“Into the buildings!” Rig snapped, as his people started taking fire from the windows of the buildings all around. The jotun took a different approach than the nieten, humans, and fenris; they climbed the sides of the buildings, and slammed their fists through windows, dragging startled snipers and machine-gunners out of their perches, and throwing them to the ground, before disappearing through those same windows into the buildings, themselves. Overhead, Rig could hear a siren’s scream, and all the remaining windows in the vicinity—even the large plate glass ones of the store fronts at ground level—shattered. And he thanked the gods that he was wearing silicone earplugs that let him hear his radio, while protecting his hearing. The various fenris didn’t have that luxury; they would be deafened until their regeneration repaired their damaged eardrums. All his orders would now need to be couched in mind-speech for them . . . another reason he had command of this particular force.
There was a break in fire as the Roman troops who, likewise, weren’t wearing ear protection clutched at their heads, deafened. Maccis, take your people left. I’ll clear right, Rig rapped out, and then they were off again. Room by room, building by building. Every time one of the bear-like or scaled nieten under his command kicked down a door, Rig, standing invisible in the doorframe, hoped that the people behind it would surrender. Some of the doors led into family apartments. He could hear the yapping of dogs, the terrified moans of women and children as they huddled at the far ends of the living quarters. He could see gunmen at the windows spin towards the door, lifting their weapons . . . and he’d fire, not willing to put the civilians in the position of hostages, or put them in danger of being caught between two lines of fire. He’d see the body fall backwards, sometimes out the window. Sometimes slumping to the ground.
And all of the men, damnably, were in the uniform of the Legion. The uniform he’d worn, himself, for eight years.
The howling of the fenris rose over the city as they chased down those who fled through the maze of dark alleys, and smoke rose with it. His throat was dry from it, and his voice a dull croak as he reported in, at four antemeridian, “Team One, last objective taken. Danel Square area secured.”
He looked out a window as vehicles with the symbol of the Eastern Empire rolled in—a blue eagle on a white field, instead of the traditional red one—and sat, aching and weary, watching the sun rise. Off to the west, pillars of black smoke rose from the harbor, mute testimony to the fires undoubtedly raging on the ships there. There were smaller plumes of lighter smoke rising from rooftops, all through the city, as if this were Londonium or Marcomanni in the middle of winter.
None of it was, for the moment, his problem. His problem was keeping this square secure. Checking to see which of his men had been wounded. Cleaning up the dead. He found Maccis, mostly naked, pulling bullets out of a hveðungr’s furry side with pliers, while a jotun held the lycanthrope down. “How bad is it?” Rig asked, stopping to watch the whole process. The female had remained in fenris form for the process, presumably to keep the transformation process from healing her flesh over the bullets.
“I think her spleen was nicked,” Maccis replied, his tone preoccupied. “Think we’ve got some internal bleeding. She’ll be fine, if she’s allowed to lie down and rest. But she can’t shape-change till I pull the bullet. Otherwise, she’ll heal around it.”
“We’ve got a triage area set up over to the west side of the square. I’ll help carry her over there, once you’re done—” Rig winced as Maccis pulled another bullet out, deftly. “Gods. No pain-killers?”
They do not help us, the female reminded him, her words coming out between whimpers. We metabolize them too quickly.
Rig looked down at her, helplessly. He was no healer. But he could do a little something, perhaps. Don’t feel it, he commanded, hoping it would help. This once . . . don’t feel it.
She sighed and laid her massive head back down on the ground. Maccis pulled the last bullet, and threw it aside. “Is this what a victory looks like?” the younger man asked, as they both helped lift her onto a blanket, to spread out her weight, and the jotun took one end, and the two of them took the other, and started to carry her away.
“Yes,” Rig replied, with a faint snort. “The city’s still standing, isn’t it? It doesn’t look like Cimbri or Crann Péitseog, leveled to the ground by a spell. It doesn’t look like Tiwan, flattened by one god’s death, only to be irradiated by another.” He gave Maccis a look as they carried the fenris female to the triage area. He could smell blood and hear the screams and whimpers of the wounded and the dying, and knew that Maccis had to be smelling worse. “This is a victory. Take what you can get, Maccis.”
The young man looked away for a moment, and then nodded. Rig exhaled, and looked around at the smoke-filled city. Now . . . all we have to do is hold it. Because Rome will be coming back. No question about it.
Ianuarius 16, 1995 AC
Adam ben Maor sat in the antechamber of Caesarion’s office, and listened to the news reports on the three different far-viewers currently blaring away in front of him. He had a sheaf of papers in his hands, mostly in Aramaic and ancient-form Hebrew, and leafed through it as he listened.
“. . . this is the Imperial News Network. Legate Orlandus Placidus Servius, commander of the storied Ninth Legion, is being dispatched, with his troops, to relieve the garrison at Tyre, which has encountered several setbacks in its efforts to pacify the rebellious Carthaginian and Judean provinces in the past several months . . . .”
“Setbacks? Is that what you call losing the city, five troop transports, and an aircraft carrier that normally would have been doing an underway replenishment at sea, but because of the danger in the shipping lanes, was directed to enter the harbor to resupply?” Adam muttered, looking up from his papers. “Legate Rudolphus committed suicide, rather than return to Rome in disgrace.”
The various young clerks who processed information for Governor Caesarion glanced up, and apparently decided that his comment didn’t require their responses, busying themselves at calculi and typewriters, instead.
Adam shook his head. He hadn’t been around Caesarion IX’s children much, with the exception of the son who shared the late Emperor’s name. His first-born, Julianus, hadn’t seemed anything out of the ordinary for a scion of Rome, growing up. He’d attended the Colosseum events with his parents, and eventually, had gone there in his father’s stead to render the official verdicts over criminals who were to be executed there. He had a busy and varied sex life, but that was more or less to be expected; while some Romans held to the stern moral principles of the old Republic, quite a few held the opinion that a man wasn’t a man, unless he was vigorously expressing that masculinity. Adam thought it all tied back to the fasces, but when he looked up to make that joke, he realized that there was no one present to whom he could say it. Trennus was off in the Veil again for the winter, leaving Saraid to rule their people with the assistance of the clan-leaders and elected officials, and Kanmi and Min were buried in the Magi library, researching god-knows-what, and Sigrun was . . . elsewhere. As always.
A second news report stood out from the cacophony from the three far-viewers. “While volcanic eruptions continue in the Massif Central region of Gaul, there are troubling reports of monsters having crossed the Alps. Local authorities cannot confirm the matter at this time, but Legion reinforcements are being moved to the northern half of the Italia peninsula. We have footage of what appears to be a jotun attack on a farmstead near Mediolanum—”
That got Adam’s attention, and he looked up in time to see what was clearly a band of grendels rampaging through a farm, ignoring shots taken on them by the farmer and farmhands, picking up and throwing the humans into walls, or suspending the humans on butchering hooks intended for pigs. Animals racing around their stalls and corrals, squealing in distress at the smell of blood. The camera work was shaky and clearly taken at a distance, and from far above. Jotun attack. Sure. Blame it on the jotun, the ones who are loyal
to Germania, and retreated with their people, letting the grendels move south towards Rome. Blame it on those who’re still up there in the north, cut off from all supply lines and communications, living as if the world has reverted to the Iron Age, as they try to keep a few tiny strongholds open—
The overhead lights flickered, and Adam sighed. Judea was on an electrical grid, powered by nuclear plants. But interruptions, due to damage to junction sites and substations, certainly made for blackouts. We haven’t had a Persian rocket attack in almost a year, he thought. Maybe someone rammed an automobile into a transformer.
The third station blared an alert tone, cutting through the chatter from the other two. The reporter on this screen was a pretty, red-haired Gallic woman, possibly of Eirish or Caledonian descent. “Novo Gaul and the Diné people are being rocked today by reports that gods are fighting over the desert city of Tongeran,” she said, looking apprehensive. “Residents are advised to evacuate the Valley of the Sun immediately. We had a helicopter in the skies over the region when the first god appeared—can we get the footage? Thank you . . . .”
Adam winced as a sun-bright light coalesced outside of what was clearly the curving bar that outlined a helicopter door. Again, the footage was shaky. Something—Adam couldn’t see what—struck the window in front of the camera, turning it to a spider web of cracks, and the helicopter spun. Reeled. There were a few screams, and his palms dampened in reaction, his mind racing through the steps a pilot could take to get the vehicle under control . . . and then the screen went black. “Our reporter was in the middle of covering a wildfire in the desert outside the city. We do not know the status of the crew or the pilot,” the reporter went on, her voice unsteady. “People on the ground have called in to report that they’ve seen the Morrigan in the air, fighting the intruder. Again, we encourage all residents to evacuate. All highways leading to Tongeran have been blocked, and all rail and air traffic has been diverted around the area.”
The door of Caesarion’s office banged open, and Marcus Livorus, his face locked in a grimace, beckoned him. “Come in, ben Maor. We had an interesting morning with the Persian ambassador.”
Adam threw one more glance at the far-viewer, and picked up his papers. Sig, please don’t be in the middle of that. Be off . . . chasing your Potentia people. He’d seen her last week, when she’d taken a day to check in on him and visit her sister in the asylum. He didn’t know what to say, or do, to comfort her anymore. How could he, when she’d told him that she could hear the screams of the dying in Cimbri? The ones saying her Name, and pleading with her for help. To save them, or at least to grant them a painless, gentle death? Part of him wanted to tell her, But of course you can’t help them all. And death isn’t even yours to grant. That’s why you’re not a god. You’re just an entity. You can’t do everything they ask of you.
And even my god says no.
But saying that, after he’d told her to go be what she was, would demean her. And what else was there to say? Telling her it would all be all right sounded like a lie even to his own ears. And how could he offer comfort, when he had no frame of reference for the kind of hurt she had experienced, as the pain and sorrow and despair of millions rushed into her? Oh, she said that much of it had been taken by Freya, Tyr, Odin, and all the others—but she hadn’t been quite the same since Cimbri. Her eyes were bleak and blank, and when he put his arms around her, it was like trying to embrace a shadow. Something that wasn’t even really there.
But she tried. God, how she tried. She’d put on a smile for him, or for Sophia. She’d sit in Sophia’s room and play the valkyrie, so that Sophia wouldn’t know what year it was, or that anything had changed . . . but Sophia did know, now. Because Apollo knew. And Apollo’s mad terror that there were two completely contiguous and wholly valid memory sets in his mind, one that he could remember from what had not yet happened, and one that was unfolding in front of him, made Sophia gibber. She could barely finish a complete sentence. The cruelest thing, Adam thought, was that Sophia’s original madness had been . . . peaceful, in its way. Serene. She accepted that everything was going to happen the way she’d seen it happen, and in a way, she’d almost been happy with it. No longer. She sobbed. She wailed. She put her face in Sigrun’s lap, and begged, in broken sentences, for her sister to make it stop. To put the world back on its right course. To end her pain. And Sigrun stroked the hair back out of her face, and every time, Adam could almost see her debating ending her sister’s suffering. Because, as Nith had told him, in their culture, to help someone who could not physically end their own life, but who suffered, was considered the truest act of friendship and love. And every time, Adam damned himself, and shook his head at Sigrun. Don’t, neshama. If we somehow win . . . if there’s even a shred of hope of that the world will stabilize, instead of ending . . . you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.
“Lassair offered to visit her,” she’d finally said, this last visit. “Lassair might be a healing presence for her. Then again, Lassair’s also . . . flame and the sun. I do not know what Sophia will see, when she looks at her now. Perhaps as much a threat as Apollo himself.”
In the here and now, Adam entered Caesarion’s office, where Solinus was on guard. It was an inner room, without windows, and the walls had been recently reinforced with rebar pounded through the ancient stone. “Ah, Adam,” Caesarion said, looking up from his own sheaf of papers. “Sit down, please, and tell me what the reaction of our local citizens will be if they hear that Persia has generously offered to send troops to help us defend ourselves from Rome.”
Adam froze, not quite sitting, not quite standing, and his back seized in protest. He exhaled to stifle the groan, sitting down. “You’re serious.”
“That was the offer of their ambassador this morning.” Caesarion rubbed at his jaw.
“You’re not going to accept, are you?” Adam’s voice was horrified.
“And, once Rome’s forces are ejected, have a Persian army occupying this land?” Marcus Livorus’ voice was dry. “Give us some credit, friend of my father.”
Adam arched his brows at Caesarion. “And yet, I see you hesitating a little.”
“I have no intention of accepting,” Caesarion assured him. “But this will require very careful work on all our parts, to ensure that we do not wind up fighting Rome on the west and Persia to the east at the same time. The only possible outcome of that would be to have Julianus’ forces and Antiochus’ troops fighting pitched battles in the streets, while the rest of us are held captive by one side or the other . . . or, perhaps more mercifully, killed outright.” He rubbed at his eyes. “If I play this absolutely correctly, I might be able to parlay Persia’s offer and my consideration of it, into a way to force Julianus to attempt rapprochement with us.”
“But the Judean citizens will riot at the thought,” Adam told him, starkly. “No more foreign kings, Persian or otherwise. That’s engrained into the national character. No more Herods.”
“I know,” Caesarion told him, and regarded him steadily. “Putting off the decision gives us time. A stalling tactic. Saying no publically reinforces that my long-term goal is re-unifying with Rome . . . once Julianus is ousted, and Hadrianus is crowned Emperor. Since it seems that Julianus will not see reason. But outright refusal gives me no room to maneuver with Persia, and establishes no threat that Julianus—or the Senate—must heed.”
If your brother Hadrianus is alive. No one’s seen him since he went under ‘house-arrest.’ Adam considered it. “My answer isn’t a politician’s. I say, reject it, and let the people of Judea know that you have. That will bolster support here. Which, sadly, is needed.” He grimaced. The Zealots and the conservatives weren’t exactly staunchly behind Caesarion.
Caesarion rubbed at his eyes. “I’ll take it under advisement. Next problem, Livorus, please?”
When the governor’s chauffeur dropped him off at his house, Adam could see a familiar vehicle parked in front of the Matrugena house. A budget-model Kusa
bana four-door that was at least twenty years old, it had been Trennus’ primary mode of transportation for years. But Tren’s in the damned Veil right now. He walked up the drive, and looked up at the house, currently occupied by Solinus, Masako, and their two children. It appeared overgrown and far too quiet, considering the army of children that had once occupied it. No grapevines, either. Everything changes. Everything passes. He knocked, and Saraid’s voice greeted him, surprisingly. Be welcome, Steelsoul. Moltensoul and his beloved are not here at the moment.
He tried the door, and it opened, so he shuffled indoors. “No guards?” Adam called.
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