Ninsianna sighed and looked up at the spider's web.
"I thought you were going to evict that thing?"
Mikhail could not understand why the insect made him feel secure when every other person who spotted one shrieked like a little girl. Even Siamek, who'd squealed so high when he'd come across a camel spider that it sounded like someone had cut the throat of a piglet, although in the warrior's defense the half-cubit-wide camel spiders were a far cry from little Miss Spider who helped him fight the sunrise which took away his wife.
"I like it," he said, his words simple, and yet the truth. He drew his arms tighter, praying she would linger.
Ninsianna forced a smile.
"Orkedeh has trained an entire army of little archers." Ninsianna touched his temple, a peace offering. "They have hunted every squirrel within half a league. Perhaps once the annual meeting of Ubaid chiefs has happened, you can take them further afield and teach them how to hunt something a little larger?"
He read the plea in her eyes. After things returned to normal. Why did everything have to be after this great task they had been saddled with by the goddess? He touched her lips, noting the way they quivered beneath his fingertips. This distance bothered her as well, but she was the one who was angry at him, even though he had done nothing wrong. Shahla fantasized about him, the villagers whispered, and whether or not it was true, it hurt her.
He kissed her and she let him, for a moment melting against him and forgetting she was angry, causing his manhood to rise up to greet her, eager to reaffirm their bond A noise came from outside the house, villagers breaking twigs to stoke fires in the beehive ovens where each morning women baked their family's bread, and the shouting of mothers to sons to go outside to milk the goat or bring table scraps to feed the pig.
Miss Spider had kept out the sunrise for as long as she could, but the day had gotten past her. The first ray of sunlight escaped her web and glistened in Ninsianna's golden eyes as if she were sunlight, too. The light of She-who-is.
"Ninsianna?" Her name came out a plea.
"I should go."
She wriggled out of his grasp, sliding out from between his wings and shivering the moment the autumn chill hit her flesh, causing thousands of tiny goosebumps to appear on her skin. She kept her back turned towards him, a coward's gesture to avoid meeting his eyes as she ripped out his heart by pulling on her clothes.
Mikhail swallowed.
"Yes. We should go," he echoed.
He waited until she had stepped out, their bedroom too small for two adults to stand side-by-side given the size of his wings, before pulling on his clothes. Khaki cargo pants. Button-down shirt. Socks so worn from walking they no longer had a heel. And boots. All items which made him different from the Ubaid. Usually a bride's first act upon getting married was to weave an outfit for her husband, but the craziness of training their village to defend themselves had taken precedent over every other activity.
From the sympathetic look in his mother-in-law's eyes when he got downstairs, she knew it had been another night where he had not made love to her daughter. Ubaid houses were tiny, the thin walls carrying the sound of what went on between married couples who lived under the same roof, especially since whenever he made love to her his wings pounded into the walls so fervently it was a wonder the entire village couldn't hear them.
"Good morning, Mama," he kissed Needa's cheek. "Where has Ninsianna gone?"
Needa's eyes met his, her nose, cheeks and lips so much like her daughter's, but her hazlenut eyes were thoroughly different. Where Ninsianna gave the impression she could see into his soul, Needa made it seem like she could feel what was breaking inside his heart, and it made her unhappy, too.
"It will pass, son," Needa said, not answering his question. "The villagers will lose interest and gossip about other things, not some lie spread by a poor broken girl whose mind seized upon a daydream in her darkest hour."
"How do I reassure Ninsianna that Shahla told a lie?" Mikhail said. "When she looked into the girl's mind and what she saw told her it was true?"
"Ninsianna knows it is not true." Needa put a porridge of boiled barley and kishk in front of him, with a crust of hard, dried bread leftover from last night and a mug of water.
"Does she?" Mikhail's voice warbled. "Does she really?"
"The child bore no sign of wings," Needa's eyes flashed with anger. "And trust me, she looked! She examined that poor thing which never had a chance to take its first breath instead of pleading with that goddess of hers to take pity on it, no matter what Shahla had done, and give it more time in the womb!"
"Ninsianna does not have that power," Mikhail said. "The power of life or death."
"Her grandfather did," Needa spat. "And it cost him his wife. And now I see Ninsianna traveling down that same path, to let her love of this goddess of hers supplant her love of her family!"
Things had not been right between Needa and Immanu, either, since the day they had found Ninsianna sprawled unconscious with a dead mouse in her hand. Harsh words had erupted between her and her husband. Mikhail had done his best not to eavesdrop on their conversation, but overheard angry whispers about dark magic, user prices, and wrong choices.
"I come from a technological culture," Mikhail said. "We do not believe in such things."
"And yet you speak of an emperor who is also a god," Needa said. "And channel a power when you go into battle from a different god, one who makes you undefeatable and marks his influence by making your eyes glow blue."
"That is different," Mikhail said. "When I think of the emperor, although I know for certain he is a god, I also know there are rules about how such powers are to be manifested. Like electricity ... the substance that no longer powers my ship. You call it magic, but we call it science. It is a force which can be harnessed if you simply understand the rules."
"And the god you pray to when you go into battle?" Needa asked. She pretended to take great interest in his uneaten porridge as she scraped it into the bucket he would bring to milk the goat.
Mikhail stared out into the sunlight, which had shifted to shine into the door like an obnoxious, victorious conquerer demanding tribute. The prayers he said when he went into battle were to restrain something, to differentiate that which should be smote from that which should not, to maintain a balance, not to destroy as the Assurians thought.
The longer he lingered amongst these people, their passions volatile and emotions unchecked, the harder he had to work to keep his own primitive urges restrained. Some dark thing lurked beneath the spiderweb of his subconscious, waiting to erupt the same way the sunlight slipped past Miss Spider's web each morning. Only Ninsianna's love and the deeply ingrained habit of saying the Cherubim prayers helped him keep that horror at bay.
"The killing dance is different," Mikhail said. "Those prayers do not make me superhuman or magic. They just help me focus so I don't get distracted when I fight."
Needa dropped his dish into the bucket of water and began to scrub it with a fervor, determined that not one dirty dish would remain to mar her house when she left to begin her daily rounds.
"She looks down on you, you know?" Needa pointed at his chest. "She thought you were a god, and now that she has realized you are not, she is irritated you cannot speak to her as her father does, inside of her own mind."
Those words hurt, but he knew she spoke the truth. Needa said harsh things to people all the time, but she did so with the precision of a surgeon, a healers gift to cut, to squeeze out an infection until the blood ran clean. There was no malice in her observation. Only irritation at her own daughter.
"I told her I am only mortal," Mikhail's wings slumped. "She has tried to teach me to look inside another's mind as you do, but each time I try, it feels as though I am just staring at her. Or worse. The minute I shut my eyes, I fall asleep."
"Bah!" Needa pulled out the dripping bowl and shook the water droplets off of it before sticking it back onto the table to dry, spraying him with l
iquid. "I do not see as Immanu does. I feel! Just as you do. All I get from my husband are shapes and blurry colors. It is he who has gotten better at communicating with me, to use his gift in a manner my heart can understand instead of all this talk of visions!"
Mikhail passed the palm of his hand over his eyes before running it up through his own hair, grown longer in his time on Earth. His eyes, that no matter how many times she or Immanu tried to teach him, could not see. Needa's expression softened. It was not him she was angry at, but Ninsianna.
"You are exhausted," Needa snapped. "We are all exhausted." She snatched his bread out from under him even though he had barely taken a bite, eager to clean up and go about her duties as the village healer. She knew from past experience he would not touch it so long as Ninsianna gave him the cold shoulder.
"It was like this when Ninsianna was still a baby. Immanu had to suddenly take his father's place and it put a strain upon our marriage."
"How did you fix it?" Mikhail asked.
Needa's mouth tightened in a thin, tight line. She grabbed the basket she used to carry her healer's arsenal, bone needles stuck carefully into a leather case, long, slender animal hairs strong enough to stitch a wound, packets of herbs, linen bandages and tiny clay jars of tinctures and ointments stoppered with a piece of wood.
"Eikuppidi stepped on a rock and is nursing an infection on his foot," Needa said, signaling she did not care to answer that question. She glanced back before she disappeared out the door. "Ninsianna loves you. She is just her father's daughter, that is all, and her grandfather before him as well. She will learn the hard way that eternity is not so wonderful without the person you love standing at your side."
Whatever that meant, Needa did not elaborate. She disappeared, leaving him staring at the bucket of melon rinds, uneaten porridge, a smashed cucumber, and empty stalks of grain which had the einkorn berries shaken off of it to be ground for bread. With no grain left to reap and the river rising to deluge the fields, there was nothing for him to do today except finish training the warriors to fight.
But first, there was the matter of milking the goat...
Chapter 56
November – 3,390 BC
Earth: Village of Assur
Angelic Air Force Colonel Mikhail Mannuki'ili
Mikhail
Mikhail watched his two lieutenants run the warriors through their paces. Perhaps a more apt description would be he watched Siamek put the warriors through their daily drills, while Pareesa mercilessly beat up the stragglers, forcing the laziest to make up double-time any duty they had shirked by having them do her favorite punishment. Push-ups.
"One hundred eighty-seven, one hundred eighty-eight, one hundred eighty-nine!" Pareesa shouted louder than the most nightmarish drill sergeant his addled memory could not remember.
The little showoff pranced amongst the warriors she commanded, her shawl belted high around her waist like a man's kilt, and sported a brand-new pair of pampooties, leather footwear consisting of the thick back-hide of a goat strung through with rawhide and the straps criss-crossed all the way up to her knees so her shoes would not come loose during training. Sometimes when he looked at the slender young woman, barely past the threshold of being a girl, he could swear some ancient goddess of war stared out of those too-young eyes.
"Two hundred!" Pareesa shouted.
With a groan and mutters of 'ohthankthegods,' the B-team sank to the ground in exhaustion, their faces pressed into the dirt like men who had been defeated in battle and lay dead upon the battlefield. He thought the B-team was coming along nicely, all things considered. Pareesa, however, took their shortcomings as a reflection of her skill as a warrior and pushed them forever harder.
"We're not done yet!" Pareesa shouted. "We still haven't completed our daily run!"
Her exuberance could not help but penetrate the listless feeling which had followed him around ever since Shahla had lost her baby. Little fairy? More like a fairy general! Mikhail decided to take pity on the poor exhausted sons of potters and weavers and offer the one temptation he knew his miniature dictator could not resist to give them respite.
"Pareesa?" he called. "Do you have a moment?"
Her head shot up like a marbled polecat's, sniffing the wind to see if he would assign more tasks for her to lord over her B-team, eager to push them harder. Despite her uncanny talents as a warrior and a leader, she was still a girl just into her teens, bounding over find out what he wanted as eagerly as if he had offered her a slice of honeycake.
"Yes, Sir!" Pareesa could barely contain her eagerness as she gave him a perfect Alliance salute, glancing back at her charges as if to say, 'see, this is how it is supposed to be done.'
"I am working out how best to teach the warriors a new defensive technique called a saw and wedge," Mikhail said. "It is designed for taking on forces with far greater numbers. Could you help me adapt the maneuver to primitive weapons before I try it on the larger group of warriors?"
"Sure!" Pareesa wiggled like a village mutt doing a happy dance when its master came out after supper and held aloft a bone. She caught the smirks of the B-team and put on her most serious face, straightening her spine and giving him another perfect Alliance salute. "I mean, yes Sir!"
She dismissed her B-team to go home for supper, admonishing them to practice the moves she had disciplined them for learning poorly and reminded them they still had to rotate over to Alalah and Orkedeh's group to learn the skill of archery.
Mikhail brought out two shields he had fashioned out of strips of wood bound onto a circle of goat-hide. They were sorry excuses of shields, prone to breaking if hit with a tone ax or his sword, but that was one hit which would not make it to a warriors skin. Wooden shields could take many hits before they shattered if the weapon which came at them was an arrow, atlatl or a spear. He wished to see how hard he could hit them before teaching the Assurians the new defensive maneuver which relied upon them.
He showed Pareesa how to affix the shield to her forearm using the straps of leather he had attached for that purpose. Pareesa danced around him, laughing as she hurled first a spear at him, then an atlatl, then an arrow, before splitting the first shield of many with a stone axe she could barely lift. The shield at that point had given its last gasp and fell apart in his arms.
"Take that!" Pareesa shouted.
Mikhail glanced over and noticed Ebad had lingered to watch her taunt him. His eyes crinkled up in a smile, the first bit of mirth he'd felt in days. The little spitfire had a way of making everyone feel better about the possibilities, even the poor B-team who she ran into the ground. Especially the poor son of the village potter who followed her around like a love-sick puppy.
Both of his experimental shields broken, Mikhail switched over to practice using a staff weapon. They hit each other in a rhythmic kata like the percussion of drummers banging out a well-known tune.
“Mikhail,” Pareesa asked in the middle of a block. “When will you teach us how to use a sword?”
“You have no possibility to create this weapon for yourself with your current level of technology,” Mikhail said. “Teaching you would waste time that could be used more efficiently learning something else.”
“What is it made of?”
“The same material that makes up my ship.”
“Can't we just use pieces of your ship to make more?” Pareesa asked. "After all, it's broken. Why not use it to make swords?"
“I will not melt down my ship to make weapons you don't need!”
He thought at first the emotion which trembled in his gut was anger, but realized fear was a more apt description of how he felt about the thought of melting down the only pathway he might ever have off of this world, however unlikely given the sorry condition of his ship. He moderated his excuses.
“Nobody else on this planet has metal weapons yet. Until they do, all you need is superior training.”
“But it would give us an edge!”
“And what happens wh
en some of you are killed in battle or lose them?” he asked. “Then your enemies will have a superior weapon as well. They've already shown they have no qualms about using them against unarmed civilians.”
“But where did you get your sword in the first place?"
Mikhail dug for the memory. His sword had been a part of him for so long that he used it without even thinking about it, its use embedded so deep in his muscles that thought only inhibited him from using it. Whenever he tried to recall where he had obtained the weapon, dark emotions surfaced. Not actual memory, but a disembodied sense of terror accompanied by rage.
That same sense of rage he sometimes felt whenever he let the humans get to him…
The Cherubim had taught him how to master the weapon, but knew he had possessed it longer than that. That vague sense of something lurking beneath the surface, waiting for its chance to escape, caused his skin to erupt in goosebumps from an eerie coldness, his pinfeathers to rise in their follicles and cause an uneasy rustle to shiver through his wings. Whatever memory was attached to his sword's acquisition, it was so dark he sensed it was better left buried.
“I don't remember,” he finally said.
“How can you not remember?” Pareesa asked. “Your sword is like an extension of your own hand!”
“Enough!”
He wasn't prone to snapping, but his fairy general dug into memories he did not care to unearth. He had enough problems to worry about without resurrecting ghosts from the grave. He decided to change the subject.
“How goes your training with the B-team warriors?”
“Oh, them,” Pareesa rolled her eyes in an exaggerated sigh that made her look like the teenager she really was and not the military commander she tried so hard to be. “It takes forever to teach them anything!!! All I do is repeat-repeat-repeat everything all day long.”
“I appreciate your taking the time to do it,” Mikhail applied a lesson on 'expressing appreciation to humans' his father-in-law had been trying to teach him. “I don't have enough time to do everything I need to do. I depend upon you and the others to help take up the slack.”
Sword of the Gods: Prince of Tyre (Sword of the Gods Saga) Page 60