The Valkyrie (The Saga of Edda-Earth Book 1)

by Deborah Davitt

  “You could have a wife travel with you!”

  Adam looked up at the ceiling again. Some of the other Praetorians did that, and it might work if they were in a position with, say, an ambassador or at a consulate, where they were going to stay for a couple of years before moving. His current position was challenging and interesting, and ensured that he was rarely in one city for more than a month at a time, other than Rome. Even here, his apartment had a musty, unlived-in smell to it. He opened his mouth to try to explain, but his mother had already swept on. “What do you mean, you won’t be home any time soon? I thought you were going to take leave . . . . ”

  Adam did his best to extricate himself from the conversation, finally pleading that he really needed to get ready for work. Once he hung up, he shook his head, and padded to the lavatory, and rubbed at his face; he’d let his beard grow back in, these past six months in Novo Gaul, Britannia, and Nova Germania. And technically, he probably should leave it in place, but Judean Defense Force regulations nattered at the back of his mind: No facial hair. Facial hair interferes with the seal of a gas mask, and is a haven for lice and fleas, not to mention an admirable handle for an opponent to seize. Officers and enlisted must be clean-shaven while on active duty. There were a few sticklers here and there who wanted to cite the Book of Jeremiah about the prohibitions on shaving, but almost everyone agreed, these days, that those all had related to mourning traditions that didn’t exist in the modern era, and a desire to separate the people of Abraham from the nations around them, such as the Hittites, Elamites, Sumerians, and Egyptians. For anyone who was concerned, there were exemptions offered. In his current job, Adam tended to default to whatever let him blend in more readily with the local population. And in Rome, that meant shaving. A decision he’d put off for a few weeks . . . but now that he’d had the same damned conversation with his mother as he’d had the last several times they’d spoken?

  It was definitely time to shave.

  As he did so, he considered the past three years, reflectively. India had been . . . interesting. A rigid caste-system, everyone’s lives even more controlled than in Judea, but it seemed like half the temples had erotic statuary in them. His Roman protectee, an ambassador, had made a point of sight-seeing and getting outside of the major cities, trying to understand the locals. As such, Adam had actually met a nagarvadhu, or a ‘bride of the city,’ a type of courtesan. The women of her region actually competed to become what she was; there was no shame at all in it, and successful ones were taught song, dance, poetry, and commanded sums so large that only princes could afford a night of their company. The position seemed to be equivalent to what a geisha truly was, in Nipponese culture. He’d met devadasi, as well, women, who, like priestesses of Ishtar in ancient Babylon, gave themselves, not for coin, but to replicate for devotees of their faith, the divine impulse in sexual form. He . . . wasn’t quite sure he understood that, but it was emphatically religious, and it was not prostitution. That much, he’d been clear on.

  So his eyes had been firmly opened in India, so far from home, but where most of the women were tightly controlled by their families, and he hadn’t been entirely eager to get involved in someone else’s religious rituals, precisely. However, Novo Gaul, and even parts of Nova Germania? Quite a different world, again. The women of both provinces had, historically, more rights than even Roman women. A Roman woman, in the days of the Republic, had been able to divorce . . . if her father had arranged for it, and accepted her back into his house. Gothic women? Even thousands of years ago, they’d had the right to divorce, in their own names. And Gallic legends spoke of women like Boadicea, who’d led her men into battle against Rome in Britannia. And the Goths clearly revered the valkyrie. So, their cultures had long had far more freedom for women than cultures like Judea, Persia, or even Hellas.

  As a result, the concept of female equality had spread from the Gallic and Gothic regions, particularly in the new world, to the rest of the old one. And in Caesaria Aquilonis? The women tended to be strong-willed and upfront about things. Adam had been taken aback the first couple of times he’d been propositioned by an interested female in Nimes in Novo Gaul. Apparently, with his dark hair, dark eyes, and olive skin, he was interestingly exotic and excitingly foreign. Whatever it was, he wasn’t going to complain about it. At all.

  Having gotten dressed, he got on with his day. He’d had half of yesterday, and half of today off, as well, so he’d actually gone out the night before, to the baths, which were, for Romans, and for most Roman provincials, the focal point of social and civic life. The baths were always divided between male and female sides. There were gymnasiums for wrestling, sparring, playing ball, and whatever else. Libraries, shops, and restaurants ringed each bathing complex. You could listen to music or a poetry reading while taking a steam, and while some Romans took a day off of work to go to the baths, they generally did a good deal more than simply bathe. They talked with their friends, they ate good food, they shopped.

  Adam had, for his part, found a taverna and had a couple of glasses of boiled wine from the Isle of the Blessed. One of the waitresses had taken a fountain pen and written her phone number in Sanskrit numerals on the back of the foolscap paper that was his receipt; Adam had chuckled and left a silver denarius and an bronze assarius, the last being her tip. Half a denarius per glass of wine. Rome was . . . expensive to live in. In Judea, the wine would have been half the price. Then again, in Judea, he wouldn’t have had to buy imported boiled wine.

  Then again, Rome was the city at the heart of the world, or so its residents liked to think. In reality, there were larger cities—Beijing, for one, in distant Qin. There were older cities in the world—Memphis, Thebes, Jerusalem, Babylon . . . the list went on. But Rome was the heart of the Empire, and it throbbed, day and night, as people came to and from it, and traversed its winding streets.

  Adam caught a ley-powered streetcar, and watched from his seat as drivers in motorcars and on scooters jockeyed with overburdened trucks in the crowded streets. Seemingly suicidal pedestrians plunged right out onto the roads, surging in packs through traffic that miraculously slowed just in time for them to cross the streets. He made his way from his apartment, which was located in a skyscraper in the area that had once been the Field of Mars, to Livorus’ palatial villa on Palatine Hill. Nodding to the guards at the gate, he made his way around to the back entrance, and began his rounds.

  There were other lictors assigned to protecting Livorus’ home and family, not to mention Livorus’ personal guards, but it made Adam feel better to have verified the perimeter. Having wended his way to the top floor of the villa, Adam paused and looked out a window, shaking his head. Up here on the third floor, the windows at least made him less uneasy, and he could appreciate the view.

  Livorus’ family was old, and distantly related, supposedly, to Marcus Antonius, who’d been a follower of Gaius Julius Caesar in the late days of the Republic. It showed; the family home on Palatine Hill was at the very heart of the city. Off to his left, he could see the Aventine Hill, where foreign kings and queens stayed; it was not considered to be within the ‘sacred’ soil of Rome, and thus, foreign rulers could be accommodated there. This window also looked down at the marble-sheathed walls of the Circus Maximus . . . and, as he walked around to the back of the house, he had another fine view, this one of the white and gleaming walls of the Colosseum . . . with the relatively new, retractable glass and metal roof that had been Livorus’ own pet project, while he’d been aedile. Sketches of that retractable roof hung, framed, in various places in the villa. Adam understood that the roof had been quite a divisive project. The Colosseum had been built to accommodate the ever-increasing crowds of Rome, in 114 AC, by Emperor Livianus, the grandson of Caesarion the God-Born. It was, as such, one of the most ancient buildings still standing, and the metal and glass addition had been termed a desecration and a travesty by its detractors . . . but the more recent addition of swamp-coolers had been less controversial, and ha
d met with universal approbation.

  From another window, as Adam paced around the top floor of the sprawling villa, he could see the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus Capitolinus. The original had been built twenty-five hundred years ago, give or take; it had burned in 1660 AC after a great fire had swept through Rome, though it had been largely a stone building. The emperor of that period, Julianus III, had rebuilt the temple, larger and grander than before. And, of course, the palace of the emperors crowned the Palatine, with an open plaza before it. That building dated back to Caesarion I; the plaza was a more recent addition, built in 1334 AC.

  Most of Rome gleamed bone-white under the afternoon sun, by the deliberate efforts of a hundred generations of public servants. Roofs were red-tiled, but the walls of all public buildings were either faced in white marble or their poured-stone was required to be painted white, to match. Even the skyscrapers that now filled the Field of Mars were largely white, though architects had obviously tried to incorporate as much glass as possible into their designs to get around this restriction.

  There was no soot in the air to stain that stark whiteness, and the city was so bright, it almost hurt to look at, reflecting almost as much light back to the naked eye as the winding bends of the Tiber that cut through the maze of buildings. It was beautiful and terrible at once to see so much of the power of Rome expressed in its architecture. The uniformity of ideas, of purpose, of belief, the strength of will to carry them out . . . and the endurance, to continue in their path for over two thousand years.

  Now, he headed down the stairs; the inner walls of the stairwell had more windows that faced into the villa’s atrium. Those windows, at night, were particularly bad for him; he could picture hands shattering the glass from the other side, and ghul crawling through. He put the thought out of his mind, and strode down the last flight of the marble stairs, stopping as Livorus’ three children, all under the age of twelve, ran through the lobby with their tutors in tow, their laughter ringing back off the tile floor and frescoed walls. Two of them had their father’s curly, dark hair, and the youngest clearly took after their mother, Poppaea, with dark golden hair. That youngest was a boy, no more than four years of age, and, because he was so young, someone—perhaps his mother—had hung a protective charm around his neck, a fascinus. Made of metal, it was in the shape of a phallus, and thus, considered lucky, or at least capable of turning away the evil eye.

  The first time Adam had seen this, his eyebrows had gone up, and he’d given Sigrun a mildly incredulous look. It wasn’t that he was unused to other cultures; he’d spent two years in India as a lictor for the Roman ambassador. And Hindus had lingam and yoni symbols in plenty to represent male and female creative and sexual energies. Those were, however, usually fairly abstract.

  Sigrun had caught the glance, and chuckled. “Romans do love their phalluses, don’t they?”

  “I had no idea how much.”

  She shrugged. “When a conquering general comes home for the traditional triumphal march, they put a phallus underneath the old-fashioned chariot, so that it hangs there, freely. Unless he chooses to parade inside of a tank, instead. In which case, they sling it underneath the main gun.”

  “So, you mean to say that he really does have the biggest swinging d—”

  “Yes.” Sigrun had nodded to him, managing to keep her face sober, but she’d gone pink, which interested him. There weren’t many things Sigrun blushed at, but this was one of them. “Also, just listen to the word for these luck charms, these amulets. Fascinus.”

  Adam had stared at her for a moment. “Oh . . . gehenna. Like the fasces?” He’d started to laugh, and had to cover his mouth, turning away so that Livorus’ family didn’t notice. “You mean to say that whenever a praetor or propraetor carries the fasces out to some place to conduct talks . . . he’s not just shaking a bundle of sticks in their faces, yes?”

  Sigrun had put both hands up and over her face, flushed rose by this point, and had laughed uncontrollably for a moment, garnering a few looks from Livorus and the other lictors as unloading of the propraetor’s luggage had continued apace. “No, it’s definitely a bundle of sticks, and the words aren’t related,” she told him. “It’s only symbolically that he’s waving all of Rome’s collective—”

  “Say no more, say no more,” Adam had told her, almost gasping for breath at this point. “I . . . never made that connection before. Thank you. I have learned something new today.” Actually, I’ve learned two things. What you sound like when you actually let go and laugh. It’s a good sound, and a good look on you, my friend.

  Back in the here and now, he watched the children trundle by, ignoring their surroundings as if they were . . . completely normal and everyday. And to them, of course, they were. The frescoes on the walls, for example, were probably five or six hundred years old, and done after the style of Pompeii. One of them invoked Flora, the goddess of spring; she was entirely naked as she danced among the flowers of a meadow. The other, set just beside the door, was an image of the god Priapus—the ugly god of boundaries, nature, and lust, who was cursed with a comically oversized penis, a permanent erection . . . and impotence. Adam was not really sure how the three conditions coexisted, but this god was depicted as cheerfully weighing his erection on a scale, opposite a bag of gold . . . and apparently, the penis weighed more, to the glee of the nymphs and satyrs around him.

  Adam shook his head. Images in general were more or less frowned on in Judea, although some less conservative communities allowed frescoes and the like, so long as they weren’t worshipped. There were public bathhouses, in the Roman style. But people in Judea were, by and large, a little more modest about their bodies than Romans were.

  “My wife hates the frescoes,” a voice said, from off to the right, and Adam turned, surprised, to see Livorus standing in the door to his library, looking up the stairs at him in evident amusement. The Roman, in the comfort of his own home, wore slacks and a long-sleeved shirt, and not a toga. But then, the toga was highly formal clothing, in this day and age. “I believe she would like to paint over them and put up something abstract in their place. I have told her, however, that I have found Priapus’ capering amusing since I was a child, I rather enjoy Flora; and, as they’ve both been here longer than I’ve been alive, I can hardly begrudge them their place in my home. And that if she wishes to spend money supporting ‘art for art’s sake,’ or whatever that movement calls itself . . . that she should spend the money on a new set of paints for our youngest son. The results will be about the same.” Livorus smiled, faintly. “Come in, ben Maor. We’ve got a few dossiers to go over, with regard to my new lictors.”

  Adam nodded, and followed the man into the library, where Sigrun was already sorting through file folders filled with pictures and typewritten reports. They were the two highest-ranking lictors, of those who would travel permanently with Livorus, and Sigrun had been with the propraetor for almost five years already. Her word would carry a good deal of weight, but they both had a vested interest in choosing people with whom they’d work well, as a team. “I’ve pulled a few names,” she said, looking up . . . and then paused, staring at him. “What happened to your face?”

  “I shaved. What, I’m not allowed?”

  A rapid-fire series of blinks. “I . . . you look different.” She shook her head, evidently flustered. “Other than Romans, I am not much accustomed to seeing men past the age of sixteen without a beard. Forgive me.”

  Adam grinned at her. “So you’re saying that I look like a girl, eh?”

  “No! I’m . . . not saying anything. At all.” Sigrun blew a few strands of pale hair out of her face, in clear exasperation, and slid a pile of folders across the table in his general direction. She shook her head, and suddenly, was all business again. “A pity Zoskales Ezana isn’t available.”

  “Who’s he?” Adam asked, taking a seat and opening the first folder.

  “My partner, before Villu. A Nubian sorcerer—from the lands south of Egypt
—and a very good one.” Sigrun looked at Livorus. “However, someone recommended him to the Imperator—”

  “Guilty as charged,” Livorus said, pleasantly, and sat down on the room’s single, large couch, turning on the far-viewer, taking a bunch of grapes from a nearby plate. “Forgive me, but there’s a floor debate in the Senate that I really must watch. Continue. Ezana is not available.” Livorus turned the dial on the far-viewer, negotiating through the twenty or so channels of programming to which Rome had access. A flicker of images. A satyr play, heavily bawdy, down to the fake phalluses worn by the male actors as they chased the females around the stage. Click. Something heavily moral and tragic by Seneca. Click. A sweating couple, caught in flagrante delicto, full penetration. “Twenty channels, and I can never find the one I want, when I want it,” Livorus muttered. “And while this is someone being fucked in the ass, it’s not actually my political opponents. Not quite what I had in mind.” Click. “Ah. Here we go.” He settled back as the picture formed, showing the columns and backless benches of the Forum, and a commentator began to drone out an introduction for this senator or that.

  Adam shook his head. Judea had thirty or so channels broadcast for far-viewer reception, and he’d had his mind forcibly expanded in India and in the course of serving Rome . . . but he still couldn’t quite believe the things that Rome put on the airwaves for public consumption. No scrambling the signal, no special times of day, nothing. Then again, during the early and late decadent periods, various emperors had decreed that anything that happened in a given script was required to happen, in reality, on stage. The number of tragedies put on by theaters had dropped to nil, overnight. None of the actors wanted to die for their art. They might have the same social status as a gladiator, or a prostitute, but actors didn’t usually face death in the course of their daily work.