Sword of the Gods: Prince of Tyre (Sword of the Gods Saga)

by Anna Erishkigal

  Mikhail would be livid when he learned she wasn't up on a roof in the quietest part of the village surrounded by other archers, but Ninsianna had never been one to let someone else tell her what to do.

  "Be careful," Yadidatum said. "If one group got into the village, there could be others."

  "She-who-is would warn me," Ninsianna reassured her. "Just as she warned me there would be an attempt on the granary."

  Gathering her bow and quiver, she skittered down the ladder after the kids she'd reassigned to more important duties. She waited until the remaining archers had pulled the ladder back up onto the roof before working her way back to their house. The scent of smoke from a burning rooftop wafted her way. Someone had set fire to the flint-knappers house. Frantic villagers scurried through the alleys, some with water to put out the fires before they spread, other on errands such as she was on to fetch supplies.

  "It makes more sense for me to go where I am needed," Ninsianna whispered to the goddess who was far too busy to answer her.

  A suspicious scurry caused her to fade into the shadows, pressing her body against a neighbor's door jamb that thankfully receded just far enough from the street to hide her. Her heart pounded as three men wearing Halifian tunics crept by. Were they here to launch another attack on the granary?

  The men headed in the wrong direction. Ninsianna hung and followed them, darting from shadow to shadow. Perhaps Papa was right? Sometimes the darkness could be useful? She was surprised when the men turned off the main alley and headed straight for her parent's house.

  Did they wish to burn their house down to send a message? Not so long as she was here! She took out her bow and silently wiggled an arrow out of her quiver, one of the good ones she used for duck hunting. She strung it onto her bowstring and waited to see what they would do. Four of them. One of her. Her arm began to shudder from the torsion on the drawn bow. She could get off one, perhaps two shots before the others overran her. Mikhail would be livid if she put herself in danger against such odds.

  She relaxed the draw, but kept the bow strung and ready to pull. Their house wasn't worth her life.

  The Halifians kicked in the door. They went inside, knives drawn, and came back out again, grumbling disappointment. So far she had seen no sign of fire. What were they up to? She focused her gift of tongues to understand what the men were saying.

  “I thought she would be tending to the wounded,” one of them said, a big, ugly bear of a man with a scar across his nose.

  “Well … she’s not,” the second one said. “She is also an archer. Perhaps she is with the main group on the south gate?” This one was younger, perhaps Jamin's age.

  "Good luck retrieving her from there!" a third Halifian snorted. He was skinny, and from the way he lapped at the heels of the ugly one, a lackey.

  “Tough little bastards,” the ugly one snorted. “That little spitfire was nearly as tough as the winged demon."

  "She’s like … what? Thirteen summers old?” the younger one said.

  Uneasiness rippled through Ninsianna's body. Pareesa? These men were talking about Pareesa? Mikhail had sent her down to the middle of nowhere so she wouldn't do something stupid like lead a charge against the enemy army! Was she okay?

  "It's the apprentice healer we want," the skinny one said. "Not the older one."

  Ninsianna shivered. They were looking for her. She should not have come back here. The moonlight peeked out from behind a cloud, just enough that if she moved, she would be seen. She clung to the shadows, waiting for the moonlight to hide again. Foolish her! She-who-is had parked her somewhere she would be safe while she was too busy to watch out for her and she had gone and gotten herself into trouble! As if she hadn't given her enough warning with the nightmare she'd been sending her every night for the past seven months!

  The skinny one moved into the courtyard and began poking around their tiny yard. Since the moonlight prevented her from running away, she would eavesdrop on the enemy plan. Perhaps some good might come of this after all?

  “The Amorites offer a bag of gold for every man who fights the winged demon,” the ugly one rubbed his hands together like a greedy squirrel sizing up a nut, “and three for whoever brings them his head. I, for one, intend to collect the bounty. And the prize!”

  Ninsianna felt a sense of horror. Jamin had been right? These attacks were motivated because the lizard demons wanted to kill her husband! Not her people! And then she had used her dark gift to silence Shahla when she'd tried to tell the tribunal it had been Mikhail who'd sired her baby. Oh, goddess! What had she done? She had brought Mikhail into this village! And gotten Jamin kicked out so he had no place to go but into the arms of their enemies!

  “Killing the winged demon won't solve the Amorite's problem,” the younger one said. “Even their women fight better than those pathetic mercenaries Kudursin uses for spear fodder.”

  A bleat of terror drew Ninsianna's eye towards the courtyard.

  “Hey!” the skinny one came out of the goat shed, dragging Little Nemesis. “Look what I found! Supper!”

  The ugly one drew his blade and moved to stab their family goat. Anger caused Ninsianna to react without stopping to think about whether her actions were prudent. Her arrow struck the skinny man in the heart. The other two rushed at her. Re-stringing her bow, she let the second arrow fly, but her aim was off. The ugly one grabbed her.

  "Let me go!" Ninsianna shouted. She tried to use the dark gift Papa had taught her which blocked people's thoughts from getting to their muscles, but she had never used it under fire. Her concentration was off. The Halifian grimaced as what had to be a splitting headache exploded into his brain, but he held onto her.

  "Look at what we've got here!" the ugly one sneered.

  Ninsianna screamed.

  The ugly one ripped her shawl off of her shoulder. Jagged fingernails dug into her breasts as though crushing juice out of a melon.

  "Mikhail!"

  "We have no time for this, Dirar!" the younger man snarled.

  "Mikhail!" she screamed a second time. Was this what the moment the goddess had warned her about? How could Mikhail hear her from far away and over the din of battle?

  He had wanted to keep her safe. Why, oh why, had she disobeyed!

  "Shut up!" Dirar clamped a hand over her mouth. She tried to bite his hand, but he was practiced enough in the art of kidnapping to cup his hand so she could not get her teeth into it.

  Ninsianna kicked backwards, but Dirar pulled her tightly against him so she had no room to maneuver. His erection pressed through her shawl. Tears sprang into to her eyes.

  'Goddess…' she prayed.

  The man's hand pulled up the lower half of her shawl to pry at her crotch and paused as his hand brushed across the swelling of her lower abdomen.

  “Hey! This one is pregnant!” Dirar laughed. “Jamin said the winged demon's wife was with child. I’ll bet this is the one.”

  Jamin?

  Dirar forgot to cup his hand. Ninsianna bit down. The taste of dirt and stale blood filled her mouth. Somebody else's blood from whomever else this man had killed tonight. She kicked back and dug her heel into his testicles, feeling a satisfying crunch. The man howled in pain.

  The younger man grabbed her away from the first.

  "You gave your word!"

  "My word only means something if it's given to one of our own tribe, Nusrat!" Dirar lunged at him. "This one wants to fight men? Let's show her what happens to a woman who fights a man!"

  "She is to be used as bait," Nusrat hissed. "Not killed! A man should not kill women!"

  Two more Halifians joined their two surviving comrades.

  "Goat shit!" one of the newcomers spied the man Ninsianna had shot. "The sorceress killed Raghib?"

  "Let's just slit her throat and be done with it!" Dirar laughed. "We'll see how long the winged demon sticks around this village once we've killed his woman."

  "No!" Nusrat circled Dirar, his knife drawn. "I gave Jamin my word
she would not be harmed!"

  Ninsianna struggled, but could not break free. She had not way to communicate with Mikhail. She sent a desperate mental image to her father, instead.

  Papa! Help!

  “We don’t get three bags of gold if we kill her,” one of the newcomers said.

  “Yeah," the second newcomer said. "If that's the winged demon's child in her belly, we can sell them both to the slavers. A child with wings will fetch a spectacular price.”

  "The plan was to use her as bait," Nusrat said. "I swear, Dirar. If your greed causes us to fail, I will make sure every man in Kudursin's army knows the reason they didn't get paid was because of you!"

  Dirar blanched.

  "That was what we agreed, Dirar," the first newcomer said.

  "Yeah," the second newcomer said. "Not to watch you rape her."

  Ninsianna stopped struggling. Papa would get a message to Mikhail. Whether or not he was guilty of this crime, he would try to save her. She would feign complacency until just before he approached, and then do something to warn him of the ambush. If only he didn't prevent her from communicating inside his mind like Papa did!

  Dirar struck down on the side of her head with the butt-end of his blade. Her heart cried out one frantic thought before everything went dark.

  'Mikhail…'

  Chapter 77

  November – 3,390 BC

  Earth: Village of Assur

  Angelic Air Force Colonel Mikhail Mannuki'ili

  Mikhail

  Mikhail stopped dead in his tracks in the middle of the dozen men who he fought simultaneously. Something was wrong.

  "Ninsianna…"

  His heart sped up even through the dulled emotions of the killing dance. Mo maité! His wife was in danger! Wordlessly, he sheathed his sword and leaped into the air, abandoning the enemy and heading in the direction he sensed her desperate plea.

  He skimmed the rooftops, primary feathers dislodging thatch from some of the roofs, until he came to their house. She lay in the back yard, artfully arranged as though she had just lay down to take a nap. His wife! His heart pounded in his throat, but he resisted the urge to go to her. He knew a trap when he saw one. He landed on the roof of the house next door.

  Was she okay? Was that movement? Could he see her chest rise and fall? He had felt that one frantic call and then darkness, but the pounding of his heart did not scream to him she was dead. Only that she was in extreme danger.

  He took to the air again and flew a circle, trying to keep silent the beating of his wings, searching for movement. The enhanced vision of the Cherubim killing dance gave him preternatural perception, but he could still only sense within the five mortal senses. Taste. He could almost taste the acrid stench of unwashed bodies. One under the canopy. A second behind the goat shed. Two more lingered out in the street, in the shadows.

  A fifth lump lay next to the goat shed with an arrow sticking out of it. Dead. Ninsianna must have surprised him and before being overpowered by the other four.

  That black pit of anger which had been seeking to erupt ever since the day his ship had crashed here seethed closer to the surface. Power. Draw upon me. Smite them. Yes. He would get even with them. Anger turned to coldness. Emptiness. Ice. Death. He felt a sense of glee. They had harmed the Chosen of She-who-is. Their deaths would please HER. Yes. He would destroy them all.

  His perception changed. Darkness. He could see all the places where these men were weak. The Halifian behind the goat shed was the most vulnerable. Flying so low his feathers hit the rooftops on the downstroke so he wasn’t an easy target against the moon, he circled to come up from behind. Silently dropping to the ground, knife drawn, he grabbed the attacker before he could scream and slit his throat in a movement so effortless he might have been caressing the neck of a lover.

  Little Nemesis bleated a greeting and trotted up to nuzzle the back of his pant leg. It jolted him out of his sense of pleasure as the now-dead Halifian's blood spurted onto his face.

  Now the goat was happy to see him?

  He lowered the Halifian to the ground, repulsed at his own exhileration at killing. Peering through the darkness, he searched to find the Halifian he could smell hiding in the shadows across the courtyard where Ninsianna's body lay.

  Fear screamed through every tissue of his body, competing even with that bottomless black pit of rage. Emotion impeded his ability to perform. Right now, he needed to force himself back into that creature of pure, cold, inhuman logic.

  "Oni o taiji suru tame ni, watashi ni anata no chikara o sazukeru," he whispered to himself. He needed to repeat it several times before that comfortable, familiar lack-of-emotion was reinstated, suppressing fear and anger.

  It was with cold, cool logic he appraised the situation. The moment he approached Ninsianna, the Halifian would shoot and kill him. Mikhail did not have a shield to block the arrows. No handy objects were within reach. At this distance, the enemy could get two arrows into him, three if the archer was really fast, before he got close enough to kill the man. There was no place for him to come up from behind.

  The goat nuzzled at his pant leg and looked up at him as though waiting for him to give it a treat. He got an idea.

  “Little Nemesis,” he said, surprised she was not afraid of him when he was in this state. “I need your help.”

  Ducking behind the fence, he stretched his wings out along the ground so he would not flare them and alert the Halifian to his presence and crawled to the release the gate. He motioned to the goat, who decided at that this moment she didn't want to get out of her pen. Foolish goat! She trotted up behind him as though she wished to hide behind his wings. He realized the mercenaries must have done something to frighten it and the foolish creature understood he would protect it.

  “Be brave, Little Nemesis,” he motioned to the gap in the gate.

  The goat didn’t move.

  "Go!"

  Nothing…

  He grabbed its teat and yanked.

  That had the desired result. The goat bolted out the gate, bleating, and ran through the yard. A diversion. As he predicted, the Halifian shot the arrow strung in his bow at the goat and thankfully missed, expecting a human, not a goat.

  Mikhail flew towards the man in the shadows, the distraction buying him a few tenths of a second in response time. The inevitable second arrow came and sank into the leading edge of one wing, dangerously close to his neck, but it missed a vital target. He registered where the pain would be later, but he felt very little pain in this state. The only thing that mattered in the killing dance was how incapacitated each wound made his body, not how painful it was. The goat diversion spared him a second arrow as he flew into the man, sword drawn, and ran him through, swinging a second time to decapitate him.

  Two more men ran out of the inside of Immanu's house and bolted for the street. Mikhail chased after the slower of the two, a big bear of a man with a cruel scar that ran diagonally across his nose and rotted teeth. The man turned and shot another arrow into his wings, but it hit empty feathers just beneath the point where the supporting flesh ended, causing little harm. The second, younger man slung his arrow and drew his bow as Mikhail fell upon the first. He swung down his sword, but his aim was off due to the internal battle which raged between his need to make sure his wife was safe and that surging anger that pleaded for him to set it free.

  The big man reached into his belt and swung a knife straight for his heart. Mikhail deflected. The knife flew out of the man's hand, right into the feet of the second man who Mikhail realized had his arrow aimed right at his heart.

  "Nusrat!" the big man screamed, "inch’u ch’yek’ krakum nran?"

  The younger man looked at the man on the ground without pity and made eye contact with Mikhail. The arrow was pulled back at full tension, so close that if he let it go Mikhail would not be able to deflect it in time no matter how fast he moved, but the younger man did not let fly the arrow. His expression was pitiless as he nodded at Mikhail.
/>   "Spanel!" the man under his boot screamed. "Du im yeghbayr!"

  "First you must bring her back the winged demon's heart," the younger man said in broken Ubaid. "Here. You will need this to do it." Never taking his eyes off of Mikhail, the man kicked the knife right back into the bigger man's hand.

  The big man with the cut nose grabbed the knife and swung upwards to bury the knife into Mikhail's thigh. Mikhail flapped his wings to get airborne just enough to miss being stabbed and brought a wing down to protect his heart from the arrow he expected from the younger man. It never came. The bigger man scrambled to his feet and lunged at him. Mikhail expertly stepped aside, more mindful of keeping his wing between himself and the unknown younger man than the burly mercenary rushing at him like an enraged bull. He waited until the big man stabbed at him a second time before swinging his sword down diagonally.

  The severed head flew towards the place where the younger man had stood only moments before, but he was gone. Mikhail prepared to rush after him, but that emotion which had compelled him to fly here in the first place, his overwhelming need to protect his mate, won over. He flew to her side.

  “Ninsianna?”

  She lay, unmoving, in the center of the back yard where, had he simply landed as they'd expected and not crept in through the goat pen, he would have been picked off from three different sides. He picked her up, this doll-like creature that was his heart and soul. Her head flopped back as though she were dead. Blood trickled down one side of her head where she’d been hit and she did not even whimper.

  “Ninsianna?” That lack-of-feeling he'd been sensing for weeks rang empty in his heart, as though he called into the void and no one answered.

  “Ninsianna!!!" his heart pounded in his throat. "I cannot feel you!!!”

  He carried her inside the house, but he saw no sign of Needa or the other women assigned to set up triage, nor was there any sign they had been here when the enemy had hit. They must have moved the triage unit someplace else. But where? His wife needed medical attention.