For proof of how effective their scientific innovation can be, look no further than the topic of gunpowder. After Leif Dalgaard first circumnavigated the globe in 1000 AC, it took less than a hundred years to open up trade over the seas with Qin, India, and Nippon, thus limiting the value of the old overland Silk Road caravan route . . . and bringing Qin gunpowder to the West. It was largely dismissed as a novelty item by Western philosophers. The first cannons, cast of bronze, exploded in half along their weld seams, and their impact on the battlefield was entirely secondary to what a team of trained sorcerers could accomplish with a massed group of catapults, ballistae, and mangonels. This was proved to Rome’s satisfaction in 1264 AC, when the Mongols, after pressing deep into Raccia and overthrowing much of Qin, turned south and west towards Asia Minor, attempting to move into Roman holdings. Construction on Domitanus’ Wall was halted as quick-moving Legion units escorted lightweight catapults through the rugged terrain of Asia Minor, and, while protecting their battle-mages with their lives, rained death down on the light, swift horses of the Mongols. The Mongols couldn’t move quickly enough to react to the heightened speed and power of these lightweight siege weapons, and, likewise, couldn’t counter the longbows of the squads called up from Britannia, whose fletchings were enchanted by the Legion’s cadres of sorcerers. Likewise, on the occasions when a Roman legion was forced to march into Fennmark and Gotaland or other such regions to chastise a petty king there, most commanders felt that digging a tunnel under an enemy’s walls and setting a gunpowder charge was an unnecessary risk to the men, and cost far too much in terms of time and manpower. Why do any of that, several tribunes argued, when all one really needed was a handful of well-trained and well-fed sorcerers?
The Mongols’ attack blunted, they turned back to the east, and swarmed through the Persian empire’s subject kingdoms, and eventually, turned back to the west, attempting to break through Domitanus’s Wall in Judea. Judea, which had no well-fed, well-trained battle-sorcerers at its disposal, looked an easy mark, in spite of the presence of Roman legions in the province.
However, the Judeans had been studying the gunpowder that tribunes, far and wide, considered ‘too dangerous to use as anything but a novelty.’ And in 1275 AC, the product of that research was used, as for the first time in recorded history, iron cannons were employed against an enemy. These weapons could be loaded more quickly than Roman catapults and ballistae, and had significantly reduced chances of exploding, compared to the brazen counterparts tested by the Legion.
By 1380 AC, the Judean army had developed the first ‘hand-held’ cannon, called a tevtah, or, in the parlance of the Romanized Gauls who first saw it in use on the Wall, an ‘harquebus.’ These match-cord lit weapons couldn’t match the longbow’s range . . . but they equaled or exceeded the amount of force that an enchanted arrow could muster.
To this day, the Judean Defense Forces do their utmost to counter the attacks of summoners, sorcerers, and Magi largely with weapons derived solely from gunpowder sources. As of 1925 AC, Judea had produced its first ‘assault rifle,’ capable of firing around five hundred rounds per minute. While some military commentators consider this a game-changing advance, others are more dubious about their practical utility. They cannot, for example, do any substantive damage to a djinni.
Judean military doctrine generally advises against direct confrontation with djinn and efreet, however. They counsel their soldiers to seek the spirits’ summoners, and shoot them. By and large, most summoned creatures will return to their home plane once their summoner has been killed. There are, however, always exceptions to every rule.
Judea is the only country on Earth that has a fully electrical power grid, without any ley-line tapping in use. They briefly burned coal and gas to fuel their power plants, and then disregarded fossil fuels as dirty, limited, and not obtainable except by trade. As such, they moved over to solar and wind power early, and, since the splitting of the atom in 1939 AC, have built the world’s first nuclear power plants as well.
Their launch of the first rocket into outer space in 1929 AC also helped to spark a space race between them, Hellas, and Nippon; the result of which is the Joint Lunar Base, which is projected to be built at some time in the 1960s, assuming that funding continues at current levels.
—Vorvena Senebelenae, The History of Natural Philosophy in Judea. University of Divodurum Press, 1953 AC.
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Iunius 3, 1954 AC
Adam awoke at close to eleven antemeridian, slamming a hand down on the button of his wind-up alarm clock before his eyes even opened. Groaning, he sat up in bed. They had been up very damned late the night before, but he needed to relieve Trennus in about an hour, just to let the Pictish man get a few hours of sleep. They had a meeting scheduled with Livorus at five postmeridian. He rubbed at his eyes, and decided that there was no faster way to wake up than to force his circulation to get moving. As such, he rolled out of bed, stretched, and dropped into military pushups on the cold tile floor of the hotel bedroom, keeping his elbows tucked to his sides. A hundred of those, in under two minutes. Then he pushed a table out of the way and used the scant carpeted area in the small room for a hundred sit-ups, in the same amount of time. Not enough time for a run. This will have to do. He padded into the bathing area, which was largely a standard Roman setup, with a standard toilet and a shower, as well as a deep bath. He dug into his luggage for his tin of shampoo powder, got into the shower, and poured the fine-milled powder into his hand before letting the water dissolve it into bubbles between his palms.
A quick scrub of his long hair and his body, and then he wrapped a towel around his waist, and regarded himself in the room’s foggy mirror. Five o’clock shadow tended to appear much earlier than evening for him on the best days, and yesterday had been particularly long. He rubbed thoughtfully at his face, before grimacing. Most of the locals were clean-shaven, so he defaulted to that, lathering his face from a bar of shaving soap and scraping his jaws and cheeks clean before getting dressed. I wonder if I could convince either Trennus or Kanmi to spar with me after the meeting? he thought, tapping lightly on the connecting door to Sigrun’s half of the suite. Trennus had made a point of saying he actually had to wrestle with spirits, and the Britannian was a physically imposing specimen. He might be an interesting challenge. I’m restless. There’s been too little to do on this mission. Or maybe I can convince Ehecatl to test how strong his arm is, now that he’s back on the team. He and the Jaguar warrior had had a good arrangement, previously; he’d traded lessons in bitahevn, or the Judean Defense Forces’ art of personal self-defense, for Ehecatl’s lessons in Nahautl knife-fighting, called tecuani, or Jaguar style. The knife-fighting had been developed for using big, jungle-cutting knifes, back in the day, and was still used by Jaguar warriors and Nahautl levy forces to this day.
“I’m up,” Sigrun called back through the door, and unlatched it from her side. As the door opened, Adam caught a rush of scents; she’d obviously just showered, herself, and her hair was wet and smelled of apples. “The meeting is at five, yes?” Rapid words in Latin.
“Yes. Breakfast? Actually, make that dinner . . . or whatever.” Adam stretched a little. “Maybe you’d be willing to spar with me a little, first. Trennus is probably dying for sleep, and Eshmunazar won’t thank me for waking him.” He chuckled a little. “Of course, you’ll drub me.”
A startled flicker of her gray eyes; he’d never asked before, though he wasn’t entirely sure why he hadn’t. It wasn’t that he was foreign to the concept of female soldiers. Women were required to serve a single year in the JDF, mostly in non-combat roles, though, in the last two decades, it had become possible for women to volunteer for combat specializations. In the Roman Legions, proper, women could volunteer for non-combat positions only, currently. In levy forces from Egypt, Carthage, Nahautl, and other such countries, women were not permitted to serve, while in Gothic and Gallic forces, women provided fully half of their levy forces. A
nd he had, from the outset, always seen Sigrun as . . . something of a weapon. A person, too, yes; he’d joked with her and always made an effort to get to know her, which was difficult, really; she said little about herself. Never spoke about her family or any friends outside of the Praetorian Guard. He had the impression, in fact, that the job was her entire life, at the present.
After a moment, Sigrun smiled a little, and said, lightly, “It is possible that you could drub me, Adam. My training is in a different style than yours. It would be interesting to match up with you, yes. Good practice. But perhaps not today? Trennus does need relief soon.”
“I know . . . I know. I’m just twitching from lack of activity in the past weeks.” Adam nodded at the door to the hallway. “Let’s relieve Matrugena and let him get some sleep.”
The meeting with Livorus at five postmeridian was conducted over a light supper in the propraetor’s room, and was lively as they all debriefed. Adam hadn’t had as much contact with the locals as the rest of them had the previous night, and his eyebrows went up as Sigrun described Tototl: “He didn’t specifically say that he was god-born, but he is an aristocrat, and in local society, that usually does mean descent from the god-born, doesn’t it, Ehe?” She turned and glanced at the Nahautl man. “Other than those who worked up through the ranks themselves, or who had ancestors who did, by virtue of excelling in the military or priesthood.” Sigrun’s word-choice, as always, was highly precise, her light accent in Latin giving her words an abrupt cast. “I do not think a mere priest of Tlaloc would have had the ability to control weather, as I believe he did last night.”
Ehecatl shook his head. “I give a nod to Tlaloc’s altar on the festival days, but the last time I visited one of his temples was when my wife was first pregnant.” His voice was subdued. “It’s considered polite to give thanks for the first-born. But my wife and I were more comfortable going to Centeotl’s temple after that.”
“Why’s that?” Adam asked, raising his eyebrows.
“Centeotl is the god of maize and fertility. Well, currently, he is.” Ehecatl grinned, briefly. “The original tribe that worshipped him called him Chicomecōātl, and said he was a young and beautiful maiden.”
“. . . I thought Tlaloc was your fertility god,” Adam said, after a moment.
“He is. He’s one of many. You have to understand that Nahautl did not turn into one country overnight. Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent, was worshipped by the Olmecs, who ruled this area before my people. He’s worshipped under other names in Quecha, too.” Ehecatl shrugged. “But as my people spread out, and conquered other tribes, their gods were added to our gods. All are venerated. Some are just . . . faces of each other. Different names for the same god. Some are greater and lesser powers. It’s all perfectly clear if you’re raised to understand it. I have the impression that outsiders can’t keep track of it, though.”
“I follow it perfectly well until I’m told that the world’s been destroyed four times already,” Sigrun replied, smiling faintly.
“You Goths think that the world is going to end next Tuesday,” Ehecatl told her, a grin spreading over his face. “How is it a stretch that we think it’s already happened? Matter of fact, isn’t one of your gods supposed to be dead right now?”
Sigrun looked up at the ceiling. “I blame this on my ancestors,” she said, and everyone in the room chuckled. “Baldur is supposed to be killed by Loki, out of jealousy, yes, only to return to life during the great battle at the end of the world. Yes, he is currently alive and much worshipped. Tyr, on binding Fenrir Vánagandr, the greatest of all wolves, was supposed to have his hand bitten off. Fenrir has been bound twice, but Tyr has two hands, and is called Tyr One-Hand, because of what is said will occur when Fenrir is bound for the third and final time. Fenrir will break free, slay Odin, the sun, and the moon. Loki will begin Ragnarok, the end of all things.” She paused. “The problem with much of our ancient legends, is that for my ancestors, time was all one piece. To this day, there is no future tense for verbs in Gothic. So the singers of the ancient sagas may have meant that something would happen but the tenses suggested to later listeners that it had already happened.” She shrugged slightly. “That explains my people’s confusing legends, Ehecatl. It does not help anyone to understand yours.”
Adam winced a little, inwardly. A language that had no future tense suggested bleak things about the outlook of the ancient Gothic tribes. They believed that the world would end. There was no point in worrying about next week.
The rest of the people in the room chuckled again, and Ehecatl relented. “All right. A children’s overview, without the nuances of which god came from which tribe. This is how the official priests tell the tale, for the masses.” He cleared his throat. “There are two greater gods, whom almost no one worships directly—the Hellenes don’t have any temples for Gaia, you see? Just for Demeter. Same idea. These two are Ometecuhtli and Omecihuatl. Now that I’ve said the names, forget them.” Ehecatl flicked his fingers, as if throwing something away. “They had four sons. Tezcatlipoca, Quetzalcoatl, Huitzilopochtli and Xipe Totec. Each of these four gods is a Tezcatlipoca—yes, I know that it’s the same name.” Ehecatl leveled a finger at Trennus, who’d just opened his mouth to ask a question, clearly. “Deal with it, you foreign barbarians.”
“You have been wanting to call me that for some time, have you?” Livorus said, mildly. “Perhaps you have what we called ‘short-timer’s disease’ in the Legion.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean you, sir. I meant all these other barbarians.” Ehecatl nodded, and Kanmi chuckled under his breath. “Tezcatlipoca himself is the Black Tezcatlipoca.” He pointed to one of the intricate jaguar tattoos on his arm. “He’s the god of night, magic, judgment, deceit, volcanoes, and jaguars. Most outsiders would consider him an evil god.”
“Like Loki. But . . . not.” Sigrun frowned, and picked up one of the oranges from the bowl at the center of the table in Livorus’ suite. “Judgment and deceit.”
“How can you possibly judge someone for a crime you’ve never committed?” Ehecatl asked her.
“I do that all the time, Ehe, but I accept that it makes sense to you,” she surrendered.
“So he’s . . . like Shiva,” Adam put in, tentatively. This concept had been a struggle for him, in India. “Hindus don’t worship Shiva to ask for evil. They try to . . . placate him, as best I understand it.”
“Precisely. I venerate Tezcatlipoca. He’s a jaguar, and so am I. We both hunt the night. But I also worship the White Tezcatlipoca, Quetzalcoatl. I was named for his aspect as the west wind. He’s the lord of mercy . . . but he’s also the Morning Star.” Adam felt a little chill go through him at the words. “He’s vengeance incarnate, when he’s in his aspect of Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli.” Ehecatl rolled off the syllables without hesitation. “Mind you, this is where Sigrun here is going to laugh a little.”
“Because, as best I recall, he had to die to become Tlahuiz . . .” Sigrun flapped a hand, and amended it to, “the Morning Star.”
“Correct.” Ehecatl nodded.
“So he’s alive and dead at the same time, just like Baldur?” Adam said, slowly.
“Pretty much.”
“And this doesn’t make your heads hurt?” Adam asked them both, shaking his own.
Ehecatl chuckled. “Keep in mind, sacrifice was the heart of my culture, if you’ll pardon the pun. Sometimes the gods even sacrificed each other.”
“They got better, I trust,” Kanmi put in, deadpan, leaning back in his leather-covered chair.
“Mostly.” Ehecatl raised his eyebrows at the Carthaginian. “You don’t have a problem with the concepts so far?”
“No. The worship of Baal-Hamon these days is similar to that of Tammuz. We celebrate him being torn to pieces to bring fertility to the fields once a year.” Kanmi shrugged. “He seems to get better, too. Move it along. I still haven’t heard the name ‘Tlaloc’ in any of this.”
“Huitzilopochtli is the Blue Tezcatlipoca,
and he’s the patron god of the city of Tenochtitlan. One of our sun gods, too. Xipe Totec is the Red Tezcatlipoca, the flayed god. Supposed to look like a husked ear of corn. He’s another fertility god. The priests used to flay captives in his honor, wear their skins for a few weeks, and would dress the statues of the god in the skins, as well.” Ehecatl looked around the room, expressionlessly. “I don’t apologize for my ancestors. It’s not done these days, and there’s an end to it.”
“Tlaloc,” Kanmi said, making a gesture with his fingers, as if reeling in a fish on a line.
“I’m getting there. The first time the four younger gods created the world, every time they’d make something, Cipactli, the giant alligator, would eat it. So Tezcatlipoca lured her with his foot, which he lost in her mouth—yes, like your Tyr, Sigrun—and he and Quetzalcoatl had to destroy her so that they could get back to creating the world.”
Trennus held up a finger. “I don’t mean to make trouble, but if the four gods were the only things in existence, how did an alligator come along and eat anything?”
Ehecatl put his face down in his hands. “You have no idea how much trouble I got into for asking that exact question at a festival for Tezcatlipoca when I was a boy,” he said, through his fingers. “I don’t know. The priests usually splutter and say she willed herself into existence, or that the four Tezcatlipocas had already made the other gods before they tried to make the earth.”
“So why’d they make her, if she was such a troublemaker?” Kanmi put in, his grin edged.
“Anyway,” Ehecatl went on, blatantly ignoring the Carthaginian, “with her out of the way, they made the world, they made giants, they made animals, but nothing could live without the sun, so Black Tezcatlipoca was chosen to be the first sun . . . except he was the god of night, and was missing half a leg! He was a very poor sun, so Quetzalcoatl knocked him out of the sky, the sky went dark, and Tezcatlipoca ordered his jaguars to eat all the people that they’d created together. And that was the first time the world ended.” Ehecatl wagged a finger at Kanmi, who was evidently doing his best not to laugh. “You weren’t much good at temple when you were a child, were you?”
The Valkyrie (The Saga of Edda-Earth Book 1) Page 26