You are bold, to try to confront it, directly. Saraid’s tone was concerned.
Zhi shrugged. Someone must. Someone must fight these creatures. One of them took down a passenger liner from the air over Qin yesterday. Two hundred lives, snuffed in an instant, because a godling does not believe that consequences apply to it.
I do not think they understand even so much as that, Lassair said, quietly, looking at the floor. When Baal shattered, the human minds he was connected to, shattered as well. I sensed nothing but . . . malevolence in them, in that brief moment before they fled Emberstone’s fires. All the worst parts of humanity—anger, envy, jealousy, hate—conjoined with raw power, and no higher virtues to balance them out. No . . . rationality. Just impulse. She looked up, and gave Zhi a very faint smile. Like many a spirit before them.
But more powerful, and with less control, Zhi countered. I cannot claim to any of these higher virtues, but I understand control, fire-that-creates.
Erida smiled to herself, and focused on the map. Zhi continuously put forth the notion that he had no virtues, and that while love was definitely an emotion worth experiencing, other human emotions were inherently weak, and that he did not experience them—pity, compassion, tolerance, and forgiveness. She suspected that he did experience them, in varying forms, and usually simply tamped down on them, when they did not directly concern his family.
The next day, they set out for Chaldea, specifically for the ancient city of Borsippa, some eleven miles southwest of Babylon itself. The location of this Chaldean city clearly showed why the Persian emperors had not wished to give up this province; it was very close, indeed, to Babylon, and had been built as a temple site two thousand years before Caesar’s ascension—during the worst era of the god-slayings, actually. After the god-slayings, the temple had been converted to the worship of Marduk, and had become a center for Magi training and research—the College of the Magi, in fact. Erida had attended the academy herself, after her apprenticeship had been completed.
Not only was Borsippa strategically frighteningly close to one of the cultural hearts of Persia, but its central ziggurat, which had been built in the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II, the king who had conquered Judea six hundred years before Caesar had lived, held a repository of ancient Chaldean and Assyrian cuneiform texts that most Magi considered essential for the understanding of primitive magic.
This time, Illa’zhi simply carried Erida there, avoiding the need for the use of a carpet. They both preferred to make Veil transit as an emergency-only option. Erida had armed and armored herself as those of the Magi did for battle; she wore a half-dozen devices, all designed to absorb energy and redirect it—rings, bracelets, necklaces, a golden headpiece that held a scarf in place over her hair. All had purposes far different than mere decoration. A bandolier over her shoulder held a dozen heavily enchanted darts; Erida had never used a gun in her life, and saw no real need to start now. Not when all she really needed to do was graze an enemy, and the darts would deliver an electrical shock powerful enough to stop an elephant’s heart. She had also marked her face with kohl, here and there. These markings identified her as Magi. Ordinary citizens would obey her directives, without hesitation. And some enemies might even flee on sight.
When they arrived, the city was, as she’d expected, a war-zone. Roman troops, particularly Judean levies who’d been garrisoned here as an outreach from the Wall, had been under assault by Persian forces for weeks, but had been holding out, until two days ago, when a mad godling had appeared in the skies. This was the closest one had been to Judean territory since the first day that they’d been unleashed on the world . . . and it was wreaking havoc. Erida hovered in the center of Illa’zhi’s grip, able to see through his cyclonic whorl of his winds through his Veil senses.
A bomb had caught the edge of the ancient ziggurat, and shorn away one corner almost entirely. Smoke rose from a dozen places throughout the rest of the city, and she could see that the Persian troops were dug in to the east, and Roman forces still held the west side of the city. Tanks and personnel carriers were moving, cautiously, through the streets, following fenris that were skulking through the streets, sniffing for enemies, while their jotun companions ambled alongside the tanks, looking around cautiously. Helicopters flew just above the old, rectangular, white-plastered buildings that jumbled into each other like a frightened crowd of onlookers. Erida spotted, through Illa’zhi’s eyes, the pulses of energy that showed her the presence of spirits, lying in wait inside a set of buildings. Immortals?
Golems, for now. Earth-spirits. An ambush. Perhaps not what we are here for.
No, but the soldiers should be warned.
Warned, yes. We should save our energies for the godling.
If it even appears.
A fair point. Very well. To battle. Zhi swooped in, declaring his affiliations with a burst of fire in the shape of a Roman eagle, to prevent the legionnaires and jotun from opening fire on him, and deposited Erida gently on the ground near the detachment commander. She established her bona fides, quickly, and pointed out the buildings that his people were about to cross between, which would have become a kill zone for his convoy. “My purpose here is to get as many books and scholars out of the academy and temple as possible,” Erida said, sharply. “But so long as we are here, anyway . . . .”
A good purpose, but trying to draw the godling to us is a better one.
Patience, Zhi, patience. Two birds with one stone is far more efficient. It should be drawn to the sense of power being used.
Another excellent point.
The skirmish was vicious. The jotun and Zhi moved in ahead of the others, tearing the walls from the houses, exposing the golems. Most were fairly typical examples of Persian military technomancy and summoning; featureless, plain statues made of baked clay, mass-produced by casting the statues and firing them in industrial kilns. Each golem had four arms; the upper two operated a firearm, apparently a thoroughly modern belt-fed shotgun. The lower arms handled fragmentation grenades. The eyes were the only distinct feature in their clay faces, and gleamed with red fire as they rained destruction down on the convoy that had just uncovered their ambush point. Erida took cover behind one of the tanks, crouching down and reinforcing her reactive shields, which should absorb the energy of any incoming projectile, and leaned out to get a view. Saw the jotun climbing the sides of the buildings, and reaching in with long arms to grab the golems. Each jotun wore a full facial helmet with a visor to protect their eyes, but while a shotgun blast at close range made them bleed, the heavy bone plating under their skins took and deflected most of the energy. And then they simply started healing, right in front of her, even as they kept moving, dragging the golems out of hiding. Wrenching ceramic arms off, and throwing the bodies out of the building, landing several stories below.
Of course, it took some doing to stop a golem entirely. The cracked torsos on the ground heaved themselves upright, and reached for arms and legs. Reattached them. Stood back up, and opened fire on the helicopters . . . which were, in turn, firing down at them. Illa’zhi lifted the pieces of battered crockery into the air and dispersed them, flinging them with wind and power up to a mile in the air, and let them rain down at random over the rooftops. Erida thought she heard the efreet snicker in her mind.
A second wave of golems, from another rank of buildings, shattered the windows, and began to open fire through the narrow openings, as the fenris began to bay warnings. The creatures couldn’t reach the golems, and Zhi was occupied with the first wave; he was snapping up energy from the various spirits chained to the golem bodies before they could flee their bindings for the Veil. This time, Erida shook her head, and began concentrating on a high-level incantation. It required energy and focus, and she took on two or three of the spirits in the golems at a time. Just the ones she could see, dimly, through Zhi’s spirit-sight. You are mine now, she told them, firmly. Your contract is with me, because I have the power to make it so. Your compensation is that I will
not allow my bond-mate to feed on your essence when he is done with your compatriots. Turn on your compatriots. Destroy their bodies. And then exit the building, single-file, and fight on my side for the next two days. Is that not a fairer bargain than any other you will receive today?
Two or three at a time, they fell to her. Her will had always been powerful; backed by Illa’zhi, these small spirits could not withstand her. They turned, and opened fire on other golems inside the building, and Erida raised her eyebrows and smiled at the Judean legionnaire beside her in satisfaction. “Brute force has its charms, but I’ve always preferred to use the enemy’s power against itself,” she said, calmly, as their new reinforcements filed out of the building.
The convoy pressed on; they were supposed to reinforce a position in the southwest area of town, where Immortals and Persian auxiliaries had the legionnaires pinned down. This particular area of town was the bazaar; as such, it was a poor area for the tanks, because of the way the narrow streets turned and twisted. And the fact that most people here lived in apartments above their shops meant that there were many multiple-story buildings, which made it a sniper’s haven.
The troops, forced to leave the tanks behind, moved in on foot and improvised. The jotun tore doors from frames, and used them as impromptu shields. Hollow metal or heavy wood wouldn’t stop a high-velocity, enchanted sniper round, but anything that slowed it down or concealed their bodies was a bonus. They covered the human troops as they moved in, and, any time they were able to triangulate the position of a sniper, they grounded their improvised shields, and raised their Judean-made miniguns, normally found on attack helicopters, and fired them up at the enemy. They might not hit their target, but they surely petrified their opponents for a moment or two; the miniguns fired in excess of two thousand rounds a minute. And the break in fire gave their people time to move to cover, and allowed helicopters to move in and direct fire down on the rooftops in turn, from above.
Zhi was amused, but impatient. I thought you wished to allow them to do the work, my love, Erida chided him. Saving your energy for more important matters.
This is true, but I, a valkyrie, or even a trained harpy could snatch these men from their roofs and hurl them to their deaths without effort. They are . . . harassment. Distraction.
I think the humans in the convoy would disagree. Even some of the fenris and jotun have been injured. Erida saw one of the giants wrapping a bandage around his own chest, the bleeding this time far from superficial. “Here. Let me remove the bullet, at least,” she called, and the jotun moved over to her position, so she wouldn’t have to leave cover. Then he hunkered down, so she could wrap the bullet with force and pull it out.
They were trying to reach the Roman troops who were pinned down. Alerted by their snipers and sentries, the Immortals and their magi responded, sending a full detachment, backed by sorcerers, and Erida and Zhi were suddenly very busy indeed. The Judean commander bundled her hastily into a tank at the rear of their column for cover, as the Immortals entered the fray. The tanks fired, and a few Immortals fell to the ground. The jotun fired, and several of the once-human creatures were thrown over backwards, riddled with bullets.
But in every case, they got back to their feet and took cover. Returned fire—literally, with flamethrowers, in some cases, forcing the jotun back. The spirits within the living bodies of the Immortals could rely on the basic knowledge of their hosts, and freely employed modern technology. Belt-fed shotguns, with magically-enhanced loads. Grenades, again with enchantments adding force and punch to every explosion. The sorcerers behind the Immortals were traditionalists, but good ones; they called fire around the Roman tanks and personnel carriers, turning each into an oven, a deathtrap for the people inside.
Erida responded, redirecting the fire right into the Immortals whose positions she could see. “Steady,” she told the people with her. “Anything they throw at us, is a weapon for my hands.” There were probably five sorcerers out there, but none of them were Magi. Erida stood inside the tank, as the sorcerers outside clearly paused, reassessing their incantations, and several of the Immortals writhed on the ground, trying to put themselves out.
“Can you do anything about the damned Immortals?” the tank driver asked, as one of the visored men vaulted up atop one of the tanks, pursued by a fenris. The wolf exhaled frost, but the Immortal did not stop. It clamped its teeth into the man’s arm, teeth shearing off flesh and crushing bone, and the Immortal ignored the pain. Struggled forwards, managing to get his fingertips of his free hand on the door at the top of the tank. Pulled himself forwards, ignoring the fact that his arm was now tattered ribbons of flesh, before unlatching the door, and lifting it. The tank spun its turret, trying to knock both creatures off, and fenris and Immortal tumbled to the ground. As the Immortal hit, the spirit inside of it channeled flame through the human’s bleeding hands, burning the fenris severely.
Erida redirected another attack by the sorcerers, this time, a more widely dispersed incantation that tore bricks and stones down off the buildings around them, sending them hurtling down atop everyone’s heads. The Persian sorcerers could do this with impunity; the only soldiers they had on the field were Immortals. Immortals would get back up again, if their heads were caved in. “I believe I have a few notions on what to do with the Immortals,” she murmured.
Kanmi Eshmunazar’s greatest gift as a spellcaster had been his ability to think outside the limits of convention. Convention said that there was no way in which to remove an Immortal’s spirit from its body; it was already bound there, as if inside a container, and you could not banish a spirit that was, effectively, trapped in a jar. Not without opening the jar. Erida had spent a good deal of the last two years working with Minori at the university, and now knew that Minori was every bit the innovator that Kanmi had been. It was to Minori that she owed her current stratagem.
Erida focused on the closest two or three Immortals, the ones who’d ringed a jotun, and were working together to cut the tendons at the back of the giant’s legs, pulling him down to where they could attack him with impunity. A fenris and another jotun moved to rescue their fellow, followed by a half-dozen legionnaires, and the inbound jotun had a seven-foot-long axe in his hands, and took the head off the shoulders of one of the Immortals. That left Erida with two. She smiled faintly, and whispered a delicate incantation, one that owed a little to the traditional water school, and a bit more to modern biochemistry.
It dissolved the ink of the tattoos on the Immortals. They didn’t even notice, locked in combat as they were. Now, they weren’t housed in binding containers. Now, they were simply spirits possessing nominally living bodies. They might be old. They might be powerful. But they no longer had anchors. “Go home,” Erida whispered, and engaged the first in a battle of wills.
She was surprised by how easy it was to rip the first spirit free, and Illa’zhi pounced on it before it could flee to the Veil, engaging it in a duel. They’d agreed beforehand, that because the Immortals used the same spirits, over and over again, if they could kill the spirits, that they should. Forcing the Persians to make new bargains, with inexperienced spirits? All the better. And Zhi wouldn’t turn down their energies or their millennia of experience in the mortal realm.
They cut their way through, but several of the tanks were badly damaged; Erida could only unbind the spirits or defend the vehicles, not both at the same time. Periodically, the other sorcerers would catch her when she was concentrating on unbinding an Immortal, and would rain fire over her tank. Zhi retaliated directly after one of them crumpled the turret gun of the tank beside Erida’s, in the middle of a firing sequence, resulting in the explosion of the firing mechanism, and the deaths of everyone aboard. Zhi snarled in her mind, assuming his cyclone form and racing forward. Erida hissed, Be careful! and got only another snarl in return . . . and then she saw Zhi’s entire two-mile, twisting length became a scarlet ribbon ascending to the heavens, as he tore the sorcerer to shreds. Nevermind. He wasn’t
properly warded, now was he?
Not in the slightest.
Two hours later, the Roman position had been reinforced, and they were given a full detachment of jotun and fenris to escort them to the ziggurat. Erida met with the panicking officials there, and directed them to load absolutely every scrap of parchment, every book, every clay tablet in the facility, into trucks, and to start evacuating students. “You’re all coming to Judea,” she told them. “I cannot guarantee the safety of this temple or this school any longer. Neither can Rome. Get out. Now.”
The school officials were also of the Magi, but as Keeper of the Archives, she outranked them, especially in terms of things such as their library. They nodded in grim assent, and began to do precisely what she bade them.
Illa’zhi hovered near the top of the ziggurat. He was chafing to assume and hold his full cyclone form. He’d be visible for miles around in it, and his mere presence would be a challenge to the mad godling that had been sighted in the area, but Shadeslore had correctly pointed out to him that such a visible and prolonged exposure would also challenge the Persians. And that they needed to delay more combat, for the moment, to allow the evacuations to proceed. He seethed a little, quietly, staring around the city with hunger. There were so many lives here. Ones he could see. Judea was terribly boring, in that respect. Jerusalem itself wasn’t so bad; there were full neighborhoods where he could see the inhabitants just fine. But outside of the capital, there were hundreds of small towns, filled with Judeans, bound firmly to their god, and scarcely more visible to his Veil senses than morning mist was to his physical eyes. No wonder the mad godlings pass the region by. As far as they’re concerned, there’s almost nothing there worth perturbing. Or perhaps they simply don’t wish to deal with the god of Abraham. Then again, their motivations hardly matter. Only their actions.
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