"Ninsianna, what do you see?"
In the dreamtime, Papa stood next to her, holding her hand. On the other side of him stood a shadow wearing a peculiar outfit, the echo of the man Papa had met with this afternoon. Ninsianna scrutinized the man's body for an obvious 'thread' which might connect him back to this place where people had seen lizard demons.
"I see many threads," Ninsianna said. "But I cannot tell which one might be the right one. Should we follow them together?"
"We shall follow them separately," Papa spoke into her mind. "But if you sense a lizard demon, trace the thread back and lead me there. We do not know if these creatures possess magical powers which could harm you while your body is separate from your mind."
Ninsianna traced the threads, most of which led north over the Taurus Mountains to the lands called Anatolia. Once upon a time she had considered marrying Jamin because he had promised to take her there on a trading mission. Now all she had to do was connect to someone who had been there and it felt as though she could see these lands for herself. They weren't so different from Ubaid territory, perhaps a bit greener. She felt disappointed. No lizard demons.
At some point her physical body made her aware that Mama had come back from her daily rounds and bustled about the kitchen, cutting melons and simmering a crock of potted lentils. Each night they ate a light supper, split up to attend training to defend their village, and then reunited after the sky became so pitch black nobody could see.
This journey was getting her nowhere! The threads exhausted, Ninsianna amused herself by implanting false images of the scent, taste and look of the melons Mama had finished preparing into the hapless Anatolian visitor's mind. She suppressed a giggle as she sensed the man succumb to the urge to locate for himself some of the melons in question and begin to eat them. Her consciousness registered his satisfaction as he bit into a melon and the sensation of juices dripping down his chin. If only her husband were not so thick-headed that she could not communicate with him thus!
She tried the trick with Mikhail, but although she could easily follow the thread which ran from her abdomen to the scar she had healed in his chest, she could never see inside her husband's mind unless she physically touched him. Should she try remote viewing the visitor's threads again? Or succumb to her hunger and stop journeying?
The sound of Mikhail making his entrance made the decision for her. If she had been following an interesting thread, she would have lingered in the dreamtime, but the dark cloud which preceded him into the house warned her that he needed her attention more than She-who-is. With a call to alert her father she was finished, she willed her mind back into her body and opened her eyes to behold her beautiful winged husband, so tall he had to stand with his head between the rafters which held up the second story.
"Mikhail!"
Ninsianna rose from the prayer-mat and slid into his arms. At five cubits tall, he was more than a cubit taller than her, so that her cheek rested at his heart. His stiff posture, tightly tucked wings, and the tiny muscle which twitched beneath one cheek as he tried to maintain an unreadable expression only confirmed what the goddess had shown her in the dreamtime. Something had gone wrong at training.
"Ah, chol beag [little dove]," Mikhail sighed. He moved his arms and dark wings, still damp from his recent dip in the river to wash off the stench of training, to encircle and protect her.
Ninsianna slid her hands around his back to massage the axiliary muscles which powered his wings, rubbing the soft pinfeathers where feathers gave way to skin. It was where his stress always sat after a hard day of training. As she rubbed, she projected soothing images of herself giving him a full body massage, once they had retreated to their bed. It was a form of communication she could use when physically touching him, but never across the dreamtime the way she could any other person.
Mikhail arched his back as her supple hands squeezed the places that hurt and made his pain go away. A low growl of pleasure rumbled in his chest.
"How was training?" Ninsianna's goddess-kissed eyes peered right through his inscrutable expression to get at the real emotions he hid. His blue-tinted spirit light matched his eyes, but it was marred by splotches of grey, the aura of a man carrying too many responsibilities.
Mikhail buried his nose into her hair and inhaled, his flesh trembling beneath her fingers with all the pent-up emotion he did not know how to express. Ninsianna melted against him, understanding it was the cure for all of his ills.
"I just don't understand why humans need to be so illogical," Mikhail mumbled into the top of her head.
Mama set Mikhail's bowl at his usual place and ladled lentils into it, her way of saying 'welcome' and dispensing comfort at the same time. Like Mikhail, Mama spoke little, but when she did speak, you had better listen.
"What did they do now?" Ninsianna's lips curved up into a smile, her golden eyes twinkling with mischief. She slid one hand up to touch his cheek, the first gesture she had ever used to communicate with him, back when they had not yet spoken each other's language.
"Dadbeh and Firouz decided to perform a stag dance instead of the self-defense maneuver I was teaching them," Mikhail said. "In front of Jamin, no less. When I didn't understand it was an honor, everyone laughed at me."
"They've been practicing that move for weeks," Papa interrupted from the table where he'd moved to sit next to Mama. "They wanted to surprise you."
"Why did they have to show it during training?" Mikhail asked. "It distracted everyone from the lesson and made me look like an ineffective leader."
"Oh, Mikhail, you didn't scold them? Did you?" Ninsianna tried not to laugh.
"I never scold," Mikhail said flatly, a hint of anger flaring into his blue eyes. "You know that."
"No," Ninsianna pursed her lips into a mock pout. She slid her hands up to frame his cheeks and batted her eyebrows as though she were a village gossip. "You just give them that oh-so-displeased expression. The one you always wear when you wish to convey 'I don't understand you, but I think you are a goat turd.'"
"I do not," Mikhail's feathers rustled with indignation.
Ninsianna donned a perfect facsimile of his unreadable expression, but the tremble of her lip betrayed she was about to burst into laughter.
Colors shifted in Mikhail's spirit light as red anger over her light-hearted mockery warred with the purple laughter she was determined to pry out of him. The hands she'd placed on either side of his cheek forced his lips up into a smile the same way a mother might coax a smile out of a child who pouted.
"There," she said, still wearing her mock pout. "Much better now. Was that so hard?" With a laugh she stood on tip-toes and planted a kiss, biting his lower lip to break his concentration. At the same time she reached between his armpit and chest to scratch the ticklish spot on his wings only she knew about, the one that made his wings twitch.
Mikhail's wings reflexively flapped. Dried herbs strung from the rafters fell as he tried to tuck the too-large appendages too tightly against his back for her nimble fingers to torment, but Ninsianna knew her quarry and smote his foul mood without mercy.
"Stop mocking me!" he cried out, but it was too late. His face erupted in that rare and elusive creature she suspected he'd known little before he'd met her … a human smile. The dark shadow lifted from his spirit-light and left it a brilliant, whitish blue, the breathtaking color she associated with him.
"See? That wasn't so hard!" Ninsianna laughed. "Try smiling once in a while, Mr. Oh-So-Serious, and perhaps we won't all seem so illogical?"
"I raised my eyebrows at them," Mikhail defended. "It was my intent to convey an apology."
"See, son," Papa clapped his hands together, pleased Mikhail had applied the lesson he'd spent weeks trying to teach him. "You are learning."
Mama harrumphed…
"We can't all be tricksters," Mama said. "Some people don't want to be smiling all the time." Mama's temperament was no-nonsense, pragmatic and blunt, as close to Mikhail's taciturn natu
re as any in the village.
Mikhail shot his mother-in-law a grateful look.
Papa reached across the table to touch Mama's hand. "Mikhail has had difficulty learning our unspoken language," Papa said. "But even you have to admit he has come a long way in not glowering at us like we are all insane."
"Maybe we are all insane," Mama grumbled, not one to back down from a position she thought to be right.
In most Ubaid households, the man was boss and the woman kept house, but in this three-healer household, one who healed the flesh, one the spirit, and one, Ninsianna, who had inherited the ability to do both, things were much more egalitarian. Mama called the shots. Everybody else listened. That was just the way it was. For some reason, it seemed to reassure Mikhail, as though he had known many such women back where he had come from.
Mikhail's grin subsided, but not completely. "Thank you, Mama, for understanding me."
With quiet conversation over the late-night snack, they snuffed out the tiny oil lamp and went to their separate rooms, one married couple on one side, the other married couple on the other, with only a thin wall to separate them. The walls did little to dampen sound, but part of Ubaid culture was the ability to pretend they could not hear her parent's nocturnal activities in the other room.
It was less difficult, she was certain, than their ignoring Mikhail's twenty-cubit wingspan pounding against the walls…
Chapter 6
September 3,390 BC
Earth: Village of Assur
Angelic Air Force Colonel Mikhail Mannuki’ili
Mikhail
The warriors met each night to train after a long day at work and brief supper. Mikhail fingered the razor-sharp tip of Immanu's spear, not his usual weapon, but one he'd adapt to his sketchy recollections about ways the Cherubim had practiced. If Jamin would not respect anything but a real weapon, then by gods, he would beat him at his own game! He ordered his two lieutenants to line up the warriors and began to teach them tonight's lesson.
"Last month some of us hunted antelope by working together to herd them into a kill box," Mikhail said. "Today we shall try a variation of that tactic, only instead of herding antelope; we'll pretend an enemy is trying to herd us."
"Why would men hunt us?" one of the newer warriors asked, Ebad, the son of the village potter. The young man possessed average height; average looks, and wore the two-fringed kilt of an apprentice craftsman. The most striking thing about him was the way he followed Pareesa around like a hungry mongrel looking for table scraps.
"Why do you think?" his plump friend Ipquidad said. "Because they all want her as much as you do!" The plump young man pointed at Pareesa.
"Shhh!" Ebad elbowed his friend and glowered at him.
"Ipquidad is right, in a sense," Mikhail addressed the larger group. "The Chief has received intelligence that the Anatolians suffer from these raids, as well."
"From the Halifians, Sir?" Siamek asked.
"No," Mikhail said. "From some tribe we are unfamiliar with. But his trading partners report organized raids, tribes wielding bows that never had them before, and whispered accounts of lizard demons."
"Lizard demons?" several warriors scoffed at once. "Next you will tell us the lulu-khorkhore is real!"
Lulu-khorkhore. The demon that devoured children. Not for the first time he wondered if the legend people used to frighten naughty children had anything to do with his father-in-law's song, the one which had prophesized his arrival?
"I can only say this one, great truth," Mikhail said. "The lizard people are real. If the Sata'an Empire decides to annex your planet, it will make your skirmishes with the Halifians appear tame.”
A low rumble of unease rippled through the troops. All had heard Ninsianna speak with the voice of She-who-is after the last raid, after they had buried the eleven villagers killed preventing the attack, plus dozens of enemies. They had all seen the sun go behind a cloud, the wind pick up, and the temperature cool as Ninsianna had spoken the terrible prophecy of what was to come.
"Picture the last time Halifians raided our village," Mikhail said. "Does anybody remember what happened when the larger group breached our south gate?"
"We were overrun," several warriors spoke at once.
"Jamin chickened out!" Pareesa shouted.
"He did not," Siamek hissed, his dark eyes flashing with anger. "He just didn't want to get into it with Mikhail!"
"Did too!" Pareesa taunted. "Stop defending him!"
"How do you know?" Siamek said. "You weren't even there!"
Instead of refereeing, Mikhail applied last night's lesson taught by his father-in-law. Raise. One. Eyebrow. Here. Human non-verbal communication for 'you're kidding yourself.'
Pareesa was right. Siamek had been the one to come to his aid after Jamin had refused. And Siamek was right. Pareesa had been stuck back where he'd freed her from the Amorite slavers. Siamek gave him a strange look, as though he hadn't expected him to give a bemused expression, while Pareesa giggled. There. He had communicated his opinion in such a way as not to verbally contradict or offend either of his two lieutenants. Perhaps he might master this whole human non-verbal communication thing after all?
"Does anyone know why the defense at the south gate collapsed?" Mikhail asked.
"Because the gate is goat-shit," Firouz said. He elbowed his best friend, Dadbeh. The two had been tasked after the raid with gathering deadwood washed up from last spring's floodtide to help repair it.
"Partly," Mikhail said. "The Chief has sent word upriver he will pay a hefty price for the stronger wood which grows in the Taurus Mountains. But those logs can't be floated downriver until the Hiddekel reaches its flood stage. So how will we defend the gates if they send such a force against us again?"
"We've already increased the guard," Varshab said, the Chief's enforcer.
"And the number of scouts," Siamek added.
"And I now fly the perimeter of the village five times per day," Mikhail said. "Watching for anyone who approaches from a distance."
"More like watching for Ninsianna," someone whispered from the back of the line. "So he can fly off with her for some private time."
Several warriors laughed. Most just gave him a knowing grin. There hadn't been much time lately for private time, far from where her parents could overhear his wings beating against the walls. He realized everyone stared at him. Heat flushed his cheeks. He ruffled his feathers and pretended he'd been thinking of something, anything, other than the delightful image which had popped into his mind.
"Patrols, scouts and stronger gates will only buy us time," Mikhail said. "So back to my original question. Assur's outer ring of houses are not so high that a man cannot vault over it, or cut down a tree and use its branches as a ladder. So if we get overrun again, what should we do?"
From the awkward silence, the warriors did not have an answer to that question. Much as everyone grumbled about being forced to train after working in the fields all day, that last raid had everyone scared.
"Any time you have large groups of men come at you," Mikhail said, "you risk being overrun. But if you find a way to stand firm, at some point those men have nowhere to go but forward. The men in the back push up against the ones at the front, making it hard for them to maneuver. You can use this weakness against them if you train for it."
"How large of an incursion does Ninsianna foresee?" one of the warriors asked.
Mikhail kept his expression neutral. Ninsianna did not understand much of what she saw because it involved technology she had never seen before. His memory was so spotty that all he knew was lizard soldiers had shot him down with a Sata'anic destroyer.
"Thousands," Mikhail said. "And the lizard people are all the same height as me." He did not add and all wielding firesticks. "But even if our next battle is merely against another 50 Halifians wielding bows, the fact remains they breached our gate. We must ensure that never happens again."
A shadow fell across the ground between where he stood a
nd the warriors, the dark visage made larger by their distance from the ground. One of the golden eagles which circled the fields surrounding Assur dove into the field next to them, plucking a serpent from the grass. With pounding wings it carried off a still-writhing snake. A single golden-brown feather floated down to the ground directly in front of Mikhail.
The ripple of fear which passed through the men was palpable. The Ubaid considered these raptors sacred, the eyes and ears of She-who-is, and also messengers. Mikhail was less superstitious, but given the overwhelming evidence such a deity toyed with them in the form of his wife, he was less prone these days to slough off the event as serendipity.
Serpent. Coming. Got it…
How would these warriors fare against the lizard men? He mentally calculated each warrior's speed, weight and throwing arm as he moved through their ranks and adjusted where they stood. He had no recollection of learning the maneuver he was about to teach, but he had woken up with the idea. As he had practiced with Immanu's spear during lunchtime, his muscles remembered what his head injury had wiped out of his conscious mind.
"Let's see … you four … in the back," Mikhail said. "And you two … in the middle. Varshab … I want you dead center in the back … and you too … Kiararsh. You're going to act as anchors."
The warriors chattered as he shuffled them from one spot to another until satisified with the way it looked, but they were much better behaved than they'd been yesterday. He pried the memories out of his subconscious by physically putting his own body into each position to knock free how this maneuver worked, but by now his men understood his body knew what his head injury had stolen. Thank the gods Jamin was not watching!
"We call this tactic léigeadar sceimhiolta," Mikhail said once he was satisifed. "I'm not sure what the exact translation would be, but Ninsianna said it would be called skirmisher." His wife's gift of tongues enabled her to translate words she did not understand.
Sword of the Gods: Prince of Tyre (Sword of the Gods Saga) Page 7