The Goddess Embraced

by Deborah Davitt

  His ears flattened, but he didn’t tell her what he really thought. That there was nowhere safe left.

  By night, he was out and running again. His stomach ached with hunger, but he didn’t dare stop to hunt. He tried to avoid main roads, but roads tended to be built where travel was the easiest anyway. So he paralleled a stretch of road that would become Imperial Highway XV, but which was currently a smaller, four-lane road that passed through the khaki land, without much cover to either side. In the distance, he could see the circular greenish dots that were the hallmark of desert agriculture; the watering systems were long bars that rotated from a central point. If his mental reckoning was correct, he was going to have to skirt around this town, which was probably Tabou, a Lihyanite city that had never been a Roman province.

  His ears caught noise, and flattened against his skull. Ley and electric motors tended to make little noise, compared to a chemically-fueled engine. But tires still scraped on the ground, and nothing on earth could disguise the crunch of tank treads. Maccis flattened down behind a ridge, and belly-crawled forwards to peer cautiously over the edge, looking down on the road below.

  To the south, behind him, he could see the headlights of an approaching convoy. Maccis flattened himself further, holding completely still, watching as the troop transports and tanks began to crawl past. The top speed of a convoy is the top speed of the slowest-moving vehicle; this convoy was doing no more than thirty miles an hour. He had time to count the vehicles—a hundred and sixty troop carriers, a hundred and fifty tanks, supply trucks, ambulances, and so on—and he got a good look at the insignia on the sides. A circle, with wings. It was an old symbol, used for over four thousand years, everywhere from Egypt to Mesopotamia. It had been affiliated with sun-gods like Shamesh, and the god-kings of ancient Persia. It had meant, more or less, the immortal sun. And by association, over the centuries, it had been given to those who protected the god-kings.

  Nowadays, of course, it was chiefly known as the unit badge of the Immortals.

  Maccis kept his mind blank. He’d fought Immortals before. He didn’t particularly want to do so again, especially alone. Where Immortals were, there were probably summoners, and where summoners were, there were probably spirits. Though any spirit that would spend much time in the mortal realm right now had to be minor in power, and forced to remain here . . . so it might not be able to see him in his leopard form. Or they could have a major power with them, an efreet on par with Illa’zhi . . . except he didn’t see any cyclones trailing the convoy. While an efreet could take a mortal form, most didn’t. Most didn’t bond with a human the way Zhi had linked himself to Erida, either. And most human summoners didn’t trust an efreet enough, or weren’t desperate enough to try it . . . or maybe the ones who were weak and tried it, just wound up being consumed by the efreet.

  After the last truck vanished, Maccis tossed another thought towards Saraid. Mother? You have about two thousand troops following that mad godling towards the border. Immortals, summoners, and their attendant troops, if the unit badges didn’t lie.

  There was another pause. Then, wearily, Saraid replied, I’ll pass the information to your father, Mercury, and the Morrigan. They’ll tell the ones who speak for the other humans of this region.

  Maccis got moving again, trying not to think, but failing. An Immortal couldn’t be turned into a ghul, any more than a god-born could. They were . . . already inhabited, if completely subsumed to the spirit within them. And maybe, once upon a time, the ‘honor’ of becoming an Immortal had been more akin to becoming spirit-touched. Until someone, possibly a magus or a priest, decided that having these powerful warriors around, who still had minds of their own, and free-will, was just too problematic. Instead of the intensive god-born training in ethics and decision-making, instead of the indoctrination process that ensures that a god-born of Valhalla sees themselves as a tool, a servant of the people and the gods . . . they ensured that the Immortals could never be anything but slaves. Because they were manufacturing them, out of people who were already adults. It’s hard to mold someone who’s already arrived at their own beliefs and opinions. It always boils down to control, doesn’t it?

  He raced onwards, pausing to choke down gray, dirty snow on a sheltered ledge for the water. He had to get home.

  On the other side of the world, it was ten hours earlier, by the clock. Mid-afternoon in Burgundoi, and Drust and Sadb crouched behind the poured-stone barricades that usually separated lanes of traffic from one another where Imperial Highway CI met Gallic Highway CCLXXX, but which had been moved to the edge of this bridge, giving them thicker cover in a perch that overlooked Highway CI. Drust had his rifle, Sadb had the shotgun she’d carried from Divodurum, and the local militia had given them as much ammunition as they could carry. Burgundoi residents flanked them. There were plenty of blond Goths here, but also at least a hundred Nahautl refugees, with their jade earplugs and heavy tattoos. Gallic refugees, from Nimes. Below, on the highway, farmers from the valleys around the city fled along the feeder roads, by foot or on horseback, under the watchful eyes of the gardia. But Drust could spot, now and again, someone in the crowd below who looked out of place. Someone who’d surely walked more than a hundred miles to get here. He could tell by the raggedness of the clothing, the way they’d stare off into space. Highway eyes. He and Sadb had caught that same look on each other’s faces, often enough.

  Valkyrie circled overhead, as did a few of Burgundoi’s remaining ley-powered helicopters. More detailed scout reports had filtered back. It wasn’t a single organized army coming up the coast towards them. It was three masses of different opponents, who might very well turn on each other, given the proper encouragement.

  The first, they’d already seen some of, before. Raiders who’d been camped along the highways between here and Nimes. They’d captured tanks and guns and missiles from tired, worn legionnaires and Gallic militia as they’d straggled up in small convoys. Very often, they’d set off avalanches to trap the troops, and killed them while their vehicles were bogged down in the snow. They’d set themselves up as highwaymen, and had done their best to live off whatever the refugees carried . . . or had moved around, attacking the few remaining farms for food and goods. The city militia and the various god-born had done their best to thin their numbers, but there were always more pirates of the open road. And with the other forces pushing them north, they were, in fact, the first to enter the city outskirts, moving in with tanks and missile launchers and machine-guns, all scavenged from legionnaires.

  The smallest bands had already moved up to the city limits, and surrendered. Given their parole and their word to fight for the city, so long as they could cower behind the thin line of civilization. Drust wanted to spit every time he caught sight of one of them. They marked themselves out with bandanas and jewelry looted from their victims. He didn’t trust any of them with his back, and thought they’d turn on anyone, if they thought it would save their own skin. He thought it wise of the militia leaders that these bandits were mostly right out on the front lines. Not back where the civilians were, in safety and comfort.

  The larger bands, however, with their heavier weapons and greater manpower, were unlikely to ask for help or succor. They’d see safe harbor in the city, cover they could use against the other inbound armies, and they’d smash right through any defensive lines on their way to take it. Because they were used to taking, not talking.

  The second incoming force was inimical, but more predictable. These were ghul raised by a godling. They had once been common people from all along the coast between here and Nimes. Perhaps from further south, as well. There was no way to tell.

  The last force was the army nominally under the control of the priests of Nahautl—those who didn’t follow Quetzalcoatl, apparently. There was no current Emperor in Nahautl. No one to control or quell the priests. As a result, they’d whipped thousands of their people north, looking for resources from Nimes, which had fallen . . . and now were looking fo
r more supplies from Burgundoi, the last manufacturing center of any size left standing . . . and for sacrifices to the dead gods of Nahautl. Because sacrifices were how the priests kept control of their army.

  The priests had managed to gain nominal control over a number of ahuizotl, or monkey-dogs, flayed men, and skull-women, the cihuateteo. The flayed men were easy enough to kill, but seeing them inspired horror in most people, and they carried disease with them in their putrefying flesh. The cihuateteo, with their impossibly distended bellies, were an inversion of fertility. Their claws raked at eyes, their skeletal jaws could bite out a man’s throat, and if they caught and landed on another woman . . . they’d squat atop them, and birth out the little monster inside them onto the new woman’s body. And the creature would burrow its way inside, through the stomach wall, and the woman would scream as if in labor . . . and when she stood up, all her skin would be sunken to the bones of her face. And she’d be one of them.

  Sadb had made Drust promise that he’d shoot her head off, rather than let her experience that.

  Rumor had it that the city leaders of Burgundoi had taken the extraordinary step of radioing the Nahautl regular army encamped at Tongeran, in spite of the fact that they were occupying an allied Gallic city at the moment. And had asked for reinforcements. They were hundreds of miles away, however. If aid came, it would probably come right out of the nick of time. So right now, they had to hold this line, right here. Until they were forced to fall back to a new line.

  Drust sighted carefully, as he caught a glimpse of the first vehicles rumbling up Highway CI, on the heels of the fleeing farmers and suburb residents. He couldn’t do anything about the stolen tanks, but from up here, where the CCLXXX crossed over the north-south highway . . . he had an outstanding perch to take out drivers of troop transports. “Lead driver in sight,” he reported, tersely. “I can take him, see?”

  “Orders are, we don’t shoot till they start shooting. They could be coming here to offer to fight on our side.” The commander of their ragged squad was a Burgundian, and his voice clearly suggested that he didn’t believe what he was saying, any more than anyone else did.

  “They’re raiders,” Sadb said, her voice tight. “Even if they’re on our side today, tomorrow, they’ll just be back to raping and murdering and stealing.”

  “I tend to agree with you,” the commander said, crouching beside them. “But today, we need every gun we can get pointed the other direction from us.”

  Make it easy, Drust thought, his finger tightening on the trigger. Make it easy for me to pull this, why don’t you now? How many of those cold, still bodies out there, along the side of the highway, under the snow, are there because of you? He could just make out the fact that the driver he was aiming at wore a metal helmet of some sort. Drust corrected his aim a little lower, so that the cross-hairs of the fine, Hellene-made rifle hovered over the sternum.

  “They’ve spotted the barrier. And us.” the commander said, and stood, lifting and waving the Burgundoi banner planted between the pieces of poured-stone barricade. Drust wouldn’t have taken the commander’s job for ten golden aureus. The more so, when the convoy below came to a halt in front of the dozens of poured-stone barriers that had been laid perpendicular to the highway, blocking their vehicles, and the commander had to pick a detachment of men to go with him and meet with the damned raiders. The bandits didn’t precisely have an organized command structure. “I don’t like it,” Drust told Sadb, watching as men hopped out of the vehicles, some shambling away along the feeder. Most stayed where they were, though, and joined road-block already set up, ignoring the uneasy stares of the other defenders. “They could just be waiting to let their fellows through.”

  That they’d picked up sixty or seventy more defenders, however dubious, was the good news. The bad news was that the largest band of raiders was still out there, and they were more organized. From the sound of gunfire coming from the eastern positions, they were trying to skirt the city, and heading for the fertile valleys northeast of town. Drust heard the whistle of a distant rocket, and hit the ground, pulling Sadb with him . . . but no immediate burst of pebbles and shrapnel hit them. Stomach churning, he settled back in to wait.

  And then, at sunset, the shout of “Incoming!” rang through the air, and Drust’s eyes widened. He could just see the horde of ahuizotl, flayed men, and cihuateteo running along the highway, ahead of the dark shapes that were probably military vehicles. “Weapons free!” their commander shouted, echoing an order ringing back and forth over the lines of defenders positioned along the highway. “Open fire!”

  Drust and Sadb did their best, but they weren’t trained soldiers. Drust fired on anything he could target . . . but then the ahuizotl broke through, leaping easily up and scampering up the poured-stone pillars that supported the overpass. He’d never seen one other than on the far-viewer. They were the size of large dogs, and each had the head of a monkey, monkey-like paws, and additional paws on the tips of their prehensile tails. They hooted and howled as they boiled over the barricade, and leaped onto the backs of the defenders, digging at eyes and wrapping their tails around throats, choking people. Their rubbery-looking faces distorted as they bit people’s arms, and some of their victims staggered around, shouting and swiping at invisible opponents, even after the creatures had been hauled off their backs and killed. Hallucinogenic poison in the bites. Wonderful.

  Sadb rose up to a crouch, and started blasting away with her shotgun, targeting any ahuizotl she could find that wasn’t choking someone, and Drust pulled out a long cleaver, acquired from some restaurant kitchen, and began chopping at the damnable monkey-dogs. The head of the first one he killed rolled along the ground, wound up face-first, seeming to look back at him . . . and he realized with a shock that the eyes in that bestial face were human.

  All along the highway, he could hear men and women screaming. Flashes of light, as the soldiers of the priests below opened fire with machine guns and grenade launchers. The first grenade that hit, landed twenty feet away, and sent Drust tumbling to the ground as the brilliant light went off. He got back to a crouch, shaken, and checked for everyone around him, including Sadb. He wasn’t a soldier. His first thought in the face of an explosion was Shit! Get back, we can’t do anything about that . . . but no one called the order to retreat. Not yet, anyway.

  He could only see by the light of flares, tossed down for visibility. The flickering shadows made it worse as masses of twisted, horrible bodies clawed their way up the dark on-ramps, over the edges of the bridge. He kept his cleaver in his hand, and stayed at Sadb’s side, as she continued to fire on anything she could identify, but they had to let people get far too damned close, just to be sure of what they were about to kill. And then something with claws hit him, and then he was free to hack at the creature again.

  The flashes of light became even worse, in their way, because every flicker of light meant a scream of agony, as another defender took a grenade in the face . . . and the light revealed that the ahuizotl on the bridge were feeding from the bodies of the fallen. Writhing limbs and bodies of attackers and defenders. All frozen in a tableau of light and shadow for an instant, like a frieze on a temple wall, and then gone, back into darkness again. “Sadb!” Drust shouted, grabbing her by the belt, and pulling her with him, having spotted a cihuateteo on the bridge in the last flash of horrific light. “Stay with me! Sadb!”

  The bridge rocked as something hit it, and reinforced poured-stone, intended to withstand the region’s heavy earthquakes, groaned. He hit the ground, losing his grip on Sadb, and then felt fingers on his own belt, and turned to elbow whoever it was. Sadb yelped, “It’s me, it’s me!” and ducked away.

  “Fall back!” their commander shouted. “Fall back to Highway Eight-Eighty! That was a tank blast. We can’t do anything about that!”

  They began to back away, side-by-side with the surviving defenders, Sadb firing at everything that came near them with her shotgun, and Drust using his butche
r knife to sever hands and heads and . . . anything else he could reach, when she needed to reload, and the creatures got closer. From behind them, Drust heard the most horrific baying and howling he could ever have imagined. It cut through the sounds of battle, and for a terrified instant, all he could think was, The Wild Hunt. The Wild Hunt is behind us, and these creatures are in front of us, and either way, we’re about to die.

  Something arced over his head, and the reaching, clawing hands that were in front of him suddenly dropped as something massive landed on them. A flare of blue-green light flooded the sky, and Drust looked up, dazed, seeing the aurora borealis for the first time in his life. He stole a single glance back, realizing that the curtain of light came from the Odinhall, which sent the light up in veils to the clouds, and let it radiate out in every direction. His glance skittered back to what was in front of him, and he saw that a massive beast, made of stone, had landed on the creatures in front of him. Part lion, part hawk, part wolf, part monkey, the gargoyle was no creature in particular. And it was tearing the closest ahuizotl to shreds.

  All along the line, hundreds of gargoyles clattered into place, taking positions between the retreating humans and the incoming wave of monsters. To the east, they faced swarms of ghul. To the south, they faced the maddened creatures and the army of the Nahautl priests. Their snarls and cries filled the night, and a great voice rang out over them all. You were all bound to the defense of the city, long ago. This is the day and this is the hour that you have awaited!