Life as a New Hire Ch. 27

"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/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.