Sword of the Gods: Agents of Ki (Sword of the Gods Saga) (40 page)

"Like goat dung," Mikhail replied.

"You scared us the other night." Needa said. Her infamous scolding gaze, the one that made you wish she would take out a switch and beat you with it, was conspicuously absent. In a way, her evasiveness was far more frightening than if she'd just come out and said,
'Mikhail, you're in terrible shape.'

The other night. The other night. What had happened the other night? The only thing he could remember was a need to find Ninsianna.

"I'm sorry," Mikhail said after he drew a blank. "Did I spike a fever?"

"You don't remember?" Needa raised a shapely eyebrow that was nothing like her daughter's.

"Should I?" Mikhail asked.

"No," Needa said. "You just … you tried to get out of bed."

Really?
Then how come he couldn’t even roll over right now or get his wing out of the weird position it'd crimped into as he slept? He must have been all kinds of delirious if he'd dragged his sorry tailfeathers up off of the sleeping pallet. It occurred to him, as he made eye contact with her, how very frightened Needa looked. What was she not telling him?

"I'm sorry I frightened you, Mama."

Even
he,
clueless as he was, was astute enough to pick up on her sorrow. She reached up and yanked the covering off the window, allowing the late afternoon sunlight to filter in. Mikhail threw his arm over his eyes to shield them from the light which made his head pound.

"Here," Needa reached for the bandages which bound his chest. "Let me check your stitches."

"How many?" He vaguely recalled her telling him yesterday, or was that the day before, but now he couldn't remember.

"Only twelve," Needa said. “You were very lucky. You have so much scar tissue that your heart wasn't quite where it was supposed to be.”

He tried to prop himself up on his elbows so Needa could unwrap the bandages from around his torso. Siamek moved forward to lift him, soggy and weak like a newborn infant. Why, of all people, did he have to appear weak before
him,
Jamin's former second-in-command?

Siamek's touch was firm, but respectful. Mikhail made eye contact, willing his eyes that did not want to obey to
see,
to look the man over who had once been a secondary nemesis. He saw no adversary now. All he saw was a concerned man who wanted to help him. With a sigh, Mikhail lay back, grateful Siamek had the acuity to recognize he'd been trying to get his wing unpinned and adjusted it for him.

The scent of death wafted up to his nostrils as Needa removed the last remaining bandage. Mikhail stared at the horrific boil which bulged out of the knife-wound, filled with green pus and black streaks stretching into the scarlet flesh around it. With each heartbeat the boil trembled as if it was alive, a horrific, monstrous child, waiting to burst forth from the place it had embedded itself inside his chest.

Needa gestured at Siamek and barked. "Go get my husband."

Siamek's brown eyes met Mikhail's. It was the look one man gave to another when they knew the odds of winning a battle were not good. He hurried out of the room, leaving his spear leaning against the wall.

"Have you ever seen anything like this?" Needa's voice warbled.

"No," Mikhail said. "Wait a minute, maybe? I…"

He stared at the hideous boil, but with his pre-Assurian memories little more than a framework like a cobweb, he couldn't for the life of him remember what would cause such symptoms. The boil shuddered with each breath as though it had taken on a horrible, demonic life of its own.

"Do
you
know how to treat such an infection?" Mikhail asked, his voice sounding small and frightened even to his own ears.

"I lanced it last night," Needa said. "And packed it with bandages soaked with myrrh-sap, but it didn’t look anything like this at the time. This is much more than an infection. This is black magic."

Mikhail had the wherewithal to not remind her there was no such thing as black magic. What
they
called evil spirits
he
called bacteria or viruses. Did it really
matter
what they called it, so long as they all understood the evil spirits could be chased away by cleanliness and antibiotics?

Antibiotics. Yes…

No. He had given his medical supplies to Needa when she'd adopted him into her household as her son. They'd long since been depleted curing illnesses in the village. There were no antibiotics left, not even in the wreckage of his ship, and he had no idea how to manufacture them or he would have already taught her how.

"Do what you have to do," he gave his mother-in-law a grim look.

Needa nodded. She pulled out the tiny scissors he had given her as a bride-price and a small knife that was little more than a paring knife. She plunged the blade into a bucket of steaming hot water.

"Where's Ninsianna?" Mikhail asked.

Needa gave him a trapped, panicked look, blended with a hefty dose of sorrow.

"I sent her to wash fresh bandages down by the river," Needa said. She held out her hand as he started to protest. "And I sent Tirdard and Firouz to guard her while she washed."

"That's where her cape was stolen from."

"Enough, man!" Needa snapped. Her entire body shuddered, as though she kept too much emotion inside that threatened to erupt like a volcano. She dabbed at her eyes with her sleeves. When she spoke again, her voice was calm. "Ninsianna has always been fastidious in her grooming. Would you want to put her
own
health at risk due to lack of cleanliness?"

Bathe. Ninsianna had gone down to the river to take a bath and no doubt not said anything because she knew he’d be jealous at the thought of two warriors ogling her soft curves, enhanced by the luscious ripeness of her advancing pregnancy.

Mikhail closed his eyes and held that thought in his mind as Needa stood over his heart with the knife, ready to cut it open and lance the wound she had only hours before closed. One part of him wanted to beg her to call Ninsianna back into the room, to hold his hand and help him bear this experience he knew would be unpleasant, but the bigger part of him wanted to spare her the emotional distress of watching him suffer. He was a grown man. He'd take his pain like a big boy.

"I am sorry," Needa whispered.

He tried to remain silent, remain still and not writhe, but the pain as the knife touched his engorged skin was too much to bear.

Mikhail whimpered.

The room spun.

The overwhelming stench of something
evil
filled the room, causing bile to rise in his throat as his stomach tried to hurl up nothing but stomach acid. Oh, gods. What in Hades
was
that stench? It reminded him of the scent of an entire battlefield filled with rotted and unburied bodies!

"I am sorry, son," Needa's voice was anguished. "I have no choice but squeeze the puss out."

It felt as though his chest exploded as Needa put her hands on either side of the stitches she had just reopened and squeezed.

Mikhail arched his back and screamed.

His entire body shuddered like a prey animal which had just been disemboweled and was in its death throes while a larger predator ate it alive. His last thought as merciful unconsciousness took him was just how grateful he was that Ninsianna was not here to see him weakened.

~ * ~ * ~

November: 3,390 BC

Earth: Village of Assur

Pareesa

Pareesa swore her arms were about to fall off!

"Are you sure about this?" Siamek asked her.

"Um … I think so?" Pareesa said. She swung the sword using an awkward overhand motion. The sword moved
towards
him, but there was nothing smooth about the way she swung up at the man who towered over her. She stopped just short of his neck.

"You were supposed to block that."

"You didn't say anything about blocking," Siamek said.

"I just swung a sword at your neck and you didn't do anything but swat at it," Pareesa said.

Siamek gave her a patronizing grin. "That's because you're a pest."

"Hey!" Pareesa said. She mock-jabbed at him. This time, he had the wherewithal to move out of her way. "That's better.
"

"Says the little
çok puan ile mızrak,
" Siamek teased her with the nickname Mikhail had given her,
spear with many points
.

Pareesa swung at the tall, swarthy-complexioned warrior even harder, an awkward, overhanded motion more reminiscent of an old woman
threshing grain than the Cherubim-possessed heroine who had thrown herself into battle to save her mentor. They’d come out here before dawn, away from the village to avoid the gawkers who might gossip that Pareesa couldn't really wield the sword she'd used to save Mikhail
.

"You sure you know how to handle this thing?" Siamek asked.

Much to her frustration, Siamek seemed to handle the blade better than
she
did. Her face flushed with anger. Why? Why did she have so much trouble mastering the weapon?

"No!" Pareesa glared at him. "I don't. Like I told you before, it wasn't
me
who saved him!"

Siamek lowered the sword.

"It
had
to have been you." Siamek's brown eyes were sympathetic. "You’ve seen how hard Mikhail trains. He said the gift isn't goddess-given, but hard won through practice."

Pareesa jabbed at him again. This time, Siamek blocked her and swung upwards, his movements as coarse and clunky as hers. The sound of steel hitting steel rung through the air. The swordplay itself might not be goddess-given, but that peculiar precognitive ‘echo,’ the ability to see the shadow-thought which
preceded
an enemy’s actual physical movement,
was
a divinely inspired enhancement she was certain. As was the ability to dampen her own fear and focus. All abilities which were frustratingly absent
now.

Siamek’s sword came perilously close to her neck even though he wasn't aiming to hurt her. Mental note. Getting your head chopped off during sword practice would leave you just as dead as getting decapitated during a battle.

"Maybe you should ask your friend?" Siamek said.

"My ... friend?"

"Yeah, you know..." Siamek pointed up towards the sky.

It took a moment for his meaning to register. "I don't think Mikhail would approve of us using the Cherubim god so disrespectfully."

She didn’t add that for the past several days she
had
prayed for the Cherubim god to grant her knowledge of how to use the sword, repeatedly, and all she got was a sense of divine bemusement.

“Like Mikhail said,” Pareesa feigned nonchalance. “There are no shortcuts to becoming proficient as a warrior. We have to learn the old-fashioned way.”

Siamek shrugged, and then thwacked at her with a particularly awkward-looking move that made him look like an old man beating a dog.

"Okay," she relented. "Maybe we should ask a
little
prayer for guidance? Together? So we don’t undo everything Mikhail worked for when we go to Qishtea and tell him we have no idea how to do the
thing.
"

She stared upwards at the sun, imagining she sassed the old God of War to get his attention the way she often did her mother.

“So are you going to help us out here, or what?” Pareesa jabbed her finger at the sun. “Because if you aren’t, you can just … just …”

Siamek raised one eyebrow.

Pareesa focused, not the prayer she'd invoked to beg him for intervention, but the first prayer Mikhail had taught her, the one which encouraged her to clear her mind. It wasn't communication in the way it had been when she'd been desperate to save Mikhail, but she could sense the old god still hung around, no doubt watching to make sure she didn't
abuse
the knowledge she'd gained while he'd been in possession of her body.