He absent-mindedly rubbed the sunken hole in his own ribcage where Ninsianna had removed the piece of his ship which had nearly shattered his heart. Only the fact the rod had lacked an arrowhead had enabled her to pull it out and stitch up the damage.
"Guide me to fight at your warriors' side," Mikhail said. "I will follow your chief's command."
He gave Needa a peck upon the cheek and waited for her to murmur a blessing, the prayer of a mother to a son. Mukannishum led him to the center of the village. Perhaps sixty men and thirty women made preparations to fend off the raid. Most were not warriors, but they moved with chaotic organization to gather rocks, spears, arrows, and supplies such as food and water in case the battle turned into a siege.
Chief Jiljab seemed a competent man, his village less industrious, perhaps, than the tight control Chief Kiyan wielded over Assurian commerce, but his warriors' command structure reminded him of something he had once seen, a memory which lurked beneath the surface but would not come to light. Whatever it was, it was reassuring.
"They work well together," Mikhail said to Chief Jiljab.
"If one man falls," Jiljab said. "Another must step forward to take his place. We do not have the luxury of specialized warriors."
"Assur's warriors have nowhere near this level of cooperation … yet." He noticed the awkward way one of the Gasurian archers jammed his arrows into his quiver. "But then again … what they do know, they know exceedingly well."
"Perhaps it is simply a matter of getting them to train together often enough to become familiar with each other's weaknesses?" Chief Jiljab said. "Gasur is a tiny village. We have no choice but to work together. Anyone who does not follow direction ends up dead."
Mikhail thought back to Needa's lamentations. The man who had died had run out to wreak vengeance upon the raiders who had killed his wife, the apprentice healer who had also been killed. The most basic premise of fighting as an army was everyone, from the loftiest general to the lowliest soldier in the trenches, must follow the chain of command. If anybody stopped to question orders, the whole works got gummed up and things fell apart. The battlefield was no place for free will.
A hush fell over the villagers as whispers made their way through the crowd.
"They come," Mukannishum said.
"Mikhail?" Harroot beckoned. "Behind here. We suspect they do not know you are in our village."
He glanced down the alleyway where Needa's parent's house was. Gasur's houses had been built so the street-door could be barricaded and access only gained through the heat-vent in the roof. The ladders people used to climb up and down were quietly being pulled upwards so the attackers could not gain access and shutters to tiny slits of windows fastened shut. Unlike Assur, whose outer ring had been built at the foot of the hill to act as a wall, Gasur had many more avenues for ingress. Once inside, however, it was harder to penetrate their mud-brick houses.
Twelve female archers moved silently in the shadows above, their bows aimed south. The healer's house had been targeted in the last raid, a target which made no strategic sense as the house was located deep within the village. The elderly healer … and her middle-aged apprentice … were not the usual slaver's prize of young women of marriageable age.
He glanced up at the sky. The moon had set, only the bright light of what he knew to be a planet illuminating the dark. There would be no moonlight to betray his silhouette to his enemies.
"I have a better idea," he said. "Are you certain they do not know I am here?"
"Not unless they had spotters when you landed yesterday," Harrood said. "There are no strangers in our village to act as spies. It would please us to have them make your acquaintance."
The young man's incisors reminded Mikhail of a dog's fangs as he flashed him a grim smile.
"Perhaps you could carry one of us to their rear?" Shumama said. "We have seen the ease with which you carry Ninsianna."
"A man weighs more than a woman," Mikhail said. He sized up their weight, calculating whether he could carry them. "You saw how heavily I landed when I carried my mother-in-law. My gift is stealth. They will hear us when we crash into the ground."
"Pity," Shumama gave him a rueful smile. "Too bad the goddess did not see fit to give us wings."
"Your defenses are sound," Mikhail said. "My best use is from the air. I shall fly a patrol and look for unpleasant surprises."
"We are honored to receive any assistance you may give," Chief Jiljab said. "Go … and watch our backs."
Mikhail faded into the darker line of houses and made his way to the north side of the village, the opposite side from where Mukannishum had spotted the raiders. He would do these people no favors if the sound of beating wings alerted their enemies their quarry was awake.
A child cried out from inside one of the houses and was shushed. Villagers murmured in fear like partridges roosting in a tree with a jackal prowling around its trunk. Every Ubaid village was accustomed to being attacked. What made this attack different was the fact the Uruk had come up with a more effective spear throwing device. He touched the sword strapped onto his hip. The familiar coldness of the killing dance fell upon him, the Cherubim incantations he could only faintly remember learning, but which he just knew, emptying his mind of all but the most important thoughts.
Smite … the … enemy.
The cool night air ruffled through his feathers, a respite from the desert heat. This time of year the air cooled at night, whispering hints of the rains that were soon to come. He spied the enemy creeping through the landscape south of the village, just as Mukannishum had seen them, but he also spied a second group moving down from the hills to the north. The second group was small, six, perhaps seven men.
Wind currents carried him to their rear. In the stillness of pre-dawn, the rustle of feathers might alert them to look up, so he glided just far enough away to muffle the flapping of his wings as he descended that final few feet. Instinct, or training, he could not remember which, caused him to immediately flatten out so his wings appeared to be a rise in the land.
One of the men looked up. He waited until the man turned around before unsheathing the survival knife he wore strapped to his calf. Ninsianna claimed the blade was evil, nearly a cubit long with a razor sharp edge on one side, saw-like teeth upon the other, but she always ran her finger along the edge with morbid fascination, daring the knife to cut her. It was one of the things he loved about her, the way she spoke of peace, but accepted his need to prepare for war.
He crept forward, his wings stretched out behind him like a lion stalking a gazelle. The ancient Cherubim pray flowed automatically to his lips.
"Oni o taiji suru tame ni, watashi ni anata no chikara o sazukeru." To subjugate the demons, grant me thy strength.
That peculiar coldness his wife called the killing dance, that prayer that separated the part of him that could kill from the part of him that could feel, showed him all the places his enemy was weak. It was not the sensation Ninsianna reported whenever She-who-is stepped into her body and took over. It was more like hyper-awareness, as though he was more of what he already was, able to sense what people would do before they did it not because some old god told him what they would do, but because his own mind pieced together subtle data that included someone's not-quite-manifest intentions. He stalked them like a lion through the grass, the tall stalks of grain slapping sheaths against his face as he moved forward like a wraith, knife clenched in his fist.
One of the Uruk turned and looked behind him, not from any sound Mikhail had made, for he was certain he had made none, but the peculiar sensation of being watched. Or perhaps his scent had carried in the wind? The man's compatriot laughed and punched him in the arm. The two turned away and moved closer to the village, ignoring death stalking them through the grasses.
They were too closely grouped together, too well organized for him to pick off one at a time. This was a group which fought together and watched each other’s back. Should he take them on himself? Or
recruit the Gasurian villagers to defend the second front?
An odd thought pierced the killing dance, and touched that part of him that could still feel. His wife was expecting their first child. If he was killed taking on six men at once, she would be a widow raising their child alone. Not even the killing dance could erase the emotion that thought caused. Let the Gasurians smite their own attackers! He would fight at their side as their ally, not smite their enemies for them. Wasn't that what he was trying to get the Assurians to do?
The killing incantations faded from his lips. He slipped his knife back into his boot and moved backwards, far enough down into a gully that the beating of his wings would not alert them they'd been made. Sticking to the shadows, he landed in the alleyway where he had taken off so his landing was obscured by the buildings. He crept forward to where Jiljab waited to spring their trap.
"Six move sneaking in from the north," Mikhail warned. "Hardened mercenaries by the look of them. You're about to fight a battle on two fronts."
"I did not see them," Mukannishum said.
"You cannot be two places at once," Mikhail absolved his grandfather-in-law of any negligence. "Do the Uruk often engage in such tactics?"
"No," Jiljab said.
"Not recently," the older Mukannishum corrected Jiljab. "But in the past, yes. I have seen such tactics before. In the time of your father."
Needa's father had once been Chief Jiljab's father's lieutenant … and had reportedly opposed her marriage to Immanu. It had begun to dawn on him that, when his father-in-law spoke of kidnappings as often being a young man's way of overcoming her parent's objections to their marriage, that perhaps he spoke from first-hand experience?
A dynamic in the Needa-Immanu relationship which had never made sense before fell into place. Oh! How had he been so dull? Immanu had all but come right out and told him! No wonder he worshipped the ground Needa walked upon … and feared her return to her village.
"They come!" the hushed whisper flew down from the rooftops, the female archers who had an eagle's eye.
He did not know what orders Jiljab had given while he'd been flying patrol. To scare off the raiders with arrows? Or wait until they were trapped between the buildings and ambush them? When no volley flew, he had his answer. These Uruk had cost them three lives yesterday and wounded others. Today, the Gasurians would have their revenge.
The raiders got past the first few houses before an imperceptible sound, so quiet even Mikhail never heard what tipped them off, caused the raiders to explode into action.
"Now!" Jiljab shouted.
A volley of arrows flew down from the rooftops, the cries of men preceding the whistle of arrows through the air. A mere heartbeat later, a second volley followed, the air filled with screams of dying men. The men on the ground, archers and warriors, let loose two volleys before rushing forward with a cry of 'revenge!'
Mikhail moved with them, the sensation of being part of a wave of soldiers both familiar, and also peculiarly crowded. Without memories, his recollection of what he had done in the service of the Emperor was scant, but what few memories he did have all involved smaller groups such as the six men he'd spotted moving in from the north. S.O.F. the cuneiform spelled out on his dog tags. Special Operations Forces. Yes. Perhaps that was why training small groups of archers felt so natural, but the larger army he now commanded felt unwieldy? A piece of his missing past fell into place.
A return volley flew at them from the Uruk raiders. Shrieks of agony erupted all around him as slender spears given devastating velocity by the atlatls thudded into the Gasurian defenders. In front of him, Harrood fell. The Uruk raider who had gotten him loaded a second spear into his throwing-stick and cast back his arm to aim a second shot. The spear was imbedded in Harrood's shoulder, a wound he was likely to survive. Mikhail flared his wings, daring the raider to take a shot at a bigger target. Him.
The raider pointed and shouted a string of words in the Uruk language. The others followed suit. The tide of raiders which had, until now, been focused solely on extricating themselves from the ambush suddenly shifted. With single-minded purpose, the Uruk raiders all aimed and took shots at him.
"Damantia!" Mikhail grunted as he used his sword to deflect more than a dozen spears. One thudded into his wings. Pain screamed down the injured limb, but it had not landed in a bone which would prevent his flight. The Cherubim incantations he had only lightly been reciting, just enough to aid his focus, rushed to the forefront of his mind. Until now, he had only used them to give him an edge, so as not to frighten the Gasurian warriors who had never seen him transform into the blue-eyed visage Ninsianna described. He lost those inhibitions now.
He stepped in front of Harrood. That part of his consciousness that remembered how to feel tucked the Gasurian warrior's facial expressions, their body language as they realized he'd transformed himself into something more, away to be analyzed later. Several waivered, not certain whether to be more afraid of the Uruk attackers … or him.
With a viscous downward slice, he decapitated the first Uruk to rush at him; a second jabbed through the heart to join the first. Confusion reigned as Gasurian defenders were left with no one to defend against as the Uruk abandoned their group cohesion and attacked him.
Jiljab was a competent leader. Within seconds he had his men swarming against the exposed Uruk back, stabbing the raiders as the fighting was now too close to use their bows. That didn't help him much as far more enemies sought his blood instead of the Gasurian's.
Perhaps he would have been better off smiting the six he'd let live in the field?
Some part of his mind analyzed all the places the Gasurian defenders were weak. The awkward moves. The places where the chain of command broke down. Warriors whose deficits in basic skills left them open to attack and, in a few places, left them wounded. Shouting from the rooftops alerted them the second raiding party now moved in from their rear.
"To me, to me!" Jiljab rallied a group to defend against the second attack.
"Looks like I'll get to drop into the back after all," Shumama shouted at him over the din. He ran towards one of the buildings where a rope ladder had been dropped to allow his ascent. An archer he'd introduced yesterday as his wife gave him a hand up then crouched back down out of atlatl-aim as her husband ran across the flat rooftops, leaping onto the next house, and then the next. Two other Gasurian warriors did the same.
A spear barely missed Mikhail's cheek. He refocused his attention on the enemy, some who only cared about smiting him, others who recognized they couldn't all come after him with the Gasurian warriors rallying around their fringe. Arrows whistled towards the invisible enemy to their rear. Shouting from the back of the village indicated Shumama and his friends had dropped down from the rooftops to engage the six-man unit in battle.
Little by little the raiders who'd attacked their front began to thin out. Some died at the end of his sword, but many more simply faded into the night, the inevitability of their defeat causing them to run. The last raider circled, stabbing him for everything he was worth, and recognized he stood alone.
There was no hatred in the last man standing's eyes. Only determination. That eerie sense that sometimes whispered to him to be merciful did so now. With a nod, Mikhail lowered his sword just enough to signal he was letting the man go. The man backed out of sword range and then ran.
The fight still raged behind him. The Gasurians swarmed around the six men who had come at them from the rear. The men were outnumbered and begged for mercy, but Jiljab gave them none. These men had targeted their village not once, but twice. It was not Mikhail's way to kill an enemy who wished to surrender, but this was not his village. Only the lingering coldness of the killing dance prevented him from wincing as the raiders were mercilessly butchered. He had spared them in vain.
This … was not his way…
He took to the air, whispering prayers he could only half-remember for some god he did not worship to carry the souls of the men he had s
mote into the dreamtime. He did not know where he had learned such things other than it had been at the hands of the Cherubim, but he must fend off the lurking darkness he felt strongest at times such as this, that black wound that threatened to break his control and tempt him to succumb to his blood lust.
What would happen if that dark beast was ever let off its leash? He did not want to know…
It was later as Needa patched up the damage to his wing, the spear having been too heavy to stick once he'd flapped his wings, that Shumama came back, Harrood at his side with his arm held in a sling, and handed him the gold they had pilfered, one from each enemy body.
Gold...
Sata'anic gold…
"What manner of creature is this?" Chief Jiljab pointed to the front of the coin.
Mikhail turned it over in his hand, not even memory loss enough to erase his god's sworn enemy.
"It's a dragon…"
Chapter 24
“It has been said, 'the truth will make men free.'
The truth alone has never made anyone free.
It is only doubt which will bring mental emancipation.”
the Satanic Bible
September 3,390 BC
Sata'an Earth Base
Lieutenant Kasib
Kasib
Sata'an Royal Navy Lieutenant Kasib looked at the sound of a light knock upon his door, one of the few real doors in this forward operating base which was still comprised largely of tents. The stacks of paperwork on his desk were so high he could barely peer over them to see who sought entrance to General Hudhafah's office. He instinctively tasted the air with his long, forked tongue for clues as to who stood outside his door.
"Enter," he called out.
Pheromones of anxiety preceded his old friend, Lieutenant Apausha, into the room. Apausha was not technically navy, but one of the countless men inducted into the Sata'an Merchant Marine which was in fact a quiet fifth branch of the Empire's military. Emperor Shay'tan, may he be blessed with a thousand graces, was too wary to trust the shipment of Sata'an goods to a bunch of mercantilists, pirates and thieves to get his less-sanctioned goods where they needed to go, so he'd created his own fleet of smugglers. Loyal men, trained the same as any military man, only given the imprimatur of 'private industry' so Shay'tan could have plausible deniability if one of their less savory shipments were intercepted.
Sword of the Gods: Prince of Tyre (Sword of the Gods Saga) Page 24
