She closed her eyes, and caught the strands of color Lassair had already prepared for her. It was . . . a little easier this time, than it had been on the road, with Japik. This one had more self left, Lassair assessed. He may even remember his name, if not his Name, when we are done. He had more . . . will. He was like Vidarr, before . . . all of this.
Ten minutes later, Vidarr and Torvald were able to release the jotun, who slumped to the floor, all fight suddenly leaving his body. “What . . . where am I? I . . . it was not a dream, then. . . . ?”
Sigrun reeled. They’d worked at the puzzle of his mind, in half the time they’d taken for Japik. She was desperately afraid that they might not have assembled everything correctly, and she had no idea how Lassair seemed to have such boundless energy. Hurry, the spirit urged her, as Sigrun caught the waterskin slung just along her shoulder, and took a deep drink. Too many more to go.
“He needs healing—”
Heal the minds first. Their bodies will follow. They heal almost as well as the bear-warriors do. Hurry, Stormborn. In this world, we have only so much time.
Sigrun hurried. They pulled the two other giants who’d been in the pits, and were now bloody and beaten, back into sanity, or some semblance thereof, and then she sat, numbly, listening to Vidarr speak to them. Tell them that they were brethren. That they might once have been fellow soldiers, and that memory might return . . . or might not. Heard the anger in the low, rumbling voices, and felt gray exhaustion tug at her vision. More, Lassair told her. But first, eat. You are using your own substance, burning yourself like a candle.
Adam had clearly heard that. He dropped down beside her, and, hunkered low, dug out a couple of candy bars from his pack for her. Nuts, for protein, Nahautl chocolate and raisins for quick energy. Sigrun’s hands shook as she tried to unwrap them. “I don’t know if we’re reassembling the people that they were, or if we’re . . . creating whole new individuals and murdering who they used to be,” she told him, and shoved another piece of candy in her mouth.
“You’re doing fine,” Adam told her, quietly. “I’m just glad that some of them can be saved.” A quick, grim look. “Wish I could do more than just pull the trigger. I know it’s mercy. But it still feels like murder.” His lips curved down at the corners. “At least you and Lassair are letting something live.”
Sigrun chewed with difficulty and swallowed, suddenly aware of just how hungry she was. and put her hand on his shoulder. “You’re not murdering anyone,” she told him. “The ettin . . . the grendels . . . the person they were, is . . . already dead.”
“You’re sure?”
“There’s not much more left inside than a . . . monkey, I think. Not that I have ever looked at a monkey with othersight.” Her lips turned down as unease swept through her. “And monkeys are hardly nine feet tall and capable of tearing people apart. So . . . it’s not murder. No more so than it was in Tawantinsuyu. At least Inti was in his right mind. These . . .” She hesitated. “You carry enough burdens, Adam.” She looked at him, her stomach clenching on what she’d eaten. “Don’t carry this one.”
And then Lassair tugged her back to work. Urgency in the spirit’s thoughts. I can feel the bear-warriors approaching, Lassair told them all, her tone unhappy. We must save as many as we can before they arrive. And Steelsoul, Emberstone, Truthsayer, and even you, Flamesower . . . you must end the lives of the mad ones. I am sorry. But it is necessary.
“Because otherwise, someone could just open the cage doors, and turn them loose. Either on us, or on the entire countryside.” Adam’s voice held deadly weariness. “I am . . . all too aware, Asha. Tren. Esh. Min. You’re with me. I just hope watching us execute the ettin and the grendels doesn’t make it harder for you to pull the jotuns’ minds back together.”
It did, and it didn’t. Vidarr and Torvald took a few vicious punches, claws, and bites, getting the first few jotun out of the cages, until Sigrun told them, sharply, “Leave them within. Asha is insubstantial at the moment. They cannot hurt her. Asha, get inside, and do what you need to do.”
Lassair floated through the cage bars, and slid her hands into another jotun’s chest. The male stiffened, going completely still, and Sigrun leaned against the bars of the cage, holding herself up, trying not to hear the rapid-fire bursts of Adam’s automatic rifle. The screams as the ettin and grendels died. Tried not to smell the odor of burning flesh, as Kanmi and Minori used blades of fire and frozen air to cut giants’ throats, letting them die in their cages. Brutal. Horrifying. Necessary.
Sigrun closed her eyes and focused all of her attention on the strands of light that made up the next jotun’s spirit. Saw the framework that underlay it. Each time, it was a little easier, seeing what made someone . . . human. Most of the jotun had had the connection to the uppermost functions severed. What an anatomist would call the cerebral cortex. Sigrun suspected it came from the horrible shock of ‘dying’ in the earth, and the sensory deprivation, which reduced and eroded the sense of self to almost nothing. And then being reborn, with no physical signs of the original self left. She showed that framework to Lassair, and was grateful that it was all . . . abstract. That she didn’t have to see what the painful memories actually were. She just identified them as nodes that could be left out of the integrated whole, lest they threaten the jotun’s sanity.
We need to work faster, Lassair told her. Let’s try two at a time.
“Lassair, I can’t. I am barely holding one of them together. If we start working on them at the same time, they’ll become . . . mental twins, or something. I will not take that risk with their minds.” It didn’t help that Sigrun had been awake since dawn the previous day. She was running on adrenaline at the moment, and that wasn’t good for delicate work, mental or physical.
Let us at least try. The bear-warriors are less than twenty minutes away. I would have more of these jotun awakened by then, than just the three we might manage, taking one at a time.
Sigrun tried. She was on her knees by the second set of cages, and Adam was there, suddenly, to help her back to her feet. “That’s enough,” Adam said, sharply. “Three from the pits, five more from the cages.”
Ten more remain, that we might save!
“There isn’t a time limit on this. We’ll put their brothers in charge of keeping them safe until you and Sig can get back to them. But we need Sig on her damned feet for this.” More quietly, and not in the ringing command tones he’d just used, Adam asked, “Are you all right, Sig?”
“Think so . . . head hurts. Why?” She did her best to focus on his face. On seeing him as a human, instead of a being made entirely of pure and shining steel.
“Your nose is bleeding.” He handed her a handkerchief, and Sigrun mopped at her face, looking at the blood in consternation. She hadn’t even felt the sticky wetness until he’d mentioned it.
Forgive me. I . . . sometimes forget, sister, that you are as mortal as all these others, in your way. Lassair drifted closer, and reached out a hand, sinking it into Sigrun’s chest, adding her healing to Sigrun’s natural regeneration. The others are near. And this place is a trap for them. And us, too, if we are not careful.
Vidarr raised his voice. “Torvald, Helga, help the new-awakened clean up. There are hoses at the south end of the building. That’s where they . . . used to clean us . . . between fights.” He pulled his lips back from his teeth in a snarl. “Get them feeling more like people again, if you would.” He switched to Latin. “I’m coming with you,” he said, shortly, looking at the various Praetorians, as they assembled around Adam and Sigrun. “I want the head of whoever’s in charge of this facility.”
I will come with you, as well, Ima chimed in. Perhaps Sari has found more of my kind who . . . have speech in their minds and hearts, as well?
Adam shook his head. It seemed a very small thing to hope for, but if he were in Ima’s shoes . . . paws . . . whatever . . . he’d probably cling to the small things, as well. “All right. Let’s get outside. Min, you can dro
p the silence you’re maintaining. I think . . . all the noise is over with, for the moment, besides the ones who are still . . . yelling in their cages. Esh, get that invisibility field working again, if you would.”
Outside, they headed for the large, apparently abandoned building to the north of them, Lassair showing them all two blips of color—storm-gray and sun-gold—coming in from the northeast, along the lake, as they themselves had hiked to this remote location. In the shelter of the old ley-facility, Adam lowered himself into a crouch. His knees protested; the three-mile hike hadn’t been enough to tire him out, but the snowy conditions, the fact that his trousers were wet to his thighs, and the bitter chill in the air, all conspired to remind him that he was, though still in peak condition, forty-one years old. The human body was only meant to last so long, and he was aware that while he had the benefit of experience, his reflexes were just not as fast as when he’d been in his twenties. He checked his current clip in the automatic rifle, and then issued a few quick hand-signals to the others, as they moved, together, around the corner of the building. It went against all his training to have them grouped up like this, but . . . Esh and Minori couldn’t cover them if they weren’t together.
And as they moved around the building, Adam could see, in the pre-dawn shadows under the trees outside the circle of the guard towers’ lights, the color-limned outlines of Brandr and Erikir breaking, cautiously, through the treeline. Adam swore, under his breath. “We can’t let them walk into a trap,” he muttered, and tabbed his radio, on the frequency they’d been using for the past week with the two bear-warriors. “Brandr? Stay where you are. There are guard towers to either side of your location. You can’t see them, but they’re there.”
Both bear-warriors froze in position, and for a moment, Adam breathed a little easier. Brandr replied, tersely, on the radio, “Ben Maor? Should have guessed you couldn’t follow directions.”
“Last I checked, I don’t actually take orders from you,” Adam returned, his voice purposefully even. “Circle around to the west. We’ve got part of the perimeter secured over there. You’ll see why pretty much as soon as you cross over the illusion line.”
“Illusions? Wonderful. Circling to the west.” Brandr’s tone suggested he planned to have words with Adam later.
“Tren, how’s Sari doing with the wolves?” Adam was just looking for status. They might well need an army to take out all the guards here, and he definitely wanted a look in what Saraid had identified as the hospital building, to the northeast. A pack of the fenris at their backs would be . . . inordinately helpful.
“She says she’s got most of them, actually. Except there’s a problem.” Trennus sounded grim.
“Isn’t there always?” Adam watched the bear-warriors moving west now. “What’s the hold-up?”
“There’s an entire room full of puppies and two nursing mothers in there.” The Pict’s voice was faintly nauseous, and Adam distinctly heard Ima whine. Caught movement as Vidarr put a reassuring hand on her ruff. “Sari says she’ll try to get everyone in there ready. Says there are . . . gods above. Seventy wolves in there, but eight are puppies, no more than six months old.”
“Gods damn them,” Vidarr grated, quietly.
“How many guards are we talking, overall?” Adam asked. Saraid and Lassair had passed along images, and he’d done a rough count in his head. “Somewhere between eighty and a hundred, correct?”
“Thereabouts,” Trennus agreed, tightly. “Bad place for a building-to-building fight.”
Adam nodded. Too many towers. Too many guards. Not nearly enough of them, even with wolves and jotun to help . . . if the jotun even would help. They did have minds of their own, after all. Some of them might just want to flee.
He had everyone else move north, along the line of the main building, to keep an eye on Erikir and Brandr. But before the two bear-warriors had gone more than a hundred feet, one of the searchlights atop the northwestern guard tower spun and aimed directly for them, as if by a hidden hand. The human guards atop the tower shouted in consternation, and opened fire down on the pair. Adam’s eyes widened as Brandr roared and took a running leap, launching himself to the top of the twenty-foot tall tower, where he slammed into one of the guards there with his hammer, sending the searchlight spinning wildly. “So much for stealth,” Adam said, shortly, and was just grateful that the guard barracks were to the south, behind the bulk of the dilapidated main building. He couldn’t fire into the scrum at the top of the tower, but the wild swinging of the light had definitely caught the attention of the guard tower to the southwest, beyond the jotun . . . training building. “Esh?”
“Too far for me,” the sorcerer replied, his words clipped. “Matru?”
Trennus had already dropped to a crouch and put one hand on the frozen ground, which now trembled and shook underfoot, as if a massive earthquake surged through the area. Adam swore, and stepped uneasily away from the rickety-appearing building . . . and watched, in a sick kind of awe, as the roof over the ‘training facility’ caved in partially, and both of the closest guard towers collapsed in on themselves. Adam saw Brandr throw himself to safety, just as the building on which he stood crumbled, and the guards there with him screamed in fear, as they plummeted into the center of a cylinder of debris. Brandr rolled to his feet, coming up with his hammer in hand, shedding snow, just as Erikir ran, fleet-footed, through the snow, to his mentor’s side. “Ben Maor!” Brandr snapped out. “That your doing? Show yourself!”
Adam tabbed his radio. “Get to the main building, straight line from where you are now. We can cover you, but only if you come to us.”
Brandr pulled his lips back from his teeth, but moved straight for where Adam had told him to go . . . and he and Erikir slipped into the increasingly tight confines of Kanmi’s invisibility sphere. The bear-warrior glowered down at them all in the light radiating from the inner surface of the sphere. “You really had to come here?” Brandr demanded. “Sigrun, do you have any idea how much trouble you’ve just gotten yourself into, let alone all of your friends?”
Adam tamped down on his irritation. “I think now is perhaps not the time for discussions about rule-breaking, or the issue of precedence in the chain of command,” he said, sharply. “We’ve so far found seventy fenris, eighteen jotun, and put down close to fifty ettin and grendels. And there’s far more going on here than meets the eye.” He gestured around at the now-visible buildings, and tried, without success, not to enjoy the way the two bear-warriors’ jaws dropped. He didn’t feel good about killing the monsters in their cages; each had been, once, a mortal man. But he did have to admit that asking, implicitly, And what have you done with your evening? was . . . more enjoyable than it should have been.
Thus, it was slightly irritating to hear Sigrun interpose, quietly, even diplomatically to her old teacher, “I’ll stand before the gods for this, Brandr. I accept the price.”
“I know you will,” Brandr returned, grimly. “That’s precisely what I was trying to avoid happening.”
It was on the tip of Adam’s tongue to tell Brandr that Sigrun had a father of her own, when he abruptly realized that he didn’t have the right to say that. And from the way they were looking at each other, the disappointment mixed with resignation and weariness in Brandr’s face, and the slight shame and a little defiance in Sigrun’s expression, Adam abruptly realized that Brandr was a father-figure for Sigrun. A friend, yes, but also probably more responsible for shaping her than Ivarr had been. She’d always described her father as a very distant presence in her life, thanks to her mother’s death and Medea’s presence as her pedagogue.
Erikir cleared his throat. “I’ve never heard of any human able to create and maintain illusions of this size and complexity,” he murmured, changing the subject. “If this is not where the god has hidden himself, then it is certainly important enough to merit contacting Valhalla.”
Brandr visibly mastered his irritation, nodded, and lowered his head, still standing, and
began to murmur under his breath in Gothic. “Hel, guardian of the land of the dead, hear our words. Come to us on death’s own silent wings.”
The Goddess Denied (The Saga of Edda-Earth Book 2) Page 31