Sword of the Gods: Agents of Ki (Sword of the Gods Saga) (70 page)

With a high-pitched shriek, the figure rose, tall, slender, and clearly visible in the flickering yellow light of the tallow lantern. It pulled another arrow out of its quiver and strung its bow as it spoke to him in a clicking, alien language.

"You!" he hissed at Pareesa.

"
Anata
," Pareesa clicked. Her eyes glowed blue against the darkness.

Jamin fired at her with his pulse rifle.

Pareesa let her arrow fly.

Jamin dove to one side and fired his gun at her again. The arrow missed his heart, but slammed into his bicep.

"Aiyah!" a high-pitched cry wafted up from the sitting room below.

"Argh!" Jamin shrieked in pain, also wounded.

The impact of the arrow knocked him backwards, into the wall, and left him pinned there like a goose which had just had its throat slit and been hung up to bleed out.

Beneath him, he saw Pareesa's shadow struggle to its feet, her exact location distorted by the three-way shadow cast by the three different tallow lanterns. One of the shadows showed a hand reaching back into a quiver. Which shadow was real?

With a pulse rifle it didn't matter. Jamin fired once, twice, three times, aiming at each of the shadows until all three of the shadows fell.

Small fires from the pulse rifle lit up the strewn-off stuffing from the cushions he had earlier disemboweled. In a dry climate, fire was a constant worry, especially when fed with cushions filled with goat hair. The fire ignited and quickly spread to the tapestries and curtains. He needed to get out of here. Fast. Or he'd be cooked alive.

He pulled at the arrow, embedded firmly into the wall. Goat shit! How had Pareesa bested him with a primitive weapon? For the first time he understood the lizard people's frustration. He tore off the fletching and then, with a cry of pain, threw himself forward, away from the wall onto the floor, leaving the arrow behind
still
embedded in the wall.

'Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,'
he fought to remain conscious. The fire leaped higher in the floor beneath him, licking up the walls and igniting the ceiling-joists which were the floor supports for the bedrooms above. Once Ubaid houses caught fire, the mud-clay bricks acted like an oven, concentrating the fire inward at whoever was trapped inside.

Smoke billowed up the stairwell, burning his eyes and causing him to choke. Wafting up with it was the scent of cooking meat. Pareesa, it seemed, had met her demise at the end of his pulse rifle.

He hung onto the top of the stair and forced himself to stand, pulling his trench coat up to cover his face. Blood dripped down his bicep, torn open from the arrow, but it was a clear-through shot, something which would heal. The house spun and threatened to topple him down the stairs, but he managed to remain conscious. He needed to get out of here. Now. Or he would die in this fire right along with his father.

His father!

He glanced back at his bedroom where his father lay unconscious. He'd been sent here to
kill
him, but now?

That part of him which was angry warred with the part of him which had always yearned for his father's respect. He had a mission to complete. He should kill him. No! Maybe if he rescued his father, this time the man would listen to him?

He could feel the outline of the secret-box pressing into his thigh, the one his father had convinced him was all made up in his head. He had come to his father once before, warning him that Mikhail's own people were purchasing
their
people from the lizard demons, and his father had cast him out and elevated Mikhail instead. What would he tell him now? That the lizard demons were decent people after all? Or that the so-called Evil One was … well … what could he say? How could he find the man so compelling and yet loathe everything that Lucifer stood for?

A long, mournful howl from directly beneath him in the kitchen made the decision
for
him. His father had already
had
several chances to believe him, and at every turn, his father had chosen to believe a stranger. He would give his father the
same
chance his father had given
him
when he'd turned him out into the desert. Let his father get
himself
out of the house … or perish … by his own efforts!

With grim determination, he moved down the stairs and searched for signs of Pareesa to make sure she was dead. The sitting room was fully engulfed in flames, but he was certain he had hit her with the pulse rifle at least once. On the wall, the fire licked upwards towards tiny woven carpet, one of the last remnants that once upon a time he'd had a mother. No.
Not
the only remnant. That carpet had been woven for his sister, but the secret box? The secret box was
his.

Coughing to dispel the smoke from his lungs, he ran into the kitchen, picked up the terrified housekeeper, and dumped her out in the street like the contents of a chamber pot. Without a backwards glance, Jamin made his way back down the streets, buried his knife into the throat of the lone un-sick sentry when he stepped up to the gate, and walked right out the front gate of Assur.

Behind him the sky glowed red as the Chief's house burned to the ground.

~ * ~ * ~

December, 3,390 BC

Earth: Village of Assur

Pareesa

Pareesa's feet made a disgusting
splurching
sound as she crept along the stream bed, doubled over to remain below the sight-line of the Uruk raiders. Ebad would have called this perfect potter's clay, but if she had to fish her pampooties out of the mud one more time, she swore she would scream. Why, oh why, hadn't she been blessed with the ability to creep up behind the Uruk and slit their throats the way that Mikhail could?

As she ran, she remembered a conversation they had once had about Mikhail's ability to become one with the darkness
.

'Mikhail? When will you teach me to smite our enemies from the rear?'

'You're too young to learn such things,' Mikhail had said.

'Did I not just help defend the village against overwhelming numbers?

'You are too short to creep up behind a man and surprise him,' Mikhail had said. He'd stared down at her, impossibly tall.

'I am not! I'm even taller than Ninsianna is now.'

From the rustle of Mikhail's feathers, she'd known he was laughing at her even though he wore his usual unreadable expression. He craned his neck downwards until his unearthly blue eyes were level with hers.

'And how will you -reach- their throat to slit it from the rear, Little Fairy? Will you ask them nicely to please bend down so you can kill them? Or would you rather jump up and down like an eager little dog?'

Old irritation blended with sadness at the fact Mikhail might die whether or not she beat the assassins back to the village. What would she do without him, this man who had always judged her by what she could
do
and
not by her gender or her age?

The receding daylight made her footing treacherous as she scrambled down the precipitous jumble of muddy boulders where the stream cascaded down into the Hiddekel River. She leaped from boulder to boulder until her foot slipped, causing her to land on her backside.

"Curse you, Jamin!" she cried out. If only she'd
really
shot him the day he'd tried to strike her and not merely gifted him an arrow through the hand!

Panting from exertion, she jogged up the path to the north gate.

Nighttime had fallen like a shroud around the village, hiding her approach from prying Uruk eyes. As she'd feared, it was completely dark, with no sign of the sentry fires, but at least the gate was closed. Or was that a bad thing? Darn! How was she supposed to get inside?

"Hello?" Pareesa scratched quietly on the coarse, solid boards. "Is there anybody on watch tonight?"

There was no answer.

She knocked louder, but nobody came to open the gate. She ran her fingers along the exterior to find a handhold, but the wood had been scraped smooth. How could she warn people if she couldn't get inside?

Three arrows jutted out of her quiver, their fletching reassuringly soft against her inquiring fingers. She did not possess wings to
fly
over the gate as Mikhail would have done, but perhaps she could shoot an arrow carrying a length of rope? Yes. That would work. But where could she find rope?
Length of rope. Length of rope.
Aha! She knew where there was rope, but it would entail hiking back down the hill.

Grumbling at her own idiocy, hiked past the narrow beach to high ground where was planted a grove of date palms. Beyond that was a pasture and several milking platforms, each one containing a small length of rope so the shepherds could tie up their goats for milking. She gathered as many as she could and tied them together into a single, bumpy length.

Muttering expletives the entire hike back up the hill, she tied the rope to an arrow and aimed it upright at a sharp angle. Drawing the bowstring back to her cheek, she let out a silent prayer as the arrow ascended, and then cursed as it fell short and nearly clobbered her over the head.

"A little help would be appreciated, you know?" Pareesa shook her fist into the air.

The old God of War did not answer her. The other villagers thought she possessed the blessing of the gods, but contrary to popular belief, the gods did not hover over mortals like anxious grandmothers, waiting to answer their every prayer. If anything, he seemed determined to make her figure out as much as possible for herself.

On her third try she sent a shot soaring over the gate. She jiggled the rope it until it lodged between two boards. Praying the rope fragments didn't untie, she hauled herself up, hoping she had knotted the pieces tightly enough. A fall from this height might not kill her, but it would most certainly break whichever part of her anatomy she landed upon. Knowing
her
luck, it would be her posterior. She could almost picture the missing Dadbeh cracking jokes about her new warrior nickname. Instead of
çok puan mızrak
, she would be renamed
Pareesa of the Two Butt-Cracks.

Grunting and winded, she heaved herself up to the top of the gate, nearly falling down the other side as she balanced precariously at the top.

"Who goes there?" a warbled voice called.

P
areesa froze. Had the Uruk seen her climbing over the gate?

"I say, you better drop right back down on the outside or I'll shoot you where you stand."

Ohthankthegods! Not an Uruk!

"It's just me. Pareesa."

"Pareesa? What you doing up there, girl?"

"Coming to warn you."

"Why didn't you just knock on the gate?"

"I did. Nobody answered."

"Well, then, get down here, girl. And be careful. The Chief will have my hide if he loses you, too."

Pareesa pulled the rope over and slid down the opposite side. Before her stood Behnam, one of Mikhail's earliest supporters, his bow in hand. He might be partially deaf, but he wasn't blind and could shoot nearly as well as she could. The spry old man gave her a semi-toothless grin.

"I did'na hear you knock, child."

"Who's supposed
to be on guard?"

"Tirdard took sick," Behnam said. "As has most of the village. An evil spirit has crept into our midst."

"It's poison," Pareesa said. She gestured in the direction of the lower well. "The Uruk gave Laum sanctuary in exchange for pouring something down into the wells. It's supposed to induce vomiting and delusions."

"I suspected something was amiss when everybody got sick at once," Behnam said. He glanced down at his own water-skin. "I've been drinking from that most of the day, but I haven't gotten sick."

"Laum poisoned the well mid-day," Pareesa said. "Have you drawn any water since then?"

"Abisimti and I don't eat as much as we used to," Behnam shrugged. "It's too much work when you get to be our age. I guess that's why we were spared."