Sword of the Gods: Agents of Ki (Sword of the Gods Saga) (151 page)

The lizards did not walk as if they patrolled the gates of Assur, but if she cleared her mind, she could detect an order to their movement, an order centered around getting their implements back into the sky canoe. She waited until the right moment, and then stood up and walked right past a lizard who had just turned around so closely she could have touched its tail.

The moment she reached the edge of the sky canoe, she crouched beneath it, that dark gift which simply
knew
things warning her that one of the men was about to turn. She pressed her slender body into the rocks. The lizard demon
did
turn and walked to stand right in front of her. Her stomach lurched and threatened to expel the uncooked barley she'd chewed on earlier, for they'd had no time to cook a porridge.

The lizard man bent and picked something up off the ground. Gita's heart pounded in her ears as the creature glanced beneath the sky canoe, directly at where
she
lay.

'Dirt and rocks, dirt and rocks, there's nothing here but dirt and rocks...'

Intelligent gold-green eyes stared right at her, their irises vertical like a cat's and not round like a human's eyes should be. Gita held her breath, silently screaming the chant in her own mind that she was nothing but dirts and rocks. The lizard man stood up and tucked the object he'd bent for into a pocket in his breeches.

The lizard demon strode away. Gita pressed her face into the rocks and vomited, her queasy stomach unable to handle any more. Still filled with the dry heaves, she glanced across the clearing and met Dadbeh's mismatched eyes. An arrow was strung in his bow, the sinew stretched back all the way back to his cheek as he'd aimed the arrow at the creature's heart and not let it fly because he understood this mission could only be accomplished by stealth.

Gita wiped the expelled grains from her lips, and then scrambled out from under the sky canoe, not quite certain what she should do. She held out the slender
scriúire
as if it was a knife. The lizard men had put their
screwdriver
into tiny holes drilled into the big, flat plate that was similar, only a darker color, to the shiny silver plates that had been removed within Mikhail's sky canoe.

The holes and the
scriúire
were approximately the same size. A thought whispered into her mind. She manipulated it until she figured out that it melded perfectly into a symmetrical, cross-shaped hole sunk deep into the wall. She twisted it counter-clockwise until at last the thing came free. Working quickly, she freed several more until the metal plate began to wobble.

The beast hummed, and then flames shot out of its back. Gita yelped and landed flat on her backside, staring up at the fire breathing monster. It glowered at her with an angry, red flame, but it did not move closer or attempt to smite her, at least not so long as she was not foolish enough to stand behind the place where the flame shot out. The fire remained contained as if it was in some kind of oven. So it was not a beast? But rather some kind of talisman?

Dadbeh rushed up to stand beside her.

"They all just went inside and shut the door," Dadbeh said. "I think this thing is about to leave."

"Help me," Gita tugged at the enormous flat plate. "I think its ready to fall off."

She twisted off the last few fasteners. The plate proved to be far heavier than either of them had expected and it clattered to the ground, nearly landing on Dadbeh's foot.

"Aiyah!" Dadbeh yelped. "Watch it, sister! You almost took off my toes!"

"Sorry," Gita muttered.

Within the beast's belly lay an entanglement of colorful worms and spiderwebs, and a big, fat reed with a bright, pink substance flowing through it that then mixed in a stomach with a green substance which then flowed into the oven which burned the flame. In this respect, it reminded her of the smote aurochs in Mikhail's sky canoe. Gita reached to touch the reeds and was surprised to discover the green one was cold, while the pink one was red but not hot.

"Here," Gita said. "I think we are supposed to smite the monster here."

She used the
screwdriver
to stab at the reed carrying the pink substance until it squirted a foul, oily liquid onto them. Dadbeh used his blade to stab the green one until it hissed with steam like an overflowing cook pot. When the fire in the oven began to sputter, Gita hooked her knife under the colorful spider webs and ripped them out, tearing every one she could.

"That should do it," Gita said, but Dadbeh could not hear her for the roar of the fire-breathing monster had grown so disruptive that it hurt her ears and made her almost want to faint. The beast was angry, and she feared it might retaliate.

She clutched her tiny
scriúire
and scurried back to the place where Dadbeh had hid only a few moments before. As she'd hoped, the fire-breathing monster coughed, and then all of a sudden the fires ceased.

"Come," Dadbeh tugged her arm. "We must leave this place immediately. They will know it is sabotauge."

Gita grabbed her robe and makeshift spear. They ducked back down into shallow stream bed and hurried back towards the south gate of the village. Their antics wouldn't hold the invaders for long, but it would buy the Assurians time, time for Mikhail to fly back here and tell them what to do.

She closed her eyes and pictured Mikhail, the way she'd been able to
feel
him ever since the day she had healed him. He was on his way back. He was wounded. He was frantic. And something had him very, very worried.

"Let's sneak inside the village," Dadbeh said. "Maybe we can be of help?"

Gita nodded. That part of her which was angry the village had turned against her was silenced by the tiny whisper that here, here she could be close to Mikhail. The latter voice won. She fortified that sentiment with the scant breadcrumbs of kindness she had received over the years. Siamek had created a distraction for her to escape. Pareesa had stood up for her. The widow-sisters had not immediately found her guilty, but made excuses to buy her time, and before this had happened they had allowed her to work for bread. She would not fight for Assur, but she would fight for Mikhail, for Pareeesa, for Yalda and Zhila, and for the mild-mannered warrior who had pulled her from the river.

They expected to be challenged as they walked across the flat ochre plain outside the outer walls, but nobody manned the south gate; not the lizard demons and certainly not any humans. The enormous outer gate lay in splinters, and the wall within was pockmarked with enormous holes. In the alley lay seven or eight creatures, all terribly burned, and one of them was still alive.

Gita stared down at the dead without mercy. She pulled out the knife she had taken from the Uruk, bent down to the surviving creature which groaned as it stared at her through it's one remaining eye, and hissed through it's boar-like tusks in Kemet.

"What did it say?" she asked Dadbeh, not certain she had heard it right.

"It begged for you to put it out of its misery," Dadbeh said.

Gita stared at the strange patterns the soot made down the mud-brick walls. What had happened here? And had this been a Sata'anic weapon? Or had her uncle drawn upon some source of magic more terrible, even, than that his warrior-shaman father had possessed? This was Immanu's doing, she suspected. The lizard demons were not so stupid as to sacrifice their own men.

"I shall grant you your death," Gita said using the few words of Kemet she knew. "But know that Mikhail will defeat you."

She shoved her kni
fe into the creature's jugular, and as she did, that great, dark hunger which forever clamored to be fed grew stronger and pushed aside the newer, more reasoned voice of the God of War who protected Mikhail. She stripped off her robe and painted her body with with the blood of her enemy, and then she plastered it with dirt and soot until she blended in with Assur's walls.

Dadbeh pulled the firestick from a dead blue-man's hand while Gita grabbed a dropped knife which was far finer than the stone blade seized from the Uruk. To their right, they could hear the battle rage. The enemy had seized the outermost ring, but there were two more gates to get through before they seized the heart of the village. Dadbeh pointed the firestick in a way she had seen Mikhail do many times, but Dadbeh could not get the weapon's magic to work.

"Goatshit," Dadbeh cursed.

"Here's a better knife," Gita said. She peeped her head around the alleyway into the street beyond. "I count maybe threescore enemy? It is not so many as we held off at the great battle which cost us so many men."

"Come then," Dadbeh said. "Your gift is stealth, while mine is cunning. Perhaps we might smite a few of them from the rear?"

They crept out cautiously into the street, past more bodies of the dead, until they reached the place where the outermost ring provided an opportunity to ascend into the second ring. Pig-men, blue-men, and lizard demons all fired pulse rifles at the Assurians who shot arrows and hurled spears at them from above.

And every single one of those enemies had their backs turned to them...

Dadbeh's mismatched eyes turned almost murderous as he gazed upon the creatures that had taken Shahla's body. Although he was a slender man, lack of bravery had never been one of his faults. He crept up behind a blue man who had swaggered to the rear of the line, an Assurian arrow sticking out of his shoulder, and stabbed the creature straight through the heart. The sound of firesticks and the screams of men on both sides of the battle drowned out the blue man's death cry.

Gita crept up closer to her enemy, welcoming that dark gift, the one which hungered for the dead. At the back of the enemy line, one of the lizard-men kneeled and paused to shove one of the little square boxes they all wore strapped across their chests into his firestick. Gita crept closer, determined to learn the weapon's secrets.

'I'm invisible, I'm invisible, I'm invisible,' she chanted to herself.

She waited until she saw how the little cartridge fit into the firestick, and then reached from behind to muffle his scream as she shoved her knife deep into the lizard demon's jugular, grabbing both the pulse rifle, and the cartridge, as he fell.

"Help me drag these bodies out of sight," Gita said. "We must gather these small, square objects the dead carry on the belt across their chests and hips, and any other object we find that we might not understand, but Mikhail will."

Dadbeh stared up at the sky. "Where is he?"

"He'll be here," Gita said. She clenched her knife in her fist, and began creeping forward to slit the next enemy throat.
She could sense Mikhail was about to drop out of the sky. The last thing she wanted, after all she’d done to save his life, was to watch him get shot in the back by enormous pigs.

~ * ~ * ~

February: 3,389 BC

Earth: Village of Assur

Pareesa

Pareesa took aim at the wooden implements which made up the second barricade. The carts, broken fence pegs torn out of the goat pens, tables and chairs and reed-woven sleeping pallets, had all caught fire, and it was the fire itself now, not the fragile barricade, which kept the lizard demons apart from the ordinary villagers who had lined up to fight them. Already the fire had begun to grow thin and die. Any moment now, the lizard demons would break through and overrun the villagers poised with spears and atlatls. Her Mama and her Papa looked so small and frail, mere human bodies, built of flesh and blood, so easily injured or killed.

She glanced up at the sky, wishing fervently that Mikhail was here.

"Is he still alive?" Pareesa spoke into the air. "Or has he journeyed into the Hall of Heroes?"

The whisper of the wind reminded her of the way her Mama tussled her hair when she told her not to bother her. There was reassurance in that answer, a resounding sensation of,
'yes, now please go away because I am busy
.' 

Pareesa prayed the lizard demons would expend the last of their magic so when they met the Assurians, they would be forced to fight hand to hand instead of spear to firestick. Several small, black balls came flying over the barricade and landed at the foot on their side. The balls exploded. Bits of flaming wood and splinters shot into the air.