Sword of the Gods: Agents of Ki (Sword of the Gods Saga) (37 page)

Qishtea gave her an unfriendly glare.

"So the hero of Assur deigns us with her presence?" Qishtea said. "A little late, aren't you? Now that we've already done the dirty work?"

He gestured out at the larger battlefield, now dotted with hastily-dug divots scratched into the earth. Of those that were left, already the carrion birds had feasted. The five lizard demons, however, were conspicuously absent. According to Varshab, sometime after the raid, one of the sky canoes had come back and taken their own dead, including Shahla.

Near the spent charcoal of the bonfire sat a pile of not just the usual spoils of war, money pouches, jewelry, weaponry and just about anything else that might prove valuable, but also their clothing, kilts and shoes.

"This is wrong," Pareesa said. "Mikhail would bury them with dignity."

"Mikhail is
dying,
" Qishtea hissed. His dark eyes flashed with fury. "All these men we lost, my father, everything, we lost because the lizard demons wanted to kill
him.
"

"Mikhail is
not
dying!" Pareesa shoved her finger into Qishtea's face. "He sent
me
here to remind you that your father treated with him to make an agreement, and that he will
hold
you to that agreement, because your father was an honorable man!"

"Where is this creature of the heavens?" Qishtea's lip curled with contempt. "Nineveh's agreement is with
him.
If
he
dies, there is no agreement. All I have to do is sit and wait for him to die."

"Mikhail's wound is not mortal," Pareesa lied. "Once he is better, he will teach you personally how to strike back at your enemies, the ones who take our women."

"Too bad they didn't take
you,"
Qishtea laughed, "little girl."

"In case you forget," Pareesa stepped into his personal space, "they tried to take me. Twice. The first time Mikhail saved
me
. The second time, it was
me
who saved
him.
Or have you forgotten who killed the lizard demons?"

"That's only because you had a sword," Qishtea said. "Where are they? Where are the swords these lizard demons carried? Every man here saw you take them." He pointed to the sword strapped around Pareesa's waist.

"I have one of them right here," Pareesa said.

"Give it to me!" Qishtea stepped towards her menacingly. "Each village should get one of them."

Behind him, the other warriors nodded, chattering amongst themselves about which villages should get a coveted sword.

"There are nine villages," Pareesa said, "and only five swords. Pray, tell me, Qishtea. Which villages amongst us should go without?"

"Nineveh is the most powerful village," Qishtea said. "So of course
we
should get one.
Your
village … you can keep Mikhail's.
After
he dies!"

Pareesa shoved him. Qishtea shoved her back, knocking her hard enough to nearly knock her onto her backside. She caught herself at the last minute and drew her sword. The other warriors stepped back, but Qishtea was too enraged to be threatened by her.

Varshab signaled the Assurian warriors to step back and form a circle, to make sure none of the other warriors interfered in what was essentially an honor-match. The chief's man would let them fight it out.

"So now you need a sword to fight me?" Qishtea mocked her.

"In case you haven't noticed," Pareesa threw off her cloak so that only the thin wrap of her shawl-dress obscured her breasts, "I'm a girl."

"How can I
not
notice," Qishtea laughed. "Why don't you go home and wash some laundry?"

"Mikhail always told me that if I wanted to fight men," Pareesa circled, "that I would need to think faster, fight harder, and, oh!" She leaped forward and slashed his kilt, "and get an equalizer." She slashed a second time. "
This
is an equalizer. Something you use when your enemy is physically stronger than you are."

"Damn right!" Qishtea taunted. One of his men tossed him a spear. He clutched it between both fists, crouched down and ready to spring at her.

Pareesa fixed her eyes between his shoulders so her peripheral vision could catch the movement of limbs no matter
which
one he used to come at her. He lunged for her thigh with the spear, not a kill thrust, but a wounding one. Pareesa danced aside and slammed down the sword, smashing Qishtea's spear so it splintered.

"Bitch!" Qishtea shouted.

"That's right," Pareesa gave him a wolfish grin. "I'm proud to be a bitch. Bitches, in case you forget, attack anyone who comes near their puppies."

Qishtea stabbed at her with what was left of his spear, now a lengthy pointed stick with a jagged edge. Pareesa thwacked him in the backside with the butt-end of her sword.

"Whelp!" she taunted him.

Qishtea lunged again. Pareesa waited until he was almost upon her before stepping aside, using his own momentum against him as she stuck out her foot to trip him. He was too good of a warrior to simply fall, but he barely caught his weight and,
had
she wanted to slam down a death-blow, she
could
have … and every man there knew it.

"While you're busy tiring yourself out," Pareesa danced out of the way of his next broken stick-thrust, "I thought I'd tell you the idea Mikhail cooked up before he sent me here to speak to you."

"Go to hell," Qishtea growled. He gestured to one of his warriors, who tossed him
their
spear. He crouched, ready to rush at her.

Pareesa pretended she hadn't heard him.

"It's a three week journey to send a raid against the bastards who killed your father," Pareesa said. "That's a long way, don't you think? Too long to hold their territory even if you capture it."

"Who cares," Qishtea said. "We'll level their village to the ground!"

He lunged at her, this time aiming for
real.
Pareesa did not yet possess the skill to wield the sword the way the Cherubim god had, but a self-defense move was a self-defense move. Her sword blocks were more awkward than the staff-blocks she'd learned to defend herself, but Qishtea didn't know the difference and
she
wasn't about to enlighten him.

"That would take, what?" Pareesa circled him, ignoring his wild eyes and watching, instead, for the next lunge. "Three weeks there? A week, at least, launching a campaign against their village?"

He rushed at her again. She leaped into the air and slammed down the sword onto the spear, causing it to crack, but not quite break. He recovered and crouched, ready to spring at her again.

"I imagine you'll burn it," Pareesa said, "since taking a village you cannot hold serves no purpose. That's three weeks back, seven to victory."

"What's seven weeks when you avenge your father?" Qishtea hissed.

Nineveh's warriors who were intermingled with the Assurian ones began to murmur. Nineveh had lost its chief. The other villages had
not.

"It's just, and don't mind
my
thoughts on this, because I'm nothing but a
girl,”
Pareesa said. "But Mikhail pointed out something when I ran that exact same crazy idea past him, wanting to do that with Assur's warriors."

"Yeah, what?" Qishtea growled. Pareesa noted the way his reactions were unblunted by caution. He rushed at her with a fury, while she danced, cautious to use economy of effort as she stepped out of his way. Little by little, she tired him out.

"Who's going to protect Nineveh while you're gone?"

Pareesa paused and pointed at the Ninevian warriors.

Qishtea hesitated. Behind him, the other warriors began to discuss the matter. Varshab's face crinkled up into a pleased expression.

"That's
our
problem," Qishtea said. He lunged at her half-heartedly, no doubt to save face.

"Yes," Pareesa said. "It
is
your problem." She circled, panting because she was beginning to tire, too, but she could see the sunlight rise in Qishtea's grief-darkened mind. "Now the
rest
of us, the ones that train under Mikhail," she dodged a half-hearted jab, "we all thought we'd put together a raiding party, a few warriors from every village," she danced aside again, but this time Qishtea only poked at her, not a full-fledged thrust, "and go teach the Amorites that when they hit one finger of the People of the River, the rest band together and hit them with a fist."

Out of her peripheral vision she noted the way the other village's warriors no longer clustered in a circle around
them,
but around each other. As she'd hoped, the men conversed about
whose
plan of action they thought their village should follow. Qishtea's … or hers.

"Mikhail is a dead man," Qishtea growled, still trying to save face, but she could see the man realized he advocated a losing battle. "What good is he, unless he can rise up from the grave?"

Pareesa suppressed the urge to fly against him and pound her fists against his chest, screaming
'it's not true, it's not true!
' Mikhail wasn't dead … yet. And until he was, she'd expend every ounce of her being helping him finish what he had started. She remembered the great Hall of Heroes the Cherubim god had shown her when she'd questioned whether she was ready to die to defend the man she loved.

"A great man inspires the living," Pareesa lowered her sword, "not just when he is alive, but long after he has passed into the dreamtime."

She pointed to the spot where Mikhail had fallen. "A great man guides our actions long after he is dead, so that whenever we are afraid, we can whisper our fears to him, and he will answer, in our thoughts, and in our dreams, so that we always know what we have to do. For when you are a hero, you become immortal."

She pointed at Qishtea with her hand and not her sword. "A great man like your father would not abandon his son to finish his great deeds alone, but would watch over him from the Hall of Heroes, where all great men go after they die. He would whisper to you,
this
man you can trust,
this
man is good,
this
plan of action is a good one, a brave one, what
I
would advise you to do were I here to fight the battle
for
you."

Qishtea's eyes glistened with tears. He sniffed and blustered an answer.

"How do I know this Hall of Heroes is real?" Qishtea asked. His spear pointed downwards now, carelessly shoved into the ground.

"Because when I stood against seventy men and asked the God of War what would happen if I died," Pareesa said. "He
showed
me this hall. He said that if Mikhail and I both fell, that he would take us there, and that
all
warriors who follow the code of honor, to live well and fight cleanly, earn their right to watch over their loved ones."

Qishtea moved his spear, point up, so that it was no more than just a staff. "How can Mikhail teach us these things if he is dead?"

"It doesn't
matter
if he dies," Pareesa said. "He taught
me.
And Varshab. And Siamek." She pointed to the two Ninevian warriors who'd come to their village to learn archery. "He taught Pirhum and Lunanna." She pointed at other warriors who'd come to Assur to train, and named them each by name, until all the men who'd trained under him, or learned something from him, or simply seen him from a distance and been impressed with how mightily he fought, stood together and nodded agreement with what she said."

"But honor declares I must avenge my father's death," Qishtea said.

"And you will," Pareesa said, "but it wasn't the Amorites who orchestrated the attack against your father, but the lizard demons, the ones Mikhail calls the Sata'anic Empire.
They're
your
real
enemy."

"If we agree to this," Qishtea said, "how do we know he won't just die? Nothing personal, but, well, you're not
him
."

Pareesa gave him a regretful smile.

"I can't guarantee Mikhail will live to honor the promise he made to your father," Pareesa said, "but I
can
promise Assur will honor his word." She pointed to her sword. "Starting with how to use one of these."

"There are only five of them," Qishtea said. "How will you teach
all
of us to use a weapon only a few of us possess?"

Pareesa pointed to the place where the five dead lizards were conspicuously absent. "First we learn to fight as an army, and then we go hunting for lizard demons so we can steal their swords!"

The other warriors cheered.

Pareesa held out her hand. Qishtea hesitated, then locked his arm against hers, forearm to forearm.