Adam had found that his hands had clenched, if briefly, before he reminded himself that it wasn’t condescension. But he found himself in surprising agreement with Kanmi as the sorcerer from Tyre muttered, “I think we lesser beings could give you two a run for your money.”
“I meant no offense,” Brandr said, turning, his grin pulling at his facial scars. “You are all masters of your own chosen forms of combat. Three of you are adepts of seiðr. Magic. But I need to know precisely where Sigrun is, if I am to fight beside her.” He shrugged. “We will require a large, open area. No roofs. No walls.”
Lassair cut in, mildly, with a comment of her own. Stormborn has hardly been solely occupied with humans since she left your tutelage. She has fought spirits. Demons. Gods. She helps train my children, too, and they are not . . . entirely human.
Adam could see the wince that passed Sigrun’s face, as Brandr turned back towards her. “You are training spirit-touched children?”
“I have presumed to pass along some of my knowledge, yes,” Sigrun answered, her expression tight.
After a long moment of breathless tension, Brandr actually laughed. “Good. That is what we are meant to do. Live. Learn. Pass on what we’ve learned. But still, I would know how fit you are.”
They found a Praetorian practice field, the inner circle of a runner’s track, out of the public eye, outside of Rome itself, and Brandr and Erikir tested Sigrun for about two hours. Adam winced with every throw. Found himself tensing, as if to help her punch harder with the force of his own will. Brutal would have been an understatement. Three people, all of whom could regenerate from almost any wound . . . no holds barred. Two on one, at that. “I think she’s using some of the bitahevn you’ve shown us over the years,” Trennus commented, grimacing as Sigrun took Erikir to the ground with a shoulder throw, and then kicked him in the head. Hard. “What’s interesting is, they’re still not actually testing her for her own combat techniques.”
Adam snorted. “I noticed. She’s got open sky. She could fly in circles, too fast for them to catch up with a gun, and pull down lightning on their heads.” No. This is testing to make sure she’s still . . . one of them, I guess. Re-establishing the old students-and-teacher bond.
At that moment, Sigrun leaped into the air, and, using her flight ability, wrapped her hands around Brandr’s head, and brought his face down while bringing her knee up. There was an audible snap of bone, and everyone sitting on the fence cringed.
Brandr pulled back, staggered, but not out of the fight, and Sigrun completely changed the rules of combat, using his head as a release point, pushing off from him into the air. Called her spear to her and began to fight, not like a ground-bound mortal or a bear-warrior, but like a valkyrie. Spirit of the air. A blur of constant motion, hit and run tactics, running rings around the two men. Weaving them into each other’s paths. He hadn’t been able to watch and appreciate her fight with Supay. It had been too fast, too dangerous, and too much else had been going on around him. This was really the first time he’d been able to watch Sigrun fight as she was born to do, and it was a revelation. She fights like a spirit. A beneficent one. All right, she fights like an angel would, if angels ever left heaven for earth, in these days. And while he’d understood how fast she was against Supay, he hadn’t seen it translated to a mortal context before. He now understood how much Sig held back in practice. Everyone did, on the mats. If you broke someone’s wrist for real, you couldn’t practice again for six weeks, and there’d be less trust when they got back. But now, she wasn’t holding back, wasn’t constrained by concern for the limits of mortal flesh.
Brandr’s concerns about how rusty she might be, suddenly had a certain stark validity to them, because the bear-warriors gave as good as they got. They couldn’t match her for speed, but she also wasn’t able to take them down. Adam could see scratches, accidentally inflicted by the spear’s point, heal up instantly. Erikir laughed and drew his sword, which glowed with golden fire, and Brandr hefted his hammer. A single blow from it, Adam knew, and Sig might be out of the fight for a couple of days, even as fast as she healed. Her best defense was her speed, and her ability to leap over their heads. Use them as her launch points. She did it again, and this time, swept Brandr’s legs out from under him from behind, with the haft of her spear, before pantomiming a slash that would have separated head from shoulders, and turning to deal with Erikir, in turn, only to have to block and duck under a sword-swipe before tumbling away through the air.
At the end of two hours, Sigrun was covered in sweat and panting. Dozens small cuts were healing on all three of the combatants, and Brandr actually picked her up off the ground with a boisterous hug, and set her back down again. “Not nearly as rusty as I thought you’d be,” he acknowledged. “Who taught you those shoulder throws? I want to learn them.”
“Adam did,” Sigrun replied, nodding to the fence. She looked better than she had, in days. The flush of exertion, the concentration she’d needed to stay in the now, had clearly knocked some of the brooding anger out of her. Had given her something to do with the anger. Adam had tried sparring with her, but her temper had been so . . . cold . . . he wasn’t sure if it had helped.
Brandr’s face lit up, and he moved over, immediately. “Knew there was a reason she liked you,” he told Adam. “Sign me up for any lessons you feel like giving.”
Adam’s eyebrows shot up. He’d expected, reflexively, to have mortal techniques derided. “You approve?”
“I’d be stupid not to approve, boy! The leverage in those throws is phenomenal. They don’t require strength to effect.” Brandr chuckled. “Everything I do revolves around the might of Thor. But there are a lot of other powerful god-born out there. I wouldn’t say no to a way of dealing with them that doesn’t involve arm-wrestling.”
He watched the bear warriors move off, and then returned his attention to Sigrun. Watching her spar, her body in motion, every movement clean and sharp and aggressive, always gave him a certain charge. So he gave her a kiss as she came in from the field. “That was fun,” he admitted, and pulled her close, so she could feel the tension in his body, and Sigrun smiled up at him. There was nothing he could do about it at the moment, and, much as he wanted to nibble his way down her throat, it lacked a certain amount of public decorum. So Adam contented himself with a promise, whispered in her ear. “Going to chase you around the bedroom tonight, Sig. So much so, that you might even sleep on the flight across the Sea of Atlas.”
And he was rewarded by the first laugh he’d heard out of Sigrun in close to a week.
Aprilis 19-20, 1970 AC
They were traveling on a Sæternesdæg, but it couldn’t be helped. At least the flight from Rome to Divodurum took long enough that by the time they reached the city on the Gulf of Nahautl, it was Sunnandæg. Divodurum was a fairly typical modern city in Novo Gaul, though it was the second-largest city in that province, right behind Nimes, that palm-tree covered oasis on the coast of the Pacifica. It operated solely on a ley-grid and sprawled out for nearly thirty miles on either side of a downtown core of silver skyscrapers, which lacked the gargoyles and other accoutrements of, say, Burgundoi. Clean lines, repeated geometric patterns in the architecture. That was the Gallic way. The houses in the suburbs were almost universally built up on flood foundations. “No basements?” Adam asked, as they drove out into the streets.
Sigrun shook her head. “No. The area gets a lot of hurricanes and tropical storms,” she replied. “It’s not as bad as Arlesus, on the delta of the Aeturnus, though. Every building in that city is built on stilts.”
“I have no idea why anyone would want to live there,” Adam muttered. “It’s a swamp.”
Sigrun shrugged. “Biggest port on the Gulf,” she answered, simply. “All the barges that carry goods the length of the Aeturnus come there. It’s strategically a very important site. But no. I would never choose to live there. They have mosquitoes that would vie with those of southern Nahautl for size and ferocity.”
>
Adam chuckled, and they turned off of one of the local highways—LIX, or fifty-nine—heading into the northeastern suburbs. Trees. Trees everywhere, and the chatter of birds, especially one with a long, shrill cry with an abrasive note that got on Sigrun’s nerves, but she identified as a grackle. A pest species, in the main. At length, following the directions that the local gardia had given them, they arrived at the small apartment complex. It was modest, compared to the tall buildings of Rome and Novo Trier that usually gave renters harbor. The three-storied buildings were clustered behind a wrought-iron fence, and there was a fair bit of cover, in the way of trees. The apartments all had single access points, their front doors oriented towards staircases that were open to the air. “Why aren’t the stairs indoors?” Adam muttered.
“Snow is rarely a concern here,” Sigrun pointed out, as he parked the car in the street, and the three of them got out. She was about to suggest that the other two head to the rental office to get the key for the gate while she . . . well, flew over a section of the wall that was out of sight . . . when a car leaving the lot pulled up to the gate. A Gallic woman in a light spring cloak and a tunic that came to her thighs, leaving her legs bare, got out of the car and unlocked the gate from the inside. A friendly smile, and a wave, followed by the words in Gallic, “Here to see a friend, are you?” The dialect of this area of Novo Gaul notably extended the vowels; a Pict, like Trennus, might have had trouble understanding the woman, though their language had the same basic roots.
Sigrun, however, had learned this dialect before she’d learned the Gallic of Europa. “Yes,” she replied, and put a smile on her face that she didn’t feel. “I heard she might have gotten in some trouble, so I came over to see if she needs help. Fritti? Do you know her?”
A wary glance, past her, to the two men, especially Erikir, who put on a friendly smile and waved his vast fingers, trying to look . . . as peaceful as possible. “Frittigil?” A pause, and the woman blurted, “Look, I don’t want to get in the middle of a custody battle. Is that the father?” A finger, pointed at Erikir.
Erikir actually looked behind himself for a moment. “What?” he asked, in good, Aquilonian Gallic, holding up his hands. “No, I definitely do not have children, that I am aware of.”
Sigrun gave Erikir a look, and switched to Gothic. “You’re a god-born of Freyr. You should get on that.” Freyr was as much a god of fertility as his sister Freya was, except he was the male aspect of generativity. The sun, virility, and war.
Erikir grinned at her, and replied in Gallic still, “All the good women are taken, Sigrun.”
The Gallic woman relaxed a bit at this point, reassured. “She’s a quiet neighbor,” the woman told them, nodding. “Doesn’t talk much. I just see her and her little boy on the stairs. I’d really like to see her go to the neighborhood bonfire for Beltane. It would be good for the two of them to get to know the neighbors, instead of always being so cooped up.”
Sigrun’s eyebrows had gone up, and stayed that way. “I’ll . . . see what I can do to talk to her about it,” she offered. Little boy? Gods, Fritti, what’s going on?
“Thank you! It’s nice to have met you. Why, you two could be sisters, you know that?” The woman opened the gate the rest of the way, and told them, generously, “Go on in. Third building on the left.”
“Neighbors,” Sigrun told the other two, as they walked in, “are really very useful.”
“That is not,” Adam told her, smiling faintly, “what you say in Judea.”
“I meant that they are useful from the perspective of gathering information and entrances.”
“Which means that our neighbors in Judea are a security risk?” His voice was slightly teasing.
“Gods, yes. We would be better off if everyone on that street was struck stone blind.”
“Most of them are currently pretending to be,” Adam acknowledged, and they headed for the building that the helpful neighbor had pointed out.
They paused and evaluated the building. Erikir walked around to the back, to stand watch. The address they had was for the third floor, and there was only one door . . . but there were windows, and as paranoid as Fritti’s movements seemed to have been, they couldn’t risk her jumping out a window. She had no known ability to fly; she wasn’t a conventional valkyrie, after all.
Sigrun waited for Erikir to signal that he was in position, and then she and Adam walked up the stairs. She looked up at him, the dearly beloved face, with just the first hints of laugh-lines forming around his dark eyes, and said, quietly, “She should recognize both of us.”
“She should. I’m a little uneasy about the whole ‘little boy’ thing, though.” Adam grimaced, shifting to Hebrew. “Not a word of it in the letters?”
“Not even one.” Sigrun tapped on the front door. “Let’s hope she’s home. I would feel foolish if she were, for whatever reason, at work on a Sunnandæg.” She shrugged, and knocked again. “Though what employment would have her laboring on a weekend is beyond me.”
“She could be a cash register jockey,” Adam pointed out.
“Retail is beneath her skills and her education. What she is, shows, and evidence is that she’s attempting to be discreet.” Sigrun tapped again, and called, this time in a northern dialect of Gothic, “Fritti? Are you there? It’s me. Sigrun. Can we talk?”
She heard movement on the other side of the door, the scrape of feet on tile, and stepped back from the door, even as Adam took a prudent step away, so that the wall shielded him, and one of his hands dropped, automatically, to the pistol at his side. Not the Velserk. Not Caliburn, as Trennus still called it, though the god-touched weapon was tucked, carefully, at the small of his back.
After another moment, Sigrun heard the rattle of a bolt being drawn back, and a chain being loosened. The door inched open, and Fritti’s star-bright eyes peered out at her. “Sigrun? Is it really you?”
“Waes hael, Fritti. Yes. I am myself.” Sigrun gestured at Adam. “You remember Adam, of course?”
“I remember,” Fritti sounded frightened. “If you’re really who you . . . if you’re really who you say you are . . . you’ll remember something we talked about. It was a long time ago. I asked you if you were partners, yes?”
Sigrun dredged the uncertain shoals of memory, and finally replied, “You asked why I did not say witan in reference to the two of us.” She smiled a little. “We two now use that form of address customarily now. But only in Gothic.”
Fritti exhaled, explosively, and switched to Latin. “It . . . it really is you.” She opened the door a little further. “You . . . I . . . Gods, where are my manners? Come in. Please. Come in.”
They stepped inside. The apartment was tiny, a one-bedroom setup, and toys were scattered over the floor. A dark-haired boy looked up from a tower of blocks he was building as they stepped in, his gray eyes wide. “Mama?” he asked, looking at Fritti. “Who’re they?”
Sigrun exhaled in surprise. She let Adam slip past her, and watched him hunker down on his haunches, bringing his head to about the boy’s height, and offered the child a Roman wrist-clasp. “Waes hael,” Adam said, in his accented, but passable Gothic. “I’m Adam ben Maor. This is my wife, Sigrun Caetia. We met your mother a long time ago. What’s your name?”
“Rig. Rig Chatti.” The boy’s eyes narrowed a little. “You’ve got a funny name.”
“So do you. Everyone’s name sounds odd if they’re not used to your language.”
Sigrun looked up as Fritti closed the door behind her. The boy had to be six, almost seven years old, if he were a day. “Fritti? Why did you not tell me?” she said, quietly, shaking her head in disbelief. “I could have helped you.”
Fritti looked down. She looked Sigrun’s age, or at least, Sigrun’s visible age: twenty-two, in blooming good health. The beauty of Baldur was in her, and Sigrun could see signs of the Evening Star’s power, as well; her hair fell in loose dark curls to her waist, and her eyes still sparkled with the stars that shone in t
heir depths. “I was embarrassed, Sigrun,” she finally admitted, exhaling. “Embarrassed, and ashamed.” She kept her voice low, though her son was visibly quite occupied with Adam, both of them now working to build that tower out of blocks. “And, well, once he was born, and I realized . . . everything . . . it just seemed best to stay out of everyone’s way. Let him grow up to be who he wants to be not . . . what everyone would try to make of him.” A little defiance, in her starshine eyes.
Sigrun felt as if she’d walked into a play in the middle of the third act. “I do not understand.” She looked around, and Fritti beckoned her into the adjoining room—a bedroom, in which Fritti had a single, twin-sized bed, and the boy had a child-sized one, along opposite walls. Crowded, but apparently, all Fritti could afford. “Fritti, why do you not start from the beginning. Who is the boy’s father? Why are you hiding? How are you hiding? What have you been doing?” Sigrun raised her hands in exasperation. “I cannot help you if I am in the dark.”
Fritti sank down on the edge of her neatly-made bed, and gestured for Sigrun to take the bed along the opposite wall. “I . . . ah . . . gods.” The younger woman put her face in her hands for a moment, and rocked. “I was so stupid.” Sigrun waited, patiently, as she collected herself. “Radulfr . . . my old trainer, the bear-warrior that I mentioned in my letters so often?” Fritti began again, finally. “When I was about twenty-three, he came to Tuscarora, where I was teaching. You’ll remember that I . . . may have had a crush on him, when he was teaching me?” Fritti’s voice was strangled.
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