"Come," Ebad shouted, backlit against the fire as though he were some ancient hero. "There are seventy, perhaps eighty men."
"Can you see Pareesa?" one of the other B-Team members shouted.
"No," Ebad said. "Yes! Oh gods! They've got her surrounded!"
Gita choked back her fear as she looked down into the valley and saw the multitudes who'd gathered to ambush Mikhail. How could they possibly hope to fight these numbers? The B-team had only sixteen members, seventeen if she counted herself. She glanced back in the direction from whence they'd come. Nothing. No shouts. No curses. No sound of stones being dislodged by running feet. If only she'd been able to earn Qishtea's trust like Mikhail had asked her to do! Because of her, the lead warrior of the most powerful tribe had cajoled the others into not even backing them up. She glanced up at Ipquidad who lumbered up behind her, sweaty and out of breath.
"What should we do?" Gita asked.
"We fight," Ipquidad said. He gripped his spear, his meaty hand trembling. "Mikhail would do the same thing for us."
"Save Pareesa," Ebad shouted. Without looking to see if the rest of the B-team would follow him into battle, he broke down the hill at a run, shouting a war cry to draw the enemy's attention away from Pareesa who stood clearly silhouetted in the enemy campfire. It was no secret Ebad was in love with Mikhail's protégé.
Gita's heart raced with a peculiar, frantic sensation as she searched the enemy numbers and could find no sign of wings.
"Where is Mikhail?"
"Maybe he's taken to the air?" Yaggitt said, one of the other B-team leaders. With a war cry, he broke into a run towards the enemy as Ebad had done, the rest of the B-Team fanning out behind him in an offensive formation Mikhail called a 'charge.'
"We stand together," Ipquidad said. "You watch my back and I'll watch yours. Alright?"
"Alright," Gita gulped. Without another word they broke into a run, heedless of the danger as they propelled themselves into enemy masses. Her own high, shrill shriek offended her ears, more out of terror than a war cry. She picked out the man she would engage first and lowered her spear to lance him. The enemies broke rank. Some continued to attack Pareesa, others rushed towards them to defend against the new threat which came at them out of the darkness. The enemy had no idea there was only seventeen of them.
'I'm invisible … I'm invisible … oh, dear goddess, please don't let me die!' Gita prayed as she materialized out of the darkness and ran the first enemy through with her spear. The man dropped with a yelp of surprise, as if he hadn't seen her. If only she'd brought her bow!
With shouts of 'to Pareesa' the B-Team engaged the enemy.
"Stay outside their fringe!" Yaggitt shouted, their default leader now that Ebad had thrown himself into the enemy midst. "We need to harass them until the other warriors get here."
Other warriors? What other warriors? Qishtea had made it clear he had no intention of following them. Whatever Nineveh did, the rest of the villages always followed.
Who were these enemies, anyways? Halifians? No, Amorites by the look of their clothing. Gita pursued one of them a step too far and found herself surrounded as the enemy danced out of her way, avoiding the thrust of her spear. Three men jabbed at her at once, but the training kata Mikhail had forced them all to memorize helped her to deflect their thrusts and dance harmlessly out of the way.
“A girl?” An enemy sneered at her through rotted teeth. "Just whack her over the head and be done with it!"
"She's too fast!" one of the men complained. "Why don't you smite her?"
“Get in there!" The leader shoved the man towards Gita. "Do you want to greet your father at the entrance to the Dreamtime and tell him you were sent there by a girl?”
Gita stabbed at one, and then the other, pretending she couldn't understand their accursed language, the language of her mother's murderers. Her grasp of their tongue was old and out-of-practice, but with the clarity which came from fighting for your life, it all came back to her as if no time had passed since the last time she'd heard men speak that accursed tongue, the day the Amorites had come to murder her mother.
Old hatreds rumbled in her veins. That dark gift, the one which had sustained her in the Assurian raid, showed her where the enemy was weak. An old injury … here. A gimpy knee … there. In this place there is an injury which can be exploited. It was not to the gentle moon goddess she prayed now, but the bat-winged keeper of the dead. A feeling akin to hunger gurgled through her veins as the next Amorite fell beneath her spear. She crouched there, panting, Jamin's cast-off spear clutched in her fists as she sized up the enemy and listened to that dark gift which whispered all the places they were out-of-shape, cocky, or too full of themselves to see the night-stalker which had slithered into their midst.
“She fights like no woman I have ever seen!” A scar-faced enemy jabbed at her with his spear.
“Perhaps she is a man wearing woman’s clothing?” The one she thought of as alligator-grin grabbed his crotch. "There's only one way to find out!"
"We'll have fun with this one," another chittered like a monkey in a tree.
"She sure looks like a man with her shawl tied high around her waist like a kilt," scar-face said. "Her tits are small and she is ugly. Perhaps she is a girly-man?" He feigned a half-hearted jab, pulled back and then stabbed at her unexpectedly, testing her reflexes.
Only the shadow-darkness which preceded the man's movement helped Gita dance out of the way.
“Let's strip off his dress and cut off his manhood!” Alligator-grin gave a guttural laugh.
"If it is a girl, we can sample her before we hand her over to the lizard people." The leader bared his rotted teeth like a hyena's fangs. "She will fetch a good price, even if she's been violated."
Fear was inadequate to stem Gita's rising anger. These bastards had killed her friend Azin! She bared her teeth, her face twisted with hatred as she pictured what this race of men had done to her mother's people. Blood lust overwhelmed her terror. She forced herself to hold her temper, to wait, to strike as Mikhail had taught them when natural forces would negate her lack of height or weight and allow her increased speed to give her an advantage.
Wait.
Block.
Feint a thrust.
Ignore the leader's taunting. Make him think you are incompetent.
Block.
Block the man trying to sneak up behind you.
Watch the leader.
Quick! Another enemy to the side!
Watch for it.
Block.
Watch for it.
Stab downwards to deflect a spear.
Step aside.
Wait… and…
"Yes!" Gita stabbed the crocodile-man in the gut with Jamin's cast-off spear. "I'm a girl. Tell everyone in the Dreamtime you were smote by a woman!"
Surprise lit up the man's face as he screeched and fell. Gita yanked the spear out and immediately struck against the next enemy who moved at her. She felt a sense of detached satisfaction as she thrust her spear into the next enemy's heart.
The sound of shouting from the direction they had just come signaled help had just arrived. Ohthankthegoddess! Whether he hated her or not, Qishtea was too vain to let a girl be braver than him. The scream of Amorites dying at the end of Ubaid spears was sweet music to Gita's ears as she stabbed at the backs of enemies who had suddenly lost all interest in her in favor of the real threat of an equal number of men.
A sound like the worst sandstorm she had ever seen erupted from the hills behind the bonfire. Her mouth agape, all paused to watch the dark lumps light up with dozens of tiny bonfires. A dance of blinking fireflies circled the hills in a peculiar, synchronized dance, red, green, red, green. With a roar, the hills separated themselves from the Earth and began to ascend into the sky.
The Ubaid screamed. Even the Amorites, who seemed to know what the things were, paused to watch them ascend, their mouths agape.
That dark gift whispered what she was seeing.
"They're sky canoes!" Gita shouted. "Just like Mikhail arrived in!" She stabbed an enemy foolish enough to turn his back to her. Sand blew into her eyes and made her choke, but she pulled her cape over her mouth and fought anyways, her eyes scrunched into slits as the enemy turned tail and ran.
"Victory!" Qishtea shook his fist in the air. "See! You're not so invincible, after all! Take that, lizard demons!"
The Ubaid cheered. Ninevians slapped Assurians on the back, and Eshnunians, Gasurians, and other villages who had sent delegates to the regional gathering of chiefs. Their revelries were short-lived. A fireball ignited on the horizon, back where they had left the chiefs haggling in their tents. The men grew silent, only the groans of dead and dying disturbing their horror as they realized perhaps they no longer had chiefs left to give them orders.
"It's a good thing you followed us," Ipquidad said in his usual, diplomatic fashion. "Come, Qishtea. Let's see what has Pareesa standing before the fire."
Shouts and the sounds of more feet clued Gita that the warriors weren't the only ones who'd followed Pareesa into battle.
"Immanu?" Gita asked.
Her uncle grabbed her by the shoulders as if, for a moment, he thought she was somebody else.
"You're not her!" Immanu shouted. His wild salt-and-pepper hair stuck up as though he was a madman. "Where is she? Where's my daughter?"
"We haven't seen her," Gita said.
Immanu shoved her aside and pushed through the warriors, shouting his daughter's name over and over again. "Ninsianna. Where is Ninsianna?"
A high-pitched, keening wail erupted from the campfire. Immanu. Someone called for Immanu. That sound was joined by a deeper, more mournful wail as Immanu's voice joined Pareesa's. Gita stepped carefully through the dying enemies and stopped, transfixed, by the circle of dead which surrounded Pareesa like the outer wall of Assur. One of the warriors yelped and leaped back as he realized some of the dead were less than human.
"Lizard demons," Gita whispered. She stared at the lifeless, gold-green eyes which stared at her from a green snout, its fangs still bared in a snarl. She'd seen etchings of these creatures at her mother's temple, but for some reason they'd been painted alongside the other heroes and not as minions of this 'Shay'tan' Mikhail described. So these were the Sata'an?
The warriors parted and gave Gita a glimpse of the sight which caused even brave Pareesa to weep.
"Mikhail…"
Gita covered her mouth to suppress her wail of grief. The scent and sound of the campfire, singed feathers, blood and shit of the dead who'd loosed their bowels upon being killed all converged to make the world spin in a surreal juxtaposition that made her want to fall to her knees and cry. While Pareesa clutched Mikhail's hand and shouted for him to hang on, Immanu tore open his shirt and exposed the knife the enemy had buried in his chest.
Mikhail? Could he really … be … dead?
Chatter drew Gita's attention towards a body which had been dragged and dumped outside the ring of dead. Ninsianna's red cape was unmistakable. She clasped her hand over her mouth as she saw two arrows sticking out of her back. Why did Immanu not perform the death rituals?
"Is that Ninsianna?"
"Who shot Ninsianna?"
"Is she still alive?"
"She's been shot through the heart."
"Look at the colors of the feathers."
"That's Assurian fletching."
"Pareesa … are those your arrows?"
All eyes turned towards Pareesa.
"That's not Ninsianna," Pareesa said. "Look at her! It is an imposter! Sent to trick him so they could lure him into a trap!"
"But she wears Ninsianna's red cape," Gita's voice warbled. She touched the colorful embroidery which rimmed the hem. "There is none like it in all the land."
"Find out who that is!"
His hands shaking, Ipquidad rolled the imposter onto her side and pulled back the hood. A gasp went through the warriors as they recognized a face which was nearly as familiar as Gita's own.
"It's Shahla!"
"Why would Shahla stab him?"
"Everyone knows Shahla was crazier than a hyena!"
"She blamed Mikhail for her baby's death."
"I heard he was the baby's father."
"No. It was Jamin."
"Shahla slept with every warrior in the village."
"She propositioned Mikhail. I saw it. I was there. Nobody refused Shahla when she offered her favors."
"I don't blame Jamin for beating her," Qishtea gave Gita a shove. "If it was me, I would have killed her. Not just beaten the bastard out of her belly."
Gita fell to her knees and touched the cheek of the woman who had been both her protector … and also her biggest curse. She touched her own tattered brown cape, a gift from Shahla once it had become too worn to be respectable for the daughter of a wealthy flax-cloth merchant. Shahla had spoken to her when no one wanted to be her friend because nobody wanted to be seen with the daughter of the village drunk. She had slipped Gita bits and snippets of food pilfered from her father's pantry to keep her from starving. But Shahla had always had a weak mind, one easily manipulated by any warrior willing to give her the affection her own father denied her.
"Shahla, what have you done?" Tears slid down Gita's cheeks at the loss of her last and only friend. That dark gift, the one which showed her if there was some life spark to be fortified and keep a wounded creature alive, showed her Shahla was beyond all hope, not even for the song.
Words flowed around her, whispered in one ear and out the other, none of them sticking as she stared over the pile of bodies between her dead friend and the beautiful winged man that Shahla had betrayed. Warriors circled around them, touching Mikhail, moving his wings, dragging the dead out of the way so Ipquidad could push forward a cart for transport.
That dark gift whispered that someone else needed her gift, someone else was still alive. She stared at Mikhail with her huge, black eyes, seeing the piss-puke-putrid green darkness which emanated from knife and spread into Mikhail's body as though it fed upon his life's energy. Pausing to cross Shahla's hands across her chest, Gita rose and stepped towards Mikhail, that whisper growing louder the closer she got to him.
"Immanu," Pareesa shouted at Immanu. "Where is Ninsianna? Mikhail needs her. Please! Use your gift!”
Immanu's bushy eyebrows knit together in concentration. Gita could sense an eerie tickling, like the kiss of a spider web, as Immanu used his shamanic gift to access the dream realm. His brow wrinkled, perplexed.
"I can sense her," Immanu's voice warbled with emotion, "but I cannot tell whether she is in the dreamtime, or still resides within this realm. It feels like … it feels as though she is here, but someone has covered her with a blanket."
That dark gift whispered the name of the terror against which the Priestesses at Jebel Mar Elyas had prayed for protection against three times each day.
“The Evil One has her,” Gita spoke before her brain could register she had uttered those words aloud.
Immanu lurched to his feet and grabbed Gita by the shoulders.
"What do you know of this Evil One?" Immanu screamed at her. His tawny-beige eyes turned copper with hatred as he dug his fingers deep into her flesh. Gita cried out in pain.
"I … I … I," Gita sputtered, cowed by the hatred which burned in her uncle's eyes.
"Gita was just bragging to us how Shahla was her best friend," Qishtea gave her a self-satisfied smirk. "Isn't that right, everyone?"
"Yeah," several of the warriors chimed in. "Everybody knows Gita and Shahla were inseparable."
"It was all Shahla could talk about," Qishtea said, "the last time she accompanied her father to our village. About how she could tell her best friend anything!"
Immanu's hands tightened so hard they threatened to snap her bones. Gita had never been welcome at their house because of some rift which had occurred between her uncle and her father, but this was the first time she'd realized her uncle hated her.
"Like father," Immanu snarled, "like daughter."
"I didn't do anything," Gita cried out. "Please, uncle. I didn't have anything to do with this!"
"I saw them together the day before we left Assur," her own B-Team leader, Yaggitt, gave her an accusatory glare. "She was down by the river, brushing out Shahla's hair and laughing."
"You planned this!" Immanu struck her face. "You and that white-winged demon!"
Gita blinked, shocked. Immanu's words slithered into her brain and taunted her as recognition of what he said paired up with the happy ramblings of a mind-damaged young woman.
"Wh-what?" Gita's face betrayed her knowledge. "A white-winged Angelic?"
"You knew?!!" Immanu knocked her to the ground and began to kick her, egged on by Qishtea and the other warriors who needed someone to blame.
"No! Uncle! Please! I knew nothing of this! You never said anything about the Evil One being a white-winged Angelic!"
She curled up in a ball to protect her vital organs the way she did when her father beat her, praying for the madness to stop. She had known! Shahla had come home three days ago and bragged a white-winged Angelic had taken her for a wife, but on the heels of her ranting that Mikhail was her husband and had secretly fathered her deceased baby, a delusion Gita knew for a fact was not true, she had sloughed off that claim as just another one of Shahla's delusions.
"Nobody ever told me the Evil One was a white-winged Angelic!" Gita cried out. "The priestesses always depicted him as having the head of a bull!"
It was Ipquidad, big, silent Ipquidad, the biggest, most timid member of the B-Team, who grabbed Immanu's hand and stopped him mid-punch.
"You never said anything about the Evil One being one of Mikhail's own species," Ipquidad said. "You led us to believe a lizard-demon orchestrated the attacks against Assur."
Gita clamped her hand over her mouth to silence her own cries of pain. When you got beaten, if you cried out, it only made your abuser beat you harder. She'd learned that lesson from her father.
Pareesa stood up from where she'd been holding Mikhail's hand.
Sword of the Gods: Agents of Ki (Sword of the Gods Saga) Page 11