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

by Deborah Davitt

  Does Jupiter have to die? Hiddenstar asked, appalled. It was a terrible thing to contemplate.

  I do not know. He is, at the moment, the biggest obstacle to the unity which could save us all. Jupiter wants unity, but only under his command. And that, I think, will never come again.

  She looked up into his eyes, which gleamed silver even in darkness. Wouldn’t whoever killed him, gain his powers?

  I don’t know if any single god could hold all of Jupiter, except perhaps Vishnu, or one of the Qin gods. Someone who already has a billion worshippers, give or take. Loki sounded grim. If a mad god devours Jupiter or Vishnu, I do not know if we could hold back such a creature, even united. And if anyone managed to destroy Jupiter, who was unprepared for so much power . . . his destruction would cause enormous damage to the world.

  So, on the whole . . . better if he lives. She shuddered.

  Perhaps so. But only if he is capable of change. He has not shown us any capacity for this, so far. He has sent agents to attack us, while we protect our people. Loki’s tone was bitter. Orcus was sent to Caesaria Aquilonis today. He caught Nantosuelta of the Gauls by surprise, and slew her in the skies over Pensacola. Loki turned away, and his face and body went preternaturally still, as if he weren’t quite inhabiting his own form for a moment. She was death, but also earth, fire, and fertility. Ravens flocked to her, as they did to the Morrigan, but she was the gentlest death I knew. The fallen leaves that nourish the new crops, and nothing more. Orcus has won for his lord a great victory today. His voice was bitter. But this is their message, beloved. That none of us are safe. That their hands will be turned against us until we surrender.

  Hiddenstar reached out, and touched his elbow, lightly. The people of Pensacola? she asked. The city was named for a tribe indigenous to the Bláthach peninsula, which had intermarried with Gallic colonists to the point where the populations were indistinguishable. Are they all right?

  Loki closed his eyes. No. Fifty-one thousand people—including those taking their holidays along what was left of the white beaches—were killed or wounded by the shockwave. He barely even consumed her. He bled her power out into the land. And then a mad godling came, attracted by the power, as was surely Orcus’ intention. Jormangand attacked the godling, because the Gulf of Nahautl and the Caribbean are in his charge. He was too late to defend Nantosuelta, but he came up onto the land to fight the mad godling. He exhaled, his breath hanging white in the air around him for a moment. There is not much left of the city, or the lands around it, but fallen buildings and melted rock.

  Hiddenstar dared to reach out, and put her arms around her lover, whose body was as rigid and cold as an icicle, but then he yielded to her touch. There can’t be peace. Not with all this.

  Nantosuelta was a creature of peace. All they have done is stiffen the resolve of the gods of Gaul. And our own. He kissed her forehead. Retaliation may come more swiftly than they can imagine.

  October 1, 1993 AC

  Niðhoggr had lived for just over two thousand years. He had no idea who his father had been—a mortal man, or a god-born, perhaps. Certainly, the name of that man had never crossed his progenitor’s lips. He’d been born into an era of almost casual brutality, and Hel had shaped him into a weapon made entirely for war and to enforce her own power. She’d brought spirits from the Veil, including her own hrímþursar allies, frost-giants like those from whom Skadi derived, and creatures—even men—from the mortal world to her realm, for him to learn to fight. How to kill. And in her realm, there was just enough causality for death to be real. Hel was, after all, the lady of death.

  He had never once doubted that if those he fought happened to be strong, quick, or powerful enough, that he would be the one bleeding out his life on the earthen floor of Hel’s great hall. She had made it clear to him that the only way for him to learn was through pain, and the only lessons he should be concerned with were obedience and survival.

  And then she’d taken him out of the Veil, and put him to use. Roman colonia, springing up in the southern forests of Germania had been his proving grounds. She had ridden him into battle, finding key generals and splitting apart every cell in their bodies with her lethal attack. Romans, Persians, Goths, and Gauls had all practiced war in similar ways at the time. One army would capture a village, put the warriors to the sword, and would enslave the healthiest of the remaining population. The old, the infirm? Were considered useless, and were often slain as well. Hel had wanted a stronger message than that. She’d ordered him to breathe out death over entire villages. He’d obeyed, because the only other result would be agony, and probably his own death. Obedience and survival. So he’d watched from the sky as the humans had run through the mud-choked streets, their animals stampeding around them in terror at his presence, each trampling the other, and had exhaled death down on them. He’d heard their screams and smelled their terror, and it had horrified him beyond anything he had ever experienced before.

  And it had been his duty to do precisely that, dozens of times, until Rome had agreed that colony space could be made for the people of the gods of Valhalla in the new world. That peace should be made between them, the gods of Valhalla, and the gods of the Gauls.

  And these were the horrors that his dreams had brought back to him, when Sigrun had insisted that he sleep. The upturned faces. The bodies of the children, lying frozen in the mud. The kind of dirt that humans forgot about in their tales of glorious battles past. They categorized it all as ancient history . . . and they could. Because no human alive today had been alive then. No human remembered that civilization had once not been civilized at all, or that they were a hair’s breadth at all times from returning to the howling abyss from which they had so slowly crawled.

  Niðhoggr remembered it. He remembered it all. Two thousand years of continuous memory —plus perhaps a century or more, spent in Veil, where time flowed as Hel willed it. It gave him perspective. He could remember when Rome’s gods had been more or less on equal footing with his betters of Valhalla. He’d watched them run the world like armed thugs, for centuries. And really, what was a feudal lord, than the leader of a recognized and particularly well-armed group of loyal thugs?

  Honor and loyalty as concepts had begun within tribes and villages as a way to ensure that a warlord could rely on his soldiers, his nobles. Honor and loyalty had been elaborated, extended out to the entirety of many cultures. Made prettier, nobler, and more valuable by that extension. But back in the day, there had been little pretty about it. Just one band of armed brigands, killing another. Rounding up the captives. Raping the women, or bringing them back to serve as slaves for their families. And probably raping them at home, too. To the victor go the spoils. He hadn’t been jesting to Sigrun when he told her that Hel’s power, Hel’s realm, were hers by right of conquest. It had seemed obvious to him.

  And yet, Sigrun was a product of the modern world. She didn’t hesitate to kill in combat—she was a valkyrie, after all—but had compunctions and a conscience. Conscience was part of the modern world. A product of its ease and its safety. And yet . . . in her, as in her companions, honor and loyalty were most exquisitely expressed, in their wider, more abstract, more modern conceptions. Not just narrow loyalty to a gang, a family, or a god or two, but to . . . ideals.

  Hel had ordered him to test Sigrun, at the Odinhall. And, if possible, and if the valkyrie had been . . . unfit . . . to slay her, and turn over the energies to Hel. Niðhoggr had required only one look at the blazing blue-white spirit of the valkyrie to know that she was more than fit. He could smell power on her, a power much like his own. He’d tested her, obeying his progenitor’s command, and had found it exhilarating. He’d never known kinship before. And Sigrun had, unlike everyone else he’d ever known, treated him like a person. Not a weapon. Not Hel’s pet.

  And thus, when Hel had again ordered him to kill the valkyrie, Nith had rebelled. He wanted, desperately, to explain it to Sigrun. He’d tried to put it into words. But never the whole trut
h, not all at once. I was a slave to her for two thousand years before you came. You gave me hope. You gave me freedom. You gave me a reason for being. Should I give less than you? I will free you, Sigrun Stormborn, from the memories that enslave you. I will comfort your mortal heart when it bleeds, and I will teach you what it means to be a goddess. And I will never allow you to falter or fail while there is breath in my body. I will guard you, guide you, and love you until the end of all things. You are my freedom. And I am yours. Someday, he might be free to speak those words.

  But not today.

  At the moment, his long perspective on the dealings of the gods of Rome told him that there would be more deaths. Jupiter would order attacks on every god that defied him, because that had been how one ensured obedience, in the old days. Do this, or you will suffer. Do this, or those for whom you care, will die, and die horribly. And even if there were not Rome’s gods to worry about, the gods of Nahautl and Quecha were embroiled in a war that would only spiral outwards and engulf other lands. And then there were the mad godlings, which were all too likely to attack a lone god.

  Knowing all of this, Niðhoggr refused to leave Sigrun’s side. No god should currently go anywhere alone. And Sigrun, with her mortal heart and her self-doubt, was acutely vulnerable.

  Still, time seemed to fleet by for him at some moments, and crawled, at others. He could hear the words of the other gods whispering at the back of his mind. Toutatis, the crafter-god of the Gauls, met with Taranis and Thor, and the three of them tracked Orcus to retaliate for the death of Nantosuelta. They caught him crossing into Nahautl, and followed the Roman death-god into that realm . . . and set on him there. The gods of Nahautl cried out in anger at the trespass, and rose into the skies to drive off the interlopers.

  Orcus, wounded by Taranis and Thor’s lightning, disappeared into the ground, taking refuge deep below the earth, and there stumbled upon his actual reason for venturing into Nahautl. Tlaltecuhtli. There were three earth goddesses in Nahautl, and one god, though Tlaltecuhtli, the god who supposedly devoured the dead, also had female aspects. Orcus slew Tlaltecuhtli without hesitation, swallowing most of the energy, so akin to his own . . . but the ley-lines rippled with the discharge; Tlaltecuhtli had been accepting human sacrifices.

  Nith, further to the north, near Divodurum, could feel the earth quiver below him as the seismic ripples spread through the continental shelf; it felt like a shudder in his own skin as he flew in the skies over Novo Gaul. This is not a power of my own. This is of Tezcatlipoca. I will have to contemplate these new senses . . . but not now. I do not have time for this now. He and Sigrun were escorting another refugee convoy, this one north from Gallic Divodurum north along the Aeturnus towards Cimbri-on-the-Caestus.

  “Something’s wrong?” Sigrun shouted over the wind. Some days, she forgot to be mortal, and used mind-speech . . . but those days were still too few and far between.

  Another god has fallen. Not one of our allies. But still . . . those who might resist the mad godlings’ ranks are growing fewer in number.

  Months passed, and Rome landed troops near Tyre and began to march the legions south, into the Caledonian Forest. We must aid Saraid and her people, Sigrun told him. She needs our help, and Trennus isn’t available. At the moment, Worldwalker was in the middle of his winter dormancy. He had become a physical conduit for his land and its connection to the Veil. As such, he was required to spend the winter months physically in the Veil . . . which meant that he could not much aid his people in the defense of their lands. Niðhoggr found Worldwalker to be a bundle of dichotomies, not least of which was the fact that the man still manipulated ley-energies, in spite of having ascended. No pure Veil creature would touch the ley-lines of this universe.

  At least, no sane one.

  Of course, he replied now. They are your friends, and our allies. They do not yet have enough arms and equipment for their small army. The JDF is working with them?

  Yes. “Yes,” she repeated, out loud, as if remembering suddenly that she should use her voice. “But Saraid can’t be everywhere at once, and if the Legion starts burning the Forest . . . using defoliant, whatever else . . . .”

  We go.

  Hours later, they soared through the air over the green forest, following Saraid as she bounded across her land. Roman tanks that had been off-loaded near Tyre were now crashing into the trees, knocking them down, and some of them leaked blood-sap from their twitching stumps, while troops ranged around with flamethrowers . . . only to have the ground itself angrily open up at their feet and suck them down into the earth, drowning them in the soil. Trennus did that from the Veil, Sigrun said, her voice awed. He is the land, now. He’s one with it.

  Jotun and fenris burst through the tree-line, the fenris howling in response to Saraid. The wolves attacked the foot-troops, taking bullets and closing their jaws on throats. Brandr Ilfetu and the jotun leaped atop tanks, tearing open the hatches, and reaching in for the unfortunate men inside. From Nith’s perspective, the slow crawl of the tanks wasn’t entirely unlike watching a siege tower’s progress towards a fortress. The flame throwers were just a horizontal version of burning pitch or boiling oil. The bullets aimed up at him, the rocket-propelled grenades?

  . . . Roman arrows, stinging him, lodging in his young and tender scales. Black-silver blood poured down his sides. No healing to be had from Hel, of course. The only lesson was survival. Be strong, or die, I care not which. Closing his eyes during the attack run to protect his most vulnerable parts, and hoping not to run into the ground . . . and, rather, landing on a formation of armed men, his weight bearing them to the ground. Feeling their iron armor and bones crunch under him, the smell of their blood puddling on the ground. Clumsy. Animalistic. You will improve. You will show them why we are the fear that comes on dark wings in the night . . . .

  He shook off the vision, and swooped down. Having Sigrun on his neck was a different experience entirely. She wrapped him in seiðr, and the projectiles bounced off her shields now that she’d had more practice with them. Fire exploded around them, and he raced through the smoke and flames and came out the other side, his jaws gaping wide as he exhaled death down on the formation below him. The Romans had come equipped to protect themselves from the forest, from the trees, from guerilla warfare and battle-magic; some of them had anti-fire charms that Nith could smell. Some of them had technomatic devices designed to turn aside bullets. None of them had come prepared for liquefied oxygen and nitrogen pouring down on them with solid flecks of the same throughout. Many of those who weren’t killed instantly broke ranks and fled, a severe dereliction of duty for a Roman legionnaire.

  A hard-bitten centurion got hold of a shoulder-mounted rocket, and aimed directly for Nith’s open jaws, trying to hit the gout of liquid air coming out of the dragon’s mouth. Nith was only aware of the inbound missile at the last moment . . . and a whip of raw seiðr shattered the rocket off to his left, and the shields around him took the blast. Nith’s head swiveled as Sigrun hissed one word: “Bastard,” and lightning slammed down on the unfortunate centurion’s head, a triple strike that left nothing but smoking boots and melted pieces of metal that had once been sidearms.

  A handful of helicopters and ley-powered fighters moved in now, swarming them, trying to take them off the infantry. A storm would be a useful thing now, Sigrun!

  A storm you wish, a storm you will have. But only once our other allies have moved into position.

  And from under the protective canopy of the Woods, their hidden aerial companions moved out of cover. Harpies, led by Reginleif. Lindworm riders, mostly nieten, but a few humans. Reginleif screamed, and her silvery voice could be heard for close to a mile: “Attack!”

  The lindworms moved out in a wedge formation. They weren’t as fast as Nith, but they were maneuverable enough in the air that he felt like a clumsy behemoth beside them. They moved together like a whip, ducking under the helicopters, which were still concentrating fire on the larger, more obvious threat that
was Nith himself . . . and their riders fired directly up into the undercarriages, finding the ley-batteries that powered the engines, and destroying them. These vehicles began to careen towards the ground, and others, still in flight, wheeled around, and their gunners began to rain large-caliber rounds towards the lindworms and their riders. None of the helicopters stood in one place for long, of course. Their best defense was, like the lindworms, in their mobility. So the aerial combat became a dance with many partners, and they fired, at will, on their attackers.