Drust had lifted his head in mild interest. He’d been good with electronics and ley-engineering, once upon a time. And the idea of living off the land, instead of canned goods was appealing, in a way. Until he really thought about it. Mitsi'adazi was sixteen hundred miles north of Divodurum. “Lot of snow in winter,” he said, weighing out the words as he spoke them. Words were hard, and getting harder for him. Sadb told him that he hadn’t spoken for an entire day last week. “More, lately.” Plus, it’s all mountain country up there. These folks are going to run into winter and not know what to do with it. They’re going to die.
The rosy glow of the fantasy faded. The newcomers thought the Divodurum crew was insane for trying to get to Nimes. “You’ll have to go past Tongeran,” they protested. “Half the desert around it was put on the restricted list. Some sort of radioactivity. You’ll all get sick and die before you even get through the desert.”
Sadb huddled into Drust’s side that night in the single sleeping bag they shared for the warmth, and asked, her voice quiet, “Is Nimes really a good idea?”
“It’s what’s left,” he told her, staring up at the overcast sky.
“But if Tongeran is radioactive—”
“Lots of people heading west. If it were certain death to be going there, would everyone still be heading that way, now?” Yes, whispered the back of his mind. Because they might not know. And there’s nowhere else to go.
They trudged onwards. A healthy man with a light load, or a trained soldier, could cover thirty-five miles a day. The refugees usually managed somewhere around fifteen. Drust twisted his ankle badly, forcing him to lean on Sadb and limp. The others from Divodurum, to his surprise, refused to leave them behind. The whole group’s pace slowed, and he wondered, not for the first time, how his ancestors had managed to colonize so much of this vast land. Slowly, he reckoned. Over centuries. Just carts and horses and oxen, longbows, iron swords, and iron-tipped spears, at first. The longboats of the Goths, plying the Aeturnus—the rivers and coasts had been the first and best highways of the continent. But at foot-speed, it was easy to see how daunting every journey must have been, back in those days.
Several off-ramps outside of Tongeran were indeed blocked off, with signs posted that stated that the areas beyond were restricted, due to health hazards. That wasn’t their most pressing, concern, however. Bandits attacked them—ragged, dirty men, who’d apparently been living out in the radioactive wasteland. All of them had sores on their bodies and faces, and their eyes were desperate as they set on the travelers. A handful of shots, from a dwindling supply of bullets. “We should start taking stuff from the bodies,” someone said. “It’s just going to waste on them.”
“You can carry their guns if you want,” Drust said, shortly. “I don’t trust anything that’s been out in that hot zone, see?”
Tongeran itself was an armed camp. It had once been a jewel in the desert, known for surprisingly lush lawns and agriculture, in spite of the aridity. But the entire city had a ring of forts around it now. Though Highway X passed through the city, travelers were required to take an access road around it. And the locals had stands outside the city limits to sell water to travelers, and other necessities. “Where’d you get these guns?” one of the locals asked, as the bus driver tried to trade them for more ammunition and food.
“Group of bandits attacked us. They don’t need ‘em anymore.”
“Hmm. Pretty good condition. But ammunition’s getting to be more valuable than the guns themselves . . . .”
“Put a price to it, and we’ll talk, eh?”
As they put Tongeran to their backs, Drust’s ankle had healed enough for him to put weight on it again. A good thing, too. A day later, they could see, behind them, smoke rising from what had to be the city itself. Could see black dots that might have been ornithopters, dipping and diving through the plumes of smoke. “Think we can pick up the pace?” the bus driver asked them all.
That didn’t even need to be put to a vote.
It was Iunius 9 when they finally reached Nimes. Drust raised his eyes from the dusty hills, and caught sight of the long sweep of the sea, past the towering skyscrapers. The famous palm trees were looking brown and frowzy, as palms tend to, after having experienced too many freezing temperatures. But the city was even larger than Divodurum had been, and it looked almost untouched, other than buildings here at the outskirts that showed signs of earthquake damage, and hasty, patch-job repairs. “We’re safe,” Sadb told him, and tears rolled down her face, cutting lines in the road-dust that coated her skin. “We made it.”
They were Gauls, and this was a Gallic city. Like Tongeran, hastily-erected forts encircled it, and there were military checkpoints on every road entering the city . . . but unlike Tongeran, travelers were welcome here. So long as they intended to move on again. The refugee camps were all outside the protection of the forts, to the south, a vast tent city. “Look,” Drust told a soldier at the checkpoint, “I’m willing to work. And I have a cousin in the city, see? Coamh Corraidhin.” He glanced at the others from the Divodurum group, and got mixed expression of envy and exhaustion in return. Most of them didn’t have a relative. Didn’t have an in, here. They were looking at being crowded into the tent city, and probably having to protect themselves every day and night. But at least without having to walk anywhere in the morning, Drust thought . . . and then wondered if that might not be worse. They’d have nothing to do, and nowhere to go in the mornings. No tasks. No way to work. There’s going to be trouble in the camps.
The guard shook his head, and told Drust, not without sympathy, “You can use that telephone over there to give him a call. If he’s willing to take you and your wife in, he can come and fetch you. Till then, go line up with the others, and get your housing chits.”
Drust hesitated. “Are weapons allowed in the camps?”
The guard gave him a long look. “Officially, no. Unofficially, you’re outside my jurisdiction, and there are a million refugees out there. How do you think we’d be going about taking all the guns away, eh?”
Sadb sagged into an actual metal folding chair as they waited in line. “Do you think Coamh will be remembering you, then?” she asked, and closed her eyes, an almost ecstatic expression crossing her face.
“He should. The question is, does he want his cousin and a wife he’s never met setting up camp in his living room, now.” Drust nudged Sadb, and pointed ahead in the line. “Look. Field showers.”
“Showers!” Sadb sat up, straining to see.
“I think they’re next to the delousing area. But aye, looks like we might get clean today.”
"I'll bet that you need a chit for the showers."
"And I'll bet you that you need a chit to get a meal."
A day later, his cousin did, indeed, come to the outskirts of the camps to pick them up, wrinkling his nose a bit at the smell of their worn clothing. “We’ll have to take the trolley,” Coamh told them, apologetically. His hair was brown, touched with the first hints of gray, and his eyes were blue, with crows’ feet, from a life spent squinting. “My motorcar’s been at the shop for two months. No parts available to fix it. I’m thinking of just selling it for the parts, but I think the mechanic would cheat me on the price.”
They settled in, and Sadb froze in place as the ground lurched. “Earthquake?” she asked, as the shaking failed to subside.
“We always got a few. It’s been pretty bad the last couple of weeks. Seismologists say it’s not coming from our usual fault-lines, but from deeper in the continental shelf.” He shrugged. People in Nimes tended to ignore minor earthquakes as the price of living in one of the most beautiful places on earth. “Look, my wife and I don’t have much anymore, but you’re welcome to the guest room. I just ask that you help kick in on the bills. Phone service is only local anymore, unless someone has a satellite phone. The farthest north it reaches is Burgundoi—don’t suppose you know anyone in Nova Germania?”
“Not really,” Drust an
swered. “Lines were cut?”
“Snapped. Couple of bad quakes, back to back, and the lines crews are trying to fix them. There are copper mines and extrusion facilities over the Nivalis mountains. Trouble is, getting the wires here. The mountain passes are blocked. The crews tried to keep up the first winter, but some of those passes get thirty, thirty-five feet of snow every winter in a normal year.” Coamh rubbed at the back of his neck as the trolley jerked and swayed on its rails, picking up speed. The car was crowded, and people were hanging off the sides, trying to get to their destinations. “The first bad winter? They had fifty feet. They couldn’t keep ahead of it on the train tracks or the highways. Since then? They’ve had snow in the middle of Iulius, for the gods’ sakes. None of it has melted. This is how glaciers build.”
Trains had bound the continent together since their invention. They’d carried wheat and meat from the plains to the seas, and brought fish and imports and manufactured goods from the coasts to the plains. Drust turned his head to the side, and considered himself highly intelligent for not having turned north to the Mitsi'adazi forest.
They settled in, as best they could. Coamh had been a sound engineer in the photogram business. “Not exactly a lot of people buying photograms at the moment,” he acknowledged, with a grimace. “A lot of troubadours and musicians are back to the old days. Out on the streets, singing for their suppers. And not a lot of people are willing to give up good food or coin for a song these days. Art’s a luxury product.” A grimace. “Fortunately, my skills transferred a bit. I’m doing ley-wiring for the city. There’s always work. Every time we have a quake, the damned lines shift. But again, without the copper wire coming in, we’re . . . patching things. And then the patches break.” Coamh shrugged. “It’s not exactly what I dreamed of doing, but it’s a living.”
“I can do that,” Drust told his cousin, blinking. “I worked with building and designing ley calculi. And I’ve worked on ley and electric motorcars. Got any job openings?”
“More people than jobs, and more jobs than we’ve got money to pay. But I’ll see what I can do.”
It was the first time he’d felt hope in a year. Tomorrow, he promised himself, as he and Sadb dozed off on the luxury of a worn sofa, I’ll find a post office, and look through the names of the Legion dead. See if I can find Fearchar’s name there. If it’s not there . . . there’s still hope.
Maius 5-Iunius 11, 1999 AC
The war council met in Valhalla. It currently consisted of gods from most of the remaining pantheons, and was a heady crowd, indeed, for Sigrun. The hosting gods of Valhalla were the most numerous, though their ranks were dwindling: Odin and Freya, Thor and Sif, Freyr, Tyr, Heimdall, Njord, Baldur, Loki . . . and, technically, Sigrun. Eir had vanished with Coyote, drawn either deep into the Veil, or some other realm, through a fissure caused by a damaged ley-line in Divodurum. Ciele, Njord’s daughter, Skadi’s daughter-self, played at the massive hearth, painting the air with images made of frost, while Fenris and Niðhoggr kept an eye on her.
The Valhallan gods, though Sigrun felt deeply uneasy counting herself one of them, lined one side of the long table. The other side, to Odin’s left, was reserved for allies. And some of those allies harbored deep suspicions of one another.
Pluto, Juno, and Venus, for instance, were present, Juno holding her new daughter to her bosom. But Amaterasu—without Minori’s body—was next after them, and regarded Pluto with unease. He’d forgone invisibility, but retained the cowl that covered his face for this meeting. Next after Amaterasu was Sekhmet, and the Egyptian war-goddess didn’t bother to hide her suspicious stare, or the way her tail lashed as she regarded Pluto, whom she’d last met in battle. After her, Quetzalcoatl, in Ehecatl’s body. His golden mask concealed his face, and the feathers coiled back from his headdress quivered a little as he buried his face in his hands at the table. There was a sense of weariness, sadness, and barely-repressed rage about him that radiated as dull red light in othersight. Beside him, as a buffer, perhaps, was Mamaquilla, her body still covered in blue-green scales, and her eyes the luminous white of the full moon. She had a hand on Quetzalcoatl’s shoulder, and seemed to be murmuring to him. Trying to calm him down.
To Mamaquilla’s left, sat the Evening Star, looking out of place and a little shy among all these others. Many people from Caesaria Aquilonis had turned to her worship, and Coyote’s, after the fall of so many other tribal gods. She had eyes that glittered and twinkled like her namesake, and wore simple leathers. To Sigrun’s veiled amusement, Mercury had insisted on pouring her wine for her. The son of Maia, playing cup-bearer to the goddess whose rape and murder, re-enacted by her people, was supposed to bring fertility to the land. Well, Mercury would know about that. Or at least, Maia did. Sigrun glanced over her shoulder, feeling distinctly uneasy, and Nith moved up to sit behind her. His tail snaked under her chair and wrapped around one of her ankles, lightly. The lethal barb, three feet long at his normal size, was only about five inches, in this one.
To Mercury’s left, Minerva had turned, with some unease, to speak with the Morrigan. Minerva was not just a goddess of crafters, but of war, as well. The discipline of a soldier was hers, not the battle-frenzy that the Morrigan represented. The two did not appear to enjoy each other’s company overly. Taranis, to the Morrigan’s left, and Toutatis, the crafter god who’d been one of his co-leaders of the Gallic pantheon for thousands of years, were conversing more comfortably, but were keeping an eye on their surroundings, and Sigrun could see them casting glances down the table towards Pluto and Juno, who had the place of honor at Odin’s side today. Where they and the Morrigan had sat, at most other war councils. For her part, Sigrun bore the Roman gods no particular ill-will, other than Orcus, and of the Hellene gods, only Hades and Apollo. Well, Hades is a prisoner in Valhalla. Apollo of Rome is dead. And Apollo of Delphi has disappeared. Not even the Roman gods know where he is. But I would put coin on it that Sophia could find him as a lodestone finds true north, if she were in her right mind. The old, chafing anger faded after a moment. There was nothing she could do about it right now. And the alliance was too new, too fragile, to compromise by making demands for Apollo’s head.
This table needs to be made round, Odin said, suddenly, as if reading the glances and unease in the air. To show that we are all companions in this war. We are not ruler and ruled, here. We are . . . a band of warriors, fighting as one. He lifted his golden cup, in salute to the company.
Sigrun looked down. She hadn’t yet taken off her mask, but now, she was more or less forced to do so, to drink in response to Odin’s toast. Doing so made her feel naked and exposed, before this very august assemblage. Crow in peacock feathers, Hel mocked in her memory. But she took the required sip of her drink, and did her best not to react visibly to it. The mead of Valhalla was not unlike eating one of Freya’s apples. A surge of raw Veil power, pouring through her, along with knowledge and memory. Connections, too; hearing the voices of the dying in the mortal realm, as they called on her Name. Sigrun Stormborn . . . save us, or at least, let the end be quick and gentle . . . She closed her eyes, and Nith’s tail wrapped more tightly around her ankle, pulling her out of the awareness of an avalanche somewhere in the Nivalis mountains. Dozens of people, trapped there. Time does not pass here, Nith reminded her, quietly. Whatever you sense, we can deal with once the banquet is done. If it is urgent.
And that was the worst thing about all the voices. It was remorseless, constant triage. She couldn’t be everywhere. She did have to choose whom she answered. The guilt of letting some of the voices slip away was a constant background hum in her mind, but she had to put it aside, or she would be, in very short order, as insane as Sophia. It was not her job to save everyone. People had to make decisions themselves, and live with the consequences.
Odin’s voice rang out once more, interrupting the reverie that the mead had caused in her. Allies and companions trust one another. And because we have faith and trust in all of you, we have determined t
o show that trust today. Some of you have already met our last guest. Hecate brought him back to the world, but Hecate . . . could not be here. We trust that she is alive today on the next planet in orbit around our sun, Mars itself. None of us has heard her whisper our Names since she took Jormangand there. But our last guest tells me that there is a fifty-three percent probability that she survives. Enough for hope, at least.
Dvalin moved to the door of the great hall, opened it . . . and Prometheus walked in. Taller than all the other gods, he still moved with light, easy steps. Most of the others had seen him before; Amaterasu, obviously. Sekhmet, yes. Mercury and Minerva, definitely. Taranis, Toutatis, and the Morrigan, however, had not. Neither had Pluto, Venus, or Juno, all of whom half-rose, staring. Their Hellene shadow-selves remembered Prometheus.
Thank you for your welcome, the titan said, quietly. It is a pleasure to be able to meet you all without the threat of being captured and bound to another mountain, or murdered for the crime of telling the truth. I trust that Hephaestus is recovering well?
Juno’s mouth had fallen open. You . . . .
Hera’s screaming in your mind, isn’t she, my lady? Prometheus said, advancing, and taking a seat on the left side, beside Toutatis. I wish my niece, and you, all the joy in creation. This new alliance of yours? I did not foresee. I expected war in Olympus. You and Pluto, fighting, and Venus seducing Pluto, once Pluto had killed you. A lack of proper information skews my results. He looked down the table at Odin. To business, then?
The Goddess Embraced (The Saga of Edda-Earth Book 3) Page 132
