Sword of the Gods: Agents of Ki (Sword of the Gods Saga) (53 page)

An arrow shot off the wall and landed several paces from his feet. A warning. Do not approach our wall. Behind him, he heard the subtle click of Sata'anic weapons being flipped over to the setting which turned an opponent into a hunk of smoldering meat. Nineveh had no idea how much firepower the lizard people could bring to bear.

Jamin lifted his hand.

"Hold your fire!" he hissed in heavily accented Sata'anic language.

Sergeant Dahaka snorted from just behind his right shoulder. At least the lizards had the wherewithal not to laugh loudly enough for the Ninevians to hear at his butchered attempt to speak their language. Jamin ignored their fanged smirks as he glanced from his left to his right, making eye contact with the men as though he stared them down. Katelego's pig-like snout quivered with a suppressed guffaw. Only yesterday they'd commiserated about what a pile of lion-dung the fat lizard king, Ba'al Zebub was, for the way he always over-acted.

All that mattered right now was what the Ninevians saw, and what they saw was one of
them
had just descended from the sky and commanded an army of heaven…

"What right do you have to bring these foul creatures to attack our village?" A voice called down from Nineveh's walls.

Jamin stared up, searching for the owner of that voice, a voice he knew well.

"Who said anything about an attack," Jamin said. He gestured to the Sata'anic soldiers as if he were a trader displaying his wares. "These good people are under the impression that all Ubaid are savages. I have convinced them otherwise. They wish to speak with somebody with the authority to negotiate treaties on behalf of your village."

He searched for Qishtea's dark head amongst those that peered over the wall, but the newly-minted Nineveh chieftain was too well trained to stand up and make himself an easy target.

"The people of the river stand together," Qishtea shouted down.

"Aye, they do," Jamin called back. "Which is why I have come
here.
What Nineveh does, the other villages will follow."

"You come here because you have been
banished
from your own village as a traitor!" Qishtea shouted.

Jamin stepped forward and picked up the arrow, bringing himself within weapons range of their best archer. He handed it to Sergeant Dahaka, then turned back to face the wall.

"I was
banished
because I warned my father I had heard rumors of lizard-men," Jamin said. "My father did not believe me."

Old anger boiled in his gut. He gestured to the soldiers who stood, kneeled in a tight military formation with their pulse rifles aimed at the wall.

"Tell me, Qishtea? Do you still believe the lizard men do not exist?"

It took a moment for Qishtea to compose a suitable retort.

"You said these lizard demons stole our women!" Qishtea shouted. The young chieftain who was now a Chief stood up, daring the Sata'anic soldiers to open fire.

Qishtea always
had
had balls of stone…

"It was all a misunderstanding," Jamin said. "The Amorites were hired to approach our people to arrange for a citizen exchange secured with trade goods and lizard gold. Not pocket the gold and steal our women."

"You
lie!"
Qishtea shook his fist down from his lofty perch. "No woman has ever been returned."

Jamin turned to gesture to the blue-skinned Marid private who stood at the off-ramp, waiting for the signal. Unfortunately, most of the women had already been sent into the heavens for arranged marriages, unions which Lucifer himself had guaranteed were happy, but a few
had not yet been shipped off-world due to some snafu which Kasib had been dodgy about explaining.

Three women appeared at the hatchway to the sky canoe, clad from head-to-toe in the finest linens the traders at Ugarit had been able to procure. Three
Ninevian
women.

Shouts grew louder from the other side of the wall as the three women moved to stand beside Jamin and uncovered their hair. Jamin turned to the eldest of the three, a tall, plain woman in her late-twenties who had left behind seven motherless children. Kuaya was her name, and she was Qishtea's cousin.

Jamin waited until the people hidden behind the wall recognized the three women and sent word to their families to come and see their missing relatives. His father had always been loath to deal with hostage-taking, but Nineveh had never been above such tactics when it had suited Qishtea's father. Jamin silently thanked the wily old desert chieftain, Marwan, for his insight into this plan.

"So now you wish to trade hostages?" Qishtea shouted.

Jamin took Kuaya's hand and held her arm up between them.

"Hostages? No. Kuaya is not my hostage. She wishes to speak to you, that is all. And if you speak to me in return, to simply hear what I have to say and nothing more, then the lizards will let her return to your village. Though you may find, perhaps, that she does not wish to stay?"

Kuaya's eyes narrowed. She most certainly
did
wish to return to her village … because of her children. But hers was an unhappy marriage, and as she'd conversed with Jamin about the wonders of Sata'anic technology, she had sworn she would miss running water and the sanitary systems which eliminated the constant stomach complaints and illnesses which plagued the Ubaid.

"What assurances do I have that if I come forth from these walls to parley," Qishtea shouted, "that you will not simply order your lizard demons to smite me with their lightning sticks?"

"You have none," Jamin said. "Other than my word."

"The oath of a traitor!"

Jamin gestured to Kuaya and the other two women.

"After my father refused to listen to the truth about the lizard people," Jamin said, "I swore I would prove the Angelic's own people were the end-buyers for Ubaid women. Well … now I have such proof. In the body of your
own
cousin."

Kuaya murmured something to her two peers. Even
before
Jamin had been sold to the Sata'anic lizards, an odd rumor had begun circulating amongst the women that it was better to marry a lizard than an Angelic, who their tutors spoke of with open contempt. According to Private Katlego, shipping women off-world to their enemies instead of rewarding their earliest allies with suitably educated wives was highly irregular.

Behind the wall it sounded as though Qishtea had a riot on his hands. A refusal to negotiate would undermine the young chieftain's authority. Jamin grinned at Marwan's deviousness. The trio of women had just spent the last two solar cycles basking in the wonders of Sata'anic magic at a
finishing school for young women
. It would be
their
arguments, not his, which would win their people over.

Nineveh's enormous wooden gates, crafted from the finest hardwood trees, groaned as the ropes which bound them to their posts cried out in protest under their stupendous weight. On the walls, the archers Jamin knew had all along crouched down, hidden, stood up and made themselves visible, two rows of archers, the first aimed downwards to take direct shots against the lizard soldiers, the second aimed high to provide further-ranging cover fire. The first row would be ineffective unless the lizard soldiers stepped within range, but the second would provide some grief if an arrow happened to fall upon a lizard soldier.

Jamin prayed
neither
side would be foolish enough to open fire. He wanted this to work so badly his chest ached as though he gasped for air. No matter
what
Lucifer whispered in his ear, some part of him would always yearn to regain acceptance within the Ubaid.

The gate opened just far enough for a man to slip past. Nineveh's walls were little protection against the lizard people's magic, but even those men who'd witnessed the attack on the Regional Gathering of Chiefs had only seen the lizard people cast down lightning to eradicate a bunch of tents. Katlego assured him the Sata'an Empire had far more firepower at their command, including a weapon he claimed could eliminate the sun. A string of Ubaid warriors slid out, all men Jamin knew by name, and took up a defensive line with spears and shields.

Jamin's mouth tightened into a grim line. So? Qishtea really
had
swallowed his pride and subjugated his men to the winged demon's command? Marwan had told him thus, but Jamin hadn't believed it. Qishtea would rather eat his foot coverings than take orders from any man other than
himself.

Qishtea stepped through the gate, one of the few men in Ubaid territory equal to his stature and bulk. He must have sent a runner back to his house, because despite the unexpected nature of this parley, he wore his five-fringed kilt, his golden armbands and chief's gold torque. His elaborately fringed shawl was wrapped around his shoulders in such a way to mark him as a
chief.
Qishtea's rank was now superior to Jamin's, and he wished to remind him of it.

Jamin gestured to the three women to gather around him and took several steps closer to the defensive group of warriors. He glanced up at the woman on the wall he knew was Nineveh's best archer from the time she had come and trained under Mikhail. He gave her the Sata'anic gesture of respect, a hand to his forehead, his lips and his heart. The woman drew her bow, aiming straight at his heart; but as he expected she did not let loose her arrow. He was now just barely within weapons range. He wished to let her know this was deliberate; that he knew that she, and only she, had the capacity to kill him if she felt Qishtea was threatened.

Jamin held out his arms to indicate he did not carry a weapon, an old dance he had learned treating with the people of the desert. Qishtea did the same, his muscular chest puffed out and arms spread wide in the intimidating pose which would have made any other man quake. Even without Sergeant Dahaka standing at his back, Jamin found the puffery to be amusing. Rather than reciprocate and approach Qishtea like two cockerels begging for a fight, Jamin behaved as he had seen Lucifer do when flanked by the hostile lizards. He forced himself to visibly relax, to drop his hands and lean towards Kuaya as though they whispered secrets as they went shopping in the market.

"I forgot how badly the open sewers smell!" Jamin gave Kuaya his most winning grin, the one which had enticed many a woman into his bed. "You
will
have a conversation with them about proper sanitation, I hope? It would aggrieve our new friends greatly if they had to walk amongst this stench with their heightened sense of smell."

Kuaya glanced back at their captors. A shadow crossed her plain, brown features. Unlike Jamin, who was certain the lizard people would let the women go so long as Qishtea didn't do anything stupid, she was less than trusting this was anything but a ruse.

"I will do my best," Kuaya said.

She used her veil to cover her mouth. Yes. It
did
stink far worse than she remembered. Jamin could almost
picture
the arguments she would have with her husband, children, and mother-in-law to scrub their hands in the days to come.

Qishtea stopped three paces from them, his right hand clutched to his belt where sat the finest obsidian blade embedded in a hilt of elaborately carved deer antler. Despite Qishtea's hastily donned finery, the young chief had not had time to oil his hair or curl his beard as he normally appeared for public ceremonies.

Jamin put one arm around Kuaya's shoulders and led her forward. Sergeant Dahaka growled at the other two women to stay with him. While Qishtea did his best to appear fearless, Jamin noted the way his eyes kept darting to the enormous five-cubit-tall lizard and the two women who huddled closer to
him
for protection than to each other.

"Are you well, cousin?" Qishtea asked Kuaya. His eyes wrinkled with concern. The even-tempered Kuaya was well-liked. It had been her abduction which had finally compelled Qishtea's father to send archers to Assur to train beneath Mikhail.

"The Amorites," Kuaya said. She stopped and glanced at Jamin, unsure if she was allowed to speak. Qishtea looked to him as well, his eyes narrowed like a raptor about to pounce upon his prey.

"Speak freely," Jamin said. "Even if it is unflattering to our benefactors. You will be free to say it anyway soon enough."

Kuaya turned back to her cousin, far more aware than
he
was that the fate of their village quite literally hinged on her ability to sway him. Even-tempered she might be, but she'd been raised in the same caste of power as Qishtea and knew what to say.

"The Amorites who kidnapped me treated us abysmally," Kuaya said. "The only reason they did not rape us was because the lizard people threatened them with death if they defiled our persons. But that did not prevent them from beating us or forcing us to walk for weeks on end with little water and almost no food."

Qishtea drew his knife. "I should
kill
you, traitor,"

Behind him, Jamin heard the click of pulse rifles being readied for fire.

Kuaya stepped between them and raised her hand.