Backscatter

But Ittobaal clearly understood everything. He sprang up and began racing along the ledge away from the bird.

The bird came to life, rising as if by magic more than a meter into the air and then zipping in front of the fleeing Ittobaal in an instant.

"The game's over Ittobaal."

Ittobaal stopped dead in his tracks, his jaw dropping. He looked back to confirm the bird was no longer at his old campsite, and then turned and glared at Sonic with wild eyes.

"You can't escape Ittobaal, not with me watching your every move. You'll save Uriah some time and effort if you just give up quietly."

A look of dismay crossed Ittobaal's face as he realized how hopeless his position was. The magical bird was betraying his location to his hunters. He wailed in despair and then hurled the rock in his hand directly at the bird. Another miss, again by a scant centimeter.

"Oh, that won't work," said Megan. "This new model has some really neat collision avoidance software programmed into it."

Megan's last words were in Portuguese. Ittobaal stared at the bird without understanding.

"It's physically impossible for you to hit Sonic with a rock," said Megan switching back to Phoenician. "Unless you can throw a rock three times faster than sound. Want a demonstration?"

The bird swooped down and grabbed a fist-sized rock in its claws and then flew over and dropped the rock near the feet of the astonished Ittobaal. Sonic then hovered a mere meter away, directly in front of his glaring face.

Ittobaal stooped down slowly, eyeing the bird closely as he felt for the rock and picked it up, accepting the bird's challenge. He faced his adversary for a bare second, and then did a lightning fast side-swing with the rock, aiming to bash the bird's brains out with a head strike.

At the last possible instant, the bird seemed to melt below the swing, just far and fast enough for Ittobaal's strike to miss completely. He growled in frustration and tried again. The bird turned one way, then the other, rising just a bit higher on each dodge. Each strike was missing by mere centimeters. In one particular strike, Ittobaal was sure his rock must have brushed the feathers, even though he felt no hint of an impact. And all the while the bird's eyes stared directly into his, mocking him. Ittobaal howled in feral hatred at the insult as he spun around and around, his eyes locked on the weaving bird, his swinging arm never quite connecting.

And then the bird turned and paused in the air slightly above him and less than two meters out in front, its eyes directly away, blind at last, presenting its rump to Ittobaal and lifting up its tail feathers as if to shit on him. It was a supreme insult, and Ittobaal's face grew contorted with fury.

He saw his chance and leaped instantly without thinking, as fast and high and silently as he could, swinging his arm in a vicious overhead arc to have the rock come crashing down directly on the demon bird's delicate back.

And maddeningly, the bird seemed to squirt forward just enough so that the rock cut only air on the downswing. Ittobaal had stretched his arm as far as he could, hoping for at least a glancing blow on its rump, but again there was no connection at all. He then bent his knees to land from his leap and discovered in shocked horror there was no ground beneath him. He had jumped off the cliff.

His body made an aerobatic twist in the air, but he was still carrying the momentum of his leap and in the air there was no way to change his direction. The side of the mountains was a steep rock face, almost vertical, and his screaming body stayed in front of the rocks for almost a hundred meters until it slammed into a boulder in the valley below.

Sonic sped down to the body and examined it. Ittobaal had hit head first and his head had exploded upon the boulder. Megan felt both weary and a heavy sense of relief. Ittobaal couldn't have suffered more than five seconds of fear. Death was surely instantaneous on impact.

She patched through to Sonic's twin and informed the search party of Ittobaal's new position and condition. Uriah replied with a single word in Hittite that he had already taught her. The word was gratitude.

Megan sat unmoving in the isolated cool comfort of her ship's surveillance center. She pondered her actions as Uriah and his team worked their way to the body. Uriah's gratitude was not for sparing Uriah the work of killing Ittobaal himself. He would have done that gladly without hesitation or remorse. Uriah's gratitude was for sparing the new king the grief of dealing with a living Ittobaal. Hannibal had given Uriah clear orders to let Ittobaal surrender peacefully if he chose to. And that was something Megan could not accept.

Megan pondered the violation of her medical oath as she surveyed the body. She had baited a man into killing himself. True, it was a man well deserving of death. Hannibal himself had come to her in Sidon the previous evening, asking for help in setting up a judicial branch of government and also inquiring with great embarrassment if the Madeirans had some merciful way of executing criminals. Brave and noble in battle, Hannibal never had to face the prospect of executing someone in cold blood.

Megan's mind went back to her husband's words, so many years ago, that sometimes life hands you difficult choices. Megan was a doctor of medicine, a veterinarian to be sure, but still someone who had vowed to protect life and not wreck mischief upon it. But she was also a mother who had vowed to protect the life of her daughter.

The issue of slavery was causing a deep chasm to form within the Canaanite society. Having Hannibal run a slave-free farm as an example was one thing, having him tell you that you no longer had property rights on your own slaves was something else entirely. Megan shook her head at Hannibal's desire to establish a judiciary. He had the right ideals but at the wrong time.

There was common recognition that the society was at a crossroads, but there was also great uncertainty among the coastal cities as to which direction the society should take. Hannibal was holding the country together but the grip was tenuous. His two greatest assets were the promises of friendship with the Madeirans and the fact that his opposition did not have a strong leader to rally around. All the king's men except Ittobaal and Uriah were dead, and Uriah was firmly in Hannibal's camp.

There was no fighting now, but Ittobaal! The man in a prison cell, even for a short time, could provide the nucleation site for the next round of civil war. He had half convinced the Philistines to help him kidnap Hannibal's young son as part of a complex plot to have Ittobaal become the next king of Canaan. The deal had fallen through, but what would be Ittobaal's next plan? Would his mind return to Edom's young daughters, the girls he had almost branded for slavery? And Kelsey would be arriving tomorrow in Sidon on her sixth birthday for a three-week stay with them. After much soul searching, Megan decided Ittobaal was one snake she would not suffer to live.

And Megan was sure Captain Silva supported her decision. He had assigned her an unusual solo shift in the surveillance control room within the ship, and had given her explicit orders not to do recordings unless there was some essential need for it. Was there any other way to interpret such orders other than for her to help Hannibal if she could? Megan paused for a moment and then duly logged in her report that Ittobaal had died by leaping off the cliff while attempting to attack Sonic with a rock. Megan was certain the captain would not press her for further details.

The tracking team finally made it to Ittobaal's body and began collecting stones for a simple grave in the rocks. Sonic joined its twin and the two birds hovered silently for a moment and then helped with the gathering of stones. The two birds worked much more quickly than the men, and after a while the men just stood quietly by and admired the birds' work.

Soon the body lay buried under the rough cairn. Uriah waved at the birds and then saluted the magical pair with his sword. The birds bowed their heads and wings in respect, and then a very somber Megan brought them home to the ship.

Author's note. Here ends Book One of Backscatter.