Hoof beats behind her.
“No, it's not real.”
Rough hands grabbing her by her long hair, long dirty nails digging into her shoulders.
Not real. Not real. This moment is not that moment.
Scrape and clatter over stone. Duller impact on the clay and gravel of the rough trail. Sophia refused to turn around. Not this time. It wasn't real.
Rank, sharp stench of male sweat and reek of horse, neither of which had been bathed or groomed in weeks or months. She could feel the reverberations through the ground, but refused to turn around, her stomach clenching in dread. A rough hand caught her hair as it flowed behind her in the wind, and she found herself spun around to face the intruder. Impression of olive skin, black hair, curly and unkempt, with leaves snagged in it. Bare chest, of course. Blood bay coat on the equine half. Foul breath, smell of rot and decay. Dim realization. I never smell anything in my visions. Hear. See. Rarely, feel. Oh, gods. Oh gods, this is real. It’s now. Panic welled up in her. I’m not ready. I’m not ready! I don’t want this! I don’t want the pain. I don’t want to go mad! “Sigrun,” she whispered. “Sigrun, please hurry.”
“What have we here?” the leader said, still gripping her by the hair, but turning back to look behind him.
There were five others. Sophia blinked. She’d only every seen five total, and seeing six confused her. “A bitch from the Temple!” the leader crowed. He turned back towards her. “Where are your gods, bitch? Why have they let this happen to us?” Every word was punctuated with a tightening of his fingers and a shake.
She shook her head. Words had always come to her so readily, but now, she was too terrified to speak. She knew what was going to happen. The central tragedy of a life lived in reverse was about to play out. “They are where Athena was, when Poseidon raped Medusa in her temple,” she finally yelped as he twisted her hair against her scalp, crowding closer. Athena turned Medusa, the victim, from a beauty to the ugliest creature in existence. She transformed both of Medusa’s sisters into gorgons too, for the simple act of standing by their victimized sister. There is no justice here. Sigrun was right. The gods I was bound to from my birth were never worthy of being served.
“A sophist!” he shouted, and shoved her, by hair and shoulder, towards the others, tearing the brooches loose from her peplos, so that her breasts were exposed. Instinctively, Sophia tried to turn. Tried to fight. She had trained in wrestling, but her god-born gifts were . . . limited. She healed better than a human. She was as beautiful as Apollo himself. And she saw the future. Nothing more. No strength. No blasts of fire from her hands. Her only defense was the truth.
Leers from the others, and rough male laughter. Sophia fought harder, and in silence, except for her internal mantra of Sigrun, hurry, Sigrun, hurry, please.
“We shouldn’t hurt her,” one of the others said, unexpectedly, and his companions turned on him, mocking and jeering. “No! It’s bad luck to hurt a priestess—”
“The gods aren’t going to lift a finger,” the leader said, laughing. “You don’t get it, Nikolaos! There are no more gods! No more rules! No more laws! Her kind lorded it over us. Nothing but parasites in their temples, eating the finest foods, fucking each other, playing while the rest of us worked. And then they made us what we are. I think it’s time we properly thanked them, don’t you?” He pulled her head back. “Starting with you.” Hot breath against her ear.
“Leave her alone!”
Sophia’s eyes went wide. Never in all her visions had she seen this sixth centaur. There had never been one there who spoke for her. She wrestled her head away, and looked down at her feet, in her hiking boots, and not sandals, and thought that maybe, because she’d changed one thing, she might have changed everything . . . moment of desperate hope. Chaos theory. The butterfly’s wings are beating . . . . I chose not to be the helpless victim entirely. I still chose to meet my fate, but on my own terms . . . . please, let this pass from me . . . .
Two of the others closed on him, and began to strike him. Beat him. Shouting insults, calling him womanish, no true centaur, no true male. Threatening to geld him and leave him to bleed to death. “No!” the leader bellowed, a grin on his face. “We’ll explain to our brother, one more time, what it means to live without the gods. Watch, brother. Watch what we can do to this bitch. And it all . . . means . . . nothing.” He smiled even more widely. “And when we’ve fucked her out, if you still insist on acting a woman, we’ll let you play the part. But if you take a turn with the rest of us . . . why, we’ll know we don’t have to leave you chained to a tree beside her corpse, so that the harpies will come to feed on both of you. Her dead. You alive. No gods, brother! No gods!”
Hands on her. Ripping the rest of her garments away, lifting her, spread-eagled, into the air, face down. A glance up, just one, to see the torment on Nikolaos’ battered face as two of the others held him, though he fought and strained with the strength of a stallion. Awareness of movement behind her. Sigrun! Hurry! Please! I don’t want this, I can’t bear this, I’m going to go mad . . . .
And then nothing but pain. Shattering awareness. Past and future all she had as she strained not to be in the present. Not to be aware of the agony in her bowels . . . .
Distant future, lying on a metal table, the doctors at their wits’ ends, guilt in their eyes, prepping her for one last procedure. Nicking her vocal cord hadn’t silenced her prophecies . . . .
Distant past, running to her tall father, being picked up off the ground. “How’s my little domina today? Did you have a good day at school?”
Not to be aware as one of them slammed a hoof into her mouth, shattering her front teeth and jaw, so he could rear up and force himself into her mouth, choking her, blocking her windpipe . . . .
Realizing that the god was coming for her. Apollo of Rome was dead. She was his last conduit to the mortal realm, and the doctors were going to euthanize her. He knew it. She knew it. He was coming to take her body as he’d raped her mind daily since she was ten years old . . . no, no, no, no, I am done with you, Apollo, I am done!
Sigrun, telling her that there were always choices, that even choosing not to choose is a choice, damn it . . . .
Looking down and seeing hiking boots on her feet.
Looking ahead and seeing Sigrun striding out into the unknown along that black road that was the Styx . . . .
Faces above her own, lovers past, for once not decayed, for once, no futures . . . .
Oh, to be unaware of the blood and the sweat and the shit and the pain . . . .
Seeing Maccis and Zaya trading bites of apple and kisses . . . .
Seeing Sigrun flying towards her on death’s own black wings . . . .
Seeing the world end . . . .
Seeing a summer garden, and Adam taking down an apple from the tree. Seventy years old, and finally willing to defy everything . . . .
Fuck you, Apollo! I die free!
Far to the north, in Gotaland, the city of Mjölby had been under assault for seven weeks, and the jotun—all of them the younger men and women who had rejected Vidarr’s advice and leadership over a decade ago, and wrangled for power and control over their people—had finally sent word, begging for reinforcements. Most of the human inhabitants of the city had fled years ago; this was a jotun and fenris outpost now, with few hveðungr, the lycanthropes. Erikir crouched on one side of a narrow arrow slit, peering out of the ancient, battered tower. “They’ve dug their own graves,” the bear-warrior growled. “Vidarr was a leader with a vision, damn it. A vision of humans and jotun and fenris all standing and fighting together. And everywhere they hold together, they’re holding against the tide. Down in Jönköping? Where he set up his first arrangement with the local king? It’s still working.” He swore, and rubbed at his scarred face. “Just look at that.”
Sigrun peered out the window herself. The Goths and Sami and Cimbri—humans and nieten alike—had all been forced south by the terrible weather and short harvests. And the
creatures that dwelled in the wilds were following them. The camps of the grendels stretched for miles in a half-circle around the city. “We’re taking the battle to them, then?”
Her phone vibrated in the poke tied to her belt, but she didn’t feel it. She had yet another fight ahead of her, Adam wasn’t due to call her for a few days, and she had the damnable thing silenced for a reason. She was already the servant of her gods and the servant of Rome. She did not need a tiny electronic master now, too.
She, Erikir, and a half-dozen other bear warriors fought alongside four thousand jotun and another thousand fenris. It was a bloody, horrible battle, but it resulted in what could be called a victory. More grendels and ettin died than jotun, and the remainder of those who’d encamped outside the walls fled, for the moment. “You need to rejoin the rest of your people,” Sigrun told the leader of the local jotun, tiredly, leaning on her spear. “You cannot hold out here alone. You have no supplies coming in, because you have spurned the humans. You have no infrastructure. Your people aren’t farmers—”
“We can learn. We will be self-sufficient.”
“Yes, and while you are out learning how to farm, you will continue to be attacked by the ettin and the grendels. Rather than re-inventing the wheel, why not work with people who have actually perfected their craft?”
“The gods made the jotun for these lands,” the young man told her, stiffly.
“If you will not work with the rest of humanity, then you will live and die on your own after this,” Sigrun warned, knowing that her words fell on deaf ears. She turned away, giving Erikir a look as the two god-born walked away. It was late, and the stars were visible through a thin haze of clouds overhead. “Nothing like deciding that your promised land is precisely where other people already live,” she grumbled.
“Oh, like that’s never happened before in human history.” Erikir gave her shoulder a light squeeze through the heavy tunic and fur-lined feathered cloak she wore today.
“True enough.” She sighed. “You’ve spent a lot of time up here with them, Erikir. This is . . . not what Saraid and I thought we would be getting, when we untangled the first jotun’s minds. And the fenris. I had a fond fantasy of a nation of people united. All working together, humans, jotun, fenris, and hveðungr, to push the monsters and the mad ones out.” And that was before the mad gods came, and everything became incalculably worse. Now we’re trying to hold back the tide with our fingers, and the gods are, too . . . .
“Damn free will,” Erikir said, shrugging. “People have this irritating habit of using it, and arriving at decisions that we don’t agree with.”
Sigrun gave him another look, and was about to reply, when her phone buzzed in her poke again, reminding her that she had a message of some sort. Since they weren’t doing anything important at the moment, she pulled it out, expecting to see a Judean or Roman number displayed. She frowned at seeing Sophia’s number. Worrying about Sophia was a perennial background drone in her consciousness. She’d begged her sister to come to Judea. But short of flying to Delphi and kidnapping Sophia, there was nothing she could do. And that would abrogate the whole notion of free will, too. Sigrun excused herself, tapping on the buttons of the satellite phone cautiously. And then froze in place, listening to the damning words. “By the time you get this message, they will already have had me for . . . twelve hours or so . . . . I'm scared, Sigrun. I don't want this.”
“I have to go,” Sigrun told Erikir, blankly, the words chanting through her consciousness, and mingling with others. I have a mountaintop appointment in 1991 . . . they will already have had me for twelve hours or so . . . No notion of who the they were. It could be Potentia ad Populum for all Sigrun knew, but she didn’t think her sister would sound that frightened—frightened into sanity and sobriety—by any mere human force. “My sister . . . Delphi . . . .”
Erikir’s head snapped up. “I’ll come with you—”
“No time,” Sigrun said, sharply, turning away. “Rejoin the others in Jönköping. These fools can stand together, or they can fall apart.” She nodded brusquely and flung herself skywards. She was two thousand miles from Delphi. At her best speed, it would take her seven hours to get there. They will already have had me for twelve hours or so . . . .
Gods damn it, Sophia, you had a choice. You could have turned away. You could have come to live with me and with Adam. The wind tore at Sigrun’s hair as she passed beneath the starry heavens, a gale threatening in her wake. She couldn’t make it there, not in time. Not without help. “Niðhoggr? Nith, please, please be listening . . . .”
A sense of presence, and then there was something black beneath her, against the darkness of the empty lands below. Something that reflected the moonlight better than the lumpen forms of trees. Sigrun latched onto Nith’s neck. “Through the Veil, Nith. Please. Delphi. She’s out of time.”
She scarcely noticed passing through the Veil for once, and then they exploded out over the skies over Delphi, coming in for a landing. She didn’t care if she was, technically, being rude to Apollo of Delphi by showing up on Nith.
The soldiers went into an uproar at the sight of the dragon, and the shrine attendants were frantic; Sophia had wandered off at noon, and they didn’t know how she’d managed it. But she’d strictly enjoined them to show her sister to her room when Sigrun arrived. She chafed at the delay, at the fact that no search parties had been sent out looking for the last Pythia until after sundown, but followed an attendant to her sister’s rooms.
And stood, staring at the mural that hadn’t been there the last time she’d been here, with Minori. Five centaurs. Four of them holding a woman in the air, curbing her like a mare, while the last reared up behind her, between her legs. All of them were laughing. The woman’s head was down, her golden hair tumbled over her face, and her white garments were soaked with blood. The shrine attendant behind her babbled, “I always thought it was a literalization of the myths of the centaurs kidnapping the Lapith women . . . .”
Sigrun didn’t remember later how her fingers found the man’s throat. All she knew was that she’d picked him up, one-handed, and put him against the wall. Every Hellene tale ends badly for the women. They’re always somehow at fault, even though they’re the ones who are kidnapped, raped, murdered . . . . She stared into the man’s eyes for a moment, and then released her grip. “That mountainside. Where is it?”
“It . . . used to be her favorite hike, but not for over a year. It’s to the northwest—domina, you can’t go out there! It’s not safe!”
She was already out the door and rising into the skies. Nith stayed, for the moment, precisely where he was, ringed by soldiers, his enormous head shifting as he watched her go. No thought left, besides get there, get there in time . . . .
. . . easy to spot them, from the air, pulled off the main trail just a little into the trees. Group of three, off to the side, one of them tied between two trees, the other two . . . kicking him, using their powerful back legs. It didn’t matter. What did matter was the group still holding her sister.
Her own body became the spear, and she landed, boots-first, on the back of the centaur behind Sophia. A hundred and seventy pounds of body-weight accelerated to her top speed, applied to the equine’s lumbar vertebrae resulted in a pulverized spinal column. She threw some of her weight back to save her own legs from the impact, but she could still feel her feet carrying forwards, crumbling the ribcage. The lower scapulars. The centaur collapsed to the ground in a bloody, impacted mess, unable to scream, and she raised herself from her landing crouch, her spear in her hands, looking for her next target . . . .
______________________
Nikolaos staggered under the impact of another pair of hooves. His arms were lashed between two trees. His back legs were bound to the trunks, as well, and two of his companions kept finding new places to plant their rear hooves, which were sharp, and carried punishing force. He’d been a loner before joining this group. He knew how dangerous it was out there, wit
hout others to watch your back. You couldn’t sleep in the wilds. Something would always catch you. Harpies. Dryads, melting out of the trees and tearing you apart. Sleep by a stream alone, and a naiad would creep out of the water and loop a rope around your neck and strangle you. He had harpy talon scars all along his flanks from where a flock had caught him, and he’d had to gallop to escape. He’d had his ribs broken by a minotaur, and he had bullet scars on his left shoulder, from where the legions had shot him when he’d tried to enter a town, desperate for food, for human companionship. He’d counted himself lucky to find his own kind at last . . . nasty and brutish, but at least he could sleep. He got to eat once in a while. If they stole, they stole because they had to. But the others liked to chase the humans, run them around, play . . . games with them. He knew there was madness in his companions. But he had, as far as he could tell, no choice about associating with them. It was them, or death.
That choice had been looking worse and worse as time went by, as their leader, Sotiris, became more and more convinced that there were no laws. No motivation for decency. More fixed on self-pleasure and revenge against humanity and the gods and . . . everything else. Another impact of hooves, and Nikolaos reflected, bitterly, that he’d have been better off dying beside some lake or stream, long before this. They were torturing the woman to death, and then they’d progress to him. But he couldn’t participate in this. Not even if it meant his own life. A line had to be drawn.
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