Sword of the Gods: Agents of Ki (Sword of the Gods Saga) (65 page)

Pareesa stifled the overwhelming urge to leap up and cut out Laum's traitorous heart. Like daughter, like father!

"It is not our wish to
kill
your people," the Uruk leader said. "Merely to incapacitate them. Only the sick and very weak will die."

"You promised me you would kill that bastard, Chief Kiyan!" Laum snarled. "And that little bitch who put an arrow in my daughter's heart!"

Laum looked her way. Goat dung! The Uruk would rape her and sell her as a slave, but Laum would certainly kill her! The Uruk leader clapped Laum in the back in a friendly, familiar gesture, distracting him from scrutinizing the muddy 'rock' which peeked out of the stream.

"We wish for you to lead a long, prosperous life, my friend, bringing wealth to our village through your extensive network of trade," the Uruk leader laughed. "The hellebore extract will make them too weak to fight while we rid your village of those who support the winged demon. Without a leader, your village will be easy to annex."

"They killed my daughter," Laum hissed. "And the entire village has taken to decorating the front of my house with the contents of their chamber pots. For all I care, every one of them can die!"

"Ahh, my friend," the Uruk leader said. "Yes, I understand your anger at the murder of your daughter. But if we kill the women and children, the entire Ubaid tribe will unite against
our
tribe to hunt you down."

The Uruk leader gestured towards the tiny caravan now headed towards the Uruk villages. "Your mistress has just birthed you a
new
daughter to replace the one which you lost. Don't ask us to take action which might necessitate our turning you out into the desert. We can protect you against one village, but not the entire Ubaid tribe."

Laum let out a long, warbling sigh which sounded like a man in pain.

"I should have protected her more from my sharp-tongued wife," Laum said. "Spent more time at home, overseeing my daughter's chastity, and less time listening to my wife's schemes to marry her off to a Chief's son."

"You have a second chance, my friend," the Uruk leader said. "If you wish, I can ensure your mistress will not have to settle for being a concubine. Would that please you?"

Laum took a long time to answer.

"Yes," he said. "But kill her quickly. No torture. At one time…" His voice grew softer. "At one time, I used to find her pleasing."

"Consider it done," the Uruk leader said. "I will send my most skilled assassin to kill her with a single blow."

The two moved away from where Pareesa hid in the stream, her body pressed into a crevasse. Laum awkwardly mounted a third camel and, with a waved greeting to the Uruk, thwacked it in the haunches with a strap. With a
g-g-g
of protest, the camel curled back its lips, and then ambled at a trot after the retreating forms of Laum's family.

The Uruk leader called out to his men to gather around. One of their number sketched symbols into the soil, a map, no doubt, of which houses they wished to hit. Pareesa stared at the figure who'd remained at the back of the pack, his head covered with a colorful Kemet traveling-robe. The other Uruk took off the unwieldy cloaks to expose their Uruk kilts and shawls, but the map-man and another man who was with him remained shielded from her view.

The sun began to descend towards the horizon. Pareesa wished fervently there was some way to warn her village, but with the desert flat for leagues, the moment she broke cover these men would spot her. She must wait until nightfall to escape. At last Laum and his party grew small enough in the distance that the map-man and his accomplice felt safe to take off their disguise.

Pareesa stared at the handsome, dark-haired man who could have passed for an Angelic if not for the fact he lacked a pair of wings. He wore the same khaki-beige
shirt
and
pants
with pockets that Mikhail wore, and the same sturdy foot-coverings which were, themselves a weapon. Even with a short-cropped hair and clean-scraped face, Pareesa would recognize the traitor anywhere.

Jamin…

~ * ~ * ~

December, 3,390 BC

Earth: Village of Assur

Gita

Tears streamed down Gita's cheeks as she watched Needa use the flat edge of her obsidian blade to scrape the maggots out of Mikhail's chest wound. She had been both fascinated, and disgusted, when her aunt had carefully bathed the tiny larvae in a bath of cold beer and then placed them into Mikhail's wound, explaining the maggots would eat the dead, blackened tissue which made his chest smell like a rotting corpse and leave behind only the pink, uninfected flesh; but each time Needa's little
'friends'
began to eat, they all instantly died!

Needa placed the tiny, white carcasses into a bowl.

"I have no choice but to scrape this tissue out by hand," Needa said. "If we leave it, the dead shall infect the living."

Gita nodded, her eyes red-rimmed from crying.

Needa sawed at Mikhail's chest as though she sliced tiny pieces of meat off of a roasted goat. Gita suppressed the urge to retch, unlike Firouz who'd run from the room the moment Needa had uncovered the maggots. Although unconscious, Mikhail gripped Gita's hand even tighter, his wings trembling with each painful dig of the knife.

"You're hurting him," Gita wept.

"I know," Needa's voice was hoarse from crying. "But we must cut out the death spirits so they don't infect him further."

Gita held her shawl-dress up to her nose to filter out the stench. The only assurance they had Mikhail was still alive was the rise and fall of his chest and his plaintive whisper each time she tried to let go of his hand.

Needa scraped out the last hideous, black chunk of flesh. With a soft, sad sigh, Mikhail relaxed and drifted deeper into his never-ending sleep, never once releasing his grip on Gita's hand. Needa wiped at her eyes.

"I will let
you
bandage this back up," Needa said. With a sob, she rushed downstairs, suppressing her ululating wail until she got into the storeroom. The maggots had been Needa's last, great hope. Mikhail was dying, and nothing she tried would keep her daughter's husband alive.

Gita dipped a clean linen bandage into the water Needa had boiled and finished dabbing out the puss, mindful that her tears did not add evil spirits to his wound. It had grown to a dinner-plate sized crater, and where the original knife wound had been, it cut so deeply she could see part of his rib. She took the fresh myrrh-soaked bandages and began to wrap them around his chest.

Mikhail shivered.

"I have no more blankets to give you,
mo ghrá
," Gita said gently. "I have given you everything I have."

She pressed her lips to each of his eyelids, his eyes twitching beneath his lashes as he dreamed of things he whispered in his sleep. Three days ago she'd added Ninsianna's magnificent red cape to the stack, and this morning she'd even added her own patched brown cape, leaving her shivering in the winter chill. The pile obscured all but his face, pale and skeletal in the light of the dying sun. She touched his cheekbones and straight nose which were the only hint that once upon a time he'd been a beautiful creature of the heavens. She wiped a tear from her own cheek, equally thin and pale. It didn't matter if Mikhail was beautiful. All she wanted was for him to wake up and live.

She resumed the grief-stricken song which seemed to bring him comfort. She had long ago stopped singing prayers for the goddess to intervene. The goddess, she sensed, had stopped caring the moment she had realized Mikhail could not bring back
HER
Chosen One. It was
her own
life energy she wove into the song now, not the blessing of the goddess, for how could she give something which she had never first possessed?

"Breathe,
mo ghrá,
" Gita sang. "All you have to do is breathe."

Firouz shoved aside the curtain and broke into a fit of coughing as his olfactory senses adjusted to the stench. Gita sang, ignoring Firouz's resentful glare. He set two cups of water and a small platter of food on the table next to Mikhail's bed. Gita pressed her fingers into the water bowl and pressed the droplets against his lips.

"Drink,
mo ghrá,
" Gita coaxed him. "A man can live a long time without food, but without water, your injuries will surely take you."

Mikhail became agitated the more she tried to trickle the water into his mouth. Gita put down his cup and took a sip of her own. She would get the water into him
later,
after Firouz had gone, by taking the water into her own mouth and pressing it to his. It was how she'd kept him alive thus far.

Firouz unstrung his goatskin and tipped the bladder up to his lips. With an exxagerated sigh he drained it, and then gestured towards Gita's plate of un-eaten food. Gita took a sip from her own cup of water, frowning at the slightly bitter taste; and then inhaled a crust of stale bread and slightly burned lentils. She paused her song long enough to meet Firouz's hostile gaze.

"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 joi
n 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."