Sword of the Gods: Agents of Ki (Sword of the Gods Saga) (152 page)

“Archers, ready your arrows!” the Chief shouted. "The demons are about to break through!”

Pareesa pulled her bowstring back to her cheek, mindful with her aim as she'd begun to grow low on arrows. The first of the enemies stepped through. Pareesa loosened her fingers half a heartbeat before the Chief gave the order.

“Let them fly!” the Chief shouted.

Pareesa's arrow slammed into a boar-man's chest. All around her, other bowstrings twanged as arrows flew loose from their sinews. Explosions of blue lightning landed all around them as the enemy fired back at them with their firesticks.

*Whoomp*

A big, fat fire-arrow shot past the shattered barricade and slammed into the mud-brick wall of the house next to her. The roof beneath her trembled as though in fear.

Men screamed.

Pareesa watched in horror as the adjacent wall collapsed. The men screamed as they fell into a hole filled with rubble and fire. There was nothing she could do to help them. She tried not to weep as she heard a human death-scream lead to silence.

"Here they come!" somebody shouted.

The enemy flooded through the fiery barricade like a swarm of angry bees.

*Whoomp*

Pareesa slammed face-down on the roof as another big, fat arrow slammed into the wall of the house
she
crouched upon. The wall crumbled. The roof began to collapse inwards. Pareesa clung to it, shrieking, as a blue bolt of lightning landed precariously close to her back.

A strong, brown hand reached down and pulled her up to safety…

"Thanks," Pareesa gasped at Siamek.

Siamek pointed at the villagers who'd rushed forward to chuck their spears.

"Your Mama wouldn't let them shoot you," Siamek said. "It was
she
who first threw her atlatl."

Siamek crept away, leaving her in numb silence to contemplate the magnitude of his words, off to give the next person orders.

Pareesa glanced down, not certain what to do. Her arrows had been lost when she had dangled from the roof. The archers who hadn't been killed scrambled to the nearest adjacent rooftop, but like her, many of them had lost their arrows in the fall. Beneath them, the brave villagers let fly their spears, the people who were supposed to wait until the lizard demon's firesticks ran out of magic.

And she, stupid girl, had lost her arrows to protect them!

The lizard demons moved forward in well-ordered lines, blasting the Assurians with so much lightning that few amongst them could take an accurate shot. Screams of agony assaulted her ears as the villagers beneath them were killed. Unlike the archers, the spearmen had no walls to hide behind except for their own flesh and blood.

Someone shoved an arrow into Pareesa's hand.

"Here. You're a better shot than me."

Pareesa strung her bow. She took aim through tear-blinded eyes, unable to see where she was supposed to shoot. Where was Mama? Papa wouldn't leave her to die, would he? She spied Mama's blue shawl amongst the fallen.

"Lay still, Mama," Pareesa whispered. "Lay still, please, because Mikhail said the lizard demons will not kill a prisoner who surrenders."

Mama did not move. Was it because she was smart, or dead? She had no time to contemplate the question because the enemy resumed their barrage of lightning at the walls where the archers had taken up a new defensive position.

A lizard demon lumbered forward with the fat tube which shot the flaming fire-arrow that exploded. He kneeled, ironically, right next to her mother. Pareesa took aim. With a whispered prayer for true aim, she shot the man, determined to give her Mama a chance to live.

The demon fell, but not before he fired off another big fat arrow. With a
whoomp
sound, the fat fire-arrow went awry and struck a building harmlessly out of their way.

"Pareesa … here!" somebody shouted.

A quiver of arrows landed next to her leg.

She glanced over just in time to see Ebad toss a second quiver of arrows to the young woman who had given -
her-
last remaining arrow, and then he disappeared back down the ladder.

"Thanks," Pareesa shouted.

The arrows were blood-stained, recently used. Ebad must have led crept up behind the enemy and picked up the arrows that had already been used once today.

With grim determination, Pareesa straightened the crumpled fletching and restrung her bow, determined to keep the lizard demons back. All around her, the other archers did the same.

"Shoot them!" Pareesa shouted.

Their shots were much more erratic as the damaged arrows flew with less than pristine precision. The only consolation was that the lizard demons appeared to be much more judicious in their shots. Was it because they now understood where to hit them where it hurt? Or were their firesticks running low on magic as they hoped?

“Retreat!" the Chief shouted from somewhere behind them. A final volley provided cover while one by one the archers climbed down off the roofs, back into the third ring which sat just beneath the central square where stood the temple of She-who-is. As with the last gateway, a barricade had been erected to slow the lizard demon's ascent, but this wall was less formidable for them to shove out of the way. It did, however, provide another chance to funnel the enemy into another narrow alley.

Pareesa lined up on the ground with the other archers behind the third and final barricade. Old Behnam ran forward with a firepot, his arm in a sling, but he wore a grin upon his face like a ghoul who'd just spied a soul to steal.

"We held them off long enough for Immanu to prepare the second potion ready!" Behnam said. "She-who-is has declared an auspicious outcome if
you
take the shot, or so Immanu says."

"Where am I supposed to aim?" Pareesa asked.

Behnam pointed at the barricade.

"See that cloth rag which is tied to the table-leg just off-center at the base?" Behnam said. "Look closely. Do you see that basket?"

Pareesa squinted, and then she saw it.

"I see it."

"Hit that," Behnam said. "Mikhail promised Immanu this potion would surpass even the
napalm.
"

Behnam handed her a fresh bracer of arrows, these ones perfect and straight, their shafts already wrapped with strips of pitch-soaked linen. Behnam placed the firepot on the ground in front of her, and then scurried off, no doubt to bring into the play whatever
other
magic Immanu had learned from Mikhail.

The chants of the lizard demons grew louder, more offensive, the sound of an invading army certain in its own victory. They had beaten them. They had beaten them badly in the second ring. But even without Mikhail here, what he had taught them had enabled them to fend off the attack far longer than they otherwise could.

Pareesa dipped the arrow in the firepot and strung it onto her bow.

The arrow flamed precariously close to the handle of the curious curved bow that Mikhail had had built just for her. Her arm began to tremble from the tension of holding the shot ready, and her own tears blurred her vision of the place she needed to hit.

'Akuma o seifuku suru tame ni, watashi wa anata no tsuyo kasu,'
Pareesa whispered the Cherubim prayer, praying that her aim would not fail her.

The lizard demons began to tear down the slender barricade. She waited until they had almost broken through.

"Now!" Pareesa shouted.

She let fly her arrow and held her breath for the ridiculously long moment as she waited to see if her aim would be true.

With a 'bang' unlike anything she had ever seen before, the barricade blew up, taking with it anyone standing upon it or close to it, not so very differently from the way the sky canoes had taken out Immanu's house. The walls of the houses on either side of the alleyway collapsed, creating a barrier of mud-bricks and cutting off the only means of egress from this ring of the village.

"Whoo!" the elated Assurians shouted at their first use of the magical potion which Mikhail called
gunpowder.

Nobody but Immanu knew the exact ingredients, but Pareesa suspected from the odd 'errands' he'd sent her little brother on, that spell included an extract of dried, filtered bat poo, brimstone from a volcano, and twice-burned wood ash.

She picked up her spear and prepared to fight hand to hand. This was the last ring of the village where they could make their stand, far more defensible than the other rings due to its single point of ingress and egress, but if they didn't cut down their numbers here, there was nowhere left to go but the temple of She-who-is. If the lizard demons stole their grain, this time of year when every villagers personal pantry had grown empty of grain and all depended upon the vermin-free sanctuary of the temple to keep their food, the Assurians would starve to death, just as had been done to Nineveh.

The conflagration from the
gunpowder
began to die down. She could see that some of the enemy lay dead upon the ground, but the demons were bigger and tougher than they were, and it appeared their clothing afforded them some measure of protection. Little by little, the invaders tore down what was left of the third barricade.

Somebody touched her shoulder and she jumped.

"Ebad?"

"Siamek said we should fight together," Ebad said. "Everybody knows we fight better as a team."

The potter's son reached out and brushed back a strand of hair that had fallen into her mouth. On either side of him stood Ipquidad, Yaggitt, and the other members of her B-team.

"What about the final preparations?" Pareesa asked.

"It is done," Ebad said. "Either we shall kill them before they get there, or they shall kill us, in which case it will no longer matter."

Pareesa glanced at the barricade as the first of the lizard demons broke through. She clutched her spear, readying to throw it, and checked her hip to make sure her sword was ready to be drawn. One spear throw, and then it would be hand-to-hand. She glanced at Ebad's hip, and was heartened to see that
he
had been granted one of their swords.

"We fight together," Pareesa said. "And we die together as a team."

With an ululating war cry, she hurled her spear at the first enemy to come through the barricade and then, drawing her sword, rushed headlong into the battle.

~ * ~ * ~

Galactic Standard Date: 152,324.02

Earth: Just outside Assur

Special Agent Eligor

Eligor

Eligor shoved his screwdriver into the melted carburetor, searching for something, anything he could jury-rig to make the engine work again.
Fuck
! They needed to fly back to the
Prince of Tyre
to make repairs! Not play toy soldiers using Shay'tan's armies as chess pieces!

Zepar came up behind him, all facsimile of his usual bland expression cast aside. His unremarkable blue eyes had turned icy with anger, and his wings flared ominously like a raptor diving for the kill.

"When will the starboard engine be back in commission, Eligor?" Zepar snarled. "The Master wants to participate in the taking of this village."

Eligor gave the dirty-winged Angelic a deliberately bland look, the kind he knew only made him madder. The way Lucifer's obsequious Chief of Staff looked right now, going back into the village was the
last
thing Zepar wanted to do.

"There will be no repairs until we get back to the
Prince of Tyre,
" Eligor stated flatly. He filled his mind with an image of the ship dropping out of the sky and the splatter that would ensue as he spoke to accentuate the message. "We'll be lucky if we can get this ship to break the planet's gravitational field."

"I shall tell the Master that
you
have been unable to fix his war chariot," Zepar said sarcastically. "He is
most
insistent we fly into the village and provide cover fire for his …
friend.
" The last word was spoken as though he spit.