Sword of the Gods: Agents of Ki (Sword of the Gods Saga) (24 page)

"You look like goat excrement, daughter." Needa gave Mikhail a furtive glance. "You've got
his
blood all over you. Go get washed and get some rest. I'll come fetch you once your father has finished performing the sacred ceremonies."

"Ninsianna stays," Mikhail mumbled. He tightened his grip on Gita's hand.

"She is with child, you big oaf!" Needa snapped. "And she's been up all night, weeping over your bed." She turned to Gita. "Once you've gotten cleaned up and eaten, lay down in
my
bed. You will get no rest in here."

Mikhail tightened his grip, and then let go. "Go,
mo ghrá.
Rest. Join me once you feel rejuvenated."

Needa frowned. Mikhail's voice sounded raspy, even to Gita's
untrained ears. As he spoke there was a rattle in his lungs. The evil spirits which stole your breath could be a death sentence if not treated promptly. Gita rose, careful to keep her face shielded from Mikhail's view, and hurried out the door where she ran face-first into Immanu's chest.

"I was just going..."

"Home," Immanu hissed so Mikhail would not hear. "And don't come back. I don't care
what
Pareesa said. I should have never begged the chief to allow you and your accursed father back into our village."

Twin daggers of hatred seethed out of her uncle's copper-gold eyes. She'd only been five years old when her father had dragged her across the desert to Assur. According to Merariy, it had been
Immanu
who had committed the wrongdoing? Not him. She was smart enough to keep that thought to herself.

"Yes, uncle." Gita cast her eyes downwards.

He grabbed her shoulders and for a moment she feared he might throw her down the stairs, but then he let her go. In his hand was Ninsianna's red cape.

"Homa or Gisou will impersonate Ninsianna from now on," Immanu said. He pressed her against the wall. "If you have any common sense whatsoever, you will leave this village this instant and never return."

Gita swallowed. Black eyes met his tawny-beige ones, the eyes of a shaman; the eyes of a man who could see into the dark and, if what her father said was true about their shared father, Lugalbanda, could stop the heart of a man simply by thinking about it.

"Yes, uncle," Gita whispered.

He shoved her towards the steep ladder which served as a stair. Gita caught the railing just in time to prevent herself from falling down into the first floor below. She gathered her tattered brown cape which had been left in a heap on the floor and Jamin's cast-off spear, still stained with the blood of their enemies. Someone had come by and left fresh bread, roasted acorns, and a crock of porridge on the table. The delicious aroma tantalized her nostrils and reminded her she had not eaten since before the ambush. She glanced up the stairs. Immunu's hate-filled copper eyes communicated this feast was not for
her.

Her stomach empty, she made her way back home to answer to her father.

~ * ~ * ~

November 3,390 BC

Earth:  Sata'an Forward Operating Base

Lieutenant Kasib

Kasib

"May our lord, god convey their sprits into the Dreamtime," the field-chaplain droned on, "and immortalize their deeds forever in pursuit of the glory of the Empire."

"Peace be upon his name," Lieutenant Kasib uttered the familiar prayer.

He pressed his claws against his forehead, his snout and his heart, signaling his devotion to forever think, to speak, and to always serve wholeheartedly their emperor and god. With a sigh, he rose up from the small, ornate prayer-mat where he'd kneeled for the last two hours in memoriam of five good men who'd lost their lives. A poster of an elaborately dressed red dragon had been haphazardly taped to the tent behind the place where the chaplain stood giving the commemoratory. Kasib sighed. This was not a temple befitting worship of Shay'tan, but field-chapels never were. What mattered, Kasib reminded himself, was the supplicant's devotion to Sata'anic ideals and well wishes for the deceased to carry into the next incarnation.

Tucking his tail out of the way so it wouldn't get stepped on as he rolled up his prayer mat, he thoughtfully trailed out of the tent along with the other soldiers stationed at this Forward Operating Base for Shay'tan's latest annexation. Martyrdom ceremonies were supposed to be joyous occasions, but Kasib couldn't help but feel the men's lives had been wasted. With a groan, he arched his back to get a crick out and flared his dorsal ridge to soak up the rays of the dying sun.

"Hey! Kasib!" a pig-snouted Catoplebas named Katlego shouted as he exited the chapel. "You going to join us later for a game of senet?"

"Yeah!" a lizard-Specialist named Iyad said. "You've got to give me a chance to win back that thirty deben you won from me last month!"

Kasib glanced over at his intended destination, the commissary. Ever since General Hudhafah had given him permission to acquire quarters within the town which abutted the seaport, he'd been shirking his connections to his friends. On the other hand…

"Not tonight," Kasib forced his posture to remain relaxed and prayed they would not smell his guilt. "Ba'al Zebub gave the general a laundry list of things to do to kiss that bastard Lucifer's tailfeathers. We all know what that means."

The Catoplebas smirked at him through his tusks and punched Specialist Iyad in the bicep. The entire base had been in an uproar ever since the
Prince of Tyre
had appeared in orbit and none other than Ba'al Zebub, their highest-ranking official second only to Shay'tan, had come onto the display monitor to order the battle cruiser to stand down.

The lizard soldier laughed. "Yeah! Good old loyal Kasib gets to do the shit-work while Hudhafah gets all the glory!"

Specialist Iyad tasted the air with his long, forked tongue and then yanked it back inside his snout, his expression sheepish. It was considered ill manners to taste for pheromones in a higher-ranking officer.

"It is my privilege to serve the General," Kasib chastised them. His snout curved up in toothy grin. "Besides, how do you think I got assigned one of those choice 'special overflow barracks' inside the town?"

"I'd sure like me one of those!" the Catoplebas lamented. "When's that armada going to get here so we all can stop sleeping 50 men to a tent? I swear, if Specialist Owiti shoves my footlocker out of the way one more time, I'm going to beat him to a bloody pulp!"

'And that,' Kasib thought to himself, 'is why I didn't burden any of the human families with a pugnacious, irresponsible brute such as YOU.'

"Only one Sata'anic soldier per family," Kasib said aloud. "And we have to integrate into their family routine as though we are second-sons, not conquerors. We are here to teach the human primitives to embrace the better aspects of Sata'anic culture! Not teach them the worst ones."

"In other words," Specialist Iyad taunted his raucous Catoplebas senet buddy, "Kasib here doesn't want us to teach the humans how to gamble!"

"Well there's five new beds just opened up in the town," the Catoplebas said. "C'mon, Kasib. Get me one of those slots. You know you can."

"Katlego!" Specialist Iyad hissed at his battle buddy's lousy manners. "We haven't even buried those men yet!"

All three of them hastily bowed their heads and made the prayer-gesture, pausing for a moment of silence as they contemplated the five good men who'd lost their lives. The renegade Angelic was finally dead, but at a much higher price then they'd intended when they'd listened to Ba'al Zebub's devious plan to lure the bastard into a trap. With so few boots on the ground, their supply lines cut off, and Shay'tan's armada still working its way the long way around the outermost edges of the galaxy, who knew when reinforcements would arrive?

"May Shay'tan guide their spirits into the Dreamtime," Kasib said solemnly, "and grant them everlasting life in the garden of She-who-is."

"Shay'tan be praised," Katelego, and Iyad murmured.

"Shay'tan be praised," Kasib said.

With a nod goodbye, Kasib continued on his way to the commissary, his tail swishing thoughtfully behind him as Private Tharwat, the lizard charged with overseeing their inventory, delivered the grim news that the base was almost out of grain. While lizard-soldiers could eat meat if they had no other choice, by nature the Sata'anic lizards who made up the bulk of Shay'tan's armies were vegetarians. Thus far they'd compensated by sending the bellicose Catoplebas and Marid, who were carnivores, out into the unspoiled countryside to hunt their own game, but with ammunition running low, soon that option would elude them as well.

Soon, they'd be relegated to chucking spears just like the humans…

"Thank you, Private Tharwat," Kasib said. "If you don't mind, I'd just like to verify your numbers." He pulled out a smart tablet and began pulling up lists of inventories. "Independently. You know how it is?"

"I take great care to make sure nobody pilfers supplies from the treasury of our emperor!" the lizard Private's gold-green eyes narrowed in hurt. His dorsal ridge reared as he filled the air with pheromones of anger.

"I'm not questioning
you
," Kasib said. "It's just … regulation. Whenever supplies drop below a certain level, the chief Logistics Officer must take an inventory and formulate a plan to stretch those resources until reinforcements can arrive."

Private Tharwat relaxed, but from the pheromones of indignation which continued to pour out of his pores, the lizard still felt insulted.

"We all serve for the glory of the Empire," Private Tharwat recited stiffly. He tucked his tail up tightly along his left side and gave Kasib a crisp salute. "Let me know if you need anything, Sir."

"Thank you, private," Kasib said. "You're dismissed."

"Shay'tan be praised," Private Tharwat made the prayer-gesture.

"Shay'tan be praised," Kasib said in return.

He waited until the man had exited the storeroom before he began to scan the shelves for places the inventory did not match his checklist. Usually commissariats erred on the side of excess inventory. An accusation of pilfering could get a soldier reassigned to the Tokoloshe front. No excess. No excess. No excess. Kasib rummaged in desperation, searching for anyplace there was a surplus. None. There was none.

Although Kasib ranked highly enough that he could take what he needed and it would be the commissary chief who would be blamed, Kasib was not the kind of guy to let another man take the fall. In fact, Kasib wasn't the kind of guy to engage in criminal behavior in the first place, being conscientious to a fault, but Taram had changed all of that.

There! He spotted a measure of rye berries that looked a little heavier than listed on the inventory. Just to be sure, he weighed it. Eleven grams over the quota. He painstakingly scooped the precious seeds into a small, cloth bag and weighed it three times before checking it off on his tablet as measuring the stated amount. There. It wasn't much, but it was something.

He then moved next door to inventory the weapons depot. That news was even grimmer. They were low on everything. People. Weapons. Ammunition. And now food. If they didn't get their hands on that grain-growing belt between the rivers before the armada got here, limping along at the brink of starvation like Shay'tan always sent reinforcements on these kinds of remote expeditions, they would all be screwed.

Kasib saluted the weapons master on his way out the door.

"Is everything in order, Sir?" the lizard nervously tasted the air.

"Supplies are critically low," Kasib said. "We have no choice but to enact Plan Delta."

The lizard's scales waxed a darker shade of green, the one usually affiliated with grimness or melancholy. Fewer plasma grenades and refills for their pulse rifles meant more soldiers would die if the humans chose to really put up a fight. There was a reason every Sata'anic lizard carried a sword. The old dragon might be beneficent when it came to ensuring a rudimentary standard of living, but when it came to squeezing out a single deben beyond that, well, there was a reason Shay'tan's detractors often depicted him as sitting on a pile of gold. Their glorious emperor, peace be upon his name, was notoriously cheap!