"Pareesa never came by today," Gita said. "Tirdard said she went into the desert to try to coax back Dadbeh."
"That's none of your business," Firouz said coldly. It was a sore point that his best friend had left after the villagers had tormented Dadbeh for grieving Shahla's death ... including him.
"Mikhail looks forward to Pareesa's visits," Gita said. "He needs every bit of inspiration we can give him to encourage him to fight to stay."
"He can't hear her," Firouz's voice lilted upward. "He can't hear any of us." The warrior twisted the butt-end of his spear into the floor boards and glowered at her as if Dadbeh's defection was her fault instead of his.
Gita's black eyes welled with tears. "He does better when he knows he is not alone."
Firouz's features danced between sorrow, anger, and grief. He finally settled upon anger, the most manly of the three emotions, and scowled.
"What you are doing to him is cruel," Firouz said. "Impersonating his wife when all he wants to do is join her in the dreamtime!"
"It is the only thing keeping him alive," Gita whispered.
"If you had any decency left in you at all," Firouz hissed, "you would throw your body upon the Narduğan fire and carry your apology to the goddess so SHE will bring him back his real wife!"
Mikhail shifted beneath her and whispered Ninsianna's name.
"Shhh!" Gita glared at Firouz.
She resumed her singing until Mikhail's breathing evened out. When she glanced back, Firouz had absented himself to wait outside the door. Security had become lax, not because the warriors trusted her, but because they all wished she would just go ahead and kill him, not out of vengence, but rather a sense of mercy.
The sun finished setting and the sky grew black and dim. Her stomach began to hurt. She clutched her midsection, not certain whether this was a coughing illness which would put Mikhail in danger, or merely food poisoning, an old enemy she had known her entire life. The cramps grew more powerful. If this was food poisoning, it was unlike any she had ever suffered. The inside of her head clanged like a temple gong.
Firouz stumbled inside and sank to his knees, suffering from the exact same symptoms.
"What did you eat today?" Gita asked.
Firouz clutched his hands to his stomach and groaned. Sweat beaded onto his forehead as his body convulsed with pain.
"Roast squirrel, tubers, and fresh bread baked by my mother," Firouz said through gritted teeth.
Gita pressed her hands to Firouz's cheeks. His flesh was cold and clammy like hers, not feverish. It was a symptom of evil spirits in the food, but none of what Firouz had eaten mirrored her scanty meal.
"What did you drink?" Gita asked.
"Just water," Firouz said. "I refilled my goatskin from Needa's bucket."
He moaned like a sheep which had just had its throat slit, and then moved onto the floor, making a pathetic whimpering sound as he clutched his hands over his ears.
Gita clutched her sides as her own wave of nausea hit again. This was not the first time she'd suffered from such an illness, and she knew what to do to minimize its duration. She forced herself to vomit into the chamberpot, and then coaxed Firouz to do the same. She then dragged him over to the floor next to Mikhail's bed, and curled up between the two so she could attend to them both. She was too weak to sing as the evil spirits tore through her body, so she held Mikhail's hand, mindful of her promise she would never leave him alone.
'Please, Mikhail,' she prayed as convulsions wracked her body. 'Please don't forget to breath while the sickness ravages through me...'
She closed her eyes and focused on the dark pain in her stomach, willing her body to transmute it, willing her body to exorcise whatever misery had decided to take up residence in her bowels. She remembered the rhyme sung to her by her mother, the one she now used to help her digest the cast-off goat slops whenever she had no other food to eat.
Darkness to darkness,
Light to light.
Embrace the pain,
Don't give it a fight.
Become one with the poison
Until it is known.
And then you can fight it,
Once the antidote has been shown.
An image came into her mind of a small, white flower. What it was and how it had come to be in her water did not matter. All that mattered was the way the substance attacked her stomach. Don't fight it. Your body already knows what to do. Lay down on your side and vomit until there's nothing left to come up so the poison doesn't travel any further into your system.
She whispered to Firouz to do the same. He didn't need any coaxing from her. Already the two of them were covered in their own disgusting, partially digested dinner.
After an eternity of pain, she became aware of voices down on the first story of the house. Immanu? She thought he wasn't due back until tomorrow? The sound of many feet climbing up the ladder warned her that something was amiss. The voices spoke not in Ubaid, but an unknown language.
A sense of horror permeated through the fog of Gita's pain. Warning! Danger! Assur is being attacked!
Pain clenched at her gut as the poison refused to release its hold. Fight. She must fight. Every instinct she possessed screamed she must defend Mikhail with her very life.
The flicker of the tallow lantern reflected off of Mikhail's sword, shiny and silver, still placed neatly beneath the bed where Pareesa had hidden it. Gita slid her hand around the cold, bumpy hilt. She had never been privy to Pareesa's sword training, nor had anyone ever taught her to channel the Cherubim god who now spoke to Pareesa like a friend, but she had to defend him.
Who would answer the call of a girl who no god ever saw?
That dark gift which had whispered to her ever since her mother had been murdered reminded her there was another god who protected Mikhail, one with whom she'd felt an affinity ever since the night those pitiless black eyes had met her gaze across a field of bodies.
"Please," Gita prayed to He-who's-not, "show me what to do!"
Calm emptiness filled her body until it found an emotion upon which it could feed to help her. Not despair, for despair was a useless emotion when one needed to act, but anger. Anger that she'd been put into this position in the first place. Anger at being forced as a child to witness her mother's murder. Anger at her dead friend for being so weak-minded as to succumb to the Evil One's plans. And anger most of all that Mikhail's enemies dared come for him when he was in so sorry a condition that not even the Dark Lord himself could reanimate his vessel.
Three men burst through the curtain...
With an inhuman howl, Gita rose up from the placenta of her own vomit and mercilessly hacked to pieces the assassins who had come to kill the man she loved.
~ * ~ * ~
Chapter 41
December, 3,390 BC
Earth: Village of Assur
Jamin
Jamin peered through the darkness at the village which had once been his home. The lizard-people had loaned him their wondrous magical eyes, a talisman which could pierce the darkness and let him see as though he was a hyena. He scrutinized Assur's defenses, trying to discern what changes his father had made since he’d been cast out to wander the wilderness. The outer wall stood solid and tall, an impenetrable barrier which had stood for as long as Jamin had been alive. To his now-jaded eyes, it appeared inadequate. What hope did a wall made of mud-bricks have against the kinds of weapons General Hudhafah would bring to bear if his attempt to eradicate the troublemakers failed?
"What do you see, brother?" Nusrat asked. Aturdokht's brother had taken to calling him brother even though, until Mikhail was dead, Jamin would not be free to marry her.
Jamin adjusted some tiny handles on the talisman which made everything clearer, if turning it all a peculiar shade of green.
"Would you like to look?" Jamin asked.
Nusrat hesitated, and then nodded. Jamin pulled the awkward helmet off of his own head and fitted the goggles over Nusrat's eyes. If there was
one trick he'd learned from the lizard people, it was how very tempting their magical devices were to men such as himself, or more accurately, men such as he used to be. Primitives. Jamin grinned at his future brother-in-law's amazement as he pointed out each aspect of the village they were about to raid.
"It looks like the gate is still guarded," Nusrat said.
"Not effectively," Jamin said. He pointed towards the darkened gate even though, without the goggles, he could not see it any longer. "The torches have burned out and nobody replaced them except for that one. That means there is probably only one guard who is not indisposed from the hellebore."
The Uruk raiders muttered and shuffled as their leader made his way forward to get a better look. Taziq was a bit shorter than Jamin; broader, but not obese; the wealthy third-son of a minor chieftain who wandered the desert, seeking trade and fortune because he had little chance of inheriting his father's village. He placed a hand on Jamin's shoulder and pointed towards Assur.
"The last time I saw I saw these walls," Taziq said, "my recollection is that they were shorter."
"When was that?" Jamin asked.
"It would have been right around the time you were born," Taziq said. "You and Marwan's son here would have both been cubs at your mother's breasts." The Uruk leader's laugh sounded like the rough bark of a hyena. "We could not breach those walls then, what makes you think we can breach them now?"
"You saw the lizard people's sky canoe," Jamin said.
"The lizard people are not here," Taziq answered, "and I am still not convinced of their benevolence."
Jamin forced himself not to stiffen.
"Thus far the lizard people have delivered every promise they have given," Jamin said, "and when they could not deliver, they have told me thus beforehand, not held out false hope or wooed me with promises they had no intention of keeping. Do you really expect the armies of a great empire to just step in and fight our battles for us without a demonstration of our fealty?"
"Then why not simply use their big firestick to blow up the winged demon's house from the sky?" Taziq asked.
Nusrat interrupted before Jamin's anger might cause him to undermine their tentative alliance.
"You saw my father's foot," Nusrat said. "Only great magic could have healed that wound. And Sergeant Dahaka himself descended from the heavens to teach you how to use that knife."
"Ay," Taziq caressed his newly gifted silver hunting knife, far finer than any stone blade. "It was a most invigorating demonstration, especially when paired with the news that every Ubaid village has abandoned Assur to fend for itself."
Jamin gestured for Nusrat to hand Taziq the magical eyes. He had his own suspicions about why the lizard people were being so parsimonious with their demonstrations of power, but he kept those thoughts to himself because he wanted the lizard people to succeed. He'd weathered enough enemy sieges and battle preparations for a far more familiar enemy, famine, to recognize the symptoms of an army that had gone too long without a fresh infusion of reinforcements.
Taziq strapped the magical eyes to his forehead and then gasped with wonder as he realized he could see Assur almost as clearly as though it was daylight.
"Shay'tan believes every man must earn his own way in the world," Jamin said. "But if you prove to be a worthy ally, he will reward you with riches beyond your wildest dreams."
Taziq, by this point, had forgotten all about his questions and was too busy peering through the magic eyes.
"Is it normal for your village to be this dark?"
His village? Even now, there was a rightness about the word.
"Not this early in the night," Jamin said. "Just because it is almost the winter solstice does not mean people go to bed immediately after supper. Laum came through for us, it appears."
Taziq pulled off the night vision goggles and passed them to the man he'd appointed to finish off the winged demon, and then to the other men in their raiding party. One by one, the six-man group tried the goggles on and gasped with wonder as Jamin pointed out the places he advised them to scale the wall. If the villagers were all sick to their stomach as Marwan had promised, this assassination attempt should go flawlessly with few collateral casualties.
"I wonder what Laum will do when he realizes he betrayed his village to help the very man he's sworn to destroy?" Nusrat asked him in Halifian so their Uruk allies wouldn't understand what he said.
A pang of guilt clenched at Jamin's gut.
"The man will be safely out of my village," Jamin said, "wealthy beyond his dreams and happy with a new wife and child to replace the ones he's lost. Under the circumstances, it's the best I can do to atone."
Sometimes Shahla came to him when he was dreaming, carrying her decrepit rag doll. He'd taken to visiting the place where the lizard-people had buried her with honor, to speak to her and apologize that things had gone so terribly wrong. It was ironic that, in death, Shahla had become his only friend.
"Our friends are anxious to get this over with," Nusrat said.
Jamin met his gaze.
"You will stay here and make sure Taziq doesn't double-cross me?"
"You know I will," Nusrat said. The Halifian grinned. "Or at least if I sell you, it will be to improve your position even more!"
Jamin gave him a weak grin. It was ironic that, in her betrayal, Aturdokht had won his respect.
He silently led the raiders down the now-trickling stream bed to the strongest, highest place along the wall, the place they never guarded because none except a man with wings could scale a wall so high. He reached into his satchel and pulled out the strange, three-pronged contraption the lizards had given him.
"Is that device magic as well?" the sloe-eyed Uruk he thought of as 'snaggle-tooth' grinned at him.
"Yes, it is magic," Jamin lied. "The lizard people call this device a grappling hook."
With a jam of his wrist, he forced the three prongs to unfurl from their sheath. The Uruk ooh'd like good little primitives. He unwound the rope, a light, thin thread about half the width of his pinkie finger, far more slender than the coarse, hemp ropes the Ubaid usually braided.
"Stand back," Jamin ordered.
The Uruk stepped back, curious to see what he would do. He grabbed the rope about a cubit from the device and began to swing it around and around until the weight of the grappling hook pulled the rope taut. With a still-awkward move, he heaved the hook over his head and sent it flying up over the wall.
"This may take a couple of tries," Jamin said. "The trick is to get it embedded into a roof strut."
He gave the device a tug and, as he feared, it came crashing right back down off the wall, pulling chunks of woven river reed and straw down along with it. Goat shit! It made him look bad, but the Uruk were so entranced with the very idea of the thing that they did not ridicule them the way Private Katlego had done when he'd taught him how to use it. His heart pounded, fearful the inhabitants had heard the thump.
"Wait," Jamin said. "We must make certain we are not heard."
The Uruk's eyes glittered bright in the scant light of the waning moon. If somebody peered over the wall, they would be clearly visible in this spot scrubbed bare of brush or boulders. Thankfully, it appeared Laum's potion had rendered the inhabitants unconscious; or at least so wracked with stomach upset that even if they did hear the thud, they did not care.
"Try again," the Uruk group-leader touched his arm.
Jamin did it again, and a third and fourth and fifth, but on the sixth try, when he tugged the rope, it did not come back down, but remained securely embedded in a roof strut.
"Go!" Jamin tapped the shoulder of a slender, wiry man, the lightest amongst them who'd been chosen to scurry up the rope first, just in case the hook wasn't firmly anchored. The man pulled himself up the slender plait hand-over-hand like a monkey and disappeared over the edge. A moment later, the man's face reappeared at the top.
"All set," the man signaled.
Jamin grabbed the rope and pulled himse
lf up hand-over-hand, his shoulder muscles screaming by the time he heaved himself, panting, over the top. He'd always prided himself on being the best warrior in the village, but ever since he'd met the lizard people he'd felt as though he was a scrawny rabbit.
One by one the rest of the Uruk warriors scaled the wall. With a grim sense of satisfaction, Jamin noted the men were far more winded than he was. Weak, he might be, when compared to the lizard people, but amongst his own species he was still a man to be reckoned with.
"You know what to do," Jamin whispered to the Uruk.
"We shall all grow rich on lizard gold," said the leader of the group assigned to shall smite the winged demon. "Sergeant Dahaka promised he would pay us." As a condition of their help, the Uruk insisted they kill Mikhail and he be the one to kill his father. More than just a wish to collect the gold, Taziq bore some old grudge against his father and the thought Kiyan's own son would kill him tickled his fancy mightily.
The Uruk fanned out, slipping across the rooftops. Jamin stared up at the frail, silver crescent of the waning moon. He was reminded of the goddess who whispered that his life had come at the cost of a vow. Vow? What vow? He wished he could remember. He crawled down a ladder into the streets which had once been his home.
Once at the bottom, he vacillated between the mission to kill his father and Taziq's promise to Laum that his wife would be taken out of the picture. His father was the more important target, but he was painfully aware that he owed Shahla a debt. Lucifer had promised to kill the viperous-tongued woman personally, but then the príomh-air had left this world and not returned for either of them. He would kill Manzur in Lucifer's stead; and when he was done, he would visit Shahla's grave to tell her that her mother had finally gotten her due. Perhaps then the poor, demented girl would cease haunting him?
Sword of the Gods: Agents of Ki (Sword of the Gods Saga) Page 43
