Sword of the Gods: Agents of Ki (Sword of the Gods Saga) (126 page)

He stretched his wings to test them for other damage and was relieved when the only pain he felt was exhaustion and fatigue. It felt as though somebody had taken a steel support rod and beaten every inch of his body, but other than a few scratches he was unharmed. Unharmed, that is, except for his ego. This was the fourth time he had failed to capture a ship!

He scanned the horizon, trying to get his bearings. The landscape was sparse, but the scent of water blew from his east, not his west, so at some point while chasing the Sata'anic scout ship he must have crossed over the Hiddekel River and ended up on the other side.

He stretched his wings to get airborne, but his lingering muscle atrophication paired with exhaustion from last night's failed mission left him unable to get off the ground. Adrenaline had enabled him to make up for the loss of aerodynamics caused by the hole in his long, primary feathers, but not today. Today, he was just a creature of the earth.

Triangulating his position by the known compass points of the rising sun, Mikhail began the long trudge back to Assur.

~ * ~ * ~

February: 3,389 BC

Earth: Sata'an Forward Operating Base

Jamin

General Hudhafah was a burly lizard, over five cubits tall, with broad shoulders and the deep chest of a bull. Every single
manû
of that lizard towered over Jamin now, his gold-green eyes emerald with fury as the general chewed him out for last night's debacle.

"You were supposed to bring back tribute," Hudhafah snarled. "
Just
tribute! Not continue your feud with the rogue Angelic!"

"You told me put an end to his trouble," Jamin said.

Hudhafah grunted a disgusted snort.

"I told you to
kill
the man! Not to toy with him!"

"Well if you gave me the proper
weapons
to do it," Jamin said, "instead of expecting your men to play with our crude, native weapons, he'd be
dead
by now instead of making our lives miserable. Wouldn't he?"

General Hudhafah's claws extended, not used to this type of backtalk from his men.

"Then why didn't you hit your own village of origin
first
,"
Hudhafah growled. "When there was still enough power to fire the pulse cannon?"

Jamin's cheek twitched. Yes. Why
had
he gone after Nineveh first?

"At the time, our allies had told us the Angelic was dead," Jamin said. "Assur is the
second
most powerful Ubaid village in the grain-growing region. Not the first one. You told me to bring the entire tribe into compliance with Sata'anic rule. Nineveh is, and always has been, the key to all trade in the region."

A dangerous growl rumbled in Hudhafah's chest, but the fierce lizard general knew he was right. They had discussed this plan before Jamin had blasted down Nineveh's walls, and until last night, the general had been pleased with how readily the subsequent villages had all capitulated despite the fact the Angelic was still alive.

"We lost six good men," Hudhafah said. "Including our doctor. The other men were only skull-crackers. But Peyman … he was the one man on this base we couldn't afford to lose."

Only
skull-crackers? Jamin's black eye's flashed with anger. Private Katlego had been seriously injured and Specialist Iyad was missing and presumed dead. His friends always joked that they were insignificant cogs in Shay'tan's army, but to hear his friends' sacrifices spoken of so dismissively caused his hackles to rise.

"Taking Peyman along wasn't
my
idea," Jamin said. He pointed at Lieutenant Kasib, who stood with his tail tucked up tightly along his right side as he tapped away at his flatscreen. "Kasib said we were being too brutal; that along with the stick of Sata'anic law, we needed to add the temptation of good things to come."

"Me?" Kasib chimed in. "You told me your own healer was trained in that village! Doctor Peyman wished to make contact with them and teach them how to immunize their children."

"If it had been up to
me,
" Jamin said,
"
the good doctor would have stayed in his house of healing. Not wasted precious healer's supplies. Even
we
know enough not to drag our healers into battle!"

The small, slender lizard stepped forward, his tail bobbing back and forth emphatically.

"Vaccines are the only medical supply we
aren't
running out of because Doctor Peyman hasn't been allowed to do his job," Kasib said. "We didn't anticipate he'd run out and begin emergency field triage!"

General Hudhafah growled and reminded the
both
of them he wasn't interested in hearing the two of them point fingers at one another.

"The other soldiers testified you had the Angelic in your gunsights," Hudhafah said. "Why didn't you kill him?"

"Maybe if you let me
practice
with this thing instead of carrying it around as a hip-weight," Jamin caressed his pulse rifle in its holster, "perhaps I might have been able to kill him instead of just burning a hole in his wings."

Hudhafah stroked his dewlap between his thumb and forefinger.

"You have been a useful ally, little chieftain," Hudhafah said, "but I think your hatred of this Angelic has clouded your thinking. Your game of cat and mouse has to end."

Jamin suppressed the urge to kick something, anything, scream, punch a desk, and knock over the too-tall pile of folders on General Hudhafah's desk. Hudhafah was right. He'd looked Mikhail in the eye and had hesitated to pull the trigger
to taunt him.

"Let me hit the Assurians directly," Jamin said softly. "I'll level the walls and strip them of what they need to survive unless they submit and earn it back, just like I did with Nineveh. We've undermined the Angelic enough that it should be the last straw."

Hudhafah grimaced, and then pointed at Kasib who watched the exchange with his usual hyper-vigilant anxiousness.

"The fuel we use to run our shuttles is critically low," Hudhafah said. "Our resupply armada is months overdue, and our network of smugglers had to be disbanded due to security breaches. That's why we didn't kill Lucifer when he showed up here with Ba'al Zebub. We thought he might know why it's been delayed."

Jamin remembered Marwan's words, his hoped-to-be father-in-law who was beginning to look more and more like just another daydream.

'Make yourself indispensable to the lizard people, and perhaps one day they will repay you…'

"What do you need me to do to help?" Jamin asked.

Kasib looked relieved. Hudhafah, on the other hand? He looked like he always did. A very busy lizard with far too many responsibilities and not enough time or resources to get it all done.

"The same thing you
have
been doing," Hudhafah said. "Teach our men to live off the land without irreparably harming our ability to ally with the local population and bring them under Sata'anic rule."

"What if your armada never arrives?" Jamin asked.

General Hudhafah gave Kasib a worried look.

"Let's just hope it does."

Jamin gave the appropriate salutes, and then moved out into the larger base, this place that was home even though it didn't
feel
like home. He kicked a pebble out of the way. Should he go visit Private Katlego in the house of healing, where he was recovering from nearly getting his arm chopped off by Mikhail's sword? Or should he go do something else? Organize a hunt. Be a
distraction
?

He stared out across the Akdeniz Sea. He'd grown up next to a river, but never had he seen anything as large as the sea which lapped at the shores upon which the base had been built. He trudged through the downed sky canoes, which couldn't fly even if they wanted to, to the place where the Sata'anic soldiers had buried the only friend he had left.

It was ironic. Back in Assur, Shahla had always been viewed as self-centered and flighty, but to the lizard people, she was the first female they'd ever seen walk right up to an Angelic and stab him in the chest. In their minds, Shahla was a martyr. Her grave had become a pilgrimage for many of the soldiers, which was why they thought
he
visited her every night. He had omitted telling them that, before she had died, Shahla had gone crazy and
he
had been the cause.

He ran his hand along the cold, grey stone. Today there were fresh gifts of woven grasses, the seed of a mango carried here from far-off lands, a stag's horn, and two different feet from different rabbits, placed alongside the gift he had made to her of Qishtea's shorn hair.

"Hello, Shahla," Jamin said softly. "I see I haven't been your only visitor today."

The never-ending breeze carried in from the salty ocean had blown in and knocked off the other gifts. He picked them up and weighted them down with rocks so they wouldn't blow off again. What did they pray for, these men who brought gifts for the girlfriend he had spurned? Did they pray for a safe return home? Bravery in battle? An honorable death, as they viewed her death to have been? Or did they pray for more mundane things? For increased rations and success during a hunt? Was this how the legends of She-who-is had begun?

He plopped down on the rocky soil and pressed his back against the stone, staring at the tombs of the five lizard men who had failed to protect her. Their graves, too, had picked up small trinkets from the men they had served with, but not as many as Shahla, who the longer he was stationed here had begun to acquire the reputation of a goddess. He was partially at fault for that perception. He couldn't bear to tell them how very flawed she had been, for to do so would be to admit
he
was flawed as well. In his own mind the stories had begun to acquire the ring of truth, and he repeated them often, wanting to believe them even though he knew they were false.

"I had him," Jamin confessed into the air. "I had him in my sights, and instead of pulling the trigger, I decided I wanted to taunt him."

He picked up a pebble and threw it down the hill, listening to the soft clink against the backdrop of the ever-present bustle of activity of the base.

"The funny thing is that when I looked into his eyes," Jamin said. "I realized I had been so busy trying to carve out
his
heart for taking Ninsianna, that I had failed to notice that I had gone and carved out my
own
heart instead."

He picked up a small, woven wreath of grass that one of the Sata'an soldiers had left, he had no idea which one, and smoothed it out. It was, he suspected, a fertility symbol; a soldier's prayer to receive a wife as very few men on this base had yet been deemed heroic enough to receive. Here he'd had a baby on the way, maybe it hadn't been
his,
but it
could
have been his, and to these men, that female would have been precious because she was fertile. Why had he been so stupid and not just married Shahla like Dadbeh had been willing to do? Maybe that's why he felt so protective now of Aturdokht and her unwanted baby girl?

"She told me she will never love me the way she loved her first husband," Jamin said. He took aim and threw another pebble towards a tiny, dead flower clinging to a bush. "She loved her husband dearly, and though she will marry me because she has no other choice, she will never love me the way that she loved her husband."

He caressed the small, grass wreath, woven carefully by a soldier with far too much down-time.

"At least she was honest with me," Jamin mumbled. "Not like Ninsianna, who led me on because I was the best option she had until a man fell from the heavens and gave her a better one."

He placed the wreath down gently back upon the tombstone. He did not wish to contaminate whatever magic the person had woven into it with his own, accursed fate.

"I guess that should make you happy," Jamin said. "That me, the most eligible man in the village, can't find somebody to love me because I treated
you
so wrong?"