Sword of the Gods: Agents of Ki (Sword of the Gods Saga) (148 page)

“Click.click.click.whoammmmmmm."
Wake up, friend.

He resisted opening his eyes. As soon as he woke up, the Other One always receded until all he could remember was the night they had sat beneath a tree, singing a song about a future which never came. A lump rose in his throat and made it hard to breathe. He had lost one mate, and now someone had taken the other.

“Grrrrrrr.click.grrrrr.grrrrr.squee.squee.squee!"

Within his dream the black-eyed girl no longer sang a song of love, but the song of a huntress ruthlessly pursuing a kill.
Amhrán had always warned him she must never sing in anger, but he had never understood why until he had felt her death-wound.

"Amhrán!"

Mikhail sputtered as the hands which had kept his head above the water suddenly disappeared. There was nothing like inhaling a lungful of salt water to force someone awake! One of his wings struck a surface beneath his feet. He realized the water was shallow enough for him to stand.

The sun blinded him as he finally opened his eyes. All around him, the water teemed with bodies.

“Eeeeek! Eeksquee.eek!” his saviors cried out with happiness.

The sun was now high in the sky, perhaps mid-morning and not the moonlit sky of when he had flown after the Sata'anic gunship. A dark shape poked out of the water mere inches from his nose.

“Weeek,weeeek,weeek,click.click?”

His savior was neither Merfolk nor Mer-Levi, but a man-sized creature similar to a Leviathan, only smaller, with a grey, brown, and pink-speckled hide. Unlike the somewhat flattened nose of a Leviathan, this creature had an elongated jaw suitable for catching fish. While she did not possess the enlarged cranial bulge that housed the Leviathan's vast intellect, the creature which stared back at him had eyes which were still curious and intelligent.

‘Eh-ek?” the pod matriarch asked.

It was universal inquiry into his state of being.

All around them, other aquatic mammals nudged at his wings and took turns making sure he was cognizant enough to stay above the water, for even Leviathans needed to surface to breathe. Leviathan. Leviathan. It had been a long time since he'd had occasion to speak any Leviathan …
if
that was, as he suspected, a sister-language to what these creatures spoke.

“Click.click.squeeee,” Mikhail said as best he could. If his memory served him properly, it meant,
'I'm okay.
'

The matriarch tilted her nose and regarded him with confusion. She repeated back exactly what he'd said, the way one might a foreigner who had just butchered your language. Self-doubt began to eat at him. Had he said
'I'm okay,'
or something peculiar such as
'I'd like to eat some squid?
'

The creature's dark eyes sparkled with humor. She repeated what he had just said, but with the proper intonation this time. All around her, the other sea creatures stuck their head above the water and chattered like eager children, eager to take turns to see if they could make him understand. He had the distinct feeling the matriarch laughed at him, but it was not a malicious laugh, but rather one of amusement at his poor grasp of their language. At last she barked, and the other leviathan-like creatures grew silent, bobbing in and out of the water as they all watched to see what he would do.

“Rumble.whirrrrrr.squeeee,” the matriarch gestured towards the shore with her long nose.
Land.
These creatures had brought him as close to land as they dared to swim. It was up to
him
now to swim the rest of the way.

“I’m okay, thanks to you, my friend,” Mikhail translated into Leviathan as best he could. He then pointed to himself. "Mikhail," and then pointed to the matriarch. “Nnn.mmm.nnn.mmmm?”

He had to ask the question two more times until the matriarch understood and gave him a name which meant absolutely nothing to him, but as she spoke it, the other leviathans all nodded their heads. One by one, the others did the same.

“[Snort].click.rrrrrr.n.” The matriarch nudged him towards the shore. “Mk.[swallowgrunt].lllllll.”

Mk.[swallowgrunt].lllllll.
The matriarch pronounced his name. She gave him a pleased grin, exposing dozens of small, sharp teeth, an adaptation to catching fish in the wild. It was time for him to save his own tailfeathers.

Mikhail thanked the creatures for rescuing him to the best of his ability. Purebred Leviathans did not fare well on dry land because they lacked the strong upper bodies and long arms of the Merfolk which enabled them to drag themselves back into the water. If they became stranded, they would be easy prey until the tide came back in.

“Thank you,” he said in his best, butchered approximation of the Leviathan language, “Grrrrrr.k.[thrum]." Their language had not changed much, he suspected, because there were only so many sounds which would carry long distance beneath the water.

“Squeee.click.grrrrr,” the matriarch squealed. In a show of what he could only call pure joy, the Levi-like creatures reared up out of the water onto their tails, stayed suspended upon the surface for a moment, and then dove back in, squealing with delight.

Mikhail swam to the shore, dragging his soggy, leaden wet wings behind him as he crawled above the water line and collapsed, too exhausted to move another meter. He rolled over just enough to raise an arm of gratitude to his new friends and shout “goodbye!”

The aquatic mammals dove into the water and were gone
.
Darkness took him and he went once more to the place beneath the tree.

~ * ~ * ~

February: 3,389 BC

Earth: Village of Assur

Pareesa

Pareesa's orders had been clear. Provide just enough resistance so the lizard demons would surge through the narrow alley which comprised Assur's south gate, but not so much that the creatures felt compelled to summon the lightning which could vaporize Assur's entire wall. She handed up what arrows she'd been able to salvage from the rooftop she'd just abandoned before scurrying up to rejoin the other archers.

"Help her pull up the ladder!" Alalah gestured to Kiana and Homa.

The girls crawled over on their hands and knees to help her, their heads kept low to avoid being killed by one of the small blue bolts of lightning. Because the village was built upon a hill, this first-ring rooftop was slightly higher than the ones they'd just abandoned. Behind them the walls of the second ring rose above them nearly a story higher. The rings themselves had been laid out so an enemy could not simply march up the hill, but had to travel sideways before passing through a second alley.

"This thing is heavy," Pareesa grunted as she labored to pull up the knobby tree trunk ladder.

"Keep pulling!" Kiana hissed. "So I can get my hands on the next rung."

A bolt of blue lightning flew past Pareesa's head and blew mud-bricks out of the back-wall of the house built behind them. Homa shrieked. Kiana just barely grabbed the ladder before it fell to the ground.

"Goatshit!!!"

"Stay down!" Alalah shouted at them.

Pareesa pressed her face into the roof-struts and inhaled the scent of moldy reeds.
Sheesh
that had been a close call! She gasped for breath. Her heart pounded so rapidly it was a wonder it didn't burst out of her chest and offer itself up to be an arrow!

"Help me!" Kiana whispered.

Pareesa pushed herself up to her elbows, cautiously peeking over the edge of the roof.
This
time, they kept their heads down as they pulled the ladder up and crawled across the thick, semi-waterproof lattice of slender poles, sticks, river reeds and mud.

The outer entrance to the village had been deliberately built between two houses to force a man or beast to walk no greater than two abreast. It was a long, slender alley, with two featureless mud-brick walls on either side, perhaps 18 cubits long and 14 cubits high. Perched precariously along the crenellations sat a series of large clay pots.

The lizard demon's shouts and hisses grew louder as they amassed just outside the shattered gate. The archers huddled together and strung their arrows, whispering like nervous little ducklings.

"They ready themselves to come through as a group," Homa said. "Just like Mikhail said they would."

"I pray they really
are
almost out of magic!" Gisou said.

"They don't
act
like they're almost out of magic," Homa said.

Both women looked at
her
.

"Mikhail said it makes no sense they have not tried to defeat us directly before," Pareesa said, "unless their magic is just as low as
his.
"

"I wish
I
had a firestick," Yadiditum said. The curvy beauty mimed taking aim with a firestick. "No need to even draw the bow. Just aim the firestick and boom! Let the lightning fly."

"Even
you
could hit the enemy with one of
those
," Gisou teased her. Yadiditum possessed many gifts, but being an excellent markswoman was not
one
of them.

"If they have
those,
" Yadiditum crinkled up her aquiline nose, "I just can't understand why this dragon god doesn't give his warriors more magic instead of making them diddle around with swords?"

"Mikhail says the old dragon is cheap," Pareesa said. "The firestick magic costs a lot of gold, so he expends it as little as he can."

All three women snorted with macabre humor.

"You mean he is just as cheap as the chief?" Homa asked.

"Cheaper!" Pareesa laughed. She glanced back at the amassing soldiers and her humor disappeared. "Well, I guess cheap is relative."

Alalah crept towards them, arm over arm on her elbows like a serpent. As the eldest of this archer squad, technically she was in charge.

"Remember," Alalah said. "The goal is to get them to waste their magic before they break into the second ring. Shoot erratically so they don't detect any pattern to your movements. Get them to fire
at
you, but don't take any chances with your lives.

Pareesa strung an arrow and popped her head up just high enough to take aim at the monsters who prepared to move. The other archers did as she did, preparing to shoot blindly into the alley. If
they
could see the lizard demons well enough to take a direct shot, the lizard demons could see them to kill them with their lightning.

There was a tense moment, and then the enemy rushed forward.

"Shoot!" Pareesa shouted.

All seven women bobbed upwards and let their arrows fly.

The firesticks shot back at them. Yadiditum screamed a horrible, painful cry as one of the shots burned into her shoulder.

"Keep shooting!" Alalah shouted. "We can't let them get through."

Pareesa hit a pig-man in the chest, and then one of the burly blue men. This first wave of enemy seemed to be other demons, all of them hideous and bizarre. Pareesa popped up again, taking her shot as soon as her eye told her where to aim. She crouched down before she could even see whether she'd hit the target. All around her, the other archers did the same, but the
real
line of defense had not yet begun to shoot their arrows.

"Keep them in the alley!" Pareesa shouted.

On the rooftop behind them crouched old-Behnam and his firepot, the eighth archer and best shot in the village, despite his age, after her and Mikhail. As an elder, he'd been charged not just with taking this special shot, but also the secret magic Mikhail had shared only with a few. With a faint whistle, Behnam's first arrow arched upwards, and then arched down again, straight towards one of the jars perched precariously on the edge of the alley wall.

The arrow hit the first jar.

The jar fell over, knocking its contents down into the alleyway below.

"Keep shooting at them!" Pareesa shouted. "We have to distract them from taking shots at Behnam!"