, slapped her, and told her that if she tried that again, he’d break her fingers. Fritti had barely comprehended the words, but she’d nodded, earnest with terror, when he’d asked if she now understood her position.

  So . . . she couldn’t dig her way out. She couldn’t slip past the guard. And she was tied at hands and wrists, with a length of cord keeping them knotted together. Fritti had tried to be brave at the start of it all, when the men had gotten out of the motorcar in Marcomanni, and, holding a map, had asked her for directions to a hotel nearby. They’d been strangers, with heavy accents in Latin. They’d been dressed oddly. Everyone she knew wore some leather—vests, jerkins, trousers, whatever—but these men had worn leather skirts wrapped around their waists and had had shaved heads. What hair they had left pomaded with something that smelled like cooking fat into a thick spike at the center of their scalps. She’d assumed they were Nahautl who didn’t have the distinctive tattoos, colorful cloaks, or earplugs. Her parents had raised her to be kind to strangers, and helpful to those in need. What possible harm could there be in giving someone directions, when they were lost?

  The back of her head still hurt from where one of them had hit her with a short club. All she’d known at the time was a searing white shock of pain, and then darkness . . . followed by awakening someplace dark. Not tied up, but jostling everywhere, with the smell of vulcanized rubber tires and machine oil. The hum of a ley-powered engine.

  They’d never told her their names. Never told her why she was their prisoner. Never talked to her beyond telling her to get out of the trunk and to go ahead and relieve her bowels . . . while one of them watched to make sure she didn’t run away. She could hear them talking in the front of the car—the shapes of the words were foreign, but she could hear them through the seat, from the trunk. And when they’d arrived here . . . wherever here was . . . they’d shoved her into this lean-to. Had women come and dress her as if she were one of them. A shaman had arrived, and mumbled some sort of prayer over here, and then they’d bound her hands and feet, and left her here.

  A timid voice at the entrance caught her ear, and she looked up eagerly from where she was curled up in a small ball, shaking from the cold. Then a woman carrying a stone lamp with a single burning wick ducked into the shed, and set a bowl of . . . meat? Some sort of thick stew? . . . on the ground. “Eat,” the woman said, briefly. Her accent in Latin was thick, and she didn’t look at Fritti, keeping her eyes on the ground, as if shamed . . . or afraid.

  “What is it?”

  “Bison. Usually, only hunters—only men—can eat this. You are privileged.” She turned to leave.

  “Please stay. Please tell me why they’re doing this to me. I didn’t do anything wrong. . . .” Fritti tried not to cry. She was from Marcomanni. She shouldn’t weep. But she was thirteen, and very, very far from home. “I didn’t do anything. . . .”

  The woman still wouldn’t look at her. “One of the men dreamed of you. He knew he would know you when he saw you, and he did. So they took you.”

  Fritti had just scooped a mouthful of stew up, and now, couldn’t swallow as her eyes rounded. Her muffled sound of consternation didn’t make the woman laugh. “Don’t worry. Your virginity won’t be threatened, Marcomanni.” The woman still looked away. “You will be given to the Morning Star. It is a . . . very great honor. One that has not been given in hundreds of years.”

  Fritti’s stomach clenched on the food, and suddenly, though she didn’t understand a word that the woman said, she wasn’t hungry anymore. Instead, she was even more afraid.

  “Eat it. Do not waste any of it.” The woman turned and left, and darkness filled the shed once more. Fritti couldn’t see the stew, which tasted as if someone had taken dried, salted meat and let it soften somewhat in warm water with. . . cornmeal mush and maybe squash of some sort. At least it was warm. She finished the food with her clumsy, bound hands, and curled back up again, keeping her hands against her chest to prevent frostbite, and shivered. Wondering what morning would bring.

  ______________________

  Martius 6, 1954 AC

  Sigrun awoke with a start, just before dawn, and sat up, shedding blankets. She’d left the room’s radiator off; a blanket was fine, but more than that, and hotel rooms tended to get stuffy. She stared at the window, and dawn’s first gray light, unblinking for a moment, and then stood, digging in her suitcase. Today was Tiwasdaeg . . . Tuesday, as people in Novo Germania tended to slur the word, or dies Martis, by the Roman calendar. Even without the possibility of having to fight a battle today, it was Tyr’s day, which meant that she needed to wear her regalia.

  She braided her hair, and knotted it neatly at the nape of her neck. Nothing for an enemy to grab, here. No jeans today; brown leather breeches, well-worn and broken in, so that they flexed with her legs easily. One of her usual leather bodices, and a padded tunic over that, to keep her skin from being scratched and chafed by the next layer. . . . which was ring-mail. Fine-gauged steel wire, looped and woven, in a shirt that hung past her hips . . . a solid forty pounds of weight that she bore easily, being used to it. Knee-high boots, flat, with rubber soles with heavy tread, for traction even in the worst of footing, and ankle support. Poleyns and greaves, buckled in place for knee and shin protection, the greaves positioned over the boots. No long, heavy, binding cloak today; she needed to be able to move. She rarely felt the cold anyway. But she did need to wear her feathered cloak.

  Her last partner in the Praetorians, Cunomorinus Villu, a Gaul from Nimes, southwest of here, along the coast of the Pacifica, had referred to the cloak as her chicken-suit. He’d frequently told her, laughing, that it looked Polynesian, somehow. It was made of white swan feathers, and hung just to her hips. When Sigrun wore this, and carried a spear, it meant that she was on the official business of Tyr. Going about her god’s work.

  Or, as today, that it happened to be a Tiwasdaeg.

  An
d today, when she might be facing combat? She left her room carrying a light helmet, which had cheek and nose pieces, but left her eyes and lower jaw uncovered. It was solid, high-quality steel. It might not stop a well-aimed round from a Judean sniper rifle, but it would definitely stop a musket ball or an arrow, and offered protection from shrapnel and slashing weapons.

  Padding down the hall, she nodded to Ptah-ases, the lictor on duty outside the propraetor’s door. The Ptolemaic shaved his head daily, oiled his dark skin for protection, and wore kohl around his eyes, for much the same reason. He was also in remarkably good shape for a man in his mid-forties, lean and agile. At the moment, he gave her a narrow-eyed look, and then allowed himself the faintest curl of a smile, teeth white in his dark face, before running one hand over his perfectly smooth scalp. “You were busy last night, weren’t you, valkyrie?”

  Gentle needling. Ptah-ases was one of the most skilled sorcerers she’d known in all her years in the Praetorian Guard, and did her the courtesy of not treating her any differently than any other subject of the empire. Sigrun grimaced. “One of your countryman was drunk, and making an ass of himself in public. I apologize for any extra attention this accrues to us. But other than to the local gardia, Adam and I didn’t identify ourselves as members of the Guard, or lictors.” She kept her voice down, and glanced around, making sure that the various travelers leaving their rooms this morning, and the maids serving the various rooms with breakfasts and newspapers on trolleys, weren’t listening to her words.

  Ptah-ases snorted. “From what I heard, the man had it coming. Most Atenists aren’t like that, I hasten to point out.” He chuckled. “I’m not. I fully acknowledge that my faith was defunct until the eighteenth century, when the old writings were recovered. For me, it’s a personal choice about worshipping whatever lies beyond the gods of this world—whatever created them. I don’t even need to give it a name. I don’t feel a need to get belligerent about it.”