A Time Warp
In 16 parts, By FinalStand. Listen to the ►Podcast at Connected.
What follows is a diversion from the central storyline, but it is crucial to understanding why certain members of the supporting cast are behaving the way they are.
808 BCE near Halab in what is today's Northern Syria:
For me, Cael Nyilas, it was a return to last night's horrifying scene that engulfed me. The screams of dying horses and moribund men crying the pantheon of life's final regrets. Blood, piss, voided bowels and the stench of comingled sweat and leather filled my nostrils. The true cacophony of battle was all about. The battle shock faded into an innocuous background distraction.
In my heart of hearts, I felt at ease, even content. We were cut off and surrounded yet hardly hopeless. Men, my brothers-in-arms and the younger noble sons of Assur and Nineveh combined to put a press of shields, armor and flesh encircling us. Those 'pampered' aristocrats stank with fear and well they should. Death was still possible before their relief arrived.
I hurt, Shara (my deity?), I was wounded, but it meant nothing. I laughed; a primitive version of 'atheists and foxholes' passing through my mind. This body had lived through much worse. The closest man, her deceased husband's cousin, and I lifted the shattered wooden chariot off the person our circle was centered on. My arm was extended to her.
She was glorious, fierce and half-drunk with battle lust. I could feel her talon-like fingers through the leather and 'parzillu' scales guarding my bicep. She half jumped and was half pulled to her feet. Her kinsman presented her 'misplaced' sword, hilt first. In her eyes, I saw the burning intensity of the Shamash (Sun God, consort of Aya?) at the height of the Burning Season.
Her martial mirth exceeded any other noise as it passed her lips.
"You took your time getting here," Shammuramat taunted me, not a true reproach. "I was so bored, I decide to take a nap in the shade of my conveniently overturned chariot." She defied all fortunes that conspired toward her demise; her own breed of madness.
"You looked so peaceful in your sleep, I didn't want to wake you," I bantered back. Her 'kinsman' scowled at my familiarity with his monarch. My champions, more like brothers to me than any kin born of my blood, had carved a gory swath to her stranded bodyguard. Mounted on Median steeds, we had pressed back the entourages of two Aramean kings bent on her violent passing.
A barricade of overturned, or unattended chariots gave us space to dismount and perform our very visible rescue mission. All the pieces were right where she wanted them; everything unfolding according to her plan. Focus the enemy in the center with her person and the banner of Assur while the rest of her chariots and all of her cavalry swept through an unguarded wadi and fell upon them from behind.
Brilliant. Somewhat less brilliant when faced with the desperate energy of our enemies, but her victory was already a certainty. The allied Western Kings were sure my command was attempting to snatch the Queen back to the safety of her infantry. Those hardy, foot-bound souls were still holding their own against the greater mass of the enemy footmen.
The children of rebellious nobles bent every bit of their remaining energy, squandered their last reserves to ensure Shammuramat didn't escape. If the positons were reversed, they would have eagerly abandoned their troops and sought safety to the rear. The idea of Shammuramat being overwrought with terror was absurd.
Our opponents' bellows for our blood turned into wails of despair. The charging, plumaged steeds of Assyria had appeared behind them. Our enemies had nothing left to slow the new arrivals down, much less stop them. For those who dared defy Shammuramat, Queen of all the Akkadians, the slaughter was just beginning.
"Come 'Alal' (that was me); I promised 'Atarshumki' I would kick his head over his own city walls before sunset and I always keep my promises," she shoved one of my horse-holders aside and took one of my steeds. 'Alal' was not the name my father gave me. It meant destroyer and it was blasphemy to lay claim to it.
"Killing kings will cost you extra," was my impious response.
Assyrians nobility barely tolerated mercenaries most of the time. My men and I didn't care. I hadn't taken up the killing business to make friends and my troops felt the same way. What mattered to us was that their coin was good and delivered on time. That was a good thing because whores and merchants were loath to advance 'our kind' anything on credit.
"I'll meet you half way," she grinned manically at me while my fighters and I raced for our mounts. (Saving the junior nobility wasn't what she were paying us for.) "I'll let you take any prince you capture as a hostage." I nodded. My men cheered hungrily, despite the choking dust. As long as I didn't get too greedy, the Kings would pay for their sons. Now we had to capture the bastards.
"Tūbātu," I reminded them. 'Goodwill'. It was a polite way of saying 'stop your chariot, rest your arms and your mother won't have to come begging for your corpse'. It was best to let opposing nobility keep their dignity in our business. Today's enemy might be tomorrow's paymaster.
I blinked and things changed.
Planting followed harvest and harvest followed planting. It had long ago become a blur. Shammuramat had grown older. Her first son became king when he was of age. I had long exceeded my welcome and my desire to stay. I was fixed to this small patch of the greater world by a rare emotion, empathy.
It had come out of nowhere. We were campaigning against the Scythians raiding over the Zagros Mountains and followed them into Urartu. Night had fallen and I walked the camp as was my habit; being killed a few times in your sleep will make you err on the side of caution. Shammuramat was gazing out over the river Arkas.
"I though all the scouts have returned," I asked as I stepped to her side. A cool, early autumn breeze blew down the valley, tossing a few loose locks of her greying hair. She always had one patch shorn short which made her left-side braids prone to unwind.
"They have. We head back for Nineveh with the dawn," she murmured, her mind elsewhere.
"Do you ever dream of home?" she asked me out of the blue.
"No. I don't dream anymore. I rarely sleep and if I did, I would hope to dream of something less boring," I snorted in amusement. She had never talked about her home, to anyone as far as I knew.
"You will be going to Lydia when winter comes," she stated tensely.
"King Gyges needs someone with experience beating Cimmerians," I answered. The true reason was that I was no longer welcome on the Assyrian payroll because I insisted on recruiting only non-Assyrians into the ranks of my ferociously effective little band of one hundred; never more and rarely less.
"Shemtsu is a fool," she grumbled.
"That is unfair," I countered. My willingness to argue with her was one of my charms in her eyes. "He is an excellent Treasurer and he makes sure your vassals pay their tribute on time and in its full amount."
The silence was hurtful to me because Shammuramat was never one to obfuscate her thoughts, especially around me. It was one of her charms, to my way of thinking.
"Salmu Eretu, the northern night sky has no answers for what ails you. Get some sleep. Tomorrow is going to start out cold before it bakes us." I called her 'Black Cloud' in Akkadian.
I had first used that name twenty years ago to insult her, highlighting her tempestuous nature. In the Assyrian court, having just received recognition for my quick thinking, Shammuramat had belittled my accomplishment, throwing my body between her, her unborn child (the man who was now not-so-gently ushering me to the border) and a Kassite noble and his retainer bent on killing them both.
Had my deed not been witnessed by half a dozen reliable sources, I wouldn't even have received that tawdry token.
"He sought glory without risk," she spat out her insult in a Hittite tongue alien to this court. Unfortunately for us both, I had worked for a Babylonian family for a few generations and they had been kind enough to turn me from an illiterate commoner to a man of some education.
Ironically, they even taught me my native cuneiform long after my birthplace was barely a memory.
"Well aren't you a black cloud on an otherwise waste of a day," I replied somewhat bitterly. Her eyes widened, then narrowed and then I heard her laugh for the first time.
"Should I tell them what you said?" she mocked me and my predicament.
"But of course," I grunted in Akkadian. I'd screwed up. My inner thoughts were 'please not decapitation, please not decapitation' because getting my head on straight after that was a real bitch.
"You've been nothing but a black cloud bent on turning the choking dust at my feet into a grasping, muddy morass. Why stop now?" I announced loudly. If you are going to die, die well. Having died too many times to count, remembering my last words were all I had left to look forward to.
The guards, familiar with the Queen's temper and stunned into inaction by me clearly embracing a long, messy death, stood around uselessly. Had I been allowed a weapon in the royal presence, I might have thought which one to kill first.
"I gift you, a lowborn man of the South (Sumerian), with honors and you respond by insulting my wife?" King, Shamshi Adad V growled as he rose from his throne.
"Husband," she stood to join him. I thought it was a pity she rarely smiled. "You asked that I too give a gift to my savior and the savior of our son (all unborn babies were sons back then until roughly half had the audacity to gender switch while exiting the womb). I have chosen." I was expecting my life for the moment and a day's head start to the border.
"It is your choice to make," the King allowed.
"From this day, until my passing, this man may always speak his mind in our lands," she demanded. She had a habit of fatally correcting anyone who saw her as less than co-ruler. The hesitation was deafening.
"As you will," Shamshi Adad V acquiesced to yet another of his wife's odd 'requests'. From that day forth we had been fast friends. She never asked about my immortality, where I was from, or how I ended up with my elite band of professional killers. I returned the favor. It was an unspoken understanding that in a few years, or decades, she would die and I would leave, not necessarily in that order. We had shared more years than I had given to any one person in quite some time.
"There is nothing left for me but ash," she declared with morbid certainty.
"Should any of us expect any better?" I did my best to offer words of comfort she would accept.
"Oh no," her noise was too bitter to be a laugh. "I had my own 'Life beyond Death' and it was stolen from me, along with my birthright."
"We are chasing the thieves?" I asked.
"Yes and no," her face grew grim once more. "These were not the ones I was looking for. They share some bonds with some of the Scythian tribes who live on the far side of the Sea of Death (the Black Sea). These raiders weren't from those tribes."
"Why are you turning back?" I questioned. "You know your Assyrians are loyal. They will follow wherever you lead. Your son won't begrudge you these few hundred. I'll come too."
"Why?" she turned and looked into my eyes. She still had that blazing fire in her eyes. She was teasing me. If she asked, I too would follow and my men would follow me.
"The Scythians have been raiding the Lands of the Two Rivers from, well, before I graduated from 'spear for hire' to a 'seeker of a mastery of war'. The rich plunder of their camps will provide plenty of incentive for my men plus we can sell the horses when we come back," I stated.
"I do not have the years left to spend on such a campaign," she sighed. I had never heard a hint of defeat in her speech before. It was unsettling and rather tragic.
"I have squandered my years in marriage, being Queen and raising my boys. I tried to make Assyria my new family and I am revealed to be a fool. You had it right. We will always be outlanders. No matter how brave, loyal, just and smart, we would never be allowed in their sanctimonious circle," she said. "You. I should have ridden off with you after my first born was acknowledged (the present King Adad-nirari the 3rd)."
"We could have gathered up some more fighters, ridden over shattered Phrygia, to the narrows (Bosporus) and into the lands of the Thracians. There is a legend of a great river that pours out from the western shore of the Death Sea. What I seek is up that river."
"How many would we face?" I grew equally serious.
"One," she coughed. "Me." My confusion was obvious. "I am not asking you to fight me, Alal. I want you to come back for me."
"I can't. That is not how it works," I stated.
"How does it work then?" she looked into my eyes. The fire was there, but banked and waning. I didn't say anything. "I have never seen, or heard of you entering a temple."
"Your men go. You do not stop them, but you have given up any pretense of worship," she pressed. "Do you not believe that anything exists beyond your senses?"
"I believe," I sighed. "I believe people are fools for giving offering, pledging their fidelity, pleading for mercy, or extending thanks to any deity. Those Shar-an (gnats) do as they will, unless it is to punish us for treating them like the spoiled children they are."
Shammuramat regained her long-stilled laughter.
"I have always felt a kinship with you through our mutual bitterness."
"Bitterness comes with familiarity," I snorted in amusement. Lovers had passion. We shared a simmering anger that came from being irredeemably wronged.
"I was born Baraqu, the first son of a potter in some city that no longer matters. I was a failure as a potter and an embarrassment to my house and my clan," I began a story I hadn't told another soul in, I couldn't recall. "In those days, the Priest-Kings declared wars and demanded each clan of the city give forth a certain number of males to fight. My family volunteered me and two rowdy cousins.
Outside the gates, my clan elder gave each of us a cowhide shield and a spear with a small spindle of copper at the tip so we wouldn't think it was a staff. We marched, I forget which city we were fighting that time. Three days later we found the enemy behind a deep irrigation ditch that had dried out for the season. Our orders were simple, 'There they are. Attack!'
My elder was at the back of our mob, making sure none of us ran away. My older cousin made it across the ditch first, but was speared twice; once in the right kidney, I can still remember my first sight of blood, and once, piercing the shield and lodging in his ribcage. My second cousin and I were pushed from behind into the fighting. I stabbed at one shield, doing no harm.
Then my surviving cousin's morale broke and he tried to claw his way back into our ranks. He was stabbed in the back, his dying body tangling with mine and bearing us both to the ground. I saw this howling mad face over me. He was a commoner, like me, driven to violence by the terror of battle. His shoddily crafted spear plunged first into my right lung. The second stab found my heart. I died.
From there, my spirit fell down toward the wretched dank caverns where all pitiful lowborn dregs are doomed to end up without hope of parole. Instead of endless misery, the Goddess Sarrat Irkalli appeared before me, barring my descent. With icy claws, she trisected my soul. I cannot begin to describe that agony. She snatched up my tattered bits and dragged me back into the world.
Sarrat Irkalli is Goddess of the Netherworld, whispered a word that penetrated my brain through the left ear of my cooling corpse. It was an utterance so catastrophic to the fabric of the Veil I dare not repeat it even now.
Baraqu? she blew a dark wind upon the first bit of my essence and it flew away.
Cael, she whispered to the second portion and off it went in another direction. You are Baraqu no more. The second name was meaningless to me at the time but my name. Do you know that if you have your true name, your spirit can not find its way to your reward, no matter how foul, or pleasing? To the third part of my soul. I name you Alal, he who stands witness to the end of all he desires; their destroyer. Powerful yet powerless.}
With that, she left me. My body was stiff from being dead so long. The next few hours were extremely painful. The Sun had set and the Moon was not in evidence. Jackals barked and hyenas laughed as they fought and feasted on the dead. I pushed the body of my cousin off me then crawled down into the ditch to hide. Hardly the reaction of a hero."
"Not the actions of the man I know," Shammuramat smirked. "So, your name is Baraqu."
"Was and I never much liked the name," I countered. "The priests gave it to me because right before my naming ceremony, a bolt of lightning from a spring storm struck the temple of Shara. So they named me Baraqu, which means 'struck by lightning'."
"That sound likes a good name," the Queen Dowager regarded me.
"That is the noble meaning. The common meaning is less eloquent, it means 'idiot'."
Another deep laugh from my treasured compatriot. So few had ever mattered so much to me.
"Struck by lightning, stricken dumb," she guffawed. "Still not the 'you' I know."
"What does the other name mean?"
"I have no idea. In all my travels I have never found a people familiar with it," I shrugged. She looked out over the low waves lapping against the stony shore.
"No explanation?" she grudgingly inquired. She had wanted me to continue.
"No. I have never again come face to face with Sarrat Irkalli, been visited by a messenger, divine, or demonic, received an omen, or any otherworldly presence of any kind," I shrugged. I was long past any resentment. "After the battle I made my way back home, we'd lost, and resumed my life for a few years. My father took the excuse of me 'letting' my kinsmen die to place my younger brother over me.
I didn't care. I always hated being a potter, so I ended up being a piddling nuisance all the time and a drunken brawler whenever I had wrangled some beer. I was always the first choice of my clan to send into battle. Despite my lack of training, I began surviving more battles than I died in. At some point, the priests began getting suspicious that I was still hanging around my great-grandnephew's house, so my house Elder suggested I leave the city.
I was given a nice copper-headed mace that I had taken in a recent skirmish. Tradition dictated I offer it to the Elder, so he could give it back to me as a sign of my value to the clan. He had taken it for his own. Now he was giving it back out of fear that it held some part of my taint. I had no idea how to live on my own. Two days out, I was robbed and murdered for the first, but not last, time. That inaugural event, I got really angry and hunted those two farmers down.
I got my mace back. I also relieved them of an onager, three slaves and a few ingots of silver. I guessed they had been rather successful robbers until they met me."
"How many did you kill?" she grinned.
"Eighteen. It took me a better part of a day with all the hacking and maiming," I grinned back.
"It is difficult to see you as an incompetent fighter," she was truly amused by my distraction.
"I started out as a rather slow learner. I died a few more times. I was hung from a city wall, decapitated (my first time), drowned and even thrown off a cliff. Eventually, I began figuring out some of the things I was doing wrong, namely traveling by myself in a hostile world.
I started picking up some skills, learned the bow, and 'liberated' a double-cured leather hauberk. At a critical juncture, when I was seriously considering life of a roadside thief, I witnessed a scuffle in a small town on the Iranian plateau. One was a large, armed man who was definitely too drunk to provide any worthy service. The other was an older man with nice robes who was berating the drunk, bigger man.
The big guy threatened the rich one. The rich one, casting around in anger, saw me and called me over. He said a few words in some language I didn't know, then spoke in Sumerian.
“Do you want to start a new career?” he growled. I nodded. “Beat this oaf up and get back the money he stole from me.”
It seemed like a genuine offer so I beat the drunk man into unconsciousness, searched him and returned the rich man's purse. He studied me, took out half the contents of the purse and handed the purse back.
“You are hired.”
“Who else do you want me to beat up?” I asked cautiously. The drunk man and the rich man were clearly as foreign as me. Beating up townies could get ugly real quick. The guy laughed.
“I want a bodyguard. My name is Umashau, member of the Sadīdu tribe of Babylon and I trade copper goods for fine stones with the local savages.”
“I am your man” I agreed. He chuckled.
Don't you want to know how much you will get paid? he snorted.
“Honestly I just want to get out of this town. I didn't have anything to trade for enough food to get me down the trail, so I was hanging around looking for an opportunity. I guess you are it.”
I took him up on his offer, guarded him and his property, laid down my life a time or two and one day stood over his grave with tears in my eyes. I left funerary offerings at his family shrine for nine generations. He was a good man and treated me well. He taught me to appreciate learning. Over time, various of his descendants gifted me with writing and awoke a talent for languages.
The last time I showed up, the priests of Marduk came looking for me, so I turned my back on Babylon for the next few hundred seasons."
"Did it occur to you that the priests of Marduk may have been delivering a message for you from their Gods?" she mocked my early history.
"Yes, when I came back from the Two Kingdoms (Egypt), I had a more thorough education about the Veil and the afterlife. By that time, Babylon was going through a rough stretch. The people living in Umashau's townhouse were no longer his kin and didn't know what had happened to them. The rest of my story is rather boring.
Less dying, more learning and taking a smarter approach to living, looking farther forward than the next season. That led me here."
"Did you ever fight in the land of the Arzawa?" she questioned. "The city of Wilusa?" which we call Troy.
"Yes. There was good pay in killing Mysians, Paeonians and Ahhiyawa.
Wilusa's normal host of enemies honored their hostages, paid ransom in bronze goods and silver ingots and didn't make a habit of mutilating the bodies of their dead opponents."
"I could see how that would inconvenience you," she shook her head. "Amazons?"
"No. I heard oft-conflicting rumors after the fact.
I never wasted much time with people who ceased to be possible enemies, or employers. Your people?" I began to put things together. Wilusa had been burned to the ground, risen again and returned to being just another rocky, grass-covered mound. Listening to the stories of sailors, merchants and poets had become a favored pastime, especially when they got their history wrong, or pointed the way to money-making enterprises.
Riches had never been the end product of my endeavors. Wealth fueled my efforts to acquire the very best for my mercenary company and to fund my continuing desire to educate myself. The more impressive the equipment, the rarer the lore, the higher the prices I could get for our services, and the former was somewhat of a ruse. In the basest terms, I was an extortionist.
I was an extortionist with a plan though. Cities fell and were sacked. My troop would race to the richest parts of town and convince the wealthy to surrender up a modest portion of their goods in return for protection from looters. Roughly half always went to the highest ranking potentate I could rely on to honor the bribe. The rest I invested back in those businesses.
In turn, every harvest season, when taxes were collected, I collected my own tithe. I bought things in a very understated manner. 'Rich merchants' were either part of the establishment (not my goal), or ducks to get plucked. I invested in caravans and bought stakes in ships that explored the waterways at the edge of our understanding.
I used those enterprises to greedily gather knowledgeable writings from every extent of the civilized and semi-civilized world. I hid my libraries in remote locations, turning my knowledge of ancient bandit hideouts to good use. Many of my men knew about my sideline. Quite naturally, they thought me somewhat eccentric.
"They are not my people. They are the ones who denied me my proper place in the world and robbed me of my future. Before I die, it is too late," her powerful frame bent under the weight of her encompassing doom. "Have either of us asked anything from the other?"
"No."
"I am asking now. Alal, come back for me. Find a way and bring me back so I can resolve this unfinished matter. Promise me," she looked back over the lake.
"That is not something within my power," I reminded Shammuramat.
"You will find a way."
"I will continue to decipher how the divinities, demons and spirits accomplish it, one day." Sleep called to her while I had found something else to roam my thoughts while slumber eluded me. "I cannot promise you, "
"If you cannot promise to come back for me," her words hung there for several minutes. "Avenge me."
'Avenge me' plus researching the keys to reading the Veil and finding the spots where a mortal could slip through to the God-like realms and the Land of the Endless Black Sands could take forever.
"Why?" That wasn't 'why should I?' or 'why is your call for vengeance just?' I would because I had long held the belief anyone I called 'companion's was one with me against all existence.
I had long ago added Shammuramat to that small list. Harm one and we all bled. We paid blood for blood, either twofold, fivefold, even tenfold if they really pissed us off.
"I had a twin sister, but she was not my twin, or my sister. Everything I won through feat of arms and martial cunning, she accomplished with soft words and clever ploys," the exiled Amazon began.
"Artimpasa, of my blood and the house of Anat, challenged me for the leadership of our tribe when our Great-aunt died. Despite my obvious favor with the Goddess, my so-called wise and courageous elders chose my twin over me. I immediately called my sister out to let combat decide who was truly the selection of our ancestors.
Like the coward she was, my sister declined. Before the next rising Sun turned the grey fields to gold, I came for her, cut down her guardian and dueled her. For all her weakness of character, she was nearly my match in skill. I was gravely wounded before I ground down her defenses. I forced her to her knees, gutted that bitch while she still breathed and read my fate in her entrails."
"I promise you," I pledged to set my sails into the unknown, the uncharted, the destination sane men avoided out of the fear of madness and practical ones simply out of fear. We never spoke of it again, not one word. She was sullen and withdrawn on the way back and I knew it was my time to depart soon after our return to Nineveh.
'Come back for me'.
It was a year later. Black Cloud knew all along that her days were numbered and the sickness inside her would never relinquish its stranglehold over her. Cancer maybe? It didn't matter. No apothecary knew any cure and she would take nothing for the pain, choosing to die with a clear-mind, even as her physical form wavered and perished around her.
I had been barred from her funeral by her son, the King. My people, the Sumerians, were derogatorily called 'clay-eaters', a man from the mouth of the Twin Rivers. I would never be the equal of a true Akkadian. That my people had been irrigating with canals, building walls and trading with the cities of the far off Indus while Akkadians were wandering goat-herders meant nothing.
No one who mattered remembered. Had any man not of Shammuramat's blood called me that to my face, I would have cut them down. They knew it; she knew it. To stop the bloodletting, she had sent me to Tyre to take care of matters best left to merchants and other professional liars. True until the very end, Shammuramat was like me, an outsider.
She never again spoke of her people, but I saw that void haunting her eyes that came from having no place to call home, akin to me. Umma was nothing more than a dusty mound the last time I went back. I had found onagers grazing in the inner sanctum of the temple of Shara, once so forbidden and frightening. The herd wasn't afraid to graze on the hallowed grounds. I still believed in gods and goddesses. I just hated them for their false favors, their insatiable hunger and their conviction that they were better than humanity.
The night of that fiasco of an award ceremony, she had me dine with her court. A place of honor was set aside for me, only one step down from her exalted majesty. I lied to those nobles and aristocrats about of my home and upbringing in order to expunge some of my commoner stench from their refined nostrils. I revealed nothing of the 'magic' that allowed me to take a spear piercing my chest and exiting my spine and not only living, but quickly dispatching the offending lancer as well.
Without mentioning that 'little' detail, I regaled my hosts with the blow by blow encounter with the Kassite nobleman, exaggerating his bravery in the attack and then the bowel-loosening terror that he exhibited when he realized who he faced, the Queen, not humble old me. Even then, she laughed at that conjured memory: me downplaying the saving her two lives.
She had been laughing while she decapitated the noble's charioteer and I was shoving a dagger into the eye of the princeling who had so offended us both. The result of that 'sacrifice' on my part was now sitting on Shammuramat's throne: her eldest son. He had officially forbidden my attendance at the vigil and the funerary rights, although I was too far away to care.
'Come back for me,' she had made me promise. It was hopeless. Every woman I loved died. Every man who guarded my back, broke bread with me and shared my wine would end up just as dead. The joke was on the Assyrian court because the final act of contempt was mine. I hadn't been a simple sell-sword for some time, centuries.
I had finally figured out that as powerful as any weapon in my hand was, wealth in all its shapes was better. I had bribed a slave to secret my helmet in her tomb while darkness gripped the land. I had also paid off a wine merchant and a few 'red-lips' to entertain the tomb guardians so the slave could complete that mission.
They had buried her and placed heavy stones upon her grave. Part of it was honoring her. Part of it was fear as well. Even coughing blood on her death bed, she scared the crap out of some of the most ruthless people I had ever fought for and against. I didn't blame them.
'Come back for me'.
There was no coming back from death for anyone, but me. My only fears were mutilation and burning. Those took time to recover from. Fear of angering some selfish entity by violating a tomb barely registered. My shield-bearer handed me my new helmet. The trip to Tyre had not been a total waste. This land smelled like her. The winds whispered to me the sound of her bow and the cleaving of her blade.
West? East? South, I hadn't been to Egypt in a while, not since I realized that all gods lied. Even with an arcane tradition older than me, no magic their pantheon would teach had brought one Egyptian back from the dead. In the Nile's favor, it wasn't here. I decided on West. That held the best chance of me being able to drown my grief in a lake of blood.
Besides, there were rumors from beyond the Cimmerian straits, rumors of long-hair warriors with shrill war cries reminiscent of the Temples of Ba'al and the screams of virgins as they were sacrificed by being tossed into pits of flame; not a noise you soon forget. I might find her kin there and let them know she had passed into oblivion, as I took their lives and inflicted the vengeance time had denied her. Amazons.
'Avenge me'.
Back to our regularly scheduled epic:
"Cáel? Is that you, Alal?" Shammuramat gazed down at me. "You never came back and I can tell you never avenged me either." That was more a stock assessment than a condemnation.
"No, he is not Alal," Pamela intervened. "Nor is he Baraqu. He is Cáel, Alal's grandson."
"That is impossible. He, you said you could never have children," Shammy regarded me while voicing her doubts to Pamela.
"No. Wait!" I had collapsed. The absence of pain suggested I had been grabbed before I hit the dirt. Many hands helped me up so I could balance on shaky feet. "Wait, Pamela, how do you know who Baraqu is?" Pamela's jaw clenched tight. 'You cannot cross over to the Endless Black Sand unless you have your true name' and Cáel O'Shea must have found a way to get half of his name back.
Bread crumbs.
"Pamela, you somehow found who, what, or whatever was Baraqu's soul fragment and gave it back to Cáel, Alal, Granddad, so he could pass on."
"But he cannot truly die while a portion of his soul remains in the Sunlit Realm," Pamela's look of pain sent my way was worse than heartbreaking.
She knew. My mentor and friend could end the existence of the greatest enemy the Host had ever known and by doing so, complete the task destiny had placed before her. She knew where the third piece was. Now I did too. The purpose of Carrig's device had been more than a memory dump.
It was a catalyst to wake up the slumbering shard that was part of the patch-quilt of my soul.
"Shit! Didn't JK Rowling do something exactly like this to that freakazoid, Voldemort?" I groused. Pamela stepped up and hugged me tight. She was crying.
"I'm always going to have eyes on you now that you know," she whispered into my ear.
See, Pamela would be denied entry into the Hall of her Cotyttia ancestors while any part of Cáel/Alal/Baraqu still 'lived' and that final piece of the puzzle was inside me.
"If it is you, or me, Pamela, it will be me first," I mumbled back. I would pay the price to keep Pamela out of hell and that was what she was afraid of. Shammy shook us apart.
"Why don't you try and explain this to me?" the former queen commanded.
"Alal found a way to bring you back," I smiled at her. "He kept both promises. For a thousand years he has bent a great deal of his time and resources on destroying the Amazons, us, thus avenging you.
"As for 'coming back for you'; Granddad's, your Alal's, research uncovered that Sarrat Irkalli's first gift, that word, among other things, made him incapable of ever finding the missing pieces of his soul.
"He and anyone under his direction was purposely blinded to their hiding places and if he drew close they would move away. So he devised a way to recover them. The first part of his plan was conceived before you died.
"He knew the value of funerary goods and how they were carried over into the afterlife."
Shammuramat patted her helmet, my helmet, or more accurately, Alal's helm with its crest of white stallion hair. The first of many tears worked its way down her cheek.
"What he gave you was more than an article of armor, it was the very symbol of his 'legend'; an integral part of the impression he made on the Weave of Destiny, courtesy of Sarrat Irkalli.
"He knew that piercing the Veil was pointless if he couldn't find you, so he made sure he could when the time came. The second part of his plan was, "
"To get himself 'gakked'?" Delilah volunteered.
"That is nuts, even for your family, Cáel," Virginia added.
"Hush before I cut off your wagging, mongrel tongues," Shammy snapped. I lowered my head.
"They are my guests, 'Black Cloud'," I sighed. "Respect me, or leave."
"You don't tell me what to do," she turned her confusion-stoked furor on me.
"You are right. I don't tell you what to do. In fact, I'm finished telling you anything," I glared back.
"Have a nice walk out of the desert," I said as I turned to leave. No one should be surprised that she grabbed my shoulder and pulled me back around.
"We aren't done," she snarled. "What happened to 'White Hair'? What were his plans?"
"To all who value my dignity, or have affection for me," I spoke loudly, "shoot me before this Anathema harlot tortures even a single word from my lips."
A dozen weapons pointed my way. It was good to be loved. It was better to be loved and obeyed.
"Check and mate, Beast," Caprica stated calmly.
"He is a Head of House and you would give him an ignoble death, murdered by his own people?" Shammy countered.
"I'm not going to shoot him," Caprica gave a brittle smile. "I can't promise you what the rest will decide on as being appropriate."
"It only takes one of us," Rachel pointed out. "I love him. Make of that what you will."
"You don't want to die," the former Queen pinned me with her gaze.
"You are absolutely correct. I am fresh out of any desire to die before screwing five hundred women. I don't have the guts, nor is my despair so deep as to embrace this unwelcome suicide. I've done that the prerequisite number of times this year, and it is only July. I've met my quota, so I really, truly want to live," I explained.
"Still, my duty is clear. If you are not with us, you are against us, Shammuramat. If you choose to act as if the only thing that matters in life is yourself, my oaths to the Host don't leave me much wiggle room."
"This isn't over," she seethed, even as she took a step back.
She wasn't leaving, only claiming this conflict was over. Nope. Not going to happen. Not by a long shot.
"Come. Sit with me, Sister," I addressed her. I handed my holstered Glock to Priya. I was mindful that the camp was preparing for evacuation and wary of further attacks.
"I will not," Shammy cut a dramatic figure, pivoting away with her posterior-length damp hair whipping behind her. My surrendering of weapons implied I wanted to negotiate. She was rejecting that offer.
"As a very wise woman once said, 'destiny cuts both ways.
If we listen, it prepares us for what we must do. Destiny also places us in situations where we know what should be done. We do not hide behind such concepts as Fate. We Amazons bow with respect to Destiny because she gives us the freedom of choice. We know what we must do, but the voice, step and blow are ours to make.'
"Alal manipulated Destiny to bring you back. Mission accomplished. He sacrificed his immortality because of his promise to you," I grinned. "Welcome back and have a nice second life. Before sending Granddad away forever, I'll ask him if it was worth it."
"An empty jab," she mocked me. "You won't give up your life to kill him."
"I don't have to," I chortled. "I now know there is a way to rip a person's soul from their body. Removing that rancid piece of filth belonging to Grandpa 'Cáel' from the real me will be a pleasure. Even my ability to do it is thanks to you saving my life multiple times this morning. How rich is that? At least you are consistent in your ingratitude."
It was a combination lie/gross exaggeration. I didn't know what Gong Tau did and I was a long way from making one of their spell casters cough up the knowledge, but she didn't know that. I had gotten her to reengage in conversation, plus imperiled my life at the same time. "You know nothing!" she screamed.
"I know a self-deceiving, malicious cunt when I see and hear one," I calculated the distance between her and my upcoming battery.
"Your sister wasn't weak, she was smart." Shammuramat had passed the ability to articulate clearly; her scream was more animal than human.
"The Host couldn't afford your manly way of thinking. They couldn't afford the infighting. And they certainly couldn't afford a leader that put her own desires over the welfare of her House. Basically, they couldn't afford you. Your sister loved you so much that she couldn't bring herself to kill you," I became more and more gripped by that ancestral rage.
"I know this because I know there was no way you could beat her guardian, a champion of Anat, and then your twin. No way. See, I am only beginning to understand Amazons, but I know women rather well. I know love and hate, and you aren't even a difficult read."
A bloody, red storm was about to break.
"You don't want justice. You want validation to cancel out the look in your sister's eyes as you executed her. I know you didn't hang around for the judgment of your sisterhood. No, you gave your sister an ignoble end by causing her to decide between her sister and her House, and she chose you. She let you live at the cost of her own life, she loved you that much.
It seems loving you is hard on a person's afterlife," I continued. We were a breath away from carnage. I've seen women vicious, selfish, conceited, deceitful and vengeful. I'd also seen their hearts break. It was never a welcome sight to my eyes. Something inside her cracked, then crumbled. This wasn't my 'lover' lore. It was from one of the 'I'm lonely and it's your fault' lessons.
Women wanted their conflicts to be emotionally satisfying. Men wanted to make themselves look better, smarter, stronger and more successful. Women lied to be 'right'. I crudely called it the Cleopatra syndrome. 'De-Nile' any fact that pointed out your wrongdoing until you could deny the 'fact' was a fact at all. It then became a rumor before it finally became a fabrication of your enemies.
The end product is the woman believing her own tale, I shit you not. Men are caught up by their lies. Women are held hostage by theirs. That is one of the huge gulfs between the sexes; men fight using facts, or fight their way out of their own lies. The ladies fight for the truth, their own, imaginary truth.
They rarely give up that truth, though they will publically deny it for the sake of resolving the argument. Guys, don't think for a second she believes she's wrong. The woman will get around to punishing you later. Scarce were the reactions I was getting from Shammuramat so the abrupt abandonment of her lies caught me off-guard, until I considered her abysmal history.
Her timeless wanderings in the Endless Black Sands, every step on the residual debris of all those souls sentenced, as she was, to that desolate landscape devoid of meaningful positive sensory input. The only stimulation you were given were the visions of the wreckage of the life you left behind.
Despair had shattered those 'lesser beings' and their spirits crumbled into the fine dust that others trod upon. That lonely existence had stripped away so much of her until only hate and hope remained. She held on to hope that an ageless friend would succeed, because he always saw a task through to the end.
The timeless torture had eroded that, yet it was her only way to assuage her anger. In the same way, her hate had dwindled until only two aspects remained, the memories she clung to concerning her motivations and the memories that led up to that crime, and they didn't mesh. The lies she had built up to secure her rage had gone from an unassailable mountain fortress to a glass house and my barb had been the final blow in a long series of deconstructions aimed her way.
Litmus test time. I handed over my tomahawk harness to Priya as well.
"Salmu Eretu Anat, sit with me and talk about what we must do," I reoffered. That was both a gift (Alal's name for her, not her forbidden Amazon one) and an obligation (her acceptance of the name 'Anat'). I was Wakko Ishara.
My House didn't grovel before our enemies and beg for a cessation of hostilities. No, Ishara created the advantageous peace, leading with honesty and truthfulness until the rival negotiators broke faith. Unlike other diplomats world-wide, Isharans headed off conflicts, peacefully resolved skirmishes (fights that happened without a pledge of warfare), conveyed the High Priestess' overtures of a cease-fire, but never offered submission.
I could not bow before Black Cloud, I didn't have the authority. I couldn't pardon her, the only person who could do that didn't exist at the moment. Picking up Ishara's ancient mandate, I could seek an advantageous peace. Based on a hodgepodge of archaic policy and my audacity, I would turn an enemy into an ally.
Cáel’s first battle alliance
Hypothetically, the Council could defer any agreement formed today, on the spot, until a High Priestess was elevated. What I proposed wasn't a pipedream. Black Cloud was the last of a First House. She also had an upcoming war in which to prove herself a valuable member of the Host, repaying her sisters for her sins by slaying our enemies AND by agreeing to live and die by the High Priestess's judgment when the war was concluded.
In essence, I was giving Shammuramat nothing while getting her to promise her skills, flesh, life and possibly death in battle in the cause of the Host. The fierce warrior-Queen chose Delilah, of all people, to hold her weapons while we sat down and talked. I laid out my offer. She demanded two amendments.
One: Alal would not die at the hands of the Host until Shammuramat's case was delivered before the Council and High Priestess.
Two: I would, in a timely fashion, tell her the history of 'White Hair' since her passing.
Number two I agreed to as that was my right. I temporarily agreed to number one with the clear mutual understanding that I would have to confer with Krasimira and St. Marie for their approval, or rejection. Her safety and that of Alal were not in my power to guarantee. Immediately Caprica, Priya and Pamela offered up their willingness to testify concerning 'Black Cloud's' critical part in the battle to save the Amazon young, her bravery and the number of enemies slain at her hand.
St. Marie had ultimate authority. Once the Regency Council was selected, they would hold that burden. The High Priestess would inherit it eventually. Ultimate authority was real and perversely that made it more of a consensus matter. With all the blame falling on one individual, others were free to give advice without guilt.
That was Hayden's act of cowardice. Her decision on the New Directive was the only one that mattered, yet she deferred to the Council's sensibilities when brutality wielding autocracy was required. Hayden did not create the list of traitors out of any misplaced assignment of blame. She took the hit for her wrong decisions and paid for that with her life.
That part done, she did what needed to be done to push the Host forward to the place they needed to be. The traitors died because they were traitors to the goals of the Amazons, an example of pride over survival. She judged who could accept that and who couldn't. Dying while those leaders lived was selfishness on her part and a waste of her death. She had remedied that detail.
My reasons for throwing Krasimira into the mix with St. Marie was twofold. St. Marie had a war to orchestrate and it was evident our opponents had planned ahead more effectively. The Keeper of Records could fabricate the legal three-legged stool that would allow St. Marie to add Shammuramat to her arsenal while not removing an ancient High Priestess's death sentence.
The final point of contention was viewed as both a must by Black Cloud and an issue she was prepared for a long and acerbic argument over.
"I may not be accepted as Head of House Anat, but I will have a command of Amazons to lead into battle," Shammy girded her loins.
"How many do you want?" I inquired coolly.
"One hundred," she suggested as our starting point. She would have been happy with fifty.
"Done," I stunned her by doing our forearm clasp. "You may want to aim for one hundred and twenty-five."
"I want Amazons," she insisted.
"I pledge to you that every candidate will have at the very least two years' experience in Amazon ways and battle training. They will be house-less, so their primary loyalty will be to you."
"I said I wanted Amazons," Black Cloud was getting feisty.
"I would never suggest any woman I would not personally accept into House Ishara," I honestly replied. "You will find that they are Amazon where it counts, in their bravery and willingness to kill." That last bit brought a curl to her lips.
"If I do not approve of the woman, I will take her life," BC upped the ante.
"I'll make sure to put that on the Job Posting Notice," I joked. "It will probably cut down the number of volunteers from a thousand to five hundred, but that's on you." We clasped arms again, sealing our agreement. Me delivering, well, I'd figure out what to say to make St. Marie agree, hopefully.
"Enough time has passed for talk. I believe we have to an evacuation to execute," Shammy stood up and motioned for Delilah to return her weapons. "Caprica Mielikki, where can I do the most good?" Caprica was aghast. She wasn't appalled; she was awestruck. The entirety of my House's purpose rolled over her like a tsunami.
She'd been calculating how many more camp counselors she was going to lose killing Shammy. Now Shammy was offering her services and obedience and it had all occurred in a matter of minutes. She thought 'Turning weakness into strength' and 'Love more than Hate' had been amusing bywords I had put forth in my naiveté.
I had turned them into Isharan axioms right before her eyes. Caprica knew, knew, that if I wasn't there, there would have been more bloodshed. No Amazon, I could see the wheels turning inside that veteran's brain, no other Amazon would have talked Shammuramat into a truce, much less a shaky alliance.
The Chief's command had grown stronger with clever application of words alone.
"Stay with me," Caprica ordered. "I'm placing you in command of two combat teams. If another attack comes, you will be my reaction force." With that, those two left as an organic 'one'. The pow-wow was over. The rest of the Amazons, save Priya, separated to complete our evacuation preparations.
"Luv, don't you have any male friends?" Delilah teased me.
"Hey now," I protested tiredly, "You don't go to a Jaguar dealership and expect to drive out in a Hyundai."
"Is Virginia going to be okay?" Delilah inquired out of the blue. "You know this Javiera better than the rest of us."
In what was yet another bizarre twist, Rachel, Mona and Delilah had hugged Virginia good-bye with some emotion. Virginia and Delilah had attached themselves to Tiger Lily when the fighting broke out and stuck with her throughout the battle, firing at and being fired on by the Seven Pillars infiltrators. To the Amazons, the fight was not their guests', but they had volunteered to help anyway.
Pamela had a quick conversation with Priya. She'd agreed to keep an eye out on behalf of our FBI agent so that no jumpy Amazon mistook her for an enemy when the Americans arrived. I had a terse good-bye with Caprica, this was her disaster to deal with, victory or not.
While my horniness had alerted her command when her pickets had failed, and while my mad dash for the bridge had been pivotal in turning the Seven Pillars surprise attack into their catastrophe, I was claiming credit for none of that. I blamed the spare phone at the guard post for Caprica's success. Miyako and I had been rescued by Shammy. Without Shammy, I would have died in a futile effort.
My humility vexed Caprica, it was so non-male in her eyes. She also 'gave back' Shammuramat to me. The Assyrian Queen was far more comfortable fighting the war than fighting for the peace.
As I hugged Virginia goodbye one last time, I asked her to hurry back to New York. I had no desire to explain this insanity to someone new. She came back with a nod, her emotions stifled by her official responsibility.
"Yes, she'll be fine," I reassured Delilah. "The very presence of Priya will calm the other Amazons. Caprica is far more 'open' than we could have hoped for. She is going to make an effort to work with Virginia. At least, as long as the Federal government doesn't criminalize the situation and lets the members of the Host go."
"What happens if they keep the Amazons and the children?" Delilah felt compelled to ask.
"It would make the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City look like water damage in your beachfront shack," Pamela shook her head. "There are roughly 8,000 Amazons in North America and they won't differentiate between armed and unarmed government employees and their families."
"At what cost? You are already at war against two other forces," Delilah pointed out.
"At best, Amazons view themselves to be in a wary cease-fire with the rest of the World. The raw numbers of our enemy is rarely an issue. During the days of my active service, there were contingency plans for such an occurrence. We will move around in small groups. Amazons will rearm by overrunning rural law enforcement centers and recuperate in Canada and Mexico."
"With stockpiles of heavy weapons, we attack refineries, power stations, petrochemical storage facilities, railroad bridges and mine major waterways," Pamela continued. "We avoid major urban centers and military installations where you can react quickly and with great force. Instead, we eliminate Sheriff's departments and Highway Patrols out in the countryside.
Either the government lets us strangle their supply and energy infrastructure, or they come out after us. Out in rough terrain, in small patrols, we start picking you off. Once you are committed to the countryside, we double back and attack your air bases, destroying your warplanes and helicopters on the ground where they are vulnerable.
After six to eight months of this, the Host withdraws from the United States. We wait four or five years then attack again. We never ask for our children back, or the return of our imprisoned Amazons. No, we kill you, cut you and strike terror in your hearts until you cast them away like the toxins you have turned them into. That doesn't stop us.
We'll keep attacking until the Council is satisfied, preferably when your government collapses. A military coup will do, as will a civil war," Pamela grinned.
"Do you think the US government appreciates that?" Delilah worried.
"I'm sure that Katrina gave Javiera all three options," I spoke.
"They can help us and we will repay that debt with interest. They can help us and then betray us, at which point the scenario Pamela layed out goes into effect. Or they can sit back and do nothing. I'm not terribly worried. We know Javiera does not have the authority to control the commanders now involved. We also have faith she wouldn't unleash forces that would fuck us over either.
She'd rather refuse our request than risk pissing us off."
"As a male, do you really think they see you as one of them?" Miyako whispered from overhead. She'd taken the seat behind me on our private jet. I thought about the ledge of the Havenstone Commercial Investments building.
"I don't care," I reached up and stroked her hair and left ear.
"It is not my place to demand respect, or understanding," I related. "They WILL respect Ishara. Me having testicles is not an acceptable excuse, in my book, for failing to do so."
"If they don't?" her delicate fingers played with the top of my head.
"I will deal with the situation when it arises, " I huffed.
", arises again," Pamela corrected me.
"I have no master plan, or set contingency. Knowing that most opponents will be tougher than me allows me to benefit from their underestimation. That outweighs what I suffer from me exaggerating their capabilities. See, I know I will fight no matter what, so it falls to me to fail or succeed."
"That barely made any sense whatsoever," Delilah snorted.
"It did to me," Aya piped up. "No sane person picks a fight with someone they can't beat. So, if they pick a fight with Cáel, they've already made one serious miscalculation."
"What would that be?" Shammy looked our way.
"That Cáel will ever give up, that he will ever admit defeat," Aya's intrepid gaze went her way.
"Dying is its own fatal confession," Shammuramat sneered.
"That is where you are wrong, Salmu Eretu, " Aya started to reply.
"Not even your youth forgives you for using that name. Call me, " Shammy said, dripping scorn.
No name came forth.
"Sērkuēn?" I suggested. Shammy's furor lanced through me. "You gave that name up when you turned away from House Anat and justice." In the Amazon tongue it meant 'She who kills'. How prophetic.
"You will address me as Shammuramat," she grew positively thunderous.
"Shammuramat is dead. If we keep this up, I'm going to start calling you Shammy to your face and we both know I'll do that one too many times. Then you'll kill me and all of this was for naught," I put my own spin on fortune-telling.
"You've got that right," she sizzled.
"Fine, we shall call you, Sakuniyas," I suggested. Once more we were on the cusp of violence and once more, I had cut Shammy off at the knees and trundled her rage off to its poorly-locked cage. I swear, I could despoil a nunnery.
"Spring?" Rachel looked my way. Sakuniyas was the feminine version of the spring season. It signaled rebirth, a fresh start and shedding of the dour cloak of winter, aka Death. Know your chicks, figure out their desires and pander to them. There was the minor complication that she wanted to consummate her relationship with my Grandfather, not me, but I liked a challenge.
"Is that an acceptable compromise?" I asked, while already knowing the answer.
"Finding you useful brings me no pleasure," Shammy/Sakuniyas grumbled.
"Does it suffice?" I prodded.
"Yes, yes, damn you," the angry tone failed to reach her eyes.
"I will let people call me Sakuniyas and answer to it when it suits me. Saku in case of battle, or other necessity," was her minimalist concession.
"I'm glad that's settled," I stood up. "Speaking of necessity, Miyako," I grabbed her left upper arm in a rough, manly fashion. "I'm going to ride you like the Pony Express."
"I have no idea what that means, but I think I like it," she beamed sexual kitten joy up at me. I am so truly, deeply and pathetically in need of professional psychiatric help.
"You know," Miyako snickered as I 'dragged' her to the restroom, "if we ever get buried in a coffin together, we'll already know how to make love." The space wasn't, actually, it was exceedingly cramped for dual occupancy. I can definitely recommend that every would-be Lothario have their own personal closet ninja. They are exquisite.
Sex with Miyako was snuggly warm (emotionally), tight (still) and close quarters. Miyako had trained thoroughly in the study of body movements and posture. She could determine what a person was thinking by observing body language to the point that eye contact had become superfluous.
She had joked about the cramped confines of our sexually secluded spot yet it was this level of contact she found herself craving. In our post-coitus afterglow, she had her arms draped over my shoulders and her calves linked behind the small of my back. Her right cheek rested on my right shoulder while she made endearing, playful puffs on my bicep.
"I will resent giving you over to Jovanović," she purred.
"Who?" I retaliated by lifting her up so I could plant kisses on her jugular.
"Selena," Miyako inhaled deeply then exhaled with sensuous joy.
"I'm not happy with you leaving, much less with someone thinking you can be replaced," I grumbled.
"Is this why all those women get angry with you when they find out you are not theirs alone?" she giggled.
"I think my dishonesty was a key factor," I confessed.
"No, I mean that you make us feel so good before, during and after sex that the idea that you could have been giving us even more of your time, it makes us jealous," Miyako murmured.
I wasn't going to argue the point that I knew way more about women and romance than she did.
Knock, knock, knock,
"Hey, Mr. Dishonest," Tiger Lily teased me through the door. "Some of us really have to go."
"We are getting dressed," I groused.
We did, Miyako looked exceptionally pleased and floated back to her seat. Charlotte had taken a middle seat so she could keep watch over both the cockpit and the rear of the plane. Rachel, Mona and Delilah had fallen asleep despite Miyako's and my voracious racket a few minutes earlier.
Saku (the genocidal maniac formerly known as Shammuramat) had pulled her armor out of storage and was getting ready to clean that and her hand weapons. She had the rapt attention of Aya and her Squirts, until my arrival brought Aya my way.
"Did you have good 'Daddy Time'," Aya smiled at Miyako.
"I had Great Daddy time," Miyako brushed some hair off Aya's shoulder.
"She's pregnant," Saku informed the plane. The look she gave me was a whole new expression for me to categorize, as I imagined the sublime horror etched on my face was new as well. First, Saku's expression, it was the 'how dare you fuck that woman to multiple orgasms with my boyfriend's body'.
Yep, I was pretty sure that was a new one.
For my part, well the 'practical me' knew I was trying to make little Isharans. But to the Man-Dog-Pig in me, the one who always insisted on wearing condoms, fatherhood meant, THE END!
I wasn't opposed to abortion. If she wanted one, I would back her up. If she didn't want to abort the pregnancy, well, time to 'Man-Up' and do the right thing. I absolutely knew it would end up in divorce, on grounds of my infidelity; but I'd try, damn it. I would do the best I could with my anemic, highly limited morality and unhealthy as well as unnatural sex drive. I would never miss a child support payment, or a minute of my visitation time.
Abortion, divorce and child support weren't going to be the issues of this union. I wanted to mock Saku's words, belittle her understanding of events and insinuate she was a cave-dwelling blockhead. The little excited squeeze that Miyako gave my hand trash-canned all of that.
"How do you know?" I tried to keep my panic from turning my calm voice into a squeak.
"I gave birth to three sons and two daughters," Saku studied me. "A mother knows these things." That, I didn't believe. Before I could take a deep, somewhat hurtful-to-Miyako, sigh of relief, she continued, "Also, having spent so much time among the dead, I am familiar with the sensation a fresh soul resonates with." I was Ahab, strapped to the Great White Whale.
I put my best 'Oh Yay, we are going to have a Baby!' face on. I would have rather chewed splinters at that moment than hurt Miyako's feelings. I had become a sap as well as a cad. How the hell did that happen?
"Will our child be a girl, or a boy?" Miyako became very respectful and demure.
Shammuramat studied Miyako for ten seconds then did the same to me.
"Daughter," she announced. What happened next caught us all flat-footed.
"We will name her Fushichou, Phoenix, after you, Sakuniyas," Miyako bowed to the Saku.
None of us were sure how Saku would take that. She had no immediate comeback either.
Eventually she gave a curt nod, then went back to her armor. Aya hugged Miyako, pressing her right ear against Miyako's belly, her very flat belly.
"What will her name be in our tongue?" Aya's precious eyes sought out an answer in mine. "Suwais-urāni," I wracked my mind for the proper word usage.
"Technically that means 'Bird that burns to ash' since there is no Phoenix in the Old Kingdom Hittite mythology. Neither flame, 'tāru', or fire, 'agnish', convey the proper mystical meaning.
"Did you just name your first kid Su?" Pamela snorted while feigning sleep.
"It is 'A Boy named Sue', you 'Ghost rider in the Sky'," I grinned. Pamela opened up one eye. A smile blossomed slowly from her lips as she stood up.
"Yippie yi oh," she said as I hugged her.
"Yippie yi Yay," I replied.
She wrapped up Aya and Miyako in a truly dysfunctional family moment.
"How did you end up knowing Johnny Cash?" Pamela regarded me proudly.
"Dad loved the man and his music. He wasn't a cowboy, but he was a lineman and that's some hard, lonely work," I explained.
"Cáel," Miyako tilted her head up and beamed me a serious dose of happiness. "Is this a happy moment?"
"It sure is," I grinned back.
"Can Mommy be next?" Aya hounded me relentlessly. I thumped her head.
"Ow," Aya pouted. "Should I take that to be a 'maybe'?"
"Why don't you go help Saku," I rechanneled her boundless energy. "Back in the day, every noble was attended to by squires who took care of their gear and served that noble as body servants. In turn, she taught them the art of war." Sakuniyas shot me a nasty look.
Aya poked her head between Pamela and Miyako.
"That sounds like fun," she met Saku's glacial chill with a warm spring breeze.
"I don't want their help," she grumbled.
"It sounds like free labor," Pamela smirked.
"I said I don't want their help," Saku snarled.
"Okay," I rolled my eyes. "Aya, Fatal Squirts, attention!" They all looked at me. "I command you, as your Celestial Potentate Poohbah, to stare at Sakuniyas until she gives you a task of a personal, to her, nature to do. Get at it."
Four sets of precocious, will-eroding cuteness assaulted the Assyrian Queen, victor of a hundred battles and skirmishes.
"You are despicable," was Saku's chosen acidic barb.
"I second that motion," Pamela patted me on the back. "I keep finding myself being prouder and prouder of you, every day. Stop it," she teased me.
None of those words dampened my mood, or my plan.
To be continued.
By FinalStand, for Literotica