Echoes of Germania (Tales of Ancient Worlds Book 1)

by H. B. Ashman

  Amalia threw her father a disapproving look, her eyebrows drawn together in annoyance, before she bowed and turned to leave. She had barely made it into the hallway when she felt the all-too-familiar grip on her upper arm, a grip she’d endured her whole life from a man whose self-proclaimed “lack of achievement” and selfish ambition had tainted their relationship. An Olympic bronze medalist himself, her father, Lukas Weber, knew only one thing in life: judo. And while others might put that bronze medal on their fireplace, her father hid it in the basement—nothing but gold was worth his breath.

  “What are you doing? Go back there and take him out,” he said.

  Amalia ripped her arm free of his grip. They both knew she had surpassed her father’s abilities years ago, but they also both knew she would never use it on him.

  “No. I’m going home to study. I have a test coming up.”

  Her father rolled his eyes. “Judo is your future.”

  “Engineering is a profitable and stable field.” Herbert, her trainer, had appeared around the corner and was fumbling with his camera that he’d used to record the match. Her father threw him a sharp look.

  “I’m nineteen. I decide my future,” Amalia said. For years she had begged for a normal life. Begged for time with friends, vacations, or even just time to sit on the couch and watch TV. But for years, she was denied that request. So the day she turned eighteen, she planned to quit judo and move out. In a rare compromise, her father agreed to let her go to university to study engineering and have Saturdays to herself as long as she continued to practice martial arts and live at home.

  Her father clenched his fists. “You’ll still go for your run tonight,” he said.

  “Tonight? But the Cherusci Storm is hitting us later,” Herbert said. It was a cute attempt, but everybody knew that her father was in charge here. Herbert was so scared of losing Amalia from his Olympic team that he would literally kiss her father’s feet if he asked.

  Her father threw his hand up. “That old wives’ tale. She’ll be fine doing a few laps. The storm might wash her head, Cherusci curse or not.”

  Herbert looked at Amalia, but Amalia shook her head at him. The Cherusci Storm was nothing but a tale to Amalia as well. Supposedly, every hundred years, a major storm hit the region. Historians traced the first storm, through ancient Roman writings, all the way back to a massacre of the Cherusci Tribe by the Romans thousands of years ago. Some spoke of a curse, but analytically minded people like Amalia and her father simply looked at the storm and saw it for what it was: a storm.

  “Fine,” Amalia agreed. “I’ll do my usual run around the lake, but tomorrow I’m studying. All day. Morning to midnight. No judo.”

  She disappeared into the women’s locker room before her father had a chance to respond. After the door slammed closed behind her, she stood silent for a moment, waiting, wondering if her father would follow her. But he didn’t.

  Amalia slumped onto the bench underneath the metal lockers, her head tilted back to gaze at the ceiling. Olympics be damned. She hated judo. She really did. At times she even hated her father. All he’d ever wanted was a son to follow his footsteps. But fortune had four daughters in store for him, and she, the youngest of them, had become the chosen one. Not overnight, of course. It all started with a phone call from school. Amalia had thrown a kid—the class bully—onto the floor. Her father was thrilled. Amalia’s fate was sealed right then and there.

  She was raised far away from giggling children and cheerful toys, confined to stuffy dojos and endless days of physical endurance training. Her father made sure to choose opponents twice her size from day one, mostly male, of course. When other children went to the pool, Amalia had judo training. When the newest movie came out and the whole world was flocking to the theaters to watch it, Amalia was at some run-down jujitsu center.

  But the end-result of her father’s personal crusade was nothing short of unprecedented. Amalia had become the Knight Templar of judo, undefeated among judokas in two years. And this year was supposed to be her first outing at the Olympics, ready to rock the world. Yet all of this meant nothing to her. She just wanted to hang out with friends, fall in love, and make out in the back of a car—you know, like normal girls.

  Amalia sighed as she looked at her reflection in a mirror at the other end of the locker room. Her blond hair was tied into a braid, a few strands falling into her petite face next to the ice-blue eyes she had inherited from her mother.

  “Just a bit longer,” she mumbled. Those words had become holy to her.

  Amalia changed out of her training clothes and into her jeans and sweatshirt. She would shower later. She still had to do that stupid jog around the lake anyway.

  Chapter Two

  Horn-Bad Meinberg, Germany

  A malia opened the front door to a waft of tomato and oregano, but before she could savor the aroma, a violent gust of wind blew the door farther open, nearly knocking Amelia over. Her father rushed up the porch stairs behind her to join the battle in getting it closed again. For a moment it seemed as if the wind would win, but her father threw all his weight against the door to finally shut out the storm.

  “Ami.” Her mother, Helge, wiped her hands on her apron and welcomed Amalia with a big hug. When she glanced at her husband, her smile remained on her lips but faded from her ice-blue eyes.

  “Is dinner ready?” her father asked her mother without even looking at her. No hello honey, no how was your day, none of that mushy horseshit for Lukas Weber.

  “Yes. Would you like me to get you a bottle of beer as well?”

  Her father opened the door to the basement next to the hallway. Like every time they returned from a match, her father was going downstairs to his basement office to analyze Herbert’s video footage and look for any imperfections in Amalia’s performance.

  “Hefeweizen,” he mumbled, shutting the door behind him.

  “Take a quick shower. Anni and I will wait for you in the kitchen,” her mother said, disappearing into the kitchen. Amalia followed her, passing the wall littered with family portraits—big and small—hanging above wooden IKEA furniture.

  “Did you win?” Anni shouted the moment Amalia came into view. She had already navigated her wheelchair to her spot at the dinner table, her phone screen bright with the colorful movements of that game she was always playing. Matching candies or something like that. Anni’s blue eyes always sparkled whenever she saw her younger sister. She was two years older than Amalia, but Amalia was nothing short of a superhero to Anni.

  “Of course I won.” Amalia grinned and took her usual seat across from Anni, who nodded in satisfied approval.

  “I knew you would kick ass again,” Anni said.

  “I’ll let you know when my next autograph session takes place.” Amalia laughed.

  “Modesty, Amalia.” Her mother frowned, but there was humor in her tone. She grabbed a plate full of pasta and was about to hand it over to Amalia but then held it back. “What about that shower? You smell like an old man’s feet.”

  “The smell of warriors,” Anni defended her sister, a mound of pasta before her.

  “Exactly,” Amalia agreed.

  “That might be, but I’m still the warrior in charge of this kitchen, so off you go.”

  “But then I have to shower twice. I still have to do my run around the lake.”

  “Around the lake? Tonight?” Her mother wrinkled her brow and placed the plate of pasta in front of Amalia.

  “Mhmm.”

  “But the Cherusci Storm.”

  “It’s just a storm.” Amalia reached for her mother’s hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. After Anni’s spinal injury from falling off a horse, her mother had developed severe anxiety. If people thought Amalia’s toughest battles were on the mat against opponents twice her size, they were wrong. It was right here, in her own home, where the matches really happened. Her older two sisters had literally left the day of their eighteenth birthdays, rarely to be seen again. She couldn’
t blame them; their father had that effect on people. But that also meant that it fell to Amalia to be strong for her mother and Anni, make their lives more bearable from the tyrant watching judo videos downstairs.

  “It’s just a bit windy outside,” Amalia said. “The storm won’t hit until later.”

  Her mother stared back, her face momentarily blank, eyes distant.

  “I’ll go now then, to ease your motherly worries.” Amalia lifted her plate to her mouth and shoved down several mouthfuls of pasta. Anni laughed as she watched, while her mother shook her head. “See, all done. Now I’ll be back way before the storm hits,” Amalia mumbled through cheeks stuffed like a hamster. Her mother let out a sigh as Anni giggled in her wheelchair.

  Amalia always played the clown for the two, despite actually being more of a serious, restrained person. A splash of color in the grey world of the Webers. To Anni, it could make a rainy day sunny in seconds. So why not? If all it took was playing the court jester, then why the hell not?

  “Your love for judo is almost as bad as your father’s,” her mother scolded her with a thin smile on her lips. She seemed calmer. It had worked.

  “I do love my judo.” Her mother had no clue how she felt. And Amalia worked hard to keep it that way. Why make her mother’s life harder?

  Amalia rose from her chair and gulped back the final swallow of pasta. She turned back to the front door and put her shoes back on. Unlike many other athletes, Amalia trained in whatever she was wearing. She could jog in jeans, skirts, or at times pajamas.

  She tightened the laces of her worn-out sneakers and opened the door. Cold air slapped against her face, and the door tugged against her grip. Amalia had to squeeze the handle tight as she stepped out into her gloomy suburban neighborhood.

  Amalia took off into the direction of the Externsteine, a nearby rock formation that was the only local attraction. The distinctive sandstone rock formations had revealed caves and ancient tools such as arrowheads dating back as early as 10,900 BC. Horn-Bad Meinberg was otherwise a typical small German city. It had an old town center with some leftover medieval houses and a castle not too far on a hill. All of it was surrounded by identical post-WWII homes. Red shingled roofs, wooden fenced yards, and the depressing lack of pedestrian life outside of the tourist seasons.

  Amalia loved jogging around the lake at the foothill of those rocks, always gazing up in awe. The Teutoburg Forest was full of mystic history dating back thousands of years.

  The crisp scent of the upcoming storm charged the air. The wind blew from all directions as Amalia’s feet hit the ground in her usual rhythmic jog, her shoes making snapping sounds against the tiny rocks that littered the path. At times, the whistling wind worked with her, pushing her along and speeding her up, but then it turned against her, aggressively blowing leaves and dirt into her face, almost as if it was commanding her to turn around. Judging by the clouds, that warning was not without merit. She had barely turned onto the narrow, muddy path that would lead through a patch of woods to the lake and caves when the sky above her darkened from gloomy grey to almost pitch black, spreading like a blanket across the heavens. There was no change of color above her, almost as if someone had switched off a light.

  Without stopping, Amalia pulled out her phone and checked the time. It was not even five. How the hell had it gotten so dark so damn quickly? She had just made it out of the woods and to the lake that surrounded the Externsteine when the first raindrops kissed the ground in scattered patterns, followed by a deep growl from above. The storm wasn’t supposed to hit until eight.

  Amalia frowned as she slowed down to a complete stop. Cold raindrops splashed her face as she looked up at the caves. The rock formation that consisted of several tall, narrow columns of grey sandstone were obscured in darkness. It was only five, so the lights that came on at night did not yet illuminate the caves.

  Out of nowhere, the wind picked up, churning leaves in quick spirals and lashing at the water of the usually calm lake.

  Amalia wondered whether she should turn back or use her phone’s flashlight to finish the loop around the caves and lake. But another blaring growl of thunder shook the earth underneath her. It was time to turn around—now.

  Amalia bolted back up the path, the rain falling harder, turning the ground to mud. She put several yards between herself and the edge of the woods when a terrifying cry rose above the chaos of the storm. At first, she dismissed it as the wind, but when she heard it a second time, she froze in her tracks. Amalia turned around and stared through the rain toward the lake. Strange.

  She was about to take off again, to get the hell out of this storm, when the cry echoed through the woods once more, this time with words:

  “Ichk . . . vafluckt!”

  Amalia darted back toward the lake. Somebody was in danger. The mud was getting deeper. It splashed, cold and wet, up her legs, arms, and even onto her face. Her heart was thumping fast and out of rhythm; it was all she could hear.

  “Ichk . . . vafluckt . . . dich!” A woman’s voice shouted in the strangest German Amalia had ever heard. Was it Plattdeutsch, that ancient Northern German dialect that nobody in the whole nation understood?

  “Ichk . . . vafluckt . . . dich!” the voice thundered through the darkness, louder and clearer now that Amalia was closer to the lake.

  Determined to help, she pushed forward as fast as she could when her foot slipped sideways on a wet tree root. She gasped, and just a fraction of a second before her face planted into an enormous puddle of thick brown mud, her body instinctively channeled her fall into the ugliest judo roll in the history of judo. Her torso still landed hard, forcing the air out of her lungs.

  “Ichk vafluckt dich drusus!” the voice screamed, crystal clear now. Covered in mud, her body heavy, Amalia leaped back on her feet. The lake was right in front of her.

  “Hello?” Amalia shouted into the heavy rains that were bashing her face mercilessly.

  “Ichk vafluckt dich drusus!” The voice shrieked back at her, clearly coming from the lake. But from where? It was too dark too see anything.

  Amalia ripped her phone out to turn the flashlight on. Her fingers slipped on the wet screen, but after a few manic attempts, she was able to turn it on. But between the darkness and the sheets of rain, its white beam died before ever reaching the lake. The strong winds had turned the air into a swirl of tiny water droplets and leaves that came from all directions.

  “I’m coming!” Amalia hollered out to the lake as she charged into the black water. It was Siberia levels of cold.

  “Where are you?”

  But this time she didn’t get a response.

  “Hello?” Amalia’s voice vanished into the storm as she spun left and right, still aiming her phone ahead of her. She pushed farther, the freezing water now all the way to her chest. Her clothes stuck to her body as waves called up by the furious winds splashed into her face.

  But just when Amalia started to believe that the woman had already drowned, that she was too late, a scream that Amalia would never forget, in this life or the next, shook the night sky and the earth beneath it like thunder.

  “Drrrruuuuuusuuuuuuuus!”

  As soon as the cry had ceased, a lightning bolt hit the rock formation. Amalia winced as the explosion rang in her ears. But the metallic light of the bolt seemed to linger longer than it should have—it lit up the lake and rocks for a few brief seconds. That was all Amalia needed to make out a dark silhouette several yards ahead of her in the center of the lake.

  “I’m coming!”

  Without another moment to waste, Amalia launched herself forward into the water and swam as if her life depended on it. She battled against the violent waves, which were heaving her up and down as she swam. Every stroke that brought her closer to the woman also sent a mouthful of dirty water into her mouth. She gasped and spat.

  “Drrrruuuuuusuuuuuuuus!”

  Just a few more feet.

  Amalia was now close enough to reach for the shad
ow of the woman in front of her. But just when she was about to stretch out her arm, the voice growled in a dialect Amalia could actually understand:

  “She is coming for your mighty empire!”

  Before Amalia could ask what the hell was going on, something grabbed her ankle and pulled her beneath the dark waves. The grip was firm and strong, almost painful. The icy lake swallowed her body. Instinctively, Amalia kicked at whatever had the death hold on her, but there was nothing but water. Her chest tightening, Amalia propelled her arms up and down, desperate to fight her way back to the surface. But she sank deeper and deeper as endless bubbles streamed past her.

  “Druuuuuusuuuuuuuus . . .”

  The voice that had the power of a thunderstorm moments ago was now soft and distant. Her frightened heartbeat thrashed against her ears. All she could do now was watch the surface move farther and farther away from her, its light thinning.

  Another lighting strike illuminated the world above her, its bright shimmer highlighting a human silhouette hovering at the surface. And there was something else. Something was sitting on the silhouette’s arm. A bird. White as snow, two large amber eyes beaming down into the darkness of the lake like stars.

  “Druuuuuusuuuuuuuus . . .”

  And as the world began to dim, a childhood memory came to her wide-open, dying eyes. She watched herself charging down the beach, barely eight years old, white sand kicking up as she pushed forward. She was running from her father to avoid a spanking. She had stepped on his new glasses. He was enraged, Amalia terrified. But she didn’t get far before Anni called to her. When she turned, she found Anni standing right behind her, tears streaking her flushed cheeks.

  “Are you leaving us?” Anni’s eyes were red, her nose runny.

  “I would never leave you.” Amalia peeked over Anni’s shoulder to make sure their father hadn’t followed.

  “You promise?” Anni sniveled.

  Amalia nodded with a thin smile.

  Beneath the lake, Amalia opened her mouth to promise the childhood version of her sister, but instead water filled her lungs.