Sword of the Gods: Agents of Ki (Sword of the Gods Saga) (159 page)

Only after they had gotten Jamin settled into a recovery room, with Lucifer at his side holding his hand, did he finally allow them to attend to the arrows and atlatl darts which had lodged into his wings.

"Sir?" Doctor Halpas said. "He is out of danger. Let us now attend to
you?
"

“I want the human to do it,” Lucifer said. His faced hardened into an authoritative demeanor. “Give her what she needs to do the job, and then leave us. But station Eligor outside the door.”

"Would you like us to give you a sedative?"

"No."

“Yes, Sir,” Doctor Halpas said.

They lay out some supplies, and then he and the two nurses hustled out of the room. Ninsianna trembled, realizing she had just been left alone with a rapist. Lucifer gestured for her to pull up a stool.

"Please, sit," Lucifer said. "You must be weary, to have spent so long upon your feet."

Ninsianna sat as far away from him as she could.

"Do not fear me," Lucifer said softly. "For it appears I have not been myself."

Ninsianna used her goddess-kissed vision to examine his spirit light. Whatever She-who-is had done to him, no sign of his earlier darkness remained.

"So I can see," Ninsianna said.

"And yet you still fear me?"

"Wouldn't you?"

Lucifer signed, and ran his fingers through his white-blond hair.

"Yes. Paranoia is a survival trait. Especially when that fear is warranted."

"Do you still have headaches?" Ninsianna asked.

"Yes," Lucifer said. "Why do you ask? Does the darkness still surround me?"

Ninsianna frowned and then squinted at the strange signals his spirit light revealed. The Evil One no longer pressed in upon him, but his spirit light reminded her of a wall into which had been punched many windows and doors.

"You still have much healing to perform," Ninsianna said. "My intuition warns me you are not yet free from Moloch's influence."

"I would never allow him to take possession of me again," Lucifer said.

Ninsianna stared at the peculiar regularity of the breaches in Lucifer's spirit light. It reminded her of the woven fence of a goat pen.

"I do not think this weakness is by choice," Ninsianna said. She examined the pattern of weaknesses. "Something was done to you, but I think it was something which was done at the level of your physical body. She-who-is whispers it is time to get your head examined by Doctor Halpas."

Lucifer gave her a wry grin.

"Eligor has told me thus every single morning since he began trying to convince me not to take Zepar's headache medicine."

Ninsianna got the little medical bag she had hobbled together and began plucking the bloody, white feathers out from the flesh into which the projectiles had become embedded. They were beautiful wings, these snow white wings which had inhabited her nightmares for the better part of a year. The flesh beneath them was pink and warm, so vastly different from the dark, hot flesh that lay beneath her husband's feathers, and she understood, given her
own
husband's dislike of having his wings touched by anyone but
her,
that this was a vulnerable spot, a humbling, it was Lucifer's way of signaling that he trusted her. She plucked the fletching from the arrows so she could pull the darts through. Lucifer winced as she yanked them out one by one, but he endured it all with a stoic grimness. At last she reached the most worrisome injury, an atlatl dart that had lodged in the ulna bone of his right wing.

“This is going to hurt,” she said. “Would you like me to ask Doctor Halpas to come back for this one? He will do a better job than me.”

“No,” Lucifer said. “Just dig it out. Consider it a small down payment for the wrongs I have committed against your people.”

His snowy white feathers ran pink with blood as Ninsianna silently finished digging out the dart. She then bandaged him back up, but never once did he let go of Jamin's hand.

“Was that really my mother?” Lucifer finally asked.

“I don’t know who that was,” Ninsianna said. “Nothing about her energy as she spoke led me to believe she was not who she said she was. The one who held you afterwards, though? That was She-who-is.”

Jamin began to rise towards consciousness and murmur Lucifer's name.

“I will leave you two alone,” Ninsianna said. She gathered her things and prepared to go. She remembered her husband's anguished plea the night she'd been almost captured, that he could not
feel
her in his heart.

“You must tell him how you feel about him," Ninsianna said. "He needs to hear it. And he needs to
feel
it."

“Ninsianna,” Lucifer said. “Thank you.”

“I didn’t do it for you,” Ninsianna said. “I did it because She-who-is asked me to do it.”

“I know,” Lucifer replied. “But thank you, anyways.”

Ninsianna left them there, alone.

~ * ~ * ~

February: 3,389 BC

Earth: Village of Assur

Pareesa

Pareesa shrieked as Mikhail catapulted her straight up into the air, and then yelped a second time as they landed suddenly on the roof. He immediately crouched down, his enormous, dark wings pressed flat against the roof.

"Get down," he yanked her to a squatting position.

For nearly a year Pareesa had dreamed of what it would be like if the drop-dead gorgeous Angelic picked her up in his muscular arms and carried her up into the sky with his dark, magnificent wings, and now that he had done it, she felt like a satchel of vegetables which had just been dumped onto the floor.

"Aren't you going to drop me off in the central square?" Pareesa pursed her lips in an exaggerated pout which always seemed to get her little sister Zakiti anything she wanted.

Mikhail's brilliant blue eyes looked not at
her
, but off to the south-east, in the direction where the lizard demons had first come. He pointed at a dual column of clear, white smoke which drifted upwards from just over the hill, one column much thicker than the other.

"We've got trouble," he said. "Our only advantage is the enemy doesn't know I'm still alive."

"What about those?" Pareesa asked. She pointed at the satchel full of pulse rifles which she was eager to wield against the enemy.

Mikhail pointed to the archers positioned on different roofs.

"Give them to the snipers positioned there … there … and there," Mikhail said. "Show them how to use them, but do not fire them until the lizards get through the barricade. Once they do, shoot into their backs. It will force them to fight on two separate fronts."

"Shouldn't we stop them
before
they get through?" Pareesa asked.

Mikhail looked to the south again, his expression worried.

"There is no stopping them from getting through that barricade," Mikhail said. "They still have too much firepower. Our only advantage is they don't know we've picked up a few of
these
."

He squeezed her shoulder, about as close as the big Angelic ever came to giving her a hug. And then, without so much as a flap of his wings, he dropped down off the roof and allowed an updraft to carry him back along the rooftops, due north instead of south even though she knew that was the way he was headed.

"So much for my first flight," Pareesa grumbled.

The woven-reed mats were soft beneath her weight as she scurried from roof to roof to show to distribute the firesticks. She warned them they only had a few shots, and then the magic would expire. Around two-thirds of the way around the central square she found a still-intact downward ladder. Her B-Team cheered as she descended down the cedar log.

The Chief strode forward and embraced her.

"We were worried you didn't make it," Chief Kiyan said. His dark eyes were crinkled with tension, and although his arm had not yet healed, he'd taken it out of its sling.

"Ebad made it as well," Pareesa said. "Has there been any word about my mother?"

"No word," the Chief said. "But we sent Homa and Gisou to go help Needa attend the wounded. If she's injured, she will get the best treatment we have."

Pareesa scanned the warriors who'd retreated into this final fallback position. They were trapped here, but the temple was the most defensible place within the village. Already the warriors had set up an impromptu fifth barricade to ring the temple. Either they would all die here, or the lizards would run out of magic and give them a chance to fight them hand-to-hand.

"Mikhail flew south to go after that final sky canoe," Pareesa said. "He thinks it's about to come back and attack us again."

"We've done everything we can to prepare," Chief Kiyan said. "Come and eat. At least we have plenty of food."

Pareesa followed him into the temple, where there was hot, cooked porridge and water drawn from the central well. Never had a simple bowl of boiled faro blended with onions and kale ever tasted so good! She stuffed her cheeks like a greedy squirrel until shouts from the rooftops alerted her their rest was at an end.

"The sky canoe has taken to the air!" the lookouts shouted.

Pareesa ran out to join the other warriors who took up positions behind the barricades, along the rooftops, and tucked into doorways and other defensible positions around the square. Their expressions grew fearful as the air filled with a roar that sounded like a sandstorm blended with the hooves of stampeding aurochs and the rumble of a thunderstorm, all combined as one. Pareesa looked to the south. A squat, oblong monster slid through the air like a turtle swimming on the river.

The enemy sky canoe did not fly fast or high, nor did it do any of the things they expected of a creature of the air. It reminded her of a cloud sliding across the sunset, no wings needed to flap or give it height. It was blunt grey, the color of a chipped flint spearhead, and from every aspect of its body sprang beetle-like antennae and arms.

An eerie pall fell upon the village as the sky canoe's shadow preceded it across the rooftops, until at last that shadow reached the central square. Behind the fourth barricade, the lizard-demons began to pound their weapons to mimic the sound of war drums. The air filled with war cries, great beast-like grunts, cries of bloodlust and animalistic cheers.

Siamek touched her arm.

Pareesa jumped.

"Where is Ebad?" Siamek asked her.

Her eyes slid over the tall, swarthy-skinned lieutenant and noted the blood which marred the front of his kilt, the deep gash on his sword arm, and the remnants of a bloody nose. His brown eyes were filled with worry.

"Ebad is somewhere up there," Pareesa said. She pointed at the rooftop. "He has a pulse rifle. I hope they had enough sense to take cover. The sky canoe will shoot them down."

"And Mikhail?"

Pareesa stared to her south. Yes. Where
had
Mikhail gone?

Before she could answer him, lightning shot out of a big arm sticking out of the front of the sky canoe. A row of rooftops the next ring out exploded skywards in a dust devil of fire and debris, their archers, dead. Killed by the enemy sky canoe.

The warriors shrieked.

The shouts of the lizard-demons grew so loud that Pareesa knew the fourth barricade was about to fall. She dropped behind the final barricade, little more than a few desperate implements dragged out of the temple and the few houses privileged to ring the central square. Siamek ducked down beside her and readied his bow. He had three arrows left in his quiver. Just three. But beside him he had his spear.

The snipers shouted a warning from the roof.

"The lizard demons are backing away from the barricade!"

"Take cover!" the Chief shouted. With the sky canoe's return, Assurian domination of the high ground had just evaporated.

"Is it too much to wish that they'll get back into their sky canoe and leave?" Pareesa gave Siamek a tepid grin.