This time, the water did end up in his lap. With a shriek of rage, Aturdokht flew at him, eager to claw out his eyes. Two of Marwan's men restrained her, dragging her out as she shrieked the entire way. Judging by their calm demeanor, this was not the first time this had happened. If anything, they appeared amused. Marwan waited until his daughter was out of earshot before he resumed his game of cobra and mouse.
"From the first day you came to us with your father's stolen treasure," Marwan said, "seeking to free your woman from the clutches of the winged demon, you have remained constant to her even though she does not want you. What will you do if you kill her husband and she rejects you still, just as Aturdokht rejects all she holds responsible for Roshan's death?"
"I came here today seeking proof of his wrongdoing," Jamin said. "You claim lizard-demons provided the Amorite slavers with the gold you used to buy these riches." He gestured to the blood-red carpet and colorful woven robes the Halifian's wore as though they were kings. "And that these lizard-demons claim it is his people who buy our women as concubines and slaves, not for their own amusement. If you can provide me with proof, perhaps I can sway my father to turn against him?"
"And what of my daughter?" Marwan's eyes had the intense stare of a man who had made up his mind.
"As you said," Jamin said. "A man can never have too many wives. Perhaps once I kill the winged demon, Aturdokht will look kindly enough upon me to not bury a blade into my heart?"
Marwan laughed. The men who had remained seated around their shaykh laughed as well.
"I see you have taken my daughter's measure!" Marwan clapped his hands twice. Garshan, the meek wife, returned carrying a tray of flat bread and some roasted acorns, food these people could scarcely afford to share. "Come! Eat! I wish to try this oil you have brought to negotiate my daughter's hand!"
No one, not even his father, had ever broken bread with the people of the desert. This was a new level of alliance with these people who tolerated his machinations to kill the winged demon because doing so suited their interests. The two men who had dragged Aturdokht out came back inside, their arms crossed to hide the places she had scratched them.
"What have you done with her?" Jamin dipped the flat bread in the luscious oil.
"Exactly what I promised," Marwan laughed. "She shall spend the next three days tied to a pole in the sun."
"The offense was slight," Jamin said. "I do not wish her to be harmed. Her child, if I recall, is still on the breast?"
Marwan shoved the bread in his mouth, making subtle happy noises as he chewed and caught the oil which dripped down into his beard with one finger to salvage every drop.
"Women are like dogs," Marwan said. "Sometimes you must beat them and banish them from your tent."
Jamin knew better than to contradict him. And his father accused him of mistreating women? Perhaps Marwan was right.
"Ahh… do not worry!" Marwan chuckled. "We shall not pay too close attention as she serves her punishment. The others will sneak her out food and water, thinking I do not notice their defiance, and bring her babe to her breast to feed. It will teach her to hold her tongue."
Jamin nodded. He did not wish to marry the girl, though she was a better match than that trollop Shahla who blackmailed his affections in exchange for her silence, but he did not wish Aturdokht to come to harm, either. Ninsianna would tolerate no other, she had always made that clear, but at the moment Ninsianna did not belong to him. For now, he would keep his options open. As they finished their feast, Marwan gave him the real item he had come to retrieve today. A golden disc stamped with the image of a winged serpent, proof that somebody offered gold for Ubaid women.
As he made his way out of the encampment, he paused in front of his bride-to-be, her hands tied in front of her around a pole driven into the ground. By the packed state of the sand, this was not the first time she had been tied thus.
"Bastard!" Aturdokht spat. Her hazel-green eyes flashed with hatred, but there was also the mist of tears. Frustration? Or grief? He did not think it was self-pity.
A stray wind picked up from the late-autumn heat and whispered through her hair. The eagles spiraled closer, hovering overhead. The wind they sailed upon caressed his cheek, the sensation one of kisses upon a toddler's brow.
'This union pleases me, favored one…'
Jamin kneeled upon one knee, his expression serious. But not for the imprint of Ninsianna he could still feel, as if she had branded him with a whispered spell, he would be pleased to take such a magnificent woman for his wife. She had been usurped as shaykha of her deceased husband's tribe every bit as much as he had been dishonored in the eyes of his own village.
"I cannot tell you what the future will bring," Jamin spoke low enough that the others could not hear. "But I promise you this. Before I take you to my bed, I shall cut out the winged demon's heart and give it to you as my gift."
"Either you bring me his heart," Aturdokht writhed against her bindings. "Or it shall be your heart I cut out and feed to you!"
He glanced up at the sky. Two eagles. Circling. Watching everything that went on below. It was said that She-who-is found favor wherever a mated pair took roost. Their black-brown wings, so much like the winged demons enormous ones, caused the black anger which writhed perpetually beneath the surface to bubble up. He grabbed Aturdokht's hair and pulled her face close until her hatred turned to fear.
Marwan gave a subtle nod of approval. Not too much force. Just enough to show her who was boss. It was what he'd dreamed his father would do when Ninsianna had broken their engagement instead of the condemnation he had gotten instead.
"You have all heard the vow from her own lips," Jamin stared into her hazel green eyes to show it was with her he made a deal now, but he shouted loud enough for the entire encampment to hear. "On the day I cut out the winged demon's heart, she shall become my wife!"
Not just the men, but the women and children hidden in the tents, free from stranger's eyes, wagged their tongues in the ululating cheer of the people of the desert.
The moment he let go of her hair, she spat on him again.
"If you touch me a second time before that day," Aturdokht hissed low enough that her father could not hear. "I will kill you."
Jamin gave her a jackal's grin. He would not woo her, this wild spirit of the desert, but he would not spurn her, either. She did not want anyone but her husband, now dead and gone, while he could not have the woman he wanted, either. Not so long as the winged demon was still alive. But Aturdokht had spunk, something he sorely missed. A lot could happen between now and when he killed the winged demon.
Who knows? Maybe a man could handle two wives? Marwan, it was said, had six.
As he walked out of the encampment, he picked up a rock and threw it at the two eagles circling above him as though he were their prey.
"Go spy on someone else!" he shouted.
With a lazy flick of a wing, the eagles circled higher, as far out of reach as the star which chased the moon over the horizon each evening, but could never catch it.
Chapter 11
September 3,390 BC
Earth: Village of Assur
Shahla
Best friend of Firouz and one of the better warriors in Assur, most people thought of Dadbeh as a prankster. Lanky and short, with mismatched eyes in two different shades of brown and a hawkish nose which had been broken once during a kabbadi game, he was no woman's idea of a dream man. Perhaps if his family had money? Perhaps then Shahla wouldn't be so hesitant to tell him he was going to be a father. Maybe. Maybe he was going to be a father. Unfortunately, she wasn't sure who the father was. But of one thing she was certain.
It wasn't Jamin…
"Why do you let him treat you thus?" Dadbeh asked.
Shahla turned away, her eyes pointed down at the ground beside him so she would not have to look him in the eye as she lied. She tilted her head to the good side, hiding the bald spot where Jamin had ripped out her hair.
"It's my fault," Shahla said. "I angered him."
It was the truth. She had angered him. Getting involved with Jamin again had been a mistake. But she was in love with him, and her parents were even more in love with him. Or more precisely, her parents were in love with the prospect of their daughter marrying the son of the village chief, not the lowly son of a wheelwright, and a landless wheelwright at that!
Her monthly moon cycle had been overdue when she'd first lay down with Jamin again, so she'd kept her mouth shut hoping her cycle was just late. Two months late. It had happened before. Why not pretend she wasn't burdened when the scares had been false so many times?
Unfortunately, her cycle had never come. She'd hidden the morning sickness until it had finally passed, hoping to bind Jamin to her by being faithful to him. She'd goddess better be faithful to him or her parents would turn her out to roam the desert, a meal for the hyenas if she didn't land the chief's son! As the second-most wealthy family in Assur, a marital alliance would prove profitable once Jamin ascended to his rightful place and Shahla turned his ear towards favorable relations with the Uruk tribe, who his father adamantly opposed trading with, for the fine flax cloth her parents traded.
She should just tell Jamin the child was his!
"Shahla," Dadbeh's voice warbled. "Just say the word and I'll ask Mikhail to snap his neck. You know they have a disagreement about them."
"Jamin is your friend," Shahla looked into his mismatched eyes, one the color of dried dates, the other hazel with flecks of green.
"Jamin was my friend," Dadbeh said softly. "Until he stole you away from me. You should not let him treat you so."
The warm flush of shame crept into her cheeks. That is why she had not told Jamin she was carrying his child. Because although she did love him, as he'd pushed her face into the ground and taken her from the rear as though he were a ram mounting a ewe, it had been Ninsianna's name he'd whispered as he'd reached ecstasy, not hers. And as he had hurt her, for oh, dear gods, Jamin had a taste for rough sex, it had been dear, sweet Dadbeh whose face she'd seen when she'd closed her eyes and pretended she'd enjoyed it, so earnest and eager to please her.
Did she love him? Who knows? But Dadbeh loved her. Of that she was certain. And he would marry her, whether or not the child was his.
Every time she'd opened her mouth to tell Jamin the final lie, that she was pregnant and the child she carried was his seed, no words had come out. Perhaps a stronger woman would have simply broken things off, but Jamin had a possessive streak. Even when he didn't want something for himself anymore, he would not give it up unless he was forced, and there was no forcing Jamin!
It had taken a winged champion, come down from the heavens, to get him to leave Ninsianna alone, accursed rival! Why, oh why had she gotten involved with him again when she had known it was a bad idea? Because she loved him, that's why, and her parents loved him even more.
And then she had made the biggest mistake of her life. Her guilt weighed so heavily upon her that sometimes she felt as though the whole village whispered behind her back about what she had done.
"Jamin will kill you," Shahla said softly, her voice almost a whisper. "You know he does not let go of what is his."
More precisely, he would not risk losing the only leverage he had to prevent her from telling the tribunal it was his fault eleven of their villagers were dead! She kept her mouth shut because she was not guiltless in this tragedy.
"If he loves you," Dadbeh's voice warbled with emotion, "then why did he break it off with you before?"
"Because Ninsianna cast a spell on him!" Shahla said. Anger rose in her veins at the memory. "She is a sorceress. Everybody knows it. You saw the way he changed after he was gored!"
Actually, Jamin had broken things off with her a few weeks before that had happened. His father did not get along with her parents, they and their demands for a break of unity with the rest of the Ubaid tribe. Once the lands south of here had been Ubaid lands, but the Uruk had pushed them out, just as the Ubaid had pushed the Halifians out of these lands before them.
Dadbeh looked past her shoulder, to the village on the hill. "Ninsianna never wanted anything to do with any of us. Especially Jamin. She never forgave him for setting her hair on fire when she was a little girl."
That thought elicited a giggle. It had been an accident, what the black bitumen had done to the fire. Throwing in the rocks had not been an accident, of course. Jamin and his friends had spent days gathering the viscous rocks the basket weaver melted to make them waterproof, to make the bonfire they lit on the winter solstice glow bright. Ninsianna, oblivious to what was going on around her and talking to her imaginary friends, had been standing too close to the fire when the bitumen had flared up. The Chief had been livid, and Ninsianna more livid still when her long black tresses were singed off of her head.
"Pity," Shahla laughed. "Even then that goddess of hers protected her. Had it been one of us, our flesh would have been burned as well!"
Dadbeh placed his hand upon her cheek, his look intense. "I mean it, Shahla. If you want to leave him, if he's holding something over you, Mikhail will make him back off. I've seen the way you taunt him, trying to make him angry. A woman doesn't do things like that unless she wants to be rid of a man."
"Dadbeh … I …"
Longing spread down to her womb, already full but aching to feel the thickness of a man inside of her again. Every woman had her weaknesses. Hers was she wanted to be held. Oh! How she wanted to be held! Every day of her life had been Shahla do this or Shahla do that. Smile at that man so he will trade favorably with us.
She hadn't meant to do it the first time, or the second, or the third, but there were trades to be made, and her parents had looked the other way when the desert chieftain had taken her maidenhead in exchange for letting their caravan pass, asking no questions, and refusing to listen when she tried to tell.
"He's a good man, Mikhail," Dadbeh said. "If a bit daft when it comes to expressing himself with words. He will make Jamin back off. You know he will."
Shahla trembled. There was a reason she had lay down with Dadbeh even though the handsomer warriors were wooing her, back before Jamin had been spurned by Ninsianna. The others always told her she was pretty, or curried favor with promises of gifts, but dear, sweet Dadbeh, who had never come to her with anything more than that earnest look in his mismatched eyes, he loved her. Of that she was certain.
"What if Jamin holds something over me?" Shahla whispered. "Something bad. He is the Chief's son."
"Then you shall tell the truth," Dadbeh said. "And Mikhail shall listen. And he shall tell the tribunal. And the tribunal shall tell the Chief what to do. And he will obey it, whether Jamin is his son or not, because the Chief has never overruled the tribunal. Not even when it involved his son."
The tribunal had ordered the Chief to pay recompense for errors Jamin had made in the past, not bad ones such as the villagers now dead, but smaller matters involving sums of money, something the Chief loved more dearly than even than his son. But the crime Jamin had committed was more serious than tribute alone. Would the Chief exercise his prerogative if the crime merited banishment? Or even death?
"No," Shahla said. "I cannot do this to him. It was an error, honest made."
Dadbeh's eyes glistened brighter, having gotten his answer.
"He's a good man," Dadbeh backed away. "If you ever change your mind, you can go to him. You can tell him the truth. The gods sent him here to teach us right from wrong."
"First you hated him," Shahla said. "And now you claim he speaks for the gods?"
"Ninsianna does," Dadbeh said, "and she does not have wings."
Shahla looked up at the eagles circling in the sky. Not the wings she was looking for, but close enough. Every woman in the village bore an affection for Mikhail. Including her. But she had curried favor with Jamin, feeding his hatred for the man, the only thing she could pretend she had in common with him, his hatred for Mikhail, and hers for N
insianna.
"Goodbye," Dadbeh whispered. "With Jamin, I wish you luck. He was once a good man, back before he got the notion into his head that he could rule this village without a shred of humility, or his father's common sense. I hope you get what you want."
She should have called to him as he turned away, lanky frame, shorter than the average male, with his kilt tied high and only one fringe, the mark of the lowest classes. But she did not. Not because she didn't love him, for in that moment she realized she did, or at least as much as she was capable of love, she, who was no stranger to the affections of men. But because she knew Dadbeh was right. Mikhail was a good man.
If she told Mikhail the truth, about telling Jamin where Pareesa liked to hunt, about how Jamin had given that information to the Halifians so they could kidnap her and lead him into a trap, and how the Halifians had double-crossed him, underestimating Mikhail and sending their men to raid the village, instead, and killed eleven villagers, the same as they were doing to every other Ubaid village up and down the Hiddekel River, that Mikhail would drag her before the tribunal and bring them both to justice for the wrongs they had committed.
He would kill her, Jamin would, rather than let her tell her tale. She had seen the murder in his eyes, and she was afraid. Every night, whenever she considered going to the Chief and confessing what they had done, it felt as though the walls closed in upon her and every eye in the village watched her, whispering, talking about her guilt. The voices said Jamin would kill her if she betrayed him, and she knew the voices were true.
"Goodbye," she told the man who would marry her no matter what. Even if the child was not his.
Gita waited until he had retreated before stepping out of the shadows, her perceptive black eyes filled with anger.
"How could you do that to him when you know he loves you?"
"I am Jamin's woman," Shahla lied. "I will not betray him."
"Jamin has wanted nothing to do with you for almost a month," Gita said. "And before that, after he dragged you behind the goat shed to have his way with you, he would beat you within an inch of your life."
Sword of the Gods: Prince of Tyre (Sword of the Gods Saga) Page 12