Black Coven (Daniel Black Book 2) (10 page)

Modern religions talk about gods as virtually omnipotent beings, but in the Greek myths they were often more like humans with super powers. Which one was Hecate?

“This war is going to change everything,” she said contemplatively. “Loki was a threat to Odin’s power before his imprisonment, when he only had his family and a few allies to call on. But now Gaea stands with him as well. Together they’ve somehow broken the seals on Tartarus, and released the horrors Zeus left chained there when he defeated the Titans. Many of them will fight with Gaea, and so will her countless children.”

“But Odin is a ruthless bastard, and he had plenty of time to prepare for this day while Loki was chained in torment. Asgard has bred an army of young gods to use as cannon fodder, and forged an arsenal of god-slaying weapons. They won’t die easily, if at all. Whoever wins this war, there will be very few survivors.”

She paused for a moment, and held out her hand. A snowflake settled onto the dark leather of her glove and sat there, unmelting.

“I don’t think Loki can reverse the Fimbulwinter,” she went on. “The magic he called on could be sealed again if he dies, but that won’t undo the changes that have already been made. The sea and air flow differently now, and they’re settling into a pattern that will be difficult to change before it runs its course.”

She paused at my muttered curse, and raised one elegant eyebrow. “Yes?”

“I know about ice ages. If he managed to start a real one that means we’re looking at a hundred thousand years until the next interglacial, more or less. ”

A faint smile creased her lips.

“I’ve always marveled at the insight of philosophers. You remind me of the time Eratosthenes flummoxed Diana by measuring the distance to the moon with nothing but a few sticks and a sharp mind. How do you know about something that last happened before humans invented writing, Daniel?”

“I can’t take credit for that one,” I admitted. “But there are half a dozen ways to measure how severe winters were in the distant past. Tree rings, ice cores, pollen counts in buried soil samples, that kind of thing. Your translation spell gives you an explanation of ideas like that as soon as I mention them, right?”

“A decent one, yes. Well, you are correct. Europe will be frozen for long ages even after this war is over. The monsters that survive it will finish off the so-called victors, and hunt humanity here to extinction. Then they will grow hungry, and seek prey further afield.”

Her eyes grew haunted.

“I remember the last age of ice, Daniel. I was a young woman when the Winter Court was driven into shadow by the return of summer, and the Titans broke free of their frozen prisons to reclaim Europe. I saw the abominations my father and brothers locked away in Tartarus, and the lesser things they tamed to their service. I stood at Zeus’ side after Cronus fell, and we scoured the land clean of the monsters that remained. The ungols are the least of the things that we sealed in those days.

“But the heroes who accomplished those deeds are gone now. The hecatoncheires will fight and die with Gaea, but what about the others? Will the decrepit gods of Egypt rise up to do battle with the dathnai when they go seeking cities to devour? With the Jade Emperor’s court send out heroes to put down the pestilence dragons? Will young Coyote cross the seas to trick the Court of Nightmares back into their prison of dreams?”

She shook her head.

“No. They will tend to their own affairs, as always, until a threat comes to their own doorstep. Then they’ll find that they aren’t strong enough to fight alone. Egypt will fall, and then all the lands of Persia will follow. The Great Beasts will take the seas and skies for their own again, and the mortal races will be reduced to savagery everywhere except the great kingdoms of the East. Their gods may be strong enough to protect them, but they care nothing for the suffering of foreigners. They will secure their own borders, but nothing more.”

She fell silent then. I contemplated her words, wondering how to respond.

“Should I be making plans to move to China, then?”

“Perhaps,” she said softly. “But I will not abandon the lands of my birth, and there are others who will stand with me. Hestia. Prometheus, if we can free him. The Summer Court of the faerie, and the spirits of land and sea. There are many hidden powers who might be persuaded, once the need to hide from the Aesir has passed. With luck, we might even create an alliance strong enough to seal the doors of Tartarus again and banish the Fimbulwinter.”

“And then there is you. I only caught glimpses of your world, Daniel. But I saw enough to know that if the gates of Tartarus were opened there, your people would destroy even the strongest of the Great Beasts. Millions would die, and the war would shatter your nation. But I would have no doubt about the outcome. Can you recreate that power here?”

“Not alone,” I told her. “It took millions of men working for centuries to build the civilization you saw. I don’t suppose you could send me back for a shopping trip? I’d kill for a copy of ‘The Way Things Work’, let alone a stack of engineering and chemistry references.”

She shook her head. “No. There is a treaty that was negotiated in ancient days, between the Titans and the beings who dwell beyond your world. Sneaking into the neutral zone once was risky enough. If I make a habit of it I will be noticed, and the consequences would be dire.”

I sighed. “Then I’m going to be limited in what I can do. If we had more time I could probably spark an industrial revolution, but it would take a century for that to really go anywhere. I think I can duplicate some key innovations using magic, but the results won’t be the same. In the short term I can build a secure strongpoint, and put together a small force that can cover long distances quickly and bring a lot of firepower to bear. Beyond that, I’m not sure yet.”

“If you can do that much already, I look forward to seeing what you can accomplish once you’ve truly mastered your magic,” she replied. “Will you work with me, Daniel?”

I considered that.

“Hecate, I had a pretty suspicious run of bad luck just before you showed up. Did you have anything to do with that?”

She frowned. “What sort of fool would give you a good reason to look for revenge just before endowing you with the power of a demigod? It was the other way around, Daniel. In a world of teeming billions there’s always someone who has just lost everything. I simply worked a scrying to find me a man with the set of abilities I needed, who was in a situation where he’d be open to a bargain.”

“Oh. Well, that does make a bit more sense. I apologize if that was unduly suspicious of me, but all I know about you is a bunch of distorted mythology.”

“I’m not offended, Daniel. It’s wise to be cautious when dealing with elder powers, and I suppose I qualify from your perspective. You hardly know anything about me, and the things you do know have to look pretty bad. I’m surprised you haven’t asked about the soul sacrifices.

I shrugged. “I figured that would be pushing it. It’s not like you have to justify yourself to some mortal who doesn’t even know anything about this world’s metaphysics. Besides, from what I understand you’ve been fighting a guerrilla against the Aesir for centuries. War is always an ugly business, and insurgencies are the worst kind of war.”

She gave me a considering look.

“Yes. The one good thing about this disaster is that it means the long war is finally coming to an end. But I have no champions left to call on, and I won’t be able to act directly until it’s too late to matter. Will you work with me to save what humans we can?”

“Yes,” I answered. “I’ll happily agree to that much. For that matter, they don’t have to be human. I’ll help any group of survivors that’s willing to work with me, as long as they aren’t crazed human-eating monsters or something.”

“Really? That’s unexpected. You aren’t going to insist on saving your own kind first?”

I shook my head. “No, I’m not that… tribal, I guess you could say? My first obligation is to the people who already depend on me, of course. But beyond that I have to prioritize who I save based on what they can contribute to our future survival, and I’m trying to think of the long term here. More craftsmen and soldiers would be good, but I imagine other races have unique abilities they can bring to the table. There are a lot of problems I can’t solve with my own magic.”

“I see. So, if I told you there’s a group of nature spirits near Kozalin who keep petitioning the gods for help?”

“Can they help us grow crops indoors?” I asked. “If the winter isn’t going to end food supplies are going to become a serious problem in a few months. I can make greenhouses, and even supply artificial heat and light. But space is going to be at a serious premium, so anything that lets us grow more food on less land will save lives.”

She nodded. “That’s well within their powers. You’d take them in, as long as they agree to help you and abide by your word?”

“Sure. I only draw the line at beings that are too alien or too ornery to actually cooperate with us. But there are only so many hours in a day, and I suspect there are more groups out there praying for help than I could possibly save.”

“Most of them pray to either Asgard or Loki,” she pointed out. “I’ll happily leave their fate in the hands of their own patrons. But yes, this needs to be managed carefully. There are a lot of lesser powers who still have bands of worshippers scattered around, and every boon I arrange is a chance to forge a new alliance or rekindle an old one. But I won’t risk the rebirth of my own cult by overburdening you.”

“Thank you. Although I have to wonder why having worshippers is so important to you?”

“That isn’t something we normally explain to mortals,” she chided me. “Which ought to be obvious if you think about it for a second. But under the circumstances I think it would actually be a good thing for you to know, as long as you promise not to spread it around. It’s going to come up soon enough.”

I blinked at her in surprise. Hecate was trusting me with secrets? Wow, she really was desperate.

“Alright. I’ll keep it quiet, if you want to tell me.”

She nodded. “It’s an essential aspect of modern divine warfare, Daniel. Extinguishing the essence of an immortal is so difficult we used to think it was impossible. That’s why measures like imprisonment or devouring used to be such common ways of dealing with enemies. If you could detonate a nuclear weapon in Asgard you’d probably discorporate most of the Aesir, but they’d just reform their bodies and come after you for revenge.”

“But we need some kind of anchor to the material world in order to reform a body here, and Odin discovered that it’s possible to sever those anchors. Get enough of them, and your enemy can’t come back.”

“So worshippers are an anchor?” I asked.

She nodded. “Family, worshippers, homeland and implements. Those are the common ones, which everyone uses. Demigods need a lot of strong connections to have even a chance of reviving themselves, but those of us with more strength can make do with less. So when you find yourself fighting the sons and daughters of the gods, destroy everything you can find that could give them a connection.”

“So that’s why Odin didn’t just kill Loki,” I mused. “They’d have had to hunt down his children too, and that would have just started Ragnarok early. But wait, why would demigods be coming after me?”

“Do you think you can keep killing Gaea’s creatures forever without drawing notice? You’re already a nuisance, and if you turn Kozalin into an impregnable citadel you’ll attract even more attention. It’s an important target, and they’re going to have someone significant assigned to capture it. If you wanted to be inconspicuous you shouldn’t have settled so close to a veil anchor.”

“Wait, what? What are you talking about?” I asked.

“You didn’t know? Odin hid the Bifrost behind a veil of magic powered by the faith of his worshippers, and anchored by nine of his greatest temples. If Loki wants to get Gaea’s children and Hel’s legions into Asgard they have to capture enough anchors to break the veil. So at some point they’re going to stage a serious attack on Kozalin.”

I groaned. “Damn it. It would have been nice to know that before we came all the way here.”

She shrugged. “This is Ragnarok, Daniel. Nowhere is safe, and if you want to recruit strong allies Kozalin is the best place you could have reached. Unless you’re going to abandon that gaggle of refugees you’ve been carting around, and flee south with just Cerise and Avilla?”

“No. I promised to protect them, and that’s what I’m going to do. I’ll just have to work fast, and make sure we’re ready when the attack finally comes.”

              The sky was clear again the next day, to my considerable surprise. I hadn’t seen two consecutive clear days since I was summoned to this world, so I was forced to conclude that the Red Conclave’s weather magic was actually working. Standing atop the transport I found that I could make out bands of dark clouds being held at bay in the distance to the west, but they showed no sign of getting closer.

              Well, that would certainly make my work easier.

              Gudrin hopped up next to me, clearing the eight foot height of the transport in a single easy bound, and looked around with a grin. Well, she was probably the strongest of the wolf girls, so a feat like that shouldn’t surprise me. She’d shot up a good six inches during the trip to Kozalin, while her malnourished body sprouted curves and her ragged mop of black hair grew out into a wild mane that reached the small of her back.

              “Good morning, boss. Is it just me, or is it getting warmer?” She asked.

              “I think it is,” I replied. “Looks like the weather wizards are actually getting somewhere.”

              “That would be nice.” She took a step closer, and rubbed up against me. “Feel like a quickie before breakfast?”

I chuckled, and gave her a one-armed hug. “Well, that came out of the blue. Just like that?”

“Does it have to be complicated? I’m horny, you’re sexy, and you didn’t bring any of your women with you.”

Her hand touched my chest, and started to trail down towards my belt buckle. I took it in one of mine.

“Would you have thought that way a month ago?”

She looked up at me with a frown. “Why does that matter?”

“I’m just curious what it feels like, going from a normal girl to what you are now. You do know it’s changed how you think about things, right?”

“I’m not stupid, boss. Of course I know. A month ago I would have died of shame if a man who wasn’t my husband saw me naked. Now I’ve had half the men in the pack and a couple of Oskar’s boys, and I’m loving it. I love having the courage to enjoy life, whether it’s fighting or fucking or just running through the woods with the wind in my face. There’s nothing wrong with that. Is there?”

I shook my head. “No, not as long as you’re happy with it. The rules you grew up with were meant for human farmers, and they don’t work for everyone. Now that you’re, well, not completely human-”

“Wolfen,” she interrupted. “We had a talk about it, last night. That’s what we decided to call ourselves.”

How imaginative. But then again, I should probably cut them some slack. Most of them were illiterate ex-peasants, and I was an information age internet junkie. Obviously our sense of taste was going to be different.

“Alright. Well, wolfen obviously have different instincts than humans, so you’re going to have to make up new rules for yourselves. Traditions that work for you, to replace the ones you’ve left behind. I’m not going to call you a slut for having some fun, but I will warn you that just doing whatever feels good won’t work out well in the long run. You, Embla and Daria should get together soon, and talk about how to handle things like mates and children. Otherwise things are going to blow up horribly when one of you gets pregnant.”

She huffed in frustration. “I guess. This is your way of turning me down, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. I don’t usually say no to sexy girls, but I’m not big on doing it with an audience.”

Not to mention that I was pretty sure she’d had sex half a dozen times yesterday, and bathing wasn’t really an option in our encampment. Day-old sloppy seconds? Ugh. No thanks.

“Then you should take your transport next time,” she pointed out. “Honestly, it feels really weird having sex when I know the boss is sleeping alone.”

“That’s for sure,” another voice put in, and I turned to find that Daria had joined us on the roof of the transport.

“It’s a big confused ball of bad stuff. Like we’re not good enough for you, and we’re being total bitches by ignoring you, and we’re being stupid for missing a shot at you, and about a thousand other things all swirling around in a big mess. I think our wolfen instincts really make a big deal out of the fact that you’re the pack leader’s boss. Maybe next time we do something like this you’ll be able to bring Cerise with you?”

“Probably,” I allowed. “Or I can figure something else out. Thanks for pointing out the problem, though. You know, the usual rule of thumb is that a leader should keep his hands off his subordinates’ women.”

She nodded. “I know. Sergeant Thomas mentioned that once, when he was explaining how to work with the soldiers. It’s probably still a good idea, since the pack has so few women. Maybe you could fix that at some point? The men have been really good about sharing so far, but I’m sure it’s going to cause trouble once the novelty of everything starts to wear off.”

“Well, I’m afraid the only kind of animal hybrid I can make is catgirls, and I don’t think that would help.”

“Catgirls?” Gudrin exclaimed incredulously. “Really?”

Daria giggled. “That’s a funny image.”

At the time I’d been hoping to extend my flesh magic into some kind of shapeshifting. But I hadn’t dared spend enough of my limited power-up time on that to be sure, and what I’d actually gotten was just a semi-random handful of transformations I could do to people. Catgirls, anime elves, gender reversals, an assortment of cosmetic changes, and some physical enhancements that might actually be useful if they weren’t so complex it would take days to do one. Like I’d ever be able to spare that much time.

“What can I say? It’s just a weird quirk of my magic. Anyway, I’ll put it on my list of problems to think about. I take it human women aren’t an option for some reason?”

“They can’t keep up with the pack,” Gudrin pointed out.

“They couldn’t really be part of the group,” Daria agreed. “Also, humans are fragile. No one wants to risk that kind of relationship now.”

“Fair enough.”

Breakfast had me missing Avilla’s cooking. But we were most of the way to the coast already, and with the clear weather I had high hopes of finishing the job and being back home by nightfall. The channel left by my heating stones had slowly expanded during the night, and was now easily wide enough for two of the sailing ships I’d seen in the harbor to pass each other. So once we hit the coast we could turn around and travel at full speed instead of creeping along planting more stones.

Starting up the work again was a little tricky, since I didn’t want to risk taking the vehicles anywhere near the channel. There was no way to tell how much the ice had thinned near it, and I didn’t want to risk breaking through. I ended up laying a force field across the ice near the end of the channel to spread my weight while I walked over to drop in the first heating stone, and placed a few more at the same interval I’d been using the day before. That got us far enough out that I was pretty sure the ice would be stable, at which point I went back to just dropping the stones off the back of the enchantment factory’s sled.

The ice hissed and smoked furiously where they landed, but even with a big heat source it takes time to melt large masses of the stuff. A trail of holes grew in our wake, gradually widening as we moved slowly along our way. The whole process was just as tedious as it had been the day before, but hopefully this was a one-time thing.

Could I do something like this for Kozalin? Warm the whole town with open-air heaters of some kind? Moderating the temperature even a little could keep a lot of those refugees alive.

But thinking about it more, I realized that it was a much harder problem. I’d have to cover three or four square miles instead of just a long, narrow path, so it would take a lot more heaters. They were also dangerous to anyone who got too close to one, so I’d have to mount each heating element in some kind of enclosure. That alone would make the project take weeks instead of days. Maybe months, depending on how elaborate the setup ended up needing to be.

Come to think if it, I’d have to use much less powerful heaters. The ones I was dumping in the river put out heat like a blast furnace, and there weren’t many places in the city where that would be safe. They’d create zones of dangerously high temperature, blocking streets and probably setting buildings on fire. I’d have to make thousands of little ones instead, with an output more comparable to a stove or campfire. But if I started dotting the city with permanent heat sources on that scale people would steal them.

              Yeah, that wasn’t going to work. I’d have to come up with a different solution.

              It was well past noon when we finally neared the coast. The grey waters of the North Sea stretched away endlessly into the distance, under an angry mass of dark clouds that swirled furiously against that invisible barrier some miles offshore. There was no sign of any shipping, but that was no surprise. Anyone caught at sea when the freeze hit would presumably have either docked at the nearest port or headed south.

              I was just a few hundred yards from the edge of the ice when Gudrin and Umar returned from patrol with a report of more goblins lurking in the vicinity.

              “There was a lot of them, a couple miles north of us. I saw three trolls, and maybe a hundred wolf riders,” Umar reported.

              Gudrin nodded. “Some of the goblins looked funny, too. There was a whole group with white cloaks and fancy armor, riding big white wolves.”

              “Did they see you?” Gronir asked.

              Umar hung his head. “Yeah, they had a lot of scouts out. I think we gave them the slip, but we killed a couple of wolf riders doing it.”

              “Sounds like your pack needs some stealth training, Gronir,” I pointed out. “But that’s for later. If they attack us during the day we’ll cut them to pieces. I go after their leaders while you guys run around the edges skirmishing, and the pilot hides in the transport. Your bows have three or four times the range of theirs, you can outrun their wolves and their arrows can barely hurt you anyway. Once we kill a couple dozen the rest will break and run.”

              “But if the ones in white cloaks are the same guys who led the attack on Lanrest they’ll be smarter than that. Probably shadow us hoping to attack after we camp for the night. So let’s see if we can’t finish our business here and be gone by then.”

              “You got it, boss,” Gronir agreed. “I’ll organize a sweep to make sure there aren’t any other bands lurking about, and then we’ll pull back to the transport and stand ready just in case.”

              “Sounds like a plan. Go ahead and park the transport here. The ice might be too thin to support it over by the edge, so I’m going to place the last few heat stones by hand.”

              The wolfen fanned out in pairs to check for other threats, and I mused that we really needed more of them to maintain good scouting. At least twenty, and thirty or so would be a lot better. But where would I find that many volunteers, let alone the felwolf hearts to empower them?

              “One problem at a time,” I sighed.

              I turned the factory enchantment back on, caught the heat stone it built in a web of force magic, and held it carefully suspended in the air before me while I paced off the distance from the last one I’d placed. Almost done. I dropped it into place, thankful that my shield blocked the cloud of steam it raised when it hit the ice, and went back for another.

              I’d just placed the second to last stone when I heard a shout from the direction of the transport, and a shadow fell over me. I dove to the side with a hard push of force magic, thankful that weeks of constant danger had at least sharpened my reflexes. I landed well outside the still-growing shadow, my hand already on Grinder’s hilt.

              There was a deep chuckle from behind me. “You’re quick on your feet, little man.”

              I turned, and found myself facing something almost as bad as the dragon I’d half expected. A huge head armored in bony plates, with a mouth big enough to swallow me whole, looking down at me from the end of a long serpentine neck that descended into the sea. For a moment I pictured something like a giant plesiosaur, but then I realized that the movement I could make out in the water offshore was more serpentine coils. It was a sea serpent.

              A sea serpent that made dinosaurs look puny. And it talked.

              “I am Narfing, son of Jarlof, son of Jormungandr. Are you the foreign wizard, Daniel the Black?”

              Its voice was a deep rumble so powerful I could feel it in my chest, like a landslide crashing down a mountainside. I took a deep breath and straightened, with my hand still on Grinder. “Yes,” I answered cautiously.

              “Good. You took longer than expected to arrive, but we still have a few minutes. I bring you word from the Unraveler, the first and last offer of peace you will hear. She comes now to tear asunder the Bifrost Veil, and you stand in her way. Step aside, and we shall grant you and your servants safe passage out of Europe.”

              I frowned. A week ago I probably would have agreed to that. I had no stake in the war between Loki and Asgard, and I wasn’t under any delusions about my ability to stop this genocide single-handedly. But after my conversation with Hecate last night… wait, had she known this was coming? The timing was too neat to be coincidence.