"May Shay'tan guide their spirits into the Dreamtime," Kasib said solemnly, "and grant them everlasting life in the garden of She-who-is."
"Shay'tan be praised," Katelego, and Iyad murmured.
"Shay'tan be praised," Kasib said.
With a nod goodbye, Kasib continued on his way to the commissary, his tail swishing thoughtfully behind him as Private Tharwat, the lizard charged with overseeing their inventory, delivered the grim news that the base was almost out of grain. While lizard-soldiers could eat meat if they had no other choice, by nature the Sata'anic lizards who made up the bulk of Shay'tan's armies were vegetarians. Thus far they'd compensated by sending the bellicose Catoplebas and Marid, who were carnivores, out into the unspoiled countryside to hunt their own game, but with ammunition running low, soon that option would elude them as well.
Soon, they'd be relegated to chucking spears just like the humans…
"Thank you, Private Tharwat," Kasib said. "If you don't mind, I'd just like to verify your numbers." He pulled out a smart tablet and began pulling up lists of inventories. "Independently. You know how it is?"
"I take great care to make sure nobody pilfers supplies from the treasury of our emperor!" the lizard Private's gold-green eyes narrowed in hurt. His dorsal ridge reared as he filled the air with pheromones of anger.
"I'm not questioning you," Kasib said. "It's just … regulation. Whenever supplies drop below a certain level, the chief Logistics Officer must take an inventory and formulate a plan to stretch those resources until reinforcements can arrive."
Private Tharwat relaxed, but from the pheromones of indignation which continued to pour out of his pores, the lizard still felt insulted.
"We all serve for the glory of the Empire," Private Tharwat recited stiffly. He tucked his tail up tightly along his left side and gave Kasib a crisp salute. "Let me know if you need anything, Sir."
"Thank you, private," Kasib said. "You're dismissed."
"Shay'tan be praised," Private Tharwat made the prayer-gesture.
"Shay'tan be praised," Kasib said in return.
He waited until the man had exited the storeroom before he began to scan the shelves for places the inventory did not match his checklist. Usually commissariats erred on the side of excess inventory. An accusation of pilfering could get a soldier reassigned to the Tokoloshe front. No excess. No excess. No excess. Kasib rummaged in desperation, searching for anyplace there was a surplus. None. There was none.
Although Kasib ranked highly enough that he could take what he needed and it would be the commissary chief who would be blamed, Kasib was not the kind of guy to let another man take the fall. In fact, Kasib wasn't the kind of guy to engage in criminal behavior in the first place, being conscientious to a fault, but Taram had changed all of that.
There! He spotted a measure of rye berries that looked a little heavier than listed on the inventory. Just to be sure, he weighed it. Eleven grams over the quota. He painstakingly scooped the precious seeds into a small, cloth bag and weighed it three times before checking it off on his tablet as measuring the stated amount. There. It wasn't much, but it was something.
He then moved next door to inventory the weapons depot. That news was even grimmer. They were low on everything. People. Weapons. Ammunition. And now food. If they didn't get their hands on that grain-growing belt between the rivers before the armada got here, limping along at the brink of starvation like Shay'tan always sent reinforcements on these kinds of remote expeditions, they would all be screwed.
Kasib saluted the weapons master on his way out the door.
"Is everything in order, Sir?" the lizard nervously tasted the air.
"Supplies are critically low," Kasib said. "We have no choice but to enact Plan Delta."
The lizard's scales waxed a darker shade of green, the one usually affiliated with grimness or melancholy. Fewer plasma grenades and refills for their pulse rifles meant more soldiers would die if the humans chose to really put up a fight. There was a reason every Sata'anic lizard carried a sword. The old dragon might be beneficent when it came to ensuring a rudimentary standard of living, but when it came to squeezing out a single deben beyond that, well, there was a reason Shay'tan's detractors often depicted him as sitting on a pile of gold. Their glorious emperor, peace be upon his name, was notoriously cheap!
"Shay'tan be praised," the weapons master made the prayer gesture.
"Shay'tan be praised," Kasib said as well.
On the way out he saluted the guards placed to ensure no unauthorized personnel accessed the heart and soul of this operation, their superior weaponry. He then walked a few hundred yards to gaze over the primitive landing strip they'd cleared for their shuttlecraft to land. All nonessential exploratory missions had ceased and fuel-guzzling trips in and out of Earth’s orbit had ended for all but the most dire circumstances. The appearance of the Angelic spy ship, Hashem's bushy eyebrows, had forced them to cut off contact with their trading partners long before the base had become self-sustaining.
Kasib frowned as he stared at the blood-red sunset, roiling with clouds that looked like pillars of smoke. On Hades-6, it was said such weather foretold Emperor Shay'tan losing his temper. Kasib made the prayer-gesture, more out of habit than actual prayer. What would Shay'tan do when he discovered his most humble and loyal servant had been pilfering grain from his stores to give to, of all things, a human?
The sentries saluted him at the makeshift gate which separated the base from the town. "Sir!"
"As you were," Kasib saluted back.
By Sata'anic standards Ugarit was nothing but a few low, stone buildings huddled together on the side of a hill which sloped gently towards the Akdeniz Sea, but by human terms this village was a magnificent city. The scent of baking bread blended with the aroma of salt air tickled Kasib's sensitive tongue. Someday this city would become a mecca of Sata'anic rule and he, Kasib, would be proud to say he'd had a hand in that transformation. As for the theft of grain? He'd find a way to make it even with the old dragon. He swore he would!
He paused in front of one of the nicer houses and straightened his uniform before knocking on the door. This was not the house he'd quartered himself into as a second-son, but a house three doors down, the real reason Kasib had proposed the program.
The door opened. His pulse sped up at the sight of the woman who stood there, backlight by a penumbra of warm light cast off from the cook fire within as though she was She-who-is stepping out of a dream.
"Kasib!" Taram's lips curved up into a smile that made his chest hurt. "You have returned!"
He'd always wondered how she knew it was him when, being totally blind, Taram was unable to see him? Behind her, her house-mother, Donatiya chased after a gaggle of her hatchlings, um, children, as they bustled about the house, engaged in a bout of tag.
"Is that Kasib?" Nipmeqa called from his favorite spot by the cook fire, the family's patriarch. "Tell him to come in!"
Kasib averted his eyes to avoid making eye contact with the beauty at the door, even though Taram could not see him, so no one could accuse him of being disrespectful to a female, but he could not help but peek upwards to admire her smooth, scale-less skin. Her sightless eyes searched for the sound of his voice. He forced himself not to taste the air with his sensitive forked tongue, a gesture the humans found repulsive, and curled his tail up close to his body to avoid being stepped on by the children who rushed up to him, their faces eager as they bounced up and down to ask him what he'd brought for them today.
"Kasib! Kasib! Kasib!" they shouted. The littlest one tugged his tail while the older children rifled through his pockets, searching for the small trinkets he'd hidden there.
The gifts were ordinary items: a plastic button; a curious seashell some soldier had brought back from a reconnaissance mission; a paper printout of Shay'tan's palace rising above the capital city, Dis. But it made the children happy, and that made him happy, for if there was anything Kasib missed sorely, it was the companio
nship of his six dozen siblings, half-siblings, mother and her three sister-mothers.
"Welcome, Kasib," Nipmepa called out in Kemet..
"Have you eaten already?" his wife Donatiya gestured to a crock which simmered by the fire. "We have some leftover porridge?"
Kasib's stomach growled.
"No thank you," he refused, careful to enunciate the foreign 'k' sound. "I've already eaten." He'd done no such thing, but with supplies so low, the only way he could compensate Nipmepa for taking care of Taram was to cut his own rations.
"Come, children!" Donatiya clapped. "It's past your bedtime! Nipmepa! Come tell your children a bedtime epic!"
Nipmepa winked at him as he herded his family up the narrow stair into the bedroom in their loft. Was it that obvious he was here to visit Taram instead of the man who'd done his best to ease relations between the Sata'anic visitors and the humans who lived in Ugarit?
"Please, Kasib," Taram gestured towards a bench beside the small, clay oven. "Have a seat and tell me about your day?"
Kasib flit his tongue out to taste the delicious scents which hung heavy in the air like a bouquet of flowers. Porridge made with barley? Yes. With a bit of honey. And … reconstituted dried figs? All blended with Taram's lightly musky scent, mixed with a hint of sandalwood dabbed at her pulse points. It aroused a hunger for more than simply a bowl of porridge.
'What is wrong with you?' he chastised himself. He reached into his satchel for the pathetically small sack of rye berries, into which he'd added his own daily ration of barley.
"This was all I was able to obtain," Kasib said.
"We are grateful for whatever you can acquire," Taram said.
Desire mixed with guilt as he watched Taram's sensitive fingers ascertain the size and weight of the bag. Her lip trembled as she recognized how inadequate it was to meet her weekly ration. She, like him, was a guest here in this house. Nipmeqa was a kindly man who had taken her in because it behooved him to be on good terms with their conquering general's chief logistics officer, but with eight children to feed, his beneficence was limited by his budget.
"I do not know when I'll be able to acquire more," Kasib said apologetically. "I'm sorry … I hadn't … I had no idea we'd be unable to track down your village of origin."
"It's okay," Taram placed her small, smooth hand over his clawed one. "Just because I am blind does not mean I am useless. I tend the garden. I watch the children. And I do whatever I can to help Donatiya out around the house. And look! My tapestry is almost finished! Soon, they will be able to sell it in exchange for some trade goods!"
Taram gestured towards a small woven rug strung onto a hand-loom. Even with a poor choice of supplies, Kasib could see the rug would be magnificent once it was finished. Because she was blind, she decorated not with color, but with texture. It reminded Kasib of the carpet a bride gave to her brides-groom back home on Hades where, if he served long and well, perhaps someday Shay'tan might allow him to take a wife?
"It shall fetch a magnificent price," Kasib mumbled. He lowered his gaze to look at Taram's hand and not her beautiful brown sightless eyes.
If only…
He forced the thought out of his mind. It was forbidden to take wives from amongst the species they conquered. Cross-species marriages were always sterile. The only purpose for marriage was to begat offspring to further the glory of the Empire. He would be condemning not just himself, but also her, to a life devoid of children to care for them in their old age.
Taram's fingers slipped up his arm to settle on his face, his lizard-like snout that had caused the humans to scream 'demon' and run away when they'd first annexed this village. Sense of touch was how Taram compensated for her lost vision to see things, but to Kasib, it felt as though she gave him the caress of a lover.
"Have you gotten any word on the fate of my sister?" Taram asked. "Or perhaps my cousin?"
Kasib's claws unsheathed themselves as he clenched at his pants leg, thankful Taram could not see his body language. She must have felt him stiffen, because her mouth circled into a puzzled moue.
"He … he …"
How could he tell this woman who had come to mean so much to him that not only had Apausha been right about the Alliance Prime Minister? But also that her sister had been handed over to The Destroyer?
His tongue instinctively flitted out to taste the air, the delicate forks taking in the scent of the room, the cooking porridge he dared not avail himself of, the intoxicating scent of Taram, who smelled so good it would follow him home into his dreams. He inadvertently tasted the hand which touched his cheek, but instead of recoiling, Taram simply smiled.
"What is it, Kasib?" Taram asked. Her hand moved higher to touch the soft scales which protected one of his sensitive ear-holes.
A confusing sensation warred within him until he gasped for breath, unable to bear the intensity of it. He was an even-tempered lizard, used to keeping his head down and doing his job. The intrigues of the past several months, however; rescuing Taram from being cast out into the wilderness by the Amorites after she'd been deemed unsuitable as a wife; sneaking into the town to visit with her; the thefts of resources, something Kasib would never do, was all too much! He only wished to serve his emperor!
"I - I - I…" Kasib stuttered. He licked his clear outer eyelids with his long, forked tongue, an instinctive gesture of self-comfort usually performed by a hatchling.
"You couldn't find them?" Taram guessed.
Kasib didn't have the heart to tell her the truth, so he lied.
"He was here!" Kasib said. "That bastard, Lucifer came here!"
"The one you said arranged marriages for my people?" Taram asked.
"Yes!" Kasib's tail slammed against the floor. "He had the audacity to come here and ask for more of you!"
Taram's brow wrinkled in intense concentration. "It doesn't make sense," she said. "If Lucifer is your enemy, why would your Emperor order you to give him my people?"
"I don't get it, either! And the worst thing is, from the way Lord Zebub was acting, you'd think Lucifer was the Prime Minister of us, not just the Alliance infidels!"
"If it was my father," Taram said, "I think he would have taken this Lucifer hostage and then ransomed him to gain concessions."
Kasib placed his other hand over hers, careful to sheath his claws. While not nobility, Taram was the daughter of an important regional chief, as was her older sister, Sarvenaz. For a young woman who was blind, it amazed him just how much Taram could really see.
"The little chieftain tried to kill him," Kasib said.
"Why didn't you let him?" Taram asked.
"I tried," Kasib confessed. He glanced around the room, mindful that such an admission would get him court-martialed, and then lowered his voice. "The pompous little puppy tried to stab him, but then he, I don't know, hesitated? As if he wanted to do it, but something held him back?"
Kasib was amazed General Hudhafah hadn't locked him in the brig for letting a human slip past armed with a knife. He suspected Hudhafah knew it'd been deliberate and condoned the slip, especially now that he'd gotten the general to prevent Ba'al Zebub from flying off-world with the little chieftain in tow. General Hudhafah had emptied their treasury to get his hand on the informant with inside knowledge about the most productive grain-growing area in the region! They were desperate to subdue those tribes with a minimum of bloodshed so they could gain tribute from those fields during the next growing season.
"Maybe you can let the little chieftain try again?" Taram suggested. From the way her sightless eyes lit up with a naughty twinkle, you'd think she suggested letting the human snitch a honey-cake instead of murdering the highest ranking civilian official for the opposing empire!
"Lucifer is gone now," Kasib sighed. He didn't add, 'and taken all news about your sister and cousin with him.'
A thoughtful silence stretched between them, the crackle of the fire, the warm feel of Taram's palm pressed against his cheek, and his painful awareness of just ho
w badly he wanted to take this woman into his arms and carry her home. No. It was forbidden! The penalty for defiling a woman to whom you were not married was severe!
The exaggerated thump-thump-thump of Nipmeqa coming down the stairs, his footfalls deliberately loud to warn them he was coming, forced them to break away from one another.
"Alas, I have overstayed my welcome," Kasib rose from the bench, reluctant to leave her. "I shall see you, perhaps, in a few days?"
"You are always welcome here, Kasib," Taram said.
It felt like loss as he stepped away and the warm, soft sensation of her hand abandoned his cheek. Casting his gaze downward so Nipmeqa wouldn't think he'd been leering at his house guest, he said his goodbyes and made his way to his own quarters, a household which was not thrilled to have him, but pragmatic enough to keep their resentment silent. He threw himself into some chores, wood split, water fetched, and one of the little boy's toys mended, chores his hosts did not dare ask him to perform, but he performed anyway because that was what a second-son would do back on Hades.
His mind whirring about all the shortfalls facing the base, Kasib fixated on the asset which had no place now that the Angelic was dead … the angry little chieftain. He'd convinced Hudhafah to defy Ba'al Zebub and hang onto the young man. Now all he had to do was figure out a way to leverage the asset they'd paid half an army's wages to obtain.
~ * ~ * ~
Chapter 15
November 3,390 BC
Earth: Village of Assur
Mikhail
The sunlight streamed through the window and glared into Mikhail's eyes, increasing the pounding which marched in martial tempo to the pain which radiated out of his chest with every heartbeat. It hurt to keep his eyes open and everything felt as though it was on fire.
"Drink," Needa whispered. Something pressed against his lips.
He took a sip, thankful to quench the burning in his throat, then grabbed his abdomen as the water caused his stomach to clench in pain.
Sword of the Gods: Agents of Ki (Sword of the Gods Saga) Page 16