A suggestion, valkyrie?
“Yes, efreet?”
You say that Rome will not march on these convoys until the spirits are out of the field of battle. Let us go and fight them. We can meet them in the air, you and I. A light of anticipation seemed to kindle in Zhi’s eyes.
Sigrun blinked, rapidly, and looked over at Erida and Brandr as her mind raced. “Technically, getting involved in the battle ahead of any order to do so would be a violation of the chain of command.” She paused. “However, my current rank, as a foreign levy serving as an advisor and liaison, is approximately equivalent to the tribuni angusticlavii on the general staff.” In essence, she ranked well above even a first-file centurion, but below the regional legate, who was in charge of several legions. Technically, the rank was usually given to an administrative officer, such as a book-keeper or supply officer, but she was neither. This all meant that she occupied an ambiguous gray-space in the military hierarchy. “I could take initiative here, and justify it as . . . supporting local militia efforts, or something else suitably bland and bureaucratic.” Assuming, of course, we succeed. She glanced again at Brandr, who had no Legion rank at the moment, being solely assigned to work with the landsknechten. “Brandr? Lady Erida?” Sigrun asked, quietly. “Would you come with us?”
Brandr grimaced, and tapped the hammer slung over his shoulders. The message was clear. He couldn’t hit an efreet with it. “The summoners, perhaps?” Sigrun offered. “Though that might put you too far behind the lines.”
She caught the exchange of glances between Erida and Zhi. “If you and Zhi can drive the efreeti back to me, I can bind them,” Erida said, suddenly grinning.
I would greatly prefer to devour their essences. Zhi’s tone was feral. In that manner, they cannot become a threat again.
“But bound, they can become allies.” Erida raised her eyebrows at her spirit-mate.
I know my own kind too well. They will only serve if they see an advantage to themselves—and continuously having to hold them in line will prove tiring, over the long run. I will make you this offer, Erida, my own . . . if there are any there who are too powerful for me to swallow? We will drive them back to you, and you may bind them. Zhi grinned again, showing teeth made of flame. In that way, all purposes are served.
Sigrun considered it all for a long moment. “Brandr . . . perhaps you might stay with Erida and ensure that she’s not targeted.”
A brief, grim nod. Zhi turned and gave the bear-warrior a speculative glance. I respect your strength, warrior, the efreet said, suddenly. Perhaps we will fight slightly more corporeal enemies at some point, together.
A faint shrug, and a single laborious word in reply: “P-perhaps.”
Sigrun rubbed at her eyes. What am I getting myself into? she wondered.
“I want to watch,” Zaya told them, stubbornly, as the other children were dispatched back to the nursery.
Erida sighed and handed the girl the field glasses. “Stay here. Stay out of trouble. You are the daughter of a Magi family. You might not have the spark of magic inside of you, but you must understand what battle is. Just as every other member of the family does.” The sorceress leaned down and kissed her daughter’s forehead. “Be brave.”
Be brave, little magus. Be brave, little valkyrie. The words rang in Sigrun’s mind like an echo.
The last time she’d fought in the air with someone else equally at home in that element had been with fellow valkyrie in Gotaland, very often having to share the sky with Judean jets and helicopters, which had meant needing to be hyper-aware of her surroundings, lest she be clipped, caught in backwash, or anything else. The efreet was an entirely different kind of companion; he lifted Erida off into the air, at first in humanoid form, for a more low-profile approach, while Sigrun lifted Brandr’s weight, her arms only straining a little. When they reached the edge of the battlefield, they found a low hill, behind which Erida and Brandr could take cover, and left them to begin setting up the binding circles and the small metal jars in which Erida would bind any efreeti they brought back to her.
Then Zhi towered up into his non-human form, a pillar of wind, smoke, and fire two miles high. Sigrun knew that most natural cyclones reached over twenty-nine thousand feet into the air. But an efreet packed almost as much raw force into a smaller package. Sigrun could feel the air pressure inside of him lower, as his winds and flames picked up speed, and was reminded, intensely, of the cyclones that could develop in the plains to the south of her childhood home to the south of Cimbri-on-the-Caestus. She shuddered internally at how much raw force the efreet represented.
You! Zhi shouted, his mental voice a roar of challenge. You would come to my territory, you would seek to do battle in my land, and yet fear to face me? Come and fight, you wisps of smoke, you puffs of wind. You are nothing and you are Nameless, if you will not fight me. Eyes made out of fire shifted inside the howling column of wind and destruction. Do you know how to fight my kind, valkyrie?
Oh, now you ask, Sigrun thought, numbly, as two columns of smoke ‘looked’ up from the water elementals that they’d just turned into meals, and began to move towards their location. She’d assumed that she’d be getting their attention while Zhi did the actual killing. “It has never come up before. Will lightning work on them?”
It will ionize their air. It will displace air, as thunder. It will convert portions of their structure to ozone. It will, in essence, sting them, valkyrie, but that is hardly your only weapon, now is it? Unspin them, as I will. Send your winds through them, and reverse their course. Deprive their fires of their air. Once you reach a certain point, you will be able to shear them apart.
Sigrun blinked. “My winds are used for defensive purposes,” she objected, rapidly, as the two columns came closer. “I can bat away projectiles. I cannot use them for offense!”
Learn, valkyrie. And learn quickly, would be my advice.
Oh, gods. Adam is going to kill me if I don’t make it home from this. If he hears I got killed by an efreet—when he dispersed a djinn when he was in his twenties with an ammunition dump set on fire—my ghost is never going to hear the end of it. Sigrun rose into the air, feeling her stomach drop into her boots. She held her spear in her hands, reminding herself that it was the very same one with which she’d killed Supay. Except Supay was incarnate. He was in a flesh-and-blood avatar, this is wind and this is fire, and fire really hurts—and set herself as the efreeti closed, ignoring her in favor of Zhi, for the moment.
The instant they were within range, however, Sigrun reached up into the clouds gathering overhead, and felt the electrical potential there. Paved the way for it, lured it down . . . and a double fork of lightning slammed down into the two efreeti, thunder almost simultaneous with a flash that turned the world wholly white for a moment. Both of them had been focusing on Zhi, entirely, until this instant. With the thunder still ringing back from the landscape, the efreeti glanced at each other, or at least, seemed to, and then split apart, one of them now racing directly for Sigrun, and the other for Zhi. We who are about to die . . . .
And then no more time for thought as an efreet engulfed her. Darkness and smoke and fire. Blindness and pain, being torn through air that was fire at the same time, struggling to control her flight as she was swirled, thought-fast, in an endless spiral. Her inner ears protested, her stomach roiled, and then she regained control, but her skin was beginning to blister from the heat, and between the smoke and the pressure, she couldn’t breathe. No. I’ve been torn by faster winds on Niðhoggr’s back. I will not be defeated by such as you! She reached out, and brought lightning down, again, using herself as the target, and, barely keeping a grip on the haft of her spear, began to lay about her with it. It felt useless, cutting air with a blade made of mortal metal, but she swore she could feel the efreet flinch.
Her head rang with oxygen deprivation as she reached out again, this time, not for her lightning, but for the winds that were usually her attendants and her shields. Unspin? Zhi
, you and are I going to have a talk about this later . . . gods, which way am I even going . . . Widdershins. So I need to make this . . . go clockwise . . . . Sigrun lashed out with all her strength, and, quite without warning, tumbled out the sidewall of the efreet, tumbling head over heels in the air and desperately trying to right herself. She managed to pull herself up, and spun in time to see the efreet she’d been fighting trying to . . . re-coalesce. Well, I’ll be damned.
Cool droplets of rain fell against her skin like a benison, soothing her burns, as she circled the efreet, trying to cut at it with winds that she’d never used as a weapon before, but . . . she’d seen Minori do similar things before. It didn’t seem entirely alien. And after gathering speed, Sigrun braced herself, took a deep breath, and slammed into the efreet’s side like a bullet, finding herself lost in darkness and flame once more.
When she found herself spat back out again, she hurt even worse than before. Black and red burns laced her skin, and she ached, but a sudden downpour of rain coursed over her body, and a howling wind forced water into all the efreet on the battlefield. Her opponent was looking worse for wear, and Sigrun set her teeth. One more pass, she thought, and dove in at it once more, even as it flinched and tried to retreat. Oh, no you don’t. In and through, tearing at it with spear and wind, and the rain followed her in, dousing its fires. And then, on one last slash of her spear, the damned thing evaporated. “Hel’s frozen heart!” Sigrun shouted into the screaming wind, swearing by the dead goddess out of habit. “It went to the damned Veil!”
She looked up as a shockwave of air rushed out towards her, and was just in time to see the two pillars beside her fuse into one, larger system. It was like seeing two huge storms on a gas giant swallow one another, and the ambient wind around her began to drag her towards the larger vortex. Oh, gods, please actually be Zhi. I don’t want to fight another efreet one-on-one till I’ve healed the burns, and this one’s bigger than the last one . . . .
Sigrun Stormborn, if you wish to retain me as an ally, I would strongly recommend not engaging in friendly-fire tactics!
“What?” Sigrun blurted out, hanging in mid-air. That was definitely Zhi’s voice, and he was using her damnably well-known name. “What are you talking about?”
The rain certainly helps to weaken the others, but it also serves to weaken me. That was a hiss of irritation.
“I’m not doing that!’ Sigrun shouted back. “Weather is weather. Gods influence it, but it’s a confluence of natural events, highs and lows spread out over thousands of miles. I can’t move that much air, let alone summon water. Lightning, yes! Localized winds, yes! Rain, no!”
Zhi’s enormous, fiery eyes regarded her. Just as you say, Stormborn. The sensation of barely leashed rage dissipated.
Sigrun jerked a thumb to where her opponent had been. “Mine decamped for the Veil.”
No. He did not. I would have felt him leave, intact, demanifested, and would have been able to pursue him. You slew him.
Sigrun wanted to object. The usual rule of spirits being the only things that could truly kill other spirits rushed to her lips, and then she remembered Hel sneering at Brandr, You think that we would give to a mere god-born, a weapon capable of defeating one of us? How foolish.
We . . . can. Of course we can. I’ve killed a god, however . . . lucky the circumstances. Of course I can . . . truly slay a spirit. Brandr probably could have killed Hel, if he’d been stronger, or if he’d had a more powerful weapon to hand. And Nith did kill her . . . and he’s as much a god-born as any I’ve ever seen. We’re half-mortal, half-spirit. We can reach them, so long as they are manifested. And that is, of course, why Zeus wished to kill all his mortal descendants. How foolish I was, not to understand that sooner. I had all the pieces, but . . . didn't apply them. And the gods keep very quiet about this . . . and bind us very tightly, in these days, so that we do not have random traitors killing gods. No wonder they have kept such close tabs on me, over the years. They want to ensure that I do not tell others of this. That the god-born are well-suited to being godslayers.
Most of the other efreet, weakened by the storm, began to retreat, but they lured a third, a powerful one, to them, with Zhi’s taunts and Sigrun’s lightning. They savaged it, between them, and pulled it back to Erida, who’d been well-guarded by Brandr, and who promptly bound the creature into a metal flask. “I’ll let him out in a binding circle in a day or two, and see if we have an ally . . . or if Zhi has a meal,” Erida commented, picking up her implements. “Allies would be most helpful.”
Sigrun considered telling Brandr her thoughts as she carried him back to the manor, but the words stuck in her throat. He’d defied everything they knew to attack Hel. What would telling him my suspicions do, besides tell him he hadn’t . . . quite been good enough? Strong enough, powerful enough? That it took a god-touched weapon, and Nith . . . who’s something of a weapon himself . . . to kill Hel? She held her tongue, for the moment. She had to consider this further.
They landed on the balcony, and Sigrun realized, in some shock, that Zaya was still there. Her tiny body was soaked to the skin, her dark hair plastered to her scalp, and she shuddered with cold, but she still clutched the field glasses in her hands. Sigrun winced; the girl’s eyes were wide, showing white all the way around. Pure, elemental combat and raw magic had been in play out there. “Zaya!” Erida chided, immediately. “What are you still doing out here?”
“I . . . w-wanted t-to s-see everything. I s-saw the tanks f-flying up in t-the air, and F-father f-fighting t-the efreet . . . “ Zaya’s teeth chattered, and Zhi, back in his humanoid form, swept the girl up into his arms, a blast of heat coming off of him to warm her.
Yes, a good battle. Inside. Before you freeze, and before I go out.
That was . . . one of the better days. Sigrun spent most of that two-year span bogged down with jotun and fenris units. Watching from the air as jotun became the mobile, sapient tanks that Adam had once predicted they’d be. They’d run in, on foot, and flank Mongol and Persian tanks, firing miniguns normally reserved for Judean helicopters. Firing rocket launchers at ornithopters overhead. Fenris slashing in, in sneak attacks from behind, savaging infantry and sending them screaming in terror. But for every battle they won, they lost another. For every inch of ground gained, another was lost. The jotun healed. The fenris healed. The common soldiers . . . did not. There were times when the air above the legion camps was greasy with the smoke of funeral pyres, and the reek got into Sigrun’s hair, her nose, and her mind.
Most nights, she was bivouacked with the jotun, with her small tent often pitched beside Vidarr and Ima’s; the pair preferred to fight side-by-side, and as commanders of their jotun/fenris landsknechten, pretty much made up their own rules. Their children were being cared for by pack betas back in Jerusalem, however.
Sigrun was just glad to have familiar faces around her. She’d known Vidarr and Ima for fourteen years now, and thanks to their regenerative capabilities, she didn’t see many signs of age in them. A whole species of god-touched, she often thought. No natural mortality. Just death-in-battle. That could be a problem in the long-term, but at least the fenris and hveðungr that Saraid’s helped no longer have litters. Still, because of the battles in the north, and fighting here . . . their numbers are down, not up. There were groups in think-tanks all over the world, debating what to do about the ‘jotun problem,’ once all the ettin and grendels were dead. A few groups had even called for enforced sterilization of jotun and fenris, only to be reminded that sterilization procedures didn’t work on creatures that could regenerate.
There was a growing tide of unease, all through the Empire, as a result. Normal humans didn’t want to be out-bred and out-competed by the jotun, like Homo sapiens had out-bred and out-competed the Neanderthal. Sigrun couldn’t quite shake the nagging feeling that someone, at some point, was going to try to wipe out the jotun with . . . bombs, or a custom-made disease, and that the jotun who survived—if any did—would annihilat
e the people who’d done it. This kind of stuff is way above your pay-grade. Stop worrying about it, and go to sleep.
She sent letters home to Adam; while she still carried the satellite phone, she didn’t want to abuse the privilege, since so many others lacked it, and random signals made for bad operational security, anyway. On nights when she wasn’t writing letters, she read, or played dice with Ima, Vidarr, Brandr, and a couple of senior fenris. Admittedly, the fenris could only toss the dice from the cup by using their teeth, so playing Liar’s Dice was very difficult for everyone involved, and mostly involved everyone looking away as each fenris plopped a paw atop the clustered dice to hide the spots. Bids were exchanged, and bluffs about the quality of each roll ensued. Sigrun’s truthsense made the game unfairly easy, so most nights, she wound up just helping the fenris play, retrieving the dice for them so that they could re-roll. It was social enough, and as Sigrun had often told Saraid, the fenris were somehow more comfortable for her than humans. They were still human in many ways. They still had rivalries and jealousies and rank-consciousness. But some of the pettier human urges just weren’t there.
She got to know more of the jotun. Looked at pictures of their children. One female jotun—Marit Lager—happened to be smaller than the rest of the mercenaries. Almost diminutive for a jotun, she was a mere seven feet in height . . .and she and her fully human husband had defied the odds, and managed to stay together. “This is our family,” Marit told Sigrun shyly one evening, when she’d checked in at the guard post where Marit was standing watch.
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