“How can you know that, Sir?” Pharzuphel sobbed. “How can you know the legends are not a lie?”
“Because I have seen that place,” Abaddon said, "and because I have, I do not fear death, for whether or not I am killed, someday my wife will reunite with me there.”
“But if Valac does not fear death,” Pharzuphel said. “Then how can I convince him to stay?”
Abaddon gave her a rare smile.
“Tell him that if he pulls through, I shall join your hands together in marriage myself,” Abaddon said. “And not only shall I declare you husband and wife if that is your wish, but I shall order you be assigned quarters together, to raise your son together the way a family should be raised.”
Pharzuphel's expression brightened for the first time since she and Sarvenaz had pulled them out of the ice cavern.
“Valac would like that. I will tell him as soon as we have achieved this objective.”
Abaddon strode out onto the bridge and settled into his commander’s chair, scanning the men and women who had served under him for many long years. Major Pharzuphel trailed behind him and took her mate's former station, the weapons console, the first person who would fire upon an enemy ship.
Abaddon tapped his comms pin to make the announcement to the crew to engage, and then thought better of it. He settled his almost-healed wings against his back and pointed at his former peace-dove of a second-in command, the member of his crew who had always ordered restraint.
"Would you like to give the order, Major?" Abaddon asked.
Pharzuphel nodded, her blue eyes still red-rimmed from tears. She pressed the broadcast button on the fleet-wide intercom.
"Attention all crew," Pharzuphel said. "Let's go grab the dragon by the tail."
~ * ~ * ~
Chapter 80
February: 3,389 BC
Earth: Uruk Territory
Gita
Avoiding detection by the roving bands of Uruk who searched for Tizqar, son of Zamub, chief of the village of Akshak, wasn't easy this deep into Uruk territory, especially since they were unfamiliar with the landscape. Gita finally gagged the man to cease his threats using a strip torn from his own, elaborate robe. Only the fact the desert was flush with moisture from the winter rains prevented them from dying of thirst. Tizqar glared at them with dark, hateful eyes.
Gita pressed the point of her blade into the Uruk mercenary's throat.
"I will release your gag so you can eat and drink some food," Gita said. "But if you cry out, I shall cut your throat. Do you understand?"
Tizqar nodded. After he had tried to escape the second time, Dadbeh had hobbled his feet with a twisted strip of cloth so he could only take small steps without falling on his face. That had slowed them, but at least there had been no more escape attempts.
Gita lifted a waterskin to his mouth. Tizqar suckled on the end like an eager kid goat, heedless of the moisture which dribbled onto his robes. At last the waterskin grew flaccid. He smacked his lips and bared his teeth at her, trying his best to appear intimidating.
"My father will find you," Tizqar hissed in broken Ubaid. "And when he does, he will flay you alive for taking his son and heir."
"You are a third son," Gita said. "I remember that much from the times you visited Laum's house. The reason, I suppose, you have chosen to prey upon helpless travelers?"
"And what do you know of commerce, daughter of a drunk and a whore?" Tizqar asked.
Gita resisted the urge to slap him. She focused instead on carving strips of raw flesh off the carcass of a hare Dadbeh had shot earlier with his bow. She fed it to him uncooked because they did not dare start a fire.
"What do you know of my mother?" Gita asked.
"That she was a temple prostitute at Jabel Mar Elyas," Tizqar sneered, "who would spread her legs to any man who paid the temple money."
Gita’s hand made a sharp ‘crack’ against his cheek.
"My mother was a priestess! And she was far better person than you."
She pressed her knife against his throat, but Tizqar was not intimidated because he knew she wanted his testimony far more than she wanted vindication for the reputation of a mother who was long since dead and in the grave. The man had no idea that she had engaged in a bit of sacred prostitution herself to win back the life of the man he had tried to kill. To shut him up, she dug the knife in just a little harder than was necessary; just enough to make him wince; just enough to draw a little bit of blood.
"Gita!" Dadbeh's voice was a sharp distraction. "If you kill him, you shall never clear your name."
Gita removed the knife. Tizqar stared at her victoriously.
"We should kill him and go join the Kemet," Gita said.
"We have no trade goods," Dadbeh said.
"We will if we take the pack he carries on his back," Gita said.
"That gold belongs to the Kemet," Dadbeh said. "We already reached agreement on this. We shall only take enough to pay an appeasement to She-who-is at the temple for Shahla's soul, and then we shall hold the rest until the Kemet travel through again next year."
Gita averted her gaze. She didn't have the heart to tell him that, no matter how much appeasement they paid, Immanu would refuse to perform the death ceremonies.
"Is that what this is all about?" Tizqar taunted? "You want vindication for the soul of a girl who was a whore?"
"You seem fixated on everybody being a whore," Dadbeh said. His words were crisp as he spoke.
Gita heard the warning in his voice. Tizqar, unfortunately, was more accustomed to a man who blustered and ignored the warning.
"Laum's daughter was a whore," Tizqar laughed. "Her mother gave her to Yazan's brother before the girl had even had her first menstrual cycle; and for a ripe price, too! Dirar always had a taste for the brutal and the young."
"That makes her a victim," Dadbeh's mismatched eyes turned green and black, respectively. "Not a harlot."
"Were you aware that Shahla was carrying Qishtea's child?” Tizqar taunted. “Not Jamin's?"
Dadbeh's cheek twitched as his eyes took on a look that was stricken. Gita noted the way his hand slid down to caress the hilt of the knife tucked in at the belt of his Ubaid kilt.
"The child Shahla carried was mine," Dadbeh said. "And had she not been killed, I would have married her. Even after she miscarried the baby."
Tizqar laughed, an obnoxious, raucous sound.
"Shahla lost that baby because her mother gave her waters of bitterness every single day since the girl first got her moon-blood cycle," Tizqar laughed. "Laum gave it to every woman in his brothel because no man wants to fuck a woman who is heavy with some other man's child."
The hairs stood on the back of Gita's neck. She remembered the disgusting tea Shahla's mother had insisted she drink three times each day, and how, towards the end, Shahla had grown clever and begun to pour it into a goatskin she carried under her shawl.
"Why would Laum do such a thing?" Dadbeh's voice sounded anguished. "Why would he do such a thing to his own daughter?"
"Daughters are useless!" Tizqar spat upon the ground. "He told Shahla to seduce one man, and then she took it upon herself to seduce many others!"
"You lie!" Gita sputtered. "Shahla would have told me if she'd been forced!"
"She didn't tell her mother she was with child," Tizqar said. "Not until it was too late for the silphium to work. But Laum, he was looking for an excuse to entrap one of the chief's sons so he could expand his trading network, he didn't care if it was Assur's chief or Nineveh, so he went to them both and tried to convince each of them child was theirs. And when that failed, he came to me to procure some tincture of ergot."
“Tincture of ergot?” Gita said. “But tincture of ergot is a poison.”
Tizqar laughed.
"Shut up," Dadbeh hissed.
"She convinced you to marry her,” Tizqar said, “and the child was not even yours!"
"I said shut up!" Dadbeh pulled his knife.
Gita placed h
er hand over Dadbeh's arm.
"Do you know what this testimony means?" Gita said.
"It means this man is responsible for my child's death," Dadbeh hissed.
"The child wasn't yours!" Tizqar said. "And even if it was, the last thing Laum wanted was for his prize bargaining chip for a favorable trade married off to the son of a landless tenant-farmer."
"I wanted the infant," Dadbeh shouted. "Whether or not it was mine! And I wanted her! Because I loved her! With or without her father's money!"
Tizqar laughed.
"That baby was as good as dead before Jamin even beat it out of her," Tizqar said. His eyes were filled with contempt. "He just did her father a favor by focusing the blame on him so he would have a mechanism to extract recompense from the Chief via the tribunal!"
A cold, empty feeling settled into Gita's gut like an old, hungry wolf which had gone too long without a feeding. That dark gift whispered to her, whispered all the places she could bury her knife into the man and watch him suffer. Slowly. Painfully. She would cut out his entrails and feed them to him alive.
Dadbeh's hand moved to cover hers. So focused had she been on answering the hunger which cried out for this man's sacrifice that she hadn't even noticed her hand had moved to carry out the daydream.
"We should kill him and feed his body to the hyenas!" Gita hissed.
"Yes," Dadbeh said. "But we won't. Because everybody knows that ergot causes madness and hallucinations. If he testifies to that, perhaps they will stop blaming Shahla for being the puppet of her father?"
His tears glistened in the faint light of the crescent moon. Even now, now that she was dead, Dadbeh still loved the girl, and he would do whatever he could to clear her name.
A cool chill touched her head and caressed it as though somebody brushed her hair. Gita glanced up and saw Shahla, still carrying the rag-doll. Gita’s eyes met Dadbeh's. He saw her, too. Shahla was trapped between, and if they did not help her, she would be condemned to live in limbo until at last her spirit grew tired and disappeared.
"Gag him," Gita said. "And if he tries anything, bury your knife into his heart. For I'd like nothing better than to watch him suffer the way I had to watch Shahla suffer in the end."
Dadbeh shoved the gag back into Tizqar's mouth, and then they tied him face-down into the dirt with his legs bent up behind him and his feet tied to his hands. This way, even if he did manage to break his bindings, he would be so stiff afterwards that his movements would be slow.
They moved a little way off so that they could speak without Tizqar overhearing their words.
"Don't listen to him," Gita said. "This only proves Shahla wasn't in her right mind."
"I know," Dadbeh sighed. He gave her a lopsided grin, more wistful than cheerful. "You saw her just then, didn't you?"
"Yeah," Gita said.
Dadbeh nodded.
"Towards the end, Shahla swore Ninsianna was messing with her mind," Dadbeh said. "I guess it was all part of her hallucinations?"
"Perhaps," Gita said. She thought of how successfully Immanu had turned the other villagers against her, so much so that they'd agreed to throw her alive upon the bonfire. Perhaps Dadbeh might feel better if he knew that some of Shahla's ramblings had been real? Just as her ramblings about the white-winged Angelic had been?
No… What use was it defiling her cousin's name? No evidence that Tizqar had given so far cleared her of her part in Ninsianna's kidnapping, and until her cousin was safely returned, there would be no safe haven for her anywhere in Ubaid territory.
Dadbeh touched her arm.
"It's understandable, you know?" Dadbeh said gently. “No one can fault you for doing what they asked.”
"What?" Gita asked. She stared into his earnest, mismatched eyes.
"That you fell in love with him," Dadbeh said. “Had you not loved him, he never would have mistaken you for Ninsianna.”
Gita averted her gaze.
"Get some rest," Dadbeh said. He jabbed a thumb at their prisoner. "It's going to be another long day tomorrow."
Gita moved back just close enough to Tizqar so she could hear him move, but not so close that he could roll towards her and do something to her in her sleep. She dozed off listening to the chirp of the insects and the gentle song of the wind, wishing in her dreams that she was back in Mikhail's arms. She drifted, happy in the song, until her dreams changed and became chaotic with movement.
Pain. She cried out as she fell.
Lizard demons.
Jamin stared down at her, but his expression was filled with hatred; not the friend she missed.
She rolled.
Chaos.
More pain shot into her wing. She sped after the sky canoe, but she could not catch it.
Tired. So tired.
"Mikhail! You are fallen! You must fly!"
A hand shook her awake. "Gita!"
She sat bolt upright, shrieking the warning which had come to her in the dream.
Her heart racing, it took her a moment to realize it was Dadbeh who stared at her and not Jamin or the lizard demons. She took deep breaths until her racing heart subsided, her body chilled and damp with sweat.
"Are you alright?" Dadbeh asked.
Tears welled in Gita's eyes, but she forced herself not to cry.
"It was just a nightmare," Gita said.
Dadbeh checked their prisoner's bindings, and then he settled in for a nap, turning the watch over to her. As soon as Dadbeh's chest began to rise and fall in a gentle rhythm, she pictured Mikhail where he had fallen, and then she began to sing.
Far off in the desert, the hyenas joined her song with harmonies of their own, their song a laughing one, too far off to be a threat.
~ * ~ * ~
Chapter 81
February: 3,389 BC
Earth: Zagros Mountains
Pareesa
It was the familiar tickle at the crown of her head that alerted Pareesa they were out of time.
"Hey, Pareesa?" Ebad asked. "Is that what I think it is?"
The potter's son pointed off in the distance, where a blinking red star moved closer to where they hauled up the hill.
Pareesa broke into a run. "Varshab! I think that's a sky canoe!"
The Chief's man turned and barked orders at the warriors under his command. That included her, technically, although ever since the incident with Mikhail she'd been given great leeway to direct the actions of her B-team. While not a steep hill, the pathway wove up a rocky path, and there were many places the forty or so warriors had to walk single file or help one another up.
"Let me go to him," Pareesa begged Varshab.
"Mikhail was very explicit that it is your aim he wants on this mission," Varshab said. "Not your sword arm."
Pareesa gave a muffled curse and fell back into line. She hated being told what to do, especially when she was far faster and a better swordsman than any person here! She considered disobeying orders and running ahead anyways, but while that familiar tickle the old god always gave whenever he wanted her to pay attention urged her to hurry, the moment she tried to veer off the path, it left her mind scrambled and she stumbled and almost fell.
'Damantia,' she muffled the Angelic curse-word. The old God of War wanted her to practice what she preached and act as a single military unit.
"C'mon! Move!" Pareesa shoved into the back of big old poky Ipquidad.
"What's your rush?" Ipquidad grumbled. "Mikhail said he'd fly back here if the situation on the ground changed."
"Pareesa just wants to be the boss," Yaggitt said. The wheelwright's son gave her a broad grin and winked at her.
"You know darned well Mikhail isn't going to wait for us if the opportunity presents itself to grab that sky canoe," Pareesa said.
Her entire B-team sped up, easily passing Varshab who ran at a steady, though slower pace, the speed of a middle-aged warrior and his men. The moment she tried to surpass him, that curious sensation of being disoriented blurred her vision again.
If gods of war could laugh, she imagined he did so now. At last they crested the hill and began down the other side. The blinking red lights glided over to the place where the hill hit bottom and then started back up a second hill, in clear sight, but so very far away. Pareesa nearly tripped when the sky canoe lit up like ten thousand suns and the vessel split open like a cracked egg.
The God of War urged her to hurry, but he didn't want her getting ahead of her people. Whatever they were about to face, she sensed he wanted them to face it together, the way Mikhail had taught them.
The path widened into a grassy meadow. The entire group sped up as they hit the bottom of the hill and leaped over a babbling brook, not too high, but enough that water soaked into her pampooties. The wet leather squished uncomfortably as they began to climb again towards the staging area. At least it was flat here, with not a lot of rocks. Mikhail had explained their magical floating carpets could navigate small rocks, but not amongst larger ones without tipping their loads. It occurred to her that the lizard people must have come here prior to the attack to determine the best place to set up this staging area.
All of a sudden, the God of War urged her onwards, flooding her body with the strength she'd been begging him for the past league and a half of running.
"It's about time," Pareesa muttered.
Her sense of irritation disappeared as her emotions were supplanted by cold, cool logic. From the staging area in front of them, all lit up as if it was daylight between the bonfire and the light from the sky canoe, she heard an explosion that sounded like lightning when it hit a date palm.
"Move!" Varshab shouted at his men. "Get up there and help him! If we lose this sky canoe, the Chief will have our heads!"
That was all the urging Pareesa needed. She ran as fast as she could, no longer just her strength, but the added strength loaned to her by the Cherubim god. As she ran, she received images, reminding her it was her shooting arm Mikhail wanted and not for her to put herself in danger. Pareesa reached back and pulled the arrow from her quiver, almost tripping as she slid her bow over her head and shoved it in front of herself to string the arrow in a practiced movement.
Sword of the Gods: Agents of Ki (Sword of the Gods Saga) Page 81