The Goddess Embraced (The Saga of Edda-Earth Book 3)

by Deborah Davitt

  No time for thought, as he and the other wolves bolted out of the undergrowth, and fell on the grendels from behind. Maccis’ jaws closed on the tendons just behind one male’s knee, and he shook his head, tearing into the flesh, tasting blood. Felt the tendons snap, and pivoted, throwing his full weight into the grendel’s buckling knees, and then darted out of the way of the falling giant. Not a mortal wound for the giants, who could regenerate . . . but it let two other fenris move in for the actual kill, tearing out the throat. Once the battle was over, they’d come back and make sure the grendels stayed dead, by severing their heads completely.

  Speed and agility were his allies. He’d seen the grendel fire large-bore firearms right at Fenris, and the bullets had bounced off the silvery fur, which was an aegis better than a flak jacket or metal plate. But the other wolves weren’t so lucky. Maccis had shifted to human form after a dozen battles and used a pocket knife clipped to his collar to pry bullets out of the other fenris’ legs and sides, so that their rapidly-regenerating bodies could heal properly. He’d helped set bones, broken when a grendel or an ettin had punched a fenris, or thrown a rock that a wolf couldn’t avoid in time. All his nursing had been done without anesthetic, and with the grim knowledge that any one of the pack could snap him in half. Maccis had discovered—painfully—that he, too, could heal his wounds, but it required shifting shape. And shifting shape when he was injured took far more energy than he’d ever known it could. He needed to eat after those kinds of transitions, and food was scarcer than he’d have liked already. So his best bet was not to be hit at all.

  He ducked a blow that would have cracked his skull, and dove between another giant’s legs, leaping up and clamping down on the creature’s groin with savage teeth. Ripping and tearing. The pain was incapacitating, and the blood-loss in the region would surely be devastating. A femoral artery strike would have been better—a grendel could die from that, just as surely as a human. They just had better odds of healing than the average mortal man or woman. The next hit, he couldn’t avoid, this one from a stone club that slammed into his side, cracking four of his ribs, and sending him flying. Maccis tumbled across the ground and then staggered back to his paws. Forced his form to change, and bolted forwards, this time as a juvenile lindworm, mostly for the rippling armor scales and vicious, poisoned bite, and landed on another grendel’s back, latching on with all four sets of claws, and clamped down at the back of the neck with his jaws, barely aware that his teeth grated deeply into vertebrae, into the softness of the nerve cord. But he could taste and smell the foulness of the cerebrospinal fluid, and snarled.

  Combat, he’d learned, could last hours between armies, but encounters like these usually lasted no more than ten or twenty minutes, no matter who won. In this case, the fenris won the day, and went around the grim business of making sure that the grendel would stay dead, while Maccis nosed among the tents . . . and actually found two youngsters, a boy and a girl, who were covered in old blood and clinging to each other, their eyes shell-shocked and glassy. Fenris! Two are alive, survivors of the caravan!

  Then speak with them, Gleipnir. Fenrir Vánagandr still called him that, the fetter that bound him to a bargain with Valhalla. You are the only one here who may wear a human face.

  It was true, too; there wasn’t a single lycanthrope in the pack. Maccis grimaced and found his human shape in his mind. He hadn’t used it much in the last five months. Mostly, just to perform first aid, a task for which hands were ultimately, very necessary. The problem was, his wolf-coat was currently covered in blood, and he hadn’t worn a stitch of clothing, other than his collar, since joining the pack. He shifted form, slowly, in front of the younglings, keeping to a crouch, so he’d look smaller. These children were Goths of some variety . . . they’d probably been raised with public nudity in Roman baths and pools, sporting arenas and beaches. Still, there was no reason to risk shocking either of them further. “Are you all right?” he asked, concentrating hard to find words to say out loud, in Gothic.

  They stared at him, and he could see that they had retreated, somewhere deep within their own minds, though they wrapped their arms around each other as if they would never let go. “Can you at least tell me your names?” he asked, as gently as he could. Words were . . . difficult. They tasted odd in his mouth. “Mine is Maccis.”

  Two terrified headshakes. Maccis sighed and kept at it. Found them furs from the grendels’ tents to keep them warm—while it was midsummer, it couldn’t be more than sixty degrees where they were, so high in the mountains. Moved them out of the killing zone, and helped them clean the blood off in the water of the lake, and started making sense of their story, as they were able to find words at last. As hard a task for them, as it was for him, apparently. They’d been in the convoy with their parents. Both parents had been killed and eaten yesterday, and the grendel female who’d claimed them had, apparently, been childless. Barren. She’d patted them on their heads, and offered them fresh meat to eat—human, naturally, which had only traumatized the children further. Gods. They were pets to her. Like a human taking in a wolf’s cubs. Maccis found it . . . somewhat encouraging that some of the grendels had those basic instincts, at some buried level.

  But he couldn’t even remember which of the grendel he’d killed. They’d all turned. They’d all fought. The female . . . might have been the rarest of all things: a grendel who could have been redeemed from her insanity. But he couldn’t say any of that to the children. “We’re going to get you back to your people,” he promised.

  They did; the brother and sister rode on one fenris’ back together, still plainly not in their own heads. The blank stares and glassy eyes said everything Maccis needed to know. The pack hunted, and dragged deer back to their camp that night, and Fenris allowed a fire to cook the meat for the children; Maccis had to find the correct part of his utility knife that unfolded into flint and steel to strike sparks. So he had his first cooked meal in five months that night with the two children, and the warm meat tasted so good, even without seasoning, that he burned his mouth repeatedly, trying to eat it as fast as if he were still in wolf form.

  After returning the children to the refugee camp on the south side of the Alps, in Roman territory, where aid workers took over, trying to find any living relatives, the pack headed back up into the mountains. You did well in the fight, Fenris told Maccis, unexpectedly. You are quick and agile and hide well. But your size hampers you against our current foes.

  There does not seem to be much I can do about that.

  Certainly there is. Do you think that I remained unseen for centuries, using my full form every day? Fenris’ tongue lolled out.

  And that was how the lessons began. Maccis had never been able to adjust his overall body mass before. He’d thought it was impossible for him—though he’d routinely seen his mother go into full fenris shape, Saraid was, after all, a true spirit. They did not have human limitations. It took over a month to grasp at what Fenris meant . . . but once Maccis understood, it was dazzling. There was a place at the back of his mind that pulsed with energy, and once he found it, he understood what it was. It was the source of all of his abilities, and his connection to his mother . . . and through her, his connection to the Veil itself. Every time he changed form, he was using that power. And once he understood the source of that power, he was able to work with it differently, drawing more energy than before . . . and finally was able to quadruple his mass, by drawing enough energy out of the Veil and converting it to matter during the transformation. Even doubling his mass had resulted in an enormous effort to walk at first; he’d had to adjust to weighing so much more than he ever had before, and while his musculature had kept pace with his mass, and he didn’t, therefore, collapse into a pile of jelly under the effects of gravity, he was exceedingly clumsy at first. Which got him quite a few silent laughs from the other fenris.

  It was effortless for us, on the Day of Transition, one of them told him. Mostly because . . . most of us went a litt
le mad that day. She sat up on her haunches, panting at him. This was Auda. Like most of the fenris in their little pack, she was half of a mated pair, and her pups were grown. I was only sixteen at the time. I don’t remember much. Just running on all four feet, and being terrified, because I knew that something was wrong. That I was wrong.

  And by the time you awakened, you were used to your body? he asked, trying not to trip over his own feet.

  In the main. I ran with the packs in Cimbri, and I was . . . low-status in the hierarchy there. A mate, and pups, but . . . always a nagging sense that something was wrong. Something was missing. There was just . . . hunting and survival. Being hungry most of the time. Hard to remember everything. Chasing humans for coming into our territory and trying to round up the cattle and the sheep that we needed to survive. And then one day she came. Auda’s ears pricked up. You smell as she did. The Lady of the Wilds.

  Maccis chose not to answer that in words, but he knew his answer was all over him. His ears had dropped an iota, and he’d looked away. Confirmation, of a sort, and difficult to control.

  I will respect your silence. Auda told him, calmly. But when speech came back . . . it was wonderful and terrible at once. We’d had self-awareness, but almost no communication. The skills had atrophied. All we’d had for so long were . . . smells. Growls. Posture and expressions, even among ourselves. And I followed her south, and realized that I’d lost seven years of my life and had three young children, all of whom needed to be taught how to speak, because they never had done so before. She sighed. They are grown now. I even have a different mate now; one that I chose, as myself, and that the heat did not choose for me.

  The pack of fenris was made up of about ten mated pairs, and one or two unmated males and females. All volunteers, and none were receiving pay for working with the god-beast. They were here because it was an honor and a privilege, and they were the best at what they did. Auda had become one of the finest search-and-rescue operatives that the Judean Praetorians had ever worked with, for example. Her mate, Koli, had been in the landsknechten, and was renowned for being an expert tracker and stealth reconnaissance specialist. He’d dirty his white fur in anything he could find, up to and including manure, so that he couldn’t be seen or smelled as a wolf, and would move in so carefully, no one ever saw him before he struck.

  Dealing with the issue of sex in the field was handled as politely as possible; fenris weren’t dogs, and they were very far from supply lines that would have kept the females in a supply of contraceptive biscuits. Estrus wasn’t due for some time, so they were currently safe from the issue of puppies. But fenris were also still human enough to have needs. Thus, a mated pair might disappear off into the underbrush after dark, while someone else was on watch. There would only be faint sounds, and then they’d return. It would have been almost unnoticeable, if not for the fact that everyone here had exceptional senses of smell. And the smells informed everyone present who belonged with whom, and instinctive respect was paid to that distinction.

  For his part, Maccis curled up on himself every night and did his best not to brood about Zaya. Wolf-form at least kept the worst of it at bay, but the emotional void, the gap in his life, was noticeable. At first, the longing for the smell of her skin and hair, the sound of her voice, was acute, as was his anxiety about her. She had every right to be angry with him. He’d made a decision, dropped it on her head, and then vanished. He couldn’t write. The best he could do, when Aunt Sig appeared to confer with Fenris on something, was to approach, and ask her, politely, to convey his love. Somewhere around the six-month mark, Maccis told himself that none of it was under his control. Zaya would either be angry, or wouldn’t be angry. He’d either be home in six months, or he wouldn’t. And thinking about it just made him irritable, because he probably could have handled . . . everything . . . better than he had, but he couldn’t fix it. Better, therefore, not to think about it at all.

  Impossible not to think about her, though. On yet another fireless night, he’d drifted to sleep, remembering her reading something to him from the Archives, as every bone in his body ached from where a grendel had hit him with a tree . . . and then he’d snapped awake, instantly alert at the sound of wings in the sky. Every fenris around him rolled to their paws, muscles tense, until the sound resolved itself into the form of a vast black dragon, and not a flight of lindworms, and the rider slipped down to the ground. Fenris himself melted out of the shadows to greet Sigrun.

  “We’ve had helicopters and valkyrie in the air, and scouts working their way in for closer reports,” she told them all, sounding tired. “All indications are that there’s a massive number of grendel currently heading to the Salassian Pass. It’s one of the major crossings through the Pennine Alps. Imperial highway twenty-seven runs through it, and there’s a railway tunnel, as well. We estimate a hundred thousand refugees are currently in the pass area.”

  The Salassi are Gauls, are they not? someone from the pack asked, quietly.

  Sigrun nodded. “Their gold mines were seized by the Empire in ninety-nine AC, but they were permitted to stay an autonomous, self-ruling state, even when the Empire established a colonia in the region, under the rule of Caesarion the God-Born. They’ve been hosting most of the refugees that come through the pass, helping them with a little food, letting them pitch tents, and then passing them on to the south. They’ve given a great deal, without asking for recompense.”

  And what does the force of grendels look like? Fenris asked, calmly.

  “Hard to get a precise number. They’re coming in bands of twenty or thirty, but they’re amassing in force under a single leader, which is . . . very unusual for them. Scouts report he’s mostly taking on the leaders of each band in single combat, and then adding the loser’s band to his own group. Presumably, each band’s leader thinks he can take over his force if they defeat him. And they’re wrong. Repeatedly.” Sigrun grimaced. “Apparently, he makes his new followers eat their former leaders. After he picks out the brains for himself.”

  Rumbles of distaste from half the fenris. Many of them had run with the wild packs, and had been mad, once. Some of them probably had eaten human flesh. They all tried very hard not to remember it, Maccis knew. Not to even think about it. Nothing they could do about it now.

  In rough numbers, then?

  “Perhaps five thousand. Against a hundred thousand unarmed civilians, a Roman legion outpost that can’t protect that many people, and anything else we can get in their way. The legions and Gothic defense forces are sending helicopters, but we all know what happens when a helicopter remains in one place too long, firing at a grendel position . . . .”

  They throw boulders at it until it flees, or crashes. Auda’s voice was subdued.

  “Right. We will have air support in the form of helicopters and valkyries aloft for lightning. Nith and I will be there.” Sigrun looked at Fenris. “This leader is interesting.”

  He is not like the rest, no. He should be captured, if we can manage it.

  “I’m glad we agree. He might be heavily guarded, if they’re actually moving towards some sort of actual . . . government . . . even if it’s just a tribal or military one.” Sigrun unfolded a map, and put it on the ground, putting rocks at the corners, to begin showing them all the geographical features of the area. “Ideally, we want to hit them when they are not expecting it. Conventional forces will engage them to the south, as a distraction. I would like you and your people to circle in and go after the leader. Capture if possible. Kill if there’s no other option.”

  And then what, daughter of Tyr? Fenris bared his teeth. Bind him?

  She sighed. “Honestly, I would like to speak with him. See if there’s . . . any part of him that could be brought back. As the fenris have been restored, as the first jotun were, as well.”

  And as we now attempt to do with the lindworms. Nith’s voice was loud in Maccis’ head. I strongly doubt that there is any more hope for this one than there was for the one you interrog
ated months ago, Sigrun. But I acknowledge that you are bound to try.

  The chances are not good. Fenris agreed. We have seen . . . anomalous behavior periodically, however. A female last month who tried to turn two human children into pets.

  Sigrun looked up, appearing struck. “You didn’t happen to manage to capture her, did you?”

  No. That band put up strenuous resistance. Fenris paused. We will go in from the east. I will summon cold and snow. Do you the same, Stormborn. They will not see us coming.

  Sigrun nodded, and began packing up her map again . . . and looked startled as Maccis nosed her hand. “Maccis, you have grown.” A look of interest and amusement. “I didn’t think you could increase your mass like this.”

  He took his human form, wincing a little at the feeling of cool air on bare skin as he crouched there. Fumbled for words. “Fenris has been teaching me a few tricks.” His voice was a dry rasp, and he had to clear his throat.