Maccis’ voice, pained and dazed, replied, Zee’s described something similar . . . I think this is how priests of Marduk used to invite him to use them as his avatars. They’d have used his Name, but godlings don’t have Names . . . .
. . . you don’t need a Name to call, Solinus said, sharply. Father can send out a general summons to any spirits in his vicinity to talk to him. I think that’s what this magus did. Rig. Leave now.
Not yet, Rig said. I have to see if it works.
Energy thrummed through the air, and the mad godling looked like a jellyfish now, all of its tendrils tucked beneath itself, trying to tangle and torment the magus that dared to try to bind it . . . or invited it. Rig had to admire the courage, the will, the desperation that drove the magus. He wants to save his people, the son of Loki thought, distantly.
Except, as the godling’s power was absorbed into the magus’ body, the body began to tear itself apart. The flesh began to burn away, leaving notable charred gaps, through which tendrils of black energy leaked out, like traceries of ink in water. And when the godling had forced the whole of its power into the fragile body of its new host, the joined creature turned, and Rig could see its face, or what was left of it. One of the eye sockets was burned out, with part of the same cheek; the other side was locked in a rictus grin of agony. Black energy leaked out around the still-white teeth on the left side, and the entire left side of the chest cavity was . . . perforated, with trails of energy worming in and out of the torso. But the amalgam creature was able to move. And it spoke, something that the godlings were incapable of doing. Now we will see who can stand against us. A willing sacrifice. A body for a conduit. A mind to use.
Rig watched as the creature began to lift into the air, black energy expanding out from the ruined body. The self-same tendrils that any mad godling had. Except this one had the sapience of a human mind to pull on. It wouldn’t react on mere instinct, the way others of its kind did. This couldn’t be allowed to exist.
Livorus’ sword was heavy and oddly cold in his hand. Rodor, we haven’t known each other long. I’m sorry for this.
No apologies are needed.
Rig sent out his thoughts. It was hard to reach Inghean this far away. But his beloved deserved this. Inghean . . . sweetheart . . . .
Hundreds of miles away, outside of Judea, Inghean stopped in mid-step. Her eight-year-old daughter, Vigdis, ran into her, dropping the sack of potatoes that the girl was carrying out of the field, where Inghean had been encouraging plants to bear crops at an increased speed. “Mother? What is it?” Vigdis asked. “You made me drop that!”
Inghean barely heard her. She turned like a compass needle finding a new and more powerful magnetic attraction, to the southeast. “Rig?” she asked, hesitantly.
Finally found something I can’t fight with illusions and shadows, beloved. An impression of a mental kiss. I love you. Hold Vigdis tight for me. And tell your brothers . . . this is not their fault.
Inghean’s eyes went wide in sudden, horrified understanding. “Rig!” she shouted, ignoring the looks from the laborers in the fields around her. “Rig, no!”
Behind the newly-assumed avatar of the godling, and before it could rise any further into the air, Rodor leaped, bringing it to the ground with his weight. The blue-scaled lindworm snarled and rolled, biting and clawing, even as tendrils of energy came out of the body, snaking forwards to penetrate deeply under his scales. As the lindworm roared in pain, arching back, the godling’s chest was exposed. And as Sigrun had so often told Rig, there were two wounds from which even the god-born could die: head and heart.
Rig brought the Roman sword down, plunging it like a dagger into the creature’s ruined chest. It flashed cold in his hand, so cold that even he felt it, and it locked his hand in place. Frost covered his hand in white traceries, racing up his arm to his elbow, and then to his shoulder, rippling along his clothing and skin.
The godling and its avatar latched onto his frozen hand, and pulled itself up along the blade. Rig could feel black energies pouring out of the hand on his, biting deeply into him, but he couldn’t move his arm. Couldn’t release the hungry blade, filled as it was with Hel’s essence. He could feel the sword devouring the godling from the inside out, and vaguely wondered why he’d never thought of using the damned thing like this before . . . because the godlings are usually up in the air, and you can’t fly, you halfwit . . . but at the same time, he knew that he was being consumed by the godling.
Rodor’s bellow of agony shook the ground, and the lindworm managed to heave himself forwards again. I can’t let go! Rig told him, as the deathfrost began to creep down from his shoulder, into his chest, and up his neck, towards his face. Take its head off!
Not while it’s connected to you. The lindworm’s words were a snarl. It feeds!
One more step, and the lindworm managed to get his massive head in line, as more tendrils erupted from the ravaged body of the avatar. Then the vicious muzzle came down, a thought-fast strike . . . and Rig found himself lying on the ground, unsure as to how he’d gotten there. He couldn’t feel his arm—the deathfrost had numbed the entire appendage. He tried to plant an elbow to get back to his feet, and stopped, staring in horror as the godling’s seething remnants, trying to escape the hunger of the Helsword, streamed into Rodor now. Darkening his brilliant blue scales. Tearing holes in the lindworm’s body.
No. Rig’s mind was clear of purpose, and he got to his feet, and tried to pull the sword out of the corpse, and inexplicably missed the hilt . . . and glanced down, to register in shock that his right hand was missing. An uneven stump, with twisted, shattered bones sticking out, terminated his arm above the wrist, and he’d never even felt it.
Shock would set in, in a minute, he knew. He didn’t have time for it. He caught the hilt in his left hand and lunged forwards, clumsily trying to cut the tendrils with the physical edge of the god-touched weapon, and wondering, distantly, if he were a fool to think that matter and energy could interact in this way. His vision wavered, and he plunged into othersight, and saw, to his surprise, a burning aura of frost-white light around the sword. Hel’s essence, manifesting to his senses for the first time, and that burning light was what cut the tendrils, not the blade itself.
The godling flinched at the hungry blade’s bite, and then plunged forwards into Rodor’s body completely, leaving behind the magus’ body as a crumbling, charred husk. The lindworm screamed, and the faint thoughts poured into Rig’s mind. I will not be a thing, I will not be mindless! I was among the first of my kind to have a mind again! No! The lindworm’s head lurched around, and Rig shied back from the teeth, watching the blue-corundum eyes darken, but not burn away, as the magus’ body had. The lindworm body was a hardier host, apparently, for this particular parasite. I will die as myself. End this! Please!
Rig hesitated, just for an instant. The greatest act of friendship a Goth could give, was to relieve a friend of an agonizing, slow death. To help prevent dishonor and disease. And yet, Rodor had just saved him. The lindworm’s scales continued to darken, but the eyes never left Rig’s.
I’m so sorry, Rig thought, and, trying to brace the sword, awkwardly held in his left hand with the stump of his right, drove it into his companion’s neck, sawing at it. He couldn’t even make it a clean, easy strike. And again, the sword began to chill in his hand, though this time, Rig didn’t care that his hand was caught. He staggered to the right, dragging the blade with him, fighting the lindworm’s strength and survival instincts as he brought the blade back around and sawed at the vertebrae, dodging claws and wings, and finally, trying to duck back out of the way of eight hundred pounds of armored flesh.
As the lindworm’s head came free, the godling, housed inside his flesh, died. Its power detonated out in a flash of light, and Rig, still chained to his sword, felt himself struggling to absorb the power. Could feel the sword absorbing it, as well.
His last coherent thought was barely coherent. I’m so sorry. We could have b
een brothers. We should have been brothers. I should have been your rider years before this . . . .
. . . I was your rider before this?
. . . I will be . . . ?
Solinus and Maccis were too far away to feel the shockwave, but as Solinus was pulling bullets out of his brother’s back, Inghean’s frantic voice came to him. He’d always been able to hear his twin, no matter where she was. Sol! Get Rig! Stop him! He just said good-bye!
A shudder shook the earth, and Maccis, who was mostly unconscious by this point, stirred a little as Solinus’ hands slipped on the forceps he had inside the wound, digging for a bullet. If I go back for him now, Maccis could die. I can’t leave him till he’s stable.
Getting the bullets out and getting Maccis conscious again, as they huddled in the scrubland in the lee of a hill, took an hour. Then his brother wearily managed to force himself into lindworm shape, and all three of them took to the air again, heading two hundred miles back to the southeast. They found wreckage in the water, and spilled machine oil glossing the surface of the waves in iridescent streams. They found Rodor’s body . . . and Rig’s. Loki’s son still had his left hand locked around his sword, and his right was . . . missing. The ravaged stump was barely oozing blood, and Solinus was able to determine, almost immediately, that this was because Rig’s entire right arm was frozen. Still, there was a large, dark puddle of red ooze under him, and Solinus, on verifying Rig was still somehow breathing, wrapped a tourniquet around the arm, above the shattered, splintered wrist. “What hit him?” he asked, stunned.
Rodor did. And he killed Rodor. Scimar sounded savagely angry. Rodor was my brother! We hatched on the same day!
“Peace,” Maccis said, shifting to human form and hunkering down in the sand. “The mad one is to blame. Not them.” The wounds across his back were still livid and red, in spite of two transformations, and his flight had been awkward and slow, because of it. “Sol, he needs a transfusion—”
“We can’t carry him any faster than we can travel ourselves. Let me ask Father if he can come. Someone should look at the ley-lines here, anyway.”
But Trennus Matrugena couldn’t leave the Woods. There was an attack, in force, from the north at the moment—a few remaining ettin and a large force of grendels who’d been forced south by lack of food in the frozen northern lands. “All right. So we carry him.”
Rig was unconscious. No illusions, therefore, to hide them. They tried to avoid Persian encampments in the desert, but they came under fire from patrols anyway. Go, Maccis said, falling back. He had yet to heal completely and Heolstor’s wings were bleeding, as the lindworm had bullet holes torn through the membranes of his wings. I’ll land and try to keep them distracted for a while.
Not leaving you—
Go, brother. They’re not going to catch me on the ground. I can change into too many things down there. In the sky, I’m too visible.
Maccis veered for the ground as Heolstor roared, This is not as I saw us, fighting together!
We’ll have other chances. Get out of here while you can still fly! I can’t transform you into anything less conspicuous, and Rig isn’t conscious to cover us in illusions!
And so Solinus had to leave his brother behind, to save the rest of his squad. The last he saw of Maccis was the dust-brown figure of a large antelope, skittering away across the rugged hills, startled by the sound of gunfire behind it.
When they got back to Jerusalem, Inghean collapsed over Rig’s chest in the hospital, clearly trying not to weep. They’d managed to get fragments of the story out of him, during his brief stints of consciousness. They’re going to call him Rig One-hand, Solinus thought, sitting in the hall outside the room. Fenris, son of Loki, was supposed to bite off Tyr’s hand for a betrayal. Instead, Rodor bites off the hand of Loki’s son, to save him. Solinus looked at his sister, however, and saw . . . unity. Balance. Wholeness, as she put her head down on Rig’s shoulder in his hospital gown. Inghean was fire and fertility, like most of Lassair’s children, but she also had a scientist’s mind and an inquiring disposition. And Rig . . . illusion, deception, cold, dominion, and apparently, given the Helsword, at least a little death. The union of opposites. It feels right, looking at them together. It always has. Little Vigdis climbed up on Rig’s bed, and tugged at her father’s bandaged arms. And Fritti . . . Fritti sat by her son’s bed, clasping his good hand, and was doing her best to heal the damage from the frost-bite to the left hand and arm, and the mangled right arm. Rig’s going to hate having to learn how to use a gun and a sword again, left-handed. Then again, the Empire may fall before he’s back on his feet again.
Then Zaya appeared at the hospital, begging of Solinus, “Where’s Maccis? Why isn’t he here?”
“He said he’d try to buy us time. Try to draw troops after him, and then lose them in the desert. His mother says he’s alive. She’d know if he weren’t.” Solinus’ voice was dull. Staring at a calendar on the ICU wall, he found it hard to believe that it was Caesarius sixth.
“Why did you leave him?” Zaya’s voice scaled upwards, and she thumped the heel of a fist unexpectedly against his sternum. It didn’t hurt. He barely even felt it, in fact.
“Because he made a choice, and so did I. For the sake of everyone there.” Solinus stared at her, his mind hundreds of miles away in the desert scrublands. “As soon as I know Rig’s going to wake up and not have brain damage I’m going back out after Maccis.” He managed to get his mind working again. “I’m sorry, Zaya. This is what we do. He’ll be all right.”
He better be. He’s got a hundred miles of Persian-held territory to get through, though. And he can’t take to the sky without being seen.
Chapter 18: The Night without Stars
Where were you, I ask, when the stars were lost?
When night’s ebony mantle lost its spark,
And hope was found to be but dross?
Where were you, when the world went dark?
Through snowy steppes I fled, through mountains stark,
In city streets I stood, and on tideless strands.
Friends united, or foes athwart, a mark
Was left on every soul throughout the lands,
And ‘twas too late for all to join their hands.
A world divided, the gods subsided—
Who yet remains to fight? And who now stands?
And who to the final feast is invited?
Where were you, when lost was the light?
Where were you, on that starless night?
—Unattributed. No date.
_________________________
Caesarius 22, 1999 AC
The death of the Persian Emperor slowed the advance of the Persian armies, in part. There were still generals in charge, and they, their troops, and the civilians swarming behind them had no country to which they might return, thanks to the mad godlings. The use of the hydrogen spell in three separate locations had, indeed, summoned mad ones to each area, if small ones. The destruction of a godling at Ikaros, and another near Shiraz, however, resulted in destabilized ley-lines in both locations. When the second line at Shiraz went up, a piece of land four hundred and fifty miles long and approximately a hundred and fifty feet wide, rapidly heated as the molecules of the earth’s crust, excited by the energies of the crumbling lines, began to oscillate rapidly. This line cut across east-west across the northern section of the Gulf of Persia, and a wall of steam, visible by satellite, began to rise. Where the lines collapsed on land, the surface was well over two hundred degrees.
Unfortunately for the Persian troops in the southern deserts, the mad godlings that remained still hungered, and they’d scented technomancy and magical power. The mad ones now swarmed the sky over the southern half of the peninsula, and Maccis, in wolf form, ran as quickly as he could ahead of them, not daring to look back. His tongue lolled out, and his breath tore in his chest. His paws were lacerated, but he had to make it across the border before the godlings caught his scent. If they don’t just come o
ver the border. What’s to stop them, after all? We have technomancers and god-born. The young man’s thoughts were distant. But I’d rather die there, with my friends and my family, than out here, alone.
In the Veil, the gods met, and Pluto suggested a desperate stratagem. We need to draw the mad ones to us. To a battle of our own choosing.
How very Roman, Freya murmured.
It is the only way, I think. We will select a location that we do not think will trigger any further ley-line degradation. It may be a gamble. But those who ever take the safest route, the route of most caution, are the soonest defeated.
The others nodded. Odin rubbed at his empty eye socket. What do you propose?
The lands north of the Alps are largely clear of your worshippers, but for a few holdout positions. We have killed a few mad ones there before, but the ley-lines have been repaired . . . and are holding. Few humans would be affected. And we have bait at our disposal. Pluto glanced at Prometheus and Amaterasu, then back to Odin and Freya. You wished to see Hades executed for facilitating the human attack on Cimbri-on-the-Caestus. His presence in the Veil was, for many years, my surety. Part of the accursed bargain between us and the gods of the Hellenes. But my affiliation with him has tainted me. And justice demands retribution for his actions. Pluto paused. Let justice serve a dual purpose. Let his death become a beacon that will summon some of the godlings to a battle at a time and place of our choosing.
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