The Valkyrie (The Saga of Edda-Earth Book 1) Page 7

  The fact that the farmers of Novo Gaul had domesticated bison around twelve hundred years ago, and wanted to protect the herds that they maintained was therefore another source of conflict between the peoples of the region. It was apparently somewhat common for a private herd to be mistaken for a wild one, and stampeded towards pit traps. Whether this was out of genuine error on the part of the hunters or not, was a matter for the local courts and imperial adjudicators.

  One of the tribal elders, an outspoken priest, had recently and loudly spoken against farming, and had stated that any agriculture more than the subsistence agriculture practiced by his people was simply a means by which people raped the earth, their mother, and forced her to give them her bounty. Adam didn’t follow the logic, but it was a matter of belief, and thus, not his concern.

  What was his concern were the half-dozen visible hunters who now emerged from the tall prairie grass, all under arms, and moved to block the road. Several did carry muskets . . . old-fashioned, but more than enough to punch through the windows of the Arma . . . and Adam slowed the motorcar to a halt. “We’re not getting out, correct?” he asked, tersely. “The vehicle’s almost like an embassy. Roman soil.

  “I’d prefer to keep metal around us as long as possible,” Ptah advised. “I can reinforce the walls and windows. I do better with solid matter already in place, instead of having to force air to change states.”

  “The approach I take will depend greatly on what tack they take with me,” Livorus told them all, with unruffled calm. “I’m willing to give up a certain amount of my dignity, and the dignity of Rome, if it gets the girl back alive, and if it soothes some rather strained relations in the region.”

  “Strained,” Sigrun said, and snorted.

  Adam didn’t even need to ask why. The Marcomanni had a strongly warlike past, just as most of the other Gothic tribes did. That one of their children had been kidnapped, and might yet be sacrificed, if the informant from within the tribe was at all accurate? Might motivate that entire subprovince to take up arms and march. Other cities, like Cimbri might follow suit. Novo Gaul wouldn’t appreciate the intrusion, but they’d probably overlook it, in the interests of peaceful relations with their provincial neighbor . . . and probably wouldn’t even weep to have the hunters of this small kingdom eliminated. All without even having to dirty their own hands. “If this is a provocation,” Adam muttered under his breath, “it’s stupid.” They’d discussed this ad nauseum on the way here. The possibility of this being a set-up was real. “There are fewer than ten thousand Chahiksichahiks. How are they going to stand against the wrath of the Empire?”

  “Not just them,” Sigrun replied, shrugging, and sat forwards in her seat, one hand on her door, ready to exit the vehicle, if needed. “Maybe they want to inspire all the old tribes to remember who they are. There’s been a lot of intermarriage in the last fourteen hundred years. Most of the old tribes are . . . integrated.” She frowned, watching the hunters approach the car, their weapons on their shoulders. Her left hand moved down, between the seats, to the spear she’d brought with her, the butt of which rested on the backseat, beside Livorus. “No. Wrong word. Dissolved. Like salt in water. You can’t look at someone from Marcomanni and tell who has Chalahgawtha blood and who doesn’t.” She shook her head. “There are only a few of these petty kingdoms that hold to the old ways. Some of them are quite modern within their lands, with cities and industry, and trade between themselves and the Roman provinces. Maybe the Chahiksichahiks want people to . . . remember.”

  “No way to tell without further information,” Livorus said, his tone clipped. “Silence now.”

  The lead hunter reached the driver’s side door, and reached out to tap imperatively on the glass. Adam unrolled the window, and looked up at the man, studying him quickly. A shaved head, except for a single long, black scalp lock, stiffened with some sort of pomade and tied back from his face; a leather jerkin; and skirt-like flaps of leather wrapped around the man’s waist, which rode over elaborately cross-tied leather leggings. Various amulets and charms wrapped around the man’s neck, and the man carried his musket over his shoulder with an ease that bespoke long familiarity with the weapon. The dark eyes were hard, however, and Adam took that as his measure of the man. No love of outsiders. Well enough. I’ve stood guard at a wall between my people and outsiders, myself.

  “State your business,” the man said, his Latin accented, but clear.

  “We bring the propraetor of Rome,” Adam said now, tersely. “He is to meet with your elders. We attempted to make contact this morning, by calling your embassy in Ponca, but no one there answered the telephone.” Modern technology was apparently forbidden within the Chahiksichahiks’ territory. Those who were sent out to deal with the rest of the world were permitted to use it, but only to placate outsiders. That . . . irritated Adam, but he supposed it was probably the people’s choice. Then again, how many of the people here have an actual voice in what their leaders decide, I wonder? I don’t think this is a democracy. “Please stand aside and allow us to pass.”

  “No further,” the man informed them all. “No motorcars on our land. Shaman says they will bring evil spirits with them.”

  “We have no summoners with us,” Ptah-ases put in, mildly. “We bring no spirits with us.”

  The man shook his head again, his face set in stern lines.

  Adam wasn’t sure if the man accepted the words of his shaman at face value, or if this was simply an excuse being given to make the propraetor of Rome walk onto their lands. “Sir?” Adam deferred, politely, to Livorus.

  “It’s their land. We’ll play nicely for the moment,” Livorus said, and gestured at the window.

  Adam rolled it back up again, as Livorus asked now, tightly, “Ptah?”

  “I can protect you propraetor, but the rest of us are going to be on our own,” the Egyptian replied curtly, picking up a bag and preparing to sling it over his shoulder. Adam could feel the tingle of magic being worked as the sorcerer drew in his will, and the air around them rippled, just for an instant. “I could try to expand the shield, but I can’t guarantee that I’ll be able to catch all the musket balls. They move rather quickly.”

  “Keep your shield focused on the propraetor,” Sigrun said. ‘The rest of us are paid to be shot at periodically.

  Adam snorted and removed the key from the ignition, then opened the door and kept it between his body and the hunters. He kept his movements slow, too, as he saw them lower their weapons into firing position. Behind him, Ptah got out of the car, ahead of Livorus, who was followed out by Ehecatl. Each of the lictors formed a living wall around the Roman man, who wore, on this most formal of occasions, an actual toga, with purple trim. The toga was not often worn outside of the Italian peninsula anymore; it was a drafty and impractical garment for modern life. That being said? Meeting with a head of state always called for formal attire.

  In his left hand, Livorus held a bundle of sticks. The fasces. As much a symbol of Rome as the eagle was. In ancient times, the lictors had carried these for consuls and magistrates. In the modern era, bodyguards needed their hands free for guns and magic . . . . and membership in the Praetorians had been opened to provincials in the past two hundred years. Allowing a non-Roman to carry the fasces was considered . . . improper. Thus, the propraetor carried Rome with him, wherever he went. “Sigrun, my dear? At my right, if you would? Adam, lead us out,” Livorus murmured, and met the eyes of the hunters squarely. “If you’d be good enough to escort us to your king? I have business with Lesharo today.”

  The words rather squarely took the armed escort that would surely have been imposed on them anyway . . . and turned them into an honor guard that Livorus had requested—no, even expected—as his due. Even using the name of their chief elder had power. It put Livorus on an equal footing with the king of these people, at the very least. Adam kept his smile from reaching further than his eyes, and made sure he could reach his revolver. There were too many guns around him
, and now that he was out of the car, he could see signs and symbols etched on the muskets. Gothic runes. Imported enchantments. Imported technology. So they allow this, but not modern conveniences. Things that would give their people more information, like far-viewers and telephones. Two points just create a line, though, not a pattern. He wasn’t enough of a scholar to tell if the spells on the weapons were potent or not, but a gun was, in the end, a gun. They could all kill perfectly well, magic or no magic.

  Their escort took them, by foot, two or three miles further along the dirt road. Adam’s senses were on edge, as he strained for any sign that they were about to be attacked, but he kept his face blank, devoid of all expression. He could smell smoke, and, in the distance, he spotted a row of low hills, and his eyebrows rose slightly, as he spotted lean-tos around those hummocks of earth. That would be the village, then. Adam could see dozens of small fields around the hills—just-planted corn, perhaps, and what might have been squash vines, but no wheat, that he could see. That priest’s denunciation was not of their own farming, but the farming of the Gauls. The plow as a form of rape. And yet . . . it’s another way of controlling their own people, isn’t it? Adam grimaced internally. He was supposed to be as neutral in his observations as he could be. But it was hard to see elderly women scratching out rows in the earth with bone hoes. There was nothing charming about hard labor, no matter how contemporary writers liked to romanticize it.

  He was also aware of Gallic and Gothic traditions that called for a ‘Great Marriage,’ between the land to be plowed in spring, and the people who would work it. It was ritualized, symbolic, and respectful; the Gauls and Goths also had hunting traditions and hunting deities as well. The priest’s denunciation thus sounded . . . heavily political. Setting up an antithesis: we are hunters, and therefore more in touch with the gods and the world than our neighbors, who are farmers.

  From an outsider’s perspective, such as his own? It sounded as if someone wanted to re-enact the transition from the Neolithic era to the Bronze Age, all over again. Wanted the hunter-gathering Neolithic tribes to go fight against their farming neighbors, with their bronze swords and armor. That first long awakening into written history had taken centuries of bloodshed in Europa, Asia, and the Fertile Crescent, if scholars and historians who studied such things were to be believed. So why would anyone want to re-create that division point? Especially if they happened to be on the inevitably-losing side? Irrational.

  That line of analysis led him back to Sigrun’s comments over breakfast. It could be political. It could be an effort to dance just close enough to the edge of provocation to inspire the other petty kingdoms of this land to unite behind the Chahiksichahiks. Behind history, honor, and tradition. But something just didn’t smell right about this to Adam.

  Dozens, even hundreds of faces, suspicious and grim, peered at them out of tunnel entrances that led into man-made hills. The Chahiksichahiks were mound-dwellers. They knew the weather of these plains, and built underground lodgings, rather than risk having their possessions, or even their lives, wrenched from them by a cyclone. Adam kept an eye on them all, the spot between his shoulder blades begin to itch as he felt, more than saw, people emerging from their mound-homes, and filling in the road behind them. “Steady,” Livorus said, again, in Latin.

  They’d just reached the largest of the mounds, and one of their escorts gestured for them to enter through the long, low tunnel. “This is the dwelling of Lesharo. I will go and give word of your arrival,” the hunter who’d spoken before told them, his face impassive.

  “I give you thanks for your careful escort,” Livorus addressed the man directly, and without any irony that Adam could detect. “I will commend you to your king for your courtesy in your treatment of my lictors and myself.”

  The man didn’t change expression, but vanished into the tunnel mouth. “And now the waiting game commences,” Ptah-ases commented in Hellene. The language was almost as good as a code on this side of the world. “They may put off permitting us to enter for as long as courtesy permits, and test our patience so.”

  “Unless, of course, the king and the elders truly know nothing of recent events,” Ehecatl returned, slowly, and carefully, in the same language. A school-boy’s diction.

  “They may simply wish to see a propraetor squat in the dirt outside their homes. To prove that they can humble Rome.” Sigrun’s Hellene was as fluid as water passing over stones.

  Livorus again held up a hand for silence. ”Ptah? Do you have my chair in your pack?”

  “Of course, sir.” Ptah-ases unslung the bag he’d carried from the car, and removed its contents, assembling a curule seat, the backless chair reserved for patricians of Rome. He set it up in the road, and asked, “Would you like for me to arrange for some shade, sir?”

  “No, the morning sun is pleasant. This interlude provides me a chance to review notes and dossiers. If you’d be so kind?” Livorus held out a hand, and Ptah removed several folders filled with foolscap from the bag as well, handing them to the propraetor as he now sat, perfectly calm and at his ease in the morning sun. Ehecatl and Ptah now turned to face the rear, while Sigrun and Adam remained at attention, facing front. Faces stolid, revealing nothing, the lictors guarded Livorus as the propraetor thumbed through his notes, as at ease as if ensconced in his office. “Do keep in mind,” he added, calmly, in Latin, and loudly enough for the Chahiksichahiks around them to hear, clearly, “that discourtesy is often a tactic used to throw negotiators off the game. An attempt to irritate a diplomat into bad decisions and missteps. Be easy, my friends.”

  From the uncomfortable shifting around them, Adam was somehow certain that Livorus had hit the mark.

  After forty minutes, the lead Chahiksichahik hunter re-appeared, stating, impassively, “Lesharo and the elders will receive you now.” The wording clearly suggested that Livorus was here as a petitioner.

  As they moved forwards towards the earthen mound, however, Adam felt his steps slow, subconscious reluctance shackling his feet. A hand landed on Adam’s shoulder from behind, and he tensed. And then Livorus himself, that steadying hand on his lictor’s shoulder, pressed him further forwards. Adam eyed the mound, swallowed, and ducked his head to enter the tunnel. It looked a little too much like a tomb for his tastes. And brought back very bad memories. Taking refuge from a Persian attack in one of the forts along Domitanus’ Wall, panting as he and five other men ducked into a pillbox-like structure, peering cautiously out of one of the windows. Seeing the bodies of dozens of other Judean soldiers on the ground outside, scattered there by an explosion, or a djinn attack . . . only to find a fist slamming through the barricaded window. Recoiling, firing his pistol at it, but the hand and the arm it was attached to, moved like a whip, reaching around, bending at unnatural angles, blindly groping for and finding the throat of one of his companions. Dragging the man, screaming, into the narrow window, ramming him, head-first, into the iron bars there.

  Hands. More hands, all reaching up and gripping, ripping. Tearing at his fellow soldier, tearing at the iron bars set in the ancient stone wall . . . . Confusion, consternation as Adam and his fellows dragged the soldier away . . . which gave one of the ghul at the window all the opening it needed to wiggle and worm its way through an aperture far too small for a healthy man to fit through. Bonelessly squirming through, its flesh compressing and even tearing off on the jagged remains of the iron bars that the masses of hands had snapped away . . . and then the ghul had stood and attacked the defenders, even as another of its fellows birthed itself through the window. And another. And another.

  Malicious awareness in the dead eyes, even as Adam had fired his gun at the damned thing, over and over again. Screaming from the other men in his squad as a place of safety suddenly became a nightmare, nothing but arms and hands tearing, teeth ripping in the darkness, suddenly not being able to shoot, because every one of the ghul had a Judean soldier in its grasp . . . breaking arms, twisting necks, and still the ghul came. Most of them
still wearing their Judean uniforms, horribly enough, because a Persian magi saw bodies on the ground as an opportunity. Magi and other summoners could cram either elemental or demonic spirits into a body, a host vessel of some sort. Elemental spirits tended to be confused by dead human bodies. They needed direction. Demonic spirits? Self-willed, malevolent, and powerful to begin with? Were incredibly difficult to leash . . . not that most magi cared to leash them, other than to keep them from attacking their own forces.

  Adam took a deep breath, reminded himself that he was half a world away from Judea, and strode into the mound, putting the image of hands reaching out of the darkness out of his mind.

  The heart of the mound was actually spacious enough for about forty or fifty people to live, if they weren’t picky about how crowded they were, with a hard-packed earthen floor, and a hole in the roof through which smoke from the fire pit at the center of the mound could escape. It was warm under the earth, sheltered from the cold of Martius outside, and filled, as it was, with living bodies. Small stone lamps burned at the edges of the circular room, where various people were engaged in handiwork of various types, and Adam could smell the press of bodies, and the remains of the morning meal, thick in the air around him.

  The tribe’s chief, Lesharo, sat with the rest of his advisors around the glowing coals of the banked fire pit. There were a half-dozen men around the fire-pit; to Adam’s surprise, most of them looked somewhat younger than he’d expected, none older than forty, besides the man who was obviously their leader. Lesharo had a hawk-like face, and iron-gray hair, but seemed older than Livorus, perhaps in his early sixties.