Sword of the Gods: Agents of Ki (Sword of the Gods Saga) (52 page)

"Go away," Jamin mumbled as he exhaled. His mother was
dead,
and when she'd died, all interest in the treasure-box had died along with her. The only thing it contained now was painful memories.

The shuttle lurched and knocked him out of his mother's prayer, a silly little song about an ancient goddess whose name no one remembered. Jamin rubbed his lips. He could still
feel
the place someone had kissed him when he'd been delirious.

"Leave me alone," Jamin mumbled to the invisible specter.

The pilot's voice came over the voice box. "Attention all crew. We are T-minus-three minutes from the drop point. Prepare to go in hot."

The creatures around him burst into action, clicking little buttons on their firesticks, um,
pulse rifles,
and checking the straps on their safety harnesses so they could get out of their seats the moment the shuttle touched down.

Jamin leaned closer to the small, brown satchel which the pig-man Katlego jokingly called a
barf bag
, but his forced breathing and almost-empty stomach spared him the indignity of losing his breakfast.

Private Katlego slapped him on the back.

"See? Not so bad once you get used to it."

"That's easy for you to say," Jamin grumbled.

He disguised his proximity to the barf bag by pretending to tie his boot laces. Boots? How long he had coveted Mikhail's sturdy foot coverings, and now that he owned a pair, each day he could not wait to get them off. The contraptions were heavy and sometimes caused him to trip, though he'd gotten better at not falling flat onto his face.

The sound of somebody clearing their throat caused Jamin to look up. Sergeant Dahaka towered over him wearing his usual grumpy expression. In his hand he carried the angular, black shape of a firestick. Jamin instinctively blanched even though he knew Dahaka had no reason to wish him ill.

"Sergeant?"

"Lieutenant Kasib said I was to give you one of these," Sergeant Dahaka said. "You know how to use this thing?"

"I do," Jamin said. He didn't add that it had been their avowed enemy, Lucifer, who had taught him how to use it, or just how badly he craved another lesson in picturing his enemy at the wrong end of the powerful weapon and watching their head vaporize beneath the magic fire.

"Good," Dahaka said. The lizard shoved the pulse rifle into Jamin's hand. "Don't shoot your own foot off."

Jamin glanced up at the Sergeant. The entire time he'd known Dahaka, the lizard had shown no sense of humor, only the patience to teach him things which took far longer than someone familiar with their magic.

Jamin's muscle twitched beneath his cheek.

"It's not like I can make fire from it without the little magic square," Jamin said. He caressed the small, black rectangle which slipped into the handle. Kasib always made sure the weapons were drained of magic before they let so
primitive
a creature as himself handle one. The only reason they let him carry one was because it behooved the lizards to let his fellow humans think he'd earned far more trust than he actually had.

"The power cartridge is live." Sergeant Dahaka's dewlap waxed a deeper burgundy. "Kasib thought it might be more convincing if
you
gave your friend the demonstration of power than if one of
us
did it."

"And what of this?"

Jamin pointed to the sword Kasib had given him, along with a lengthy lecture about the proper oiling and sharpening of a soldier's blade. He had
yet
to master the weapon.

"A good soldier
always
has his backup ready," Dahaka growled. The grizzled sergeant-at-arms caressed the hilt of his well-worn sword. "Shay'tan is a beneficent old god, but parsimonious when it comes to outfitting grunts like you or me with enough of
those."
The lizard pointed to the pulse rifle's power cartridge. "Not to mention, you don't want to
see
what happens if you accidentally breach the outer hull."

Jamin nodded even though half of what Dahaka said didn't make any sense, not because he didn't understand the pidgin of Kemet and the Sata'anic language, but because he was still figuring out the rules to their system of magic.

The pilot's voice came over intercom again.

"We are now over the jump zone. Prepare for landing."

Jamin's stomach lurched even though the pilot flawlessly switched over from what Jamin thought of as the
going forward oars
to the
going up and down oars.
Bile rose in his throat as the entire sky canoe gave that now-familiar feeling of
sinking
.

Sergeant Dahaka moved towards the hatch and grabbed one of the numerous hand-holds to remain standing. While Jamin couldn't yet understand every single word, he'd been into battle enough times to get the gist of what Dahaka said.

"All right you numbheads," Dahaka barked in the Sata'anic language. "You know the drill. The minute the shuttle touches down, go with your team to
your
side of the shuttle. Weapons set to shock, but if you come under heavy fire, you have permission to shoot to kill."

"Aye!" the creatures all shouted in unison.

Jamin glanced into the small, eager blue eyes of his pig-like Catoplebas hunting partner, Private Katlego. He and Katlego both shared a love for the hunt, but Katlego was a truculent creature, prone to senseless brawling when Jamin had the sense to play things cool. During their hunt yesterday, Katlego had lamented how
bored
he was with being stuck on the base rather than sent out to quash rebellions like they usually did during an annexation. Today's soldiers were heavily weighted towards what Kasib referred to as
'our more enthusiastic soldiers.'

"Don't shoot yourself in the foot," Katlego grinned at him through his boar-like tusks.

Jamin gave him a serious reply.

"Don't shoot anybody to kill unless they shoot at you first."

It wouldn't take much for Shay'tan's battle-eager soldiers to open fire on the Ninevians.

"What?" Katlego laughed. "With a spear?" Katlego gave a long guffaw that sounded like a wild boar grunting just before it charged.

"You're not afraid of a
primitive
weapon?" Jamin said. His dark eyes burned intently black. "You already killed their chief. Once you open fire, the opportunity to parley with them will be lost forever."

Katlego caressed the hilt of his pulse rifle.

"This is all the parleying we need."

Jamin placed his hand on the pugnacious boar-man's forearm.

"These are
my
people we're trying to win over," Jamin said. "Give me a chance to screw things up myself before you do it for me, okay? I've got a lot riding on this today."

He inwardly winced as he realized just how much he sounded like his father.

Katlego snuffled with his large, flat pig-like nose. He bared his fangs, but it was a generalized gesture of disgust, not anger or dislike of
him.

"Yeah, yeah," Katlego grunted. "I know what it's like to dance to the lizard-people's standards. Three-hundred-fifty years since the lizards annexed my homeworld and Shay'tan
still
doesn't trust us to be anything but skull-crackers."

Jamin nodded, glad he'd taken Katlego up on his offer to go hunting yesterday, away from the lizards who scorned his and the Catoplebas' taste for meat. While Kasib had not lied to him about his prospects to someday fit into Shay'tan's massive empire, the pig-man had given him a much more realistic appraisal of just what concessions he could win for his people. If he was to woo his people into supporting the lizards, he must entice them with goods he could actually
deliver.

The sky canoe stopped, and then began the pendulous rocking motion which always occurred moments before the ship touched down upon the ground. Jamin's stomach threatened to evict what little breakfast he'd eaten this morning.

Sergeant Dahaka barked from his position by the door.

"That's our signal, boys!"

All around him lizard-men, pig-men, and the curious blue-men who looked a bit like humans except for their lapis-blue skin, unclipped their safety harnesses and prepared to leap out of their jump seats. The men raced for the door the instant the ship touched down. A breath of air, rich with the scent of the Hiddekel River, rushed in as the ramp-hatch slid down. Jamin inhaled the fragrance of Ubaid land. The soldiers hustled down the ramp in two orderly lines to form a defensive formation on either side of the shuttle.

Sergeant Dahaka stood waiting at the off ramp, chest puffed out to appear intimidating as possible, his dorsal ridge reared to give him the illusion of extra height. Dahaka was a huge, burly lizard, not quite as large as General Hudhafah, but cut from the same measure of linen, parsimonious with his words and loyal to the general to a fault. He reminded Jamin a bit of his father's chief enforcer, Varshab.

"You ready for this, kid?" Dahaka tasted the air with his long, forked tongue.

Butterflies danced in Jamin's stomach, a different flavor than his usual anticipation before the hunt. At least he no longer had the urge to vomit.

"As ready as I'll ever be," Jamin said.

He ran his fingers through his now-short hair and felt along his beardless jaw. He looked
different
now than he had the last time Qishtea had seen him. He needed to play up those differences if he wished to convince Nineveh to side against the rebels who still clung to Mikhail's views. Nineveh was the most powerful village in Ubaid territory, more powerful, even, than Assur, and there was forever rivalry between the two. It was time to stir things up in the power-vacuum created by Mikhail's injury.

The deep, throaty sound of a ram's horn split the air, followed by shouts from the direction of the village. Unlike Assur, whose fortifications had been built upon a hill, Nineveh sat in the flood plain at a crook of the river. While both villages possessed outer walls, Nineveh had, by necessity, built theirs higher.

Jamin straightened the buttons on his Sata'anic military uniform. His father had always been a showman. Wear this five-fringed kilt or, in Jamin's case, four. Always wear your golden torque and the leather bracings which mark you as a chief. Toss your shawl over your shoulder just
so
, to demonstrate you come from a good family. All these things his father had taught him, and yet it had never been enough to impress the wealthier village, especially not Qishtea, his equal in every contest. No, if he was to impress Qishtea, it would not be using the same, old tired techniques tried by his father.

He heard human shouts from far outside the shuttle and the growled retorts of the nearby Sata'anic soldiers. No doubt Nineveh had archers lining up on their outer wall.

Flipping back the tails of the cloak the lizards called a
trench coat
as though it was a robe of state, it was not his father Jamin pictured now, but the only man who'd ever made him want to throw himself prostrate onto the ground and shout,
'let me serve you.'

Jamin closed his eyes and focused on his inner-Lucifer…

'Why should I force them to do my bidding when it's oh-so-easy to grant them their heart's desire,' Lucifer had whispered in his ear.

Jamin fingered the sword strapped to his left hip. Marwan had been right. The lizard people had erred by relying on the Amorites instead of approaching his people directly and engaging someone like
him
to explain the benefits of Sata'anic rule. The Ubaid were forever concerned with trade because most wars were fought over a lack of resources. The lizards needed access to Ubaid fields, Nineveh wished to harvest a surplus of grain, and the lizards could teach them to harvest even
more
grain so they'd all grow fat and wealthy. It was unfortunate Mikhail's machinations had forced the lizards to kill Qishtea's father, who like his
own
father, had always been more mindful of the state of his treasury than the well-being of his own son.

Qishtea, on the other hand, would only care to wreak revenge.

"Watch my back for me, will you?" Jamin asked Sergeant Dahaka.

Dahaka tasted the air with his long forked tongue, and then scratched his ear-holes in a gesture Jamin recognized was thoughtfulness. Katlego had explained that the lizards could
taste
what someone was feeling. With a thumbs-up, the grizzled Sergeant took a position at Jamin's back.

Jamin pictured the way Lucifer had walked, far more arrogantly than even the wealthiest Ubaid chief. Conqueror. Leader. Statesman. He had to convince these people he was
more
than he'd been before…

Carrying himself regally as though
he
was in charge, Jamin strode down the ramp like a conquering hero. He had played this game before, but never had the stakes been so high.