The Goddess Embraced

by Deborah Davitt

  The fenris ranged off ahead of the vehicles at their steady, mile-eating lope. Centaurs, all carrying heavy weapons, such as rocket and grenade launchers, trotted alongside the convoy, their weapons strapped to their equine backs, with the delivery mechanisms either positioned over their shoulders, or in their hands.

  Rig’s chief task was actually a fairly difficult one at the moment, but he had some help with it from Reginleif. “I’ve never covered this many people on the ground and in the air before,” he admitted. This was a picked group of three hundred people, but they were all different sizes, all moved at different rates of speed, and had wildly different shapes.

  “What is life without challenges?” Regin asked him, mildly, and joined her magic with his. Rig gritted his teeth, and threw himself into the illusion. To all outwards observers, the convoy vanished. Nothing visible on the road or in the air, no dust rising from their tires. Nothing at all.

  Less than an hour later, the lindworms reported visual contact as the Immortals and JDF engaged each other in the distance. “All forces,” Vidarr’s voice crackled over the radio, “prepare to engage on my mark. Lokison, Lorelei, drop the illusion once we’re within twenty feet.”

  Sweating in spite of the chill in the air, Rig held onto the illusion until the landsknechten forces opened fire, the harpies launched themselves into the air, and Reginleif slipped off Heolstor’s back. “Put in your earplugs,” Regin warned as she dove away, her wings folded to a stoop, and raised her voice in a scream that assaulted the ears of all those below.

  Rig scrambled to obey. “Set me down,” he told Heolstor. “I’m trained for ground combat.”

  Use your automatic rifle and your illusions for now. We have the advantage of surprise. Let us use it.

  Solinus had already slipped off Scimar’s back and taken phoenix form, and now blazed a trail through the ranks of soldiers on the ground. The poured-stone road was molten in his wake, and vehicles in the convoy that had been jockeying for position, now ground to sudden halts. Tank treads might not have melted immediately, but rubber tires would be a complete loss.

  He threw himself through a windshield, which turned to liquid on contact with his body, and poured himself into the cab of a troop transport, returning to humanoid form, more or less, long enough to wrap burning arms around the driver, who screamed and flailed. The guard seated beside him stared in blank astonishment, and then fumbled, frantically, for a small fire extinguisher in the emergency kit at his feet. Solinus caught the movement out of the corner of his eye, and solidified his form enough to kick, forcefully, with his left leg, keeping the guard at bay, while the driver burned to death in his merciless embrace.

  Masako hadn’t been in combat in several years, so she remained on Scimar’s back. His movements didn’t impede her spells or her concentration, as she muttered under her breath, forming the matrices that would steal the energy Solinus had already provided, from the molten areas of poured-stone. Stole the heat from the gunfire filling the air, from the tank shells blistering towards the JDF lines to the north of her, and bent it back around. Forced it into the poured-stone road, heating the entire surface . . . and then lifted it. Flexed it, like a piece of hot taffy, and pulled it over the two closest vehicles, settling molten-hot tar and rock in a shell over both. The personnel carriers ground to an immediate halt, their tires melting on the axels, and their drivers unable to see. Everyone inside the vehicles began to roast, while their air supply had also been cut off, as the tar oozed in through every crack, dripping down on them, and blistering their hands as they tried to open the hatches to escape.

  Persian battle-mages, no slouches, countered. They could sense the direction from which her weaves came, and incanted rapidly. Masako considered herself lucky; some technomancers had, in times past, frozen air around lindworms and their riders. With the flight surfaces coated in what was, effectively, dry ice, the lindworms had plummeted like rocks, and their riders’ skins had been frozen off. Instead, these magi used a traditional whirlwind, creating a vortex in the air to disrupt Scimar’s flight and her concentration. Masako’s tattoos, however, designed to repel fire, freed her of the need to carry fire-suppression technomantic devices, and allowed her to carry, instead, a wide variety of other items. Some had been devised by Erida and Minori, and a few by Masako herself. One of them reacted to the reduction in barometric pressure, and an internal switch flipped, releasing a counterspell, stealing the energy of the vortex around them and storing it in an internal lithium-cadmium battery strapped to one of Masako’s legs. High-end technomancy, and heavy . . . but worth it, as she returned the energy to them, in the form of a series of small, highly-condensed balls of superheated gas. Plasma pellets, each the size of her fingertip, but she sprayed the entire area, cutting through vehicles and bodies as Scimar steadied himself in the air. I have never carried a sorcerer in the air before, the lindworm said, baring his teeth. I am enjoying your manner of combat!

  With the first three vehicles in this section of the convoy halted, those behind them swung off-road, trying to line up firing positions that would let them attack this new group of assailants. The doors on the rest of the personnel carriers began to open, and the soldiers carried inside began to pour out, and Scimar rolled sharply to the right as the masked soldiers lifted weapons, and opened fire. Masako muttered rapidly, stealing energy from the bullets’ own motion, but a handful still hit Scimar in his left flank, bouncing off his red scales. She keyed her radio, and said, tersely, “Masked units exiting vehicles. Can anyone confirm that these are Immortals?”

  On the ground, the fenris ran, flanking either side of a jotun charge. Vidarr led the attack himself, pausing to set a foot back to brace himself as he took his weapon of choice off his back. It was a minigun, usually reserved for helicopters, but a jotun had the strength and the mass to carry it and withstand the recoil. He and a dozen other jotun opened fire, and the fully-masked Persian soldiers turned, as one, into the streams of bullets, and began to advance. Vidarr could see bodies jerk backwards when hit. Raw impact, raw inertia, still had an effect. But they kept moving forward, and fired, in return. Vidarr felt a rifle bullet slam into his upper chest, deflecting off his internal armor of bone links, and grunted in pain. “I can confirm that these troops don’t lie down and die when shot,” he growled into his radio, and kept up his attack. “Heads and hearts are heavily protected. Keep your shots center of mass, and break through their armor. Once they’re on the ground, either cut off the heads, or blow them off with a shotgun or a grenade.”

  Even for a jotun, watching the Immortals advance, their wounds healing rapidly, was unnerving. They moved in complete silence. Indomitable. Staggering backwards as lines of fire converged on a body . . . only for the man behind him to continue forwards, lock-step with the rest. Returning fire seemingly at will. “Fenris! Centaurs! Flank and attack!”

  The swift-moving centaurs and fenris fanned out from the jotuns’ sides and closed with the enemy. The centaurs dropped mortars, grenades, and even rockets into the center of the Immortals’ formation, and Vidarr could see some of the creatures, on fire, still crawling forwards. Their bodies healing, the bones knitting. The fenris leaped in from the sides, exhaling their frost breath, and then darted in to bite at tendons and throats.

  The Immortals closed on the jotun line, while behind them, the tanks swiveled their turrets, lining up shots. The scream of a shell coming towards him, and a painful blast as its high-explosive round went off. Rocks, dirt, and metal hit Vidarr’s body and face. He picked himself up, thinking, I guess they don’t care much about friendly fire, do they? The Immortals don’t feel pain. They heal rapidly. Or they can be replaced, since all they are . . . are containers for spirits.

  As he hauled himself upright, an Immortal closed, trying to fire a shotgun into his midsection. He knocked the weapon offline with one hand, kicked the creature backwards with one heavy boot, and then fired the minigun at point-blank range. This time, bullets sawed the body in half.
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  But that soldier was just the white froth on the crest of a much larger wave, which bore down on the jotun now. And in close quarters, the Immortals either used shotguns, or switched to heavily-enchanted blades of carbon-blacked steel. Some of these weapons even had internal storage cartridges that held necrotizing snake venom. These were a recent development, as Persian R&D had responded to the rapidly-regenerating jotun and fenris now common on the battlefield. All Vidarr knew what that those cuts hurt like a bitch and took a couple of weeks to heal.

  Through the scrum, Vidarr watched as one of the Immortals, suspended from a fenris mouth, who, not struggling as a human might, drew one of those black blades, and drove it forward into the fenris’ throat, up through the soft flesh between the jawbones, and into the brain . . . impaling itself along the way. Vidarr thought for a frozen instant that the fenris might have been Ima, and managed to get a grip on the Immortal in front of him, squeezing and twisting the head and neck, feeling the vertebrae break—a sensation not unlike twisting the thighbone of a raw chicken leg out of its socket. He knew it wouldn’t keep the damned thing down, so he dropped the limp body, planted a foot, and tore the head upwards with a shout of angry effort. It ripped loose reluctantly, tendons and muscles dangling, and then he turned and slammed it into the masked face of the next Immortal coming after him. It might have had a psychological effect on a human, but there was nothing human left in these Immortals. Nothing at all.

  Brandr Ilfetu was a hundred and nine this year, and had been fighting since before Sigrun Caetia had been born. He’d seen battles between mortals and gods. He’d been struck down by Hel herself, and lived to tell the tale.

  Riding along on the ground, with Regin in the air above him on a lindworm’s back, Brandr had been struck by how rich the past few years had been. He had Regin chivying at him, forcing him to practice his words in private. He had her irascible wit and sharp mind constantly at hand, and he woke up beside her every morning that they could manage it. They’d somehow acquired Sigrun as . . . almost a daughter. She came by, once in a while, to talk. To ask for advice, for the human perspective that she was gradually losing. She’d come to them ten days ago, for instance, to ask them if she’d done the right thing in giving her husband his ring back . . . and after she’d explained why, Brandr had only been able to tell her that not only had it been the right thing, but that if he saw Adam ben Maor anywhere near Reginleif or their . . . well, egg . . . he’d give the man one warning to leave, old age or not.

  As for the egg . . . all right, it was an egg, and he still wasn’t sure how he was going to react if it split in half on him, depositing a gooey mass of wet feathers with a human face in his hands, but he expected to be terrified. Not that he would admit that to anyone. A human child averaged about six pounds at birth, give or take. Harpy hatchlings didn’t even make for good-sized rabbits. Three pounds, at most. The child would fit in one of his hands. On the other hand, he was just as glad that Reginleif had had the child in the egg. She was small for a valkyrie, and slightly-built, and he’d all along been hoping, quietly, that she wouldn’t carry a god-born boy, if pregnancy had been her fate, instead of eggs. And with her having laid the egg, and it being off safely in the Veil, she was free to fight beside him again.

  So, all in all, life had been good to him. Too good, probably. He had too much to lose now, and he’d never had much of anything, before. Friends, companionship, colleagues. But not all this . . . wealth.

  His ruminations hadn’t distracted him from the task at hand. He lifted his head as the radio chatter in his ear picked up, and they approached the battle area. He pulled the visor of his helmet down over his face, shaking his head when one of the landsknechten offered him a pistol. It wouldn’t do him any good. Though he did wear a flak jacket with ceramic inserts. No sense taking a bullet in the heart if he could avoid it.

  And then he leaped off the flatbed truck he’d been crouching on, alongside the jotun, and tore his way into the Immortal lines. The rage, as always, snarled and bubbled just under the surface; it was a hyper-adrenal state, and one that a bear-warrior had to repress, rigorously. Use, and not be used by. If you gave in to it entirely, there was a good chance you would endanger your friends as much as your enemies, by being out of position. By getting too far ahead of the line, and making them think that they needed to come to you, compromising their own safety. And yet, bullets tore into his flak jacket as he ran forwards. Caught at his arms and legs, and rang off his helmet. Each impact, each bright spark of pain, brought the rage further up.

  He brought his hammer around in a heavy arc, driving the Immortals around him back. His job was to herd them, more or less. To try to get them into positions where people with flamethrowers could fire on them . . . though burning the flesh alone was no guarantee of putting an Immortal down. Even mere bone was enough to keep them going. Brandr growled as a bullet clipped his helmet, and leaped forwards, landing in front of the next closest target, bringing his hammer down, crushing its helmet entirely. There should have been nothing left of the skull or brain inside of what was now a malformed lump of metal, and blood and cerebrospinal fluid was indeed leaking out, foul-smelling as it was. But the Immortal remained standing, and managed to draw its black-edged sword, closing on him. Brandr caught the creature’s wrist in his off-hand, stepped aside, and brought his hammer down again, from behind. Die already, you piece of shit. The fingers wouldn’t loosen on the sword, so, still moving, he aimed another shot at the elbow, shattering the arm, and this time stripped the weapon free. The hilt felt oily in his left hand, but he managed to bring it around, hacking at the neck of the Immortal who’d just lost the weapon.

  Too much time per enemy. He kicked the now-headless corpse away, and kept moving, ducking, dodging, weaving. At least in the melee, he didn’t have to worry as much about bullets, although the Persians behind this part of the convoy were setting up and firing right into the scrum—as he found out when a mortar went off ten feet from him, dropping him and two Immortals to the ground. Brandr rolled back to his feet, bleeding and burned; the Immortals had actually taken more of a beating than he had, and he was able to shatter their skulls entirely before moving on.

  And then he looked up and realized he had no idea where he was, in relation to the jotun. Damnit. You’re better than this, Ilfetu. He’d gotten disoriented, and needed to fall back to where the others were. For an instant, he had breathing room, and a good look at the battlefield as a whole. A handful of fenris were fighting their way toward his position. Good, I’m not as far out of place as I thought. The line of tanks and personnel carriers stretched back along the road, and a half dozen had pulled off the shoulder, the closest some two hundred feet away. He could see the tank turrets swiveling, and saw a flight of lindworms ride in . . . saw young Rig and his mount appear, their invisibility fading as the young man leaned over and lopped off one turret, cleanly at the middle, and then vanished once more. Nice sword, that. Saw the machine gunners on the personnel carriers take aim up at the lindworms and the harpies, including Regin, as they swooped in, the lindworms dropping bombs, and the harpies seizing Persian soldiers off the ground and carrying them off again, rising rapidly into the air, like hawks stooping to seize a hare . . . and then dropping them from fifty or seventy feet up. He could see the jotun and the Immortals closing, behind and to his left. The centaurs galloping in to spray the troops with incendiary fluids and rocket-propelled grenades.

  And then two more Immortals closed with him, and a fenris leaped in from behind him, and there was no more time to think, just to react. He threw himself easily atop one of the tanks, and tossed the sword he’d captured away. Most bear-warriors, like Erikir, easily matched a jotun for strength, if not size. But where Erikir had other gifts—the focused light of the sun, a cheerful disposition and easy charm—Brandr had the might of Thor in his veins. He’d arm-wrestled and beaten probably two hundred jotun in the past fifteen years. There were quiet bets going all over Little Gothia as to who would
finally beat him, which he pretended to ignore. While a bear-warrior was expected to know how to boast, and boast well, he’d found that often, it said more if he said nothing at all.

  Thus, when Brandr reached down and hauled the hatch at his feet, it was with all the strength that Thor had granted him. The lock sheared. The hinges snapped. He slid it aside, and as he reached down into the crew area, one of the soldiers inside shot up at him. The pistol bullet slammed into his shoulder, and Brandr growled and yanked the man up and out by the throat, throwing him, screaming, down into the melee. And then he leaped down into the tank, taking out the entire crew. He examined the tank controls, put the vehicle on a ramming course for a personnel carrier, and jammed the accelerator down, pinning it in place with a dead man’s rifle, before swinging the turret around and firing the only loaded round directly into the Persians’ own lines.

  Content with the damage he’d done for now, Brandr clambered back out of the tank as it lumbered slowly towards its own lines. Saw the fenris and the jotun moving behind it in a wedge, using it for cover now, and grinned. This is what bear-warriors were for. To turn the tide of battle. He reached up to check the bullet-wound in his shoulder, and felt a scab there, instead. Some field medic with a knife was going to need to go digging for the bullet inside, later. He could still feel it grating against the bone, but at least he wasn’t bleeding now. His healing, other than the brain damage that had left him with the stammer, had actually improved substantially after Hel’s demise. The bitch-goddess had left her mark on him.