The Goddess Denied (The Saga of Edda-Earth Book 2)

by Deborah Davitt

  “That wasn’t very nice,” Inghean opined. “He could have just asked her father to change his mind.”

  “Remember that marriages were about politics back then. If her father dissolved the betrothal to the prince of another kingdom, war could have broken out.” Sigrun’s voice was calm. “So, Helgi killed Sigrún’s father, and much of her family, and married her, as he had promised. History does not record if she wept at the death of so much of her clan, but one of her brothers, Dagr, survived, and Helgi left him alive on the condition that he swore fealty to him. Dagr swore, but was required by honor to avenge his kin. He prayed to Odin, and was given a spear that could kill the reincarnation of the once-nameless man. And he did indeed kill Helgi on the field of battle, and Sigrún put a curse on her brother, forcing him to eat nothing but rotten carrion forever. She buried Helgi in a barrow, but he was allowed to come back from Valhalla for one night, so that they might say farewell.” Sigrun paused. “Sigrún died shortly thereafter. The sagas say of sorrow, but I believe she took the spear that had slain her husband, and pressed it through her heart.”

  Adam, outside in the hallway, winced. The Gothic and Roman acceptance of suicide still jarred him. It was emphatically not a part of his culture. “That’s kind of depressing,” Latirian assessed, after a moment.

  “Well, they had one more chance to get it right,” Sigrun replied, her voice calm. “She was reincarnated a third time, this time as the valkyrie Kára, the stormy one. And she found Helgi again, still with the same name she’d gifted him, lifetimes before. And she took the form of a swan to protect him in combat, and they fought together, until Helgi accidentally struck her with a magic sword during a terrible battle. In injuring her, he weakened himself, and he was struck down by their enemy, and they both died.”

  Masako shifted on her cot. “Your bedtime stories are sad,” she accused.

  Rig raised his hand. “Why did your parents name you Sigrun?” he asked. “Weren’t they afraid you’d meet Helgi?”

  “My mother was apparently a romantic. And yes. Most of my stories are sad. Almost every Gothic story has an unhappy ending, you’ll find. Now, under the covers, all of you. Sleep well.”

  Sigrun came back out into the corridor, blinking when she saw Adam there, and closed the door behind her. “What is it?” she asked him.

  “Masako’s right. You need better bedtime stories.”

  “It’s a perfectly good set of sagas. Beautiful alliterative verse. They tell the story of a man with no name, who lives and dies and lives again, a love that does not die, and two lovers who cannot ever truly say good-bye.” Sigrun shrugged. “It speaks of self-sacrifice, and sorrow, and abiding.”

  “It speaks of giving up and ‘better luck in the next life.’” Adam shook his head. “But here’s my real question.”

  “Hmm?”

  “If you absolutely had to pick a name to use, over and over and over again . . . why on earth would anyone pick Helgi?”

  Sigrun gave him a look. “Would you prefer to use Adam, life after life?”

  “Absolutely. Nothing wrong with that name.” He nodded, and tamped down, hard, on a tickle of memory that whispered at the back of his mind. And his name is your name . . . . “Come on. Let’s go to bed. And try to think of slightly more cheerful ways to go to sleep.”

  Maius-September, 1970 AC

  For people in northern Europa, Aprilis 27, 1970 AC was a date that marked a watershed. It sparked the largest humanitarian effort in human history, and one of the largest mass migrations since probably the last Ice Age. Humanity had never seen a war that had killed so many, and in a single day; not even smallpox had had a mortality rate like this—not since the invention of vaccination, centuries before. And it wasn’t even just the number of dead, although the rotting corpses in the streets were bad enough, and sure to present problems of disease and psychic trauma to the survivors. There were, quite literally, millions of roving monsters suddenly at large in what had been, by and large, peaceful lands. The armies and militia and city guards all mobilized, as best they could, though their own numbers had been decimated. The gods and the god-born came, and they began moving the survivors to defensible enclaves.

  Many of the survivors reacted in horror when they saw the physical mutations forced upon fellow humans. Fights broke out in shelters, the humans frantically declaring that they wouldn’t share space with monsters—be they dragon-scaled, bear-clawed, wolf-fanged, sheep-horned, deer-antlered or other—and this usually resulted in a need for god-born intervention. Even worse were the reactions, at first, when Vidarr and Ima first brought their delegation of sane jotun elites and awakened fenris to Turku, Fennmark’s capital, having run through the snows between there and Lieksa at a steady pace. Still, the jotun immediately had an impact on the city defenses, and Vidarr went out into the countryside, frequently, returning with more fenris who had retained some of their humanity, and with other jotun, many of whom showed signs of having been attacked by ettin, grendels, or even humans. Saraid worked with them, tirelessly. The spirit of the Caledonian Forest was seen throughout the mountains and forests of the north, almost always in the form of a huge white wolf, bounding through the snow. Preventing the desperate, hungry fenris from attacking caravans of human survivors, all trying to make their way south. She spread herself through the north, bringing the wolves their voices and their sanity, and their howls into the night winds began to sound, uncannily, like her name.

  For better or worse, inside of a month, the gods of the Fenns and the other Baltic peoples attempted to reassert themselves, and ordered the Valhallan gods and their god-born to leave. Mortal leaders still beseeched Rome and Raccia and Hellas for food and medical supplies, and even military assistance, but they were to leave their god-born at the borders. The rationale was clear, if uncomfortable. The gods of the Baltic region did not wish to lose any more of their followers, even if it were to gratitude.

  As such, Vidarr, Ima, and their growing collection of jotun and fenris left Turku, and began the long march. They’d decided to make their way to Gotaland, Vidarr’s old homeland, but boats were an issue; a few ferries were running across the Baltic Sea, but not many, and none would take jotun and monsters across into Gotaland. So they took advantage of the summer months, and ran north. Into the lands held by the Sami, and collected jotun along the way. More and more fenris, as well, though feeding their people was looking like an increasingly vexing issue.

  They passed abandoned farms, where the sheep bleated, unshorn and starving, in pastures where their farmers had died. Vidarr ordered the animals killed, and that fed his people, for a time. They hunted, and fought, frequently, with the monsters that roamed the land now. Found reindeer herds, where Sami camps should have been this time of year, but no herdsmen to tend them.

  By Iulius, they had turned back to the south, and were heading down the western shore of the sea, and the ranks of their . . . not really an army, but their tribe, in the most ancient of ways . . . had swollen to twenty thousand, between the fenris and the jotun. Vidarr began having to treat with humans, who, seeing this invasion, panicked and called for god-born, for the militia, for anyone who would come and fight the army of monsters. Fortunately, Vidarr knew a few god-born by first-name, and Erikir had decided to travel with the tribe, from the very first moment that they had been all dismissed from Fennmark. Erikir’s presence made a difference, and he and Vidarr actually became fast friends.

  There were also humans with his tribe. He’d picked up stragglers of this Sami tribe or that one. Random hunters, trappers, and farmers. And a good thing they had the trappers, too. They knew how to hunt. How to dress game, and prepare hides. Skills that most of the jotun, being city-dwellers themselves, did not have. Many of the jotun they’d picked up, here and there, had wrapped old family quilts or blankets around themselves as makeshift kilts. The women had usually safety-pinned blankets together, front and back, to create makeshift caftans, and wrapped bands of whatever fabric they could find aroun
d themselves to bind their breasts. None of their old clothing, naturally, fit, and even a few weeks in Turku hadn’t given them enough needles or scissors suited to jotun hands. People had to share these tools, as they tried to scrape together a thin veneer of civilization. And just having access to dressed hides helped with that. Made the new clothing look a little less grab-bag. More functional. Less . . . looted.

  The rest of the normal humans with them were the human wives, husbands, brothers, and sisters of his jotun, who’d refused to abandon their family members, at least once they’d understood that their loved ones weren’t monsters out to kill them. The husbands and wives who hadn’t mutated with their beloveds were having the worst time of it, really. Vidarr didn’t really know what to say to them, but Ima spent much of every night walking through the camp. Talking to people, or rather, listening to them, with that intent, interested gaze of hers locked on their faces. And she relayed how a given wife was frightened to allow her husband to touch her now. Or how her husband didn’t want to see her flinch, so wouldn’t even touch her hair anymore. Both sides were frightened, and with good reason; the weight difference averaged about eight hundred pounds. The females who’d become jotun, whose husband had stayed more or less human reported their mates feeling threatened, or a little emasculated, by their wives’ sudden enormous strength. Or just repulsed by their appearance. Reports of verbal altercations and fights were common. Marriages were breaking up, as seemed . . . sadly inevitable. But just because someone couldn’t be intimate anymore didn’t mean that there was no jealousy, however irrational.

  The human males who saw their now-giant wives take jotun lovers tended to be . . . fairly rational about the whole thing. Mostly, Vidarr suspected, because they had to be. But he’d had to pull at least three jotun males off of human men they perceived as ‘moving in on’ their human wives before the jotun could pound the human in question into fine paste. And every time he’d had to intervene, he’d demanded of the jotun in question, and what, precisely, do you think you can still do with her, eh? You can hold hands, you can talk, you can be together, if you both agree to it. And yes, yes, a marriage is about more than just sex. But I think it’s clear that that is out of the question, yes?

  The jotun women with straying human husbands tended to be crushed, but in a different way. Their self-images, already poor, suffered. A few tried to commit suicide. Which was perfectly acceptable in Gothic and Roman culture, but Vidarr couldn’t let them wipe away the shame that they felt in that fashion. The numbers of female survivors were better than when the scientists had created the process . . . but there were still at least two male jotun for each female. So he sent Ima to them, and she sat with them. Listened. And let them feel better, when she told them that she didn’t even remember what her face had looked like, before she’d been a wolf. “Sometimes, I wonder if I’ll find an old picture of myself, if I find my mother’s house,” Ima told them. “And sometimes, I think that if I do, I should have Vidarr burn the pictures for me, so I can’t see them. So I won’t know how different I look.” A quick smile. “Other than the ears, teeth, and tail, of course.”

  And then, of course, there were the humans who hadn’t stayed . . . perfectly human. Scales. Fur. Fangs. Claws. Curling ram horns or reindeer antlers. None with wings yet, but Vidarr wondered if that was just a matter of time. Some of them had been outcasts from groups of refugees hurrying south. Loners, picked up along the way. Some of them had jotun family, and most of these humans seemed to have an easier time relating to their newly-jotun family members; both sides knew that they were, in effect, freaks. It didn’t help with the . . . intimacy issues of husband and wives caught on either side of the size divide, but it definitely helped with the social bonds of the entire camp. They called themselves the nieten or the nietenlice. Beasts, or beast-like ones. It seemed better than what the full humans tended to call them. Sceadugenga, or shadow-travelers. Forað, which could mean monster or morass. Hveðungr, a word for monster that also was one of Loki’s alternate names. Ovættr, another variant on monster. The various dialects of Gothic were replete with synonyms for that term.

  Coming up with a name for what Ima and others like her was difficult. The handful of people who spoke Hellene wanted to call them lycanthropes, or lycan, for short. Ima personally preferred hveðungr. Because they were the children of Loki, in a very real way. And there was no reason to be ashamed of what they were. Vidarr thought that this might catch on among their people, but suspected that outsiders would have a hard time pronouncing the name.

  Vidarr convened a thing every night, that democratic staple of Gothic culture, to get people to talk out their problems, and to involve everyone in his ever-growing band in the day-to-day decisions. But as much as he tried to have the various groups represent themselves, more often than he liked, Vidarr had to crack heads. We’re reverting to tribalism. Not good. But it was what it was, and for better or worse, the fenris, because of Ima, backed him. And in his band, he had ten thousand jotun, six thousand fenris, three thousand nieten, and one thousand regular humans, by Iulius. And their numbers were swelling.

  Of course, sometimes their numbers dwindled, as they passed through ettin territory. As lindworms swooped down from above—almost always targeting the humans, or the nieten, because they looked, to a predator’s eyes, smaller and weaker. Like younglings, or diseased individuals. The column’s numbers being in such force, they tried to keep the humans and nieten at the center of the column, and that mostly deterred the lindworms. They’d cruise overhead, circling the column for an hour or two, waiting for stragglers. And then they’d go away, and find a lone cow or sheep to lift into the sky, drop from a half mile up, and then descend to feed. Vidarr had seen them do this many times in the past few months. Like an eagle dropping a turtle. Though, just as often, the lindworms would land, make the kill, and start eating right there . . . or would carry the carcass to a place safer from scavenging by fenris.

  The areas through which they were passing, however, were far too dangerous for unescorted helicopters or ornithopters, so they were more or less on their own, in many ways. The people of Gotaland and Cimbri knew they were coming; Vidarr had sent word before leaving Fennmark. But their primary means of communication, since so many radio towers and phone lines were simply destroyed, remained the god-born. Particularly Sigrun. She came, periodically, usually with a lindworm in hot pursuit, and she’d usually deal with the scaled beast in the air, once she’d sighted the column. She’d cruise in for a landing, therefore, to the raucous cheers and howls of the entire camp, and would work with the trappers and hunters to recover the body, so that the scales could be processed into clothing for someone. But no matter how hungry anyone was, no one wanted to eat the meat. There were too many legends of how greedy men had been turned into lindworms and dragons, for their sins, back in ancient times. And there was a very real possibility that the current lindworms could be transformed humans.

  Vidarr and his original jotun—the Unmaddened, they called themselves—did their best not to remember eating what they’d been given to eat—and told the others that a little hunger was better than living with that kind of memory.

  Everyone took them at their word.

  Sigrun brought them news, too. Let them know what obstacles were in their path to the south. Kept them connected with the rest of the world. And, invariably, had some small, kind gift with her. Needles, thread, leatherworking tools, knives suited for gutting and dressing game. Scrapers for the hides. Salt. A heavy pack of beef bones and rawhide strips, once, for the fenris. Soap, toothpowder. Ration packs from the Roman legions, to include beans, crackers, dried fruit compressed into bars, and even tins of herring for a change in diet. Whatever she could carry, she flew in for them, as did a handful of other valkyrie, but many of the god-born were tasked to the main cities, trying to hold the monsters at bay.

  Ima took to greeting Sigrun with a jotun-sized hug, which always seemed to surprise the valkyrie, and Vidarr was, personally,
always delighted to see her. He privately held her, Saraid, and Lassair—he knew their proper names now, so he could get their attention, if needed—largely responsible for Ima’s transformation, and for the sanity of his people. He’d seen the valkyrie stand up to Hel herself. He’d lost track of the details in the massive fight in the ley-facility . . . but when he’d turned back to look, Hel had been dead, being shaken apart by Niðhoggr. And Niðhoggr turned up, every now and again, too, flying overhead when Sigrun was there. The lindworms . . . stayed very far away when the dragon took to the skies.

  So, the valkyrie would appear, drop off goods and information, stay for an hour or a day. Saraid would appear, and they’d work with the fenris. Only one in ten fenris could be transformed into a lycanthrope, like Ima, which everyone rued, but . . . there were only so many gods, and many of the fenris simply hadn’t held onto their humanity well through the transition. So they’d gain another lycanthrope, maybe two. Saraid would embrace the valkyrie, Vidarr would clasp her wrist . . . and then he’d watch as she wearily ascended back into the sky, to do the same thing for an isolated community to the west of their path, or to the north, or off across the sea to the east. He didn’t envy her the shadows of exhaustion under her eyes.