He could sense but not see Reginleif, as she wreathed herself with invisibility, so that the gunners couldn’t fire on her until she was on her target. The siren screamed, shattering the glass canopy of the Roman helicopter, but not the eardrums of the pilot or the gunners, mostly because they wore protective ear covers. That didn’t stop the erstwhile valkyrie, who caught the upper edge of the metal canopy with her fingers and swung in with her legs, kicking the pilot in the head with both of her boots, before landing more or less in his lap. Harpy talons closed on the man’s carotid artery, while the people aboard were still scrambling for their sidearms. A red spray of blood painted the shattered remnants of the windows, and then Reginleif was out the other side, face red with blood before turning herself invisible once more, leaving the helicopter wobbling uncertainly in the air as the men inside scrabbled desperately for the controls.
The other harpies carried grenades with them, or small packs of chemical explosives, which they looped up and planted, again, on the undercarriages of the helicopters. “Clear below!” Reginleif cried, her voice carrying through the gunfire and the explosions. “Clear!” At her clarion call, the Picts and other defenders fell back . . . leaving the helicopters to fall mostly on their own troops.
With their aerial allies out of the way, Nith and Sigrun moved back in, and the storm came with them. His deathfrost breath caught one helicopter, stalling its engine and rotors; it fell like a stone, while Sigrun’s lightning slammed two others, sending them in smoking ruins to the ground. Bullets and rockets shattered themselves on the shield she maintained around them until finally, one of the missiles got through, scoring his side. It didn’t matter. Pain is fleeting. He leaped upwards in the sky, heading for the fighters that had been hesitating to fire so far, because all their targets were engaged with their own helicopters. He felt a shudder wrack his frame as he left sound itself behind him, felt Sigrun holding on with all her strength. Clouds formed overhead, and lightning struck the jets. Air currents lashed at their wings, and freezing rain and hail began to fall, coating the wings. Each of the Roman fighters was equipped with technomantic gear on the wings designed to protect them from this kind of weather event, but they required a moment or two to free the maneuvering flaps . . . and the lightning, wind, and freezing rain didn’t give them that chance.
Neither did Nith. The pilots fought the controls, rolling away, showing the jet’s belly . . . and that gave Nith his chance. He matched course and speed, belly-to-belly with the first jet, and latched onto it with three-foot-long diamond talons, feeling metal and tubing shred at his touch. The spurt of hydraulic fluid, like the blood of a great beast. And then he released it and flipped end-for-end in the air, diving backwards for the ground away from it, before pivoting upwards once more, and aiming for his next target. This second plane’s pilot had managed to keep control of his vehicle in spite of the hurricane-force winds lashing his wings, and now launched two air-to-air missiles at him, which Sigrun again slapped away with seiðr. Nith bared diamond fangs and exhaled at close range, clogging the jet intakes with frozen air, and tail-slapped the plane, hard, on his way past, shattering the pilot’s canopy as the jet plummeted towards the ground.
Among the trees, the Roman technomancers countered. Tried to catch the fires already spat from the flamethrowers of the infantry, and spread it. Tried to hold shields over their troops, but Saraid and her son, Maccis, and a dozen fenris overran their positions. The fenris howled as fire crawled along their bodies, but Saraid shrugged off the flames and closed her jaws on this sorcerer or that, shaking them until they stilled. Another enclave of sorcerers reached up into the skies, and tried to solidify the air around the lindworms, who plummeted, with their riders. Faces freeze-burned, at least wherever the riders’ helmets hadn’t protected them, and the riders and beasts nearly suffocated, or broke bones on impact.
Then the technomancer tried the same trick on Nith and Sigrun.
Nith laughed silently, and Sigrun shattered the shell around them, and they plunged like a spear hurled at the earth . . . only to see Truthsayer leading a group of Pictish and Nipponese battle-mages in an attack of her own, the Grass-Cutting Sword in her hand as she and the other sorcerers seined the nitrogen out of the in the air around the Roman casters, leaving nothing but pure oxygen around them . . . and then tossed a spark their way.
Nith’s frost-breath was, in that moment, a mercy.
The methods of combat had changed. The danger never really had. And the aftermath . . . Nith could only watch as Sigrun moved among the wounded. Removing bullets and healing shattered bones. Repairing skin that had been freeze-burned, and helping to burn the bodies of the dead. The Legion’s forward advance had been blunted, but there would be more soldiers. More tanks. More guns. Thank you, Saraid told them that evening, giving Sigrun an embrace. Both of you. I remember when Rome’s soldiers first came to my forest, centuries ago. They were . . . unwilling to surrender or retreat. My people survived by attacking from the shelter of my trees. Guerilla warfare. We will do it again, if it is necessary. But I wish that it will not be.
The Emperor has spoken of bringing back the custom of decimation. His troops may fear to surrender. Nith’s tone was distant. This first encounter, they required a certain amount of shock, in order to engender awe. If they know in their hearts that they cannot win? If they are so disheartened by the fact that retreat means death at the hands of their own fellows, and so demoralized to know that advance means death at our hands . . . they may be willing to entertain thoughts of surrender on the morrow. Or the next day. It will not come easily, Lady of the Wilds.
It did not come easily in the past, either. They advanced into the lands of my people, and were driven back, again and again, until the truce was made between the gods of both peoples, and between the humans on each side. Saraid’s tone was sad. But none of that matters now.
Sigrun gave the forest spirit a quick, shy embrace. It may come to matter again. When the madness has burned itself out. Take heart, my friend. The world has not yet ended.
Niðhoggr had expected Sigrun to wish to return to the Jerusalem house, since they were only a hundred miles or so away. No. At the moment, I consider myself to be in the field, she told him, when he inquired, tentatively, on the subject, as she tossed a bedroll on the ground beside his bulk, not far from the bonfire that the Picts had started, using deadfall from the trees around them. Aside from which, Adam has told me to go and be a goddess. I have given him the option to . . . be able to fight again, at my side. Trennus offered him the same..
. . . as did I, Nith told her, tentatively, as she lay on the ground beside him.
The words made her sit up, turn, and stare at him. You did?
I offered to soul-bind him. To give to him of my essence.
Shock from her, the blue-white of her essence rippling, overlain by the silver glow that was her seiðr, and the darkness of night that always enveloped her. Why did you do so?
Nith hesitated. He couldn’t tell her the whole of it. But he could give her the central truth. For that I thought it would make you glad. For that it might remove the sorrow from your heart.
She looked down, and Nith delicately placed one murderous claw on her shoulder. He refused, she replied, her tone dull.
Yes. He did. I told him that he would be subject to me, but that I would require nothing of him, but that he give you joy.
Sigrun sighed. He will never change his mind.
No. I doubt very much that he will. Perhaps in extremis. Perhaps on his deathbed. Again, nothing but truth. Though he hated to renew what he thought a false hope, and leave her still unable to move, either forwards or backwards.
He is proud of who and what he is, what he has accomplished. Sigrun leaned back against his side. He could barely feel her slight weight against his scales. Of what his people have accomplished, without magic. He forbore to repeat his previous words on the nature of pride to her. And yet . . . he never turned from magic, once he came to understand i
t. He had Kanmi and Min enchant his bullets. He made full use of Tren’s spirit contacts, and never hesitated to employ ley-magic in combat. He uses Caliburn. Frustration in her tone. Why is this so different?
Those were actions that profited more than just himself, Nith told her, after a long moment. He sees accepting immortality as a selfish act.
A ripple passed through his form, and he went silent. He did not say that he thought that Steelsoul’s hesitation on the matter was, in its way, a form of selfishness. Accepting immortality just to extend your own life at the expense of another might be selfish, but choosing to live for another? Was, in a way, a form of sacrifice. A pleasant one, perhaps, but sacrifice, nonetheless. Inflicting this hurt on Sigrun but not releasing her was cruelty, in Nith’s opinion. It forced her, every time they met, to feel the death creeping through Steelsoul—and how could she not, with her valkyrie senses? And who could blame her for hesitating before she embraced him, when his mortality hissed at her?
His actions forced her to choose, every time they met, between speaking of the matter again, which could drive him further away from the decision, and not speaking of it, which could be construed as lack of love.
In Nith’s opinion, refusing the soul-bindings and refusing Worldwalker’s offer of refuge in the Veil were quiet choices of suicide. He had nothing against suicide; it was accepted in his people’s culture as a valid remedy for intolerable grief or loss of honor. Reginleif, for example, could certainly commit suicide, and cleanse her honor and her name . . . though Loki appeared to have forbidden this, for unknown reasons. Two hundred years of service, ten years as Hel’s tool, a series of bad decisions . . . and an eternity of atonement. Nith didn’t feel sorry for Reginleif . . . but he did understand her. More than he could understand Adam ben Maor.
Nith shifted his bulk, and stared up at the stars, listening to Sigrun’s breathing as she began to doze beside him. The sound of the fire’s crackling, the mourning and celebration throughout the rest of the camp. No change from ancient times, here, either. It seems simple to me. He has rejected her, as a goddess. He will only accept her on his terms—those of their mortal contract. In honor, he should release her from their bond. He should tell her that while he loves her, he chooses mortality, and that if he ever changes his mind, he will contact her.
But instead, every time they meet, I see hope flicker in her heart . . . only to die. His hold on his humanity has become a reproach to her, for having accepted her divine spark. The acceptance that let her hear me. The acceptance that lets us fight together as two halves of the same whole. His train of thought had been diverted, and Nith recalled himself. It didn’t matter. How long before seeing him becomes as much a punishment, a penance, as every visit to her sister is? His hold on her is crippling her, but he will not let go. Because he still loves her. And she will not leave, because she cannot live with the guilt if she does. And while we do not have time for him to die a natural death, still we must all recapitulate again and again the long, slow, inevitable farewell, as love dies, and its ashes are pored over and divined for meaning. Because he cannot let go of her, and she is unable to leave. Nith exhaled frost, and looked up at the sky again. But in fairness, were I him, I would not wish to be alone and poor, after having been so rich.
But then, were I him, I would have bound myself to her, without hesitation. Then again . . . I am older than young Steelsoul. By the time I was his age, my progenitor had bent me into this form for decades, and had been refusing me food for twenty or thirty years. Those were my lessons in pain. And these? These are hers. He looked down from the stars, saw that Sigrun’s blankets had slipped down from her, and used a single claw to pull them back up again. And yet, we are changing her sister’s future. I know, in my heart, with all the force of pre-memory . . . that if she had not accepted her divine spark . . . she would not have heard my voice until Steelsoul died. She shut out her divinity, and me with it, and thus I would have spent thirty years unheard. I will not regret that she can hear me now.
Something tickled at his mind, and he grasped at it. Tried to bring it to the surface. It seemed to him that he had forgotten something. Something important. Vastly so. But he couldn’t bring it fully into focus. Something to do with the nature of time and the Veil? Something to do with pre-memory’s whispering voice, which was never very strong with him, but had stirred in him when he had first seen Stormborn in the Odinhall. Something that had already happened.
Something that would already always have happened . . . . ?
Nith exhaled again. He couldn’t bring the thought to clarity. Ah, well. The only lessons we learn, are those learned in pain. And then he looked back up at the stars again. They had been his companions for two thousand years. They had heard him, when he was forbidden to speak to anyone else. When he had cast out his heart to anything and anyone who would listen, begging them to release him from the existence he endured, bound to Hel.
And who was to say, that the stars, the universe itself, had not listened? He had companions now. Trust and loyalty that were not merely things to be observed in humans—or broken in humans—but given to him. Dignity and self-worth. And all those things, Sigrun had given to him.
Nith did not complain when Saraid, a week later, begged them to come to the villa of the king, and the youngest Matrugena children once more climbed all over him. He even settled down in the courtyard at his full size, and let them use his body as a slide, while resting his head, carefully, on the roof of the villa, to enjoy the warm sunlight over the Caledonian Woods. The shrieking and laughter of the children did not bother him.
It was far better than hearing them sob, wretchedly, for their mothers, as they clung to a motionless body in the middle of a muddy track. It was better than hearing them weep as the slave-traders lined them up, roped them together, and made them start walking south to Rome, or east into Polania, or north towards the boats that would take them to Gotaland. And better, far, than mothers and wives screaming his name as a curse, for Hel had not only used him as a weapon against Roman colonia. Sometimes, she had turned him against their own people. Villages who had insulted her. Villages that had not propitiated her, or who had mocked her Name. Belief had rushed into him after those attacks, but had left him sick and shaking. They believed that he was the scourge of humanity. That he was designed and intended to destroy the World-Tree. The universe. They believed that he was Hel’s weapon, Hel’s pet.
And that belief had shaped him for two thousand years. The terror and the tears had eroded him until he wasn’t sure who he was, anymore, except that the very core of him had still resisted Hel. He had surveyed Valhalla, silently. Seen the love between Freya and Odin, Thor and Sif, Skadi and Njord. The bonds of affection between them all. Oh, they all had mortal god-born. It was understood that a mortal could not stand beside a god in time. So it was perfectly acceptable to have a mortal lover, and an immortal beloved. And they all loved the children of those unions. And why should I not be loved? he had wondered. And part of him, the abused child, had thought that the punishments and the pain were love, at least as much as Hel could give. But the adult, the rational being that he had become, knew that it was not the case.
So all in all? A few good-natured yelps and yips of animal enjoyment, of mock-fear as the children slid down his side towards the ground? He could abide with that.
November 23, 1993 AC
“I don’ care. Yur cendaurs were lade cummin’ up da ‘lank. And don’ ged me starded on da lack of air zuppord ‘rom da harpies.” The minotaur male swung his head around, glaring at all those assembled in the command tent. The shape of minotaur mouths, tongues, and larynxes were not conducive to human speech. Most minotaurs had required up to three years of therapy just to get this far, and for most of them, Latin was a second language. Brandr, given his own speech problems, was usually impressed by how well most of them spoke.
It didn’t keep him from thinking that they sounded like they had the worst head-colds in recorded history, howeve
r.
The others currently present were representatives of the fifteen or twenty different varieties of ‘humanity’ currently in the region. There were jotun and fenris present, a Pictish general, a JDF liaison, a small contingent of harpies, including Reginleif and one or two males, who were along for support and strategic concerns, the centaur commander, and a Carthaginian leonne, The list went on and on. Most of them were, however, bristling at Anniketos’ words. “We moved precisely when we were ordered to do so,” the centaur commander replied. Brandr had just met him for the first time yesterday—he called himself Nikolaos, and his flanks held the long white weals of old scars. “Your men charged early, without support from those around them, and were cut off, as a result.”
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