“Honestly,” she complained, “I don't know why you even bother training them. They've got no talent! Especially Ebad! Every time I try to teach him anything, he drops things.”
The aforementioned Ebad sat at the edge of the field chatting with three young women, having started garnering some serious female attention. Three months of having his tail feathers ridden non-stop by Pareesa had hardened his body into the beginnings of a professional warrior. Pareesa was too blind to see what stood in front of her eyes … or the way Ebad kept breaking eye contact with the young women who flirted with him to see if Pareesa even noticed.
Mikhail suppressed a smirk. It was no secret to anyone except Pareesa that Ebad was hopelessly in love with her. He thought back to when he had been trying to avoid his feelings for Ninsianna and wondered if he had been that obvious … or pathetic? Probably! Yalda and Zhila still teased him about how lovesick he had been until he had finally won her hand.
It wouldn't help Ebad's prospects if he pointed it out to the object of his affection … especially as Pareesa still thought of Ebad as inept. The young man was killing himself practicing, trying to become worthy of Pareesa's tutelage. Given time, Ebad might still win her respect.
“Perhaps we could make wooden swords to learn,” Pareesa suggested, still obsessing about his weapon of choice, “and you could teach us how to use those. That way, if Ninsianna's premonition about lizard demons overrunning our village comes true, I can just steal a sword from them … after I kill them.”
The woman-child had good reason for turning herself into a human weapon, but her one kill in battle had only whetted her appetite to smite her enemies. Sometimes killing was justified, but blood lust was not. He restarted the staff weapon practice, hitting at her staff with moderate strength as he tested her reflexes.
“Killing should only be done as a last resort," Mikhail admonished her. "Not a first. You sound like Jamin.”
“I'm not like Jamin!" Pareesa slammed her staff down hard upon his, causing a reverberation to shudder up his forearm. "I want to be just like you!”
“Until you and I came along,” Mikhail said, “Jamin was the most talented warrior in the village, but he enjoyed hurting others. I don't.”
“But you are the most powerful warrior any of us has ever seen!”
“And I hate that killing is the only thing I'm really good at!” his voice cracked.
He paused his blows.
“You have no idea how heavily it weighs upon me when I bury the men I’ve killed," Mikhail said. "Those men had hopes, and dreams, and families. Just like us. Killing isn't something you should look forward to … ever!”
He resumed the lesson.
Pareesa was silent as she hit him with her staff, her attention divided between the weapon and his words. He allowed her to remain deep in her thoughts as he parried at an easy pace. The thunk, thunk, thunk of two staffs hitting against one another sent a reassuring vibration up his arms.
Finally she admitted, “I never really thought about it before. Everybody is so busy trying to become like you, that none of us ever stopped to consider what it must be like to be you.”
An elusive memory touched upon his subconscious and whispered that he'd heard these words before. He'd had a similar conversation with Master Yoritomo at around the same age Pareesa was now. He paused to tease the memory out of his subconscious. He knew the Cherubim monk was a teacher at the monastery, but for the first time he remembered what his teacher's position was within the larger Alliance.
Memory fragments about visiting the Eternal Emperor in some sort of laboratory flashed into his mind. He stopped hitting, momentarily distracted as he tried to tease the memory out of his subconscious.
Pareesa clonked him over the shoulder hard enough to make him yelp.
“Oh! I'm so sorry!”
Pareesa was fierce, but he'd taught her to hold back on her strikes when she sparred with her students. She scrutinized the emotions that danced across his face, used to this quirk of her mentor. “Did you just remember something from your past?”
“Yes,” he stared down at her. “I met with the Eternal Emperor. My Cherubim teacher was his Master-of-Arms.”
“You met god?"
“Not god as in … god," he said. “And yes … I guess I did. It's funny how I didn't remember that before now.”
“Must not have been very memorable,” Pareesa snorted. She crouched into the ready position, her staff held diagonally in front of her. “Hajime!”
Pareesa resumed hitting him, working her way through the series of staff forms. He could tell from the way she counted and made a little sing-song rhyme to accompany each sub-move that she was memorizing the exact sequence so she could break it down and teach it during tomorrow's lesson, the mark of a natural-born teacher. He gave her a wistful smile.
“I don't think the problem is a lack of memorability,” he spoke in between staff-weapon hits. “It's me. You have no idea what it's like to have so many gaps in your memory.”
“I'd like to say I sympathize,” she jabbed forward with a ferocious move that wasn't part of the form they were practicing, “but if you get distracted like that during a battle, it could turn out very badly for you.”
To emphasize her point, she swung at his legs and made him leap to avoid it.
He flapped his wings once, just enough to gain the unfair advantage of partial flight. Like a striking cobra, he jammed down his staff to knock her weapon out of her hand, then brought the other end of the staff up just in time to unbalance her. He hooked his heel into the back of her knee just as he pushed. Pareesa landed on her back with a surprised yelp. His boot crushing down upon her abdomen, he aimed the unsharpened end of his staff at her throat in universal symbol of a victor who held the fate of his adversary's life.
"Mercy!"
Pareesa's eyes sparkled with excitement and fear. The little fairy thrived on such adrenaline.
“If I didn't trust you to be near me,” Mikhail solemnly finished his verdict on the lesson, “you would never get close enough to me in the first place to ever see me get distracted.”
Pareesa's chest heaved as she caught her breath and nodded. She had become too cocky lately. He had just put her back into her place. She was the best student he had, but his fairy general still had much to learn.
He noticed Ebad stood silently in the lengthening shadows, waiting patiently for him to finish training Pareesa so he could speak to her. It was time to give the determined young man a chance to get a word in edgewise.
"If you don't mind," Mikhail reached down to give Pareesa a hands up, "I need to go get hoof prints all over me now."
Shaking off her defeat with a girlish giggle, Pareesa grasped his hand and pranced to her feet, already turning over in her mind, no doubt, how she could replicate the move he had just used to defeat her.
"You mean more so than you have already?" Pareesa pointed to the cloven smudge-marks that branded his thigh and laughed. Hoofprints. It was a screaming testament to the fact she wasn't the only one who had much to learn when it came to mastering one's adversaries.
"I swore to Immanu that I would teach that goat to obey," Mikhail gave her a raised eyebrow, about as close as he got to mirth, "and I will defeat her, even if I have to tie her down and force the milk out of her!"
"And he says that -I- have anger management issues!"
Pareesa grabbed her staff and one of the shattered shields. No doubt by morning the resourceful young woman would have the wood bound back together and be ready to teach her B-team how to perform a saw and wedge.
Mikhail watched her skip away, her defeat only whetting her appetite to do better. Ebad fell in behind her like a shadow as he hurried to catch up, earning sorrowful looks from the three young women who had huddled around him trying to get his attention. He heard Ebad's words as the breeze amplified their voices and carried them back down the hill, unaware he could still hear them.
“Pareesa?” Ebad caught up with her.
“What?” Pareesa turned her head but did not slow down, leaving the poor young man breathless as he ran after her to ask the question Mikhail knew the smitten warrior wanted to ask her.
“I was just wondering if, um, maybe, um, tomorrow, um, if you’re not too busy, that maybe, well, maybe, um, maybe, um, after um, practice, um, you’d want to, um, go to, um, well, maybe you’d, um, want to go for a, um, walk?” Ebad stammered.
Mikhail could see Pareesa's scornful look from here.
“I have other plans.”
Mikhail winced along with Ebad as Pareesa hurried away; leaving the poor young man standing there, shoulders slumped, looking forlorn. Did she even have a clue?
At least Ninsianna wasn't treating him that cold. Gathering up his weapons, he trudged home, wracking his brains for ways he could earn back his wife's trust.
Chapter 57
November – 3,390 BC
Mesopotamian Plain
Jamin
Jamin found the herds before he found them.
He'd begun to lose hope after he'd gone to their last known tent-site and discovered Marwan's tribe had pulled up stakes. A Ninevian trader informed him word had filtered out of Assur he was being banished even before they'd dragged him before the tribunal. So powerfully did the wave of hatred which had seethed through his body ever since Siamek had turned his back on him grip him that it nearly made him stumble. He picked up a rock and threw it at a pigeon simply because he needed something to smite.
The bird flew away, the whistle of its wings taunting him as it reminded him of his real quarry. Once upon a time he had loved Ninsianna, but as he had stared into those eyes tinged with fire at the tribunal and felt the crushing weight of her sorcery trying to invade his mind, it had felt as though she reached into his heart and carved it out, leaving a dark, aching void that gnawed at his empty ribcage.
Sorceress…
His mouth tightened into a grim line. The hatred which had seemed overwhelming before was nothing compared to his need to strike out and kill whoever he could, to hurt them, to make them bleed, to fasten his hands around their throat and watch the life fade from their eyes as he had very nearly done to Shahla.
The desert sun beat down upon his head, his dark hair collecting the sunlight and cooking his brain even though it was late in the season. He stank of his own sweat, needing to take a circuitous route away from the river to avoid contact with others who might not be as innocuous as the one from Nineveh. Was this what it was like for the Halifians? To traverse Ubaid lands without permission and risk being attacked simply to obtain the water they needed to stay alive? His goatskins were nearly out of water and he'd traded half the trinkets his father had given him to salve his guilty conscience for information from the trader.
The bleating of goats and sheep was like an omen from some ancient god of heat and the desert, that old devil the Halifians worshipped and said was a god of fire. At last he had a glimmer of hope. Nusrat, Aturdokht's full-brother scrambled to his feet where he'd been lounging talking to another, Lubaid, a half-brother Jamin figured by the look of him. Jamin stood still and waited for them to acknowledge him. Lubaid hung back, his hand held under his robe where Jamin knew would be a stone blade, but Nusrat approached unafraid, a good sign.
"Jamin," Nusrat greeted him cautiously. He looked down the road behind him, as though looking for an invading army. "You have some nerve following us here."
Nusrat was taller than the average desert dweller, dark complexioned as all Halifians were, but with the same exotic bone structure and underlying way of moving that his full-sister had, those traits that screamed their mother's people had come from some far distant tribe to the north.
"What lies have filtered out of Assur?" Jamin jerked his head as though to say, 'tell me the worst.'
"You tried to throttle Laum's daughter," Nusrat said. Hazel eyes, tinged with speckles of green the way his sister's were, stared into his, no doubt questioning whether it was true.
"What do you know of Laum?" Jamin deflected the inquiry.
Nusrat gave him a grin that reminded him of a hyena baring its fangs. "Perhaps you would have been better off marrying her?"
"I did not agree to marry her," Jamin hissed. "In case you forget, I was already betrothed to somebody else?"
"The shaman's daughter?"
"Your sister!"
Nusrat's grin faded. "You have made a powerful enemy. Laum has offered whoever brings him your head a chief's ransom in grain and cloth."
"Shall you collect the bounty, then?" Jamin was acutely aware of the way Lubaid circled around from the rear. His muscles bunched as his heart rate increased, ready to spring into action.
"Perhaps," Nusrat shrugged. "There is the matter, however, of the bride price you promised to pay for my sister."
"I tried and I was unsuccessful," Jamin threw out his arms as though to say 'bring it on.' "So kill me now and be done with it, because we both know what the fate is of someone who has been banished!"
Lubaid stood at his back, within striking range. That part of Jamin which had once been a good man, who wanted to pay his penance for the crimes he had committed with his own blood, warred with that portion of him that was angry and wanted to kill.
"Aieyah!" Lubaid lunged at him, his black blade flashing straight for his back.
The instinct to survive won. Jamin stepped aside just in time to avoid being stabbed and pulled his own blade from beneath his belt. As Lubaid rolled and came up, knife pointed forward, Jamin crouched, his blade held out in front of him, ready for the second attack. He noticed Nusrat did not move against him. He simply stood, waiting to see what would happen. Lubaid leaped up and lunged at him a second time.
Jamin deflected him with a fighting move he had learned from stalking the winged demon. He could almost hear the old god of the desert the Halifians worshipped laughing as he grabbed Lubaid by the wrist and spun underneath his arm, twisting it behind him and up his back. With a kick to the back of the knee, Lubaid went down. Jamin twisted the Lubaid's arm higher until the young man dropped the knife.
"Mercy!" Lubaid shouted.
Jamin stared, panting, at Nusrat, who had not moved the entire time, but had simply stared at the exchange with bemusement. His chest rose and fell, catching his breath as he wiped the sweat from his eyes and blinked to clear the sting.
"If you kill him," Nusrat said, "you are unlikely to get back into my father's good graces."
Flipping his woven brown robe over one shoulder as though it were an Ubaid shawl, the desert prince turned and walked back towards the top of the hill where the sheep grazed, unconcerned about his brother's fate.
Jamin kicked Lubaid so he landed face-first in the sand and picked up his knife, shoving it into his belt along with his regular blade. Life in the desert was harsh. You could never have too many knives. Let Lubaid beg his father for the trade-price to obtain a new one from the flint-knapper. If there was one thing Jamin had learned from his trips out to treat with the people of the desert, it was that they were more like a pack of dogs, always fighting with one another and vying for social position, than the more established social hierarchy of the Ubaid. A man gained social position by being tough.
He hiked up the hill where Nusrat had settled back on top of his rock to watch his flock. His jaw dropped as he looked down at the tent settlement that was being broken down below, swollen to a dozen times its original number.
"So many?"
Nusrat shrugged. "My father is a pragmatic man. When he realized our pathway to the river was not going to materialize through you, he pulled up stakes and moved us back to negotiate with the western tribes. He did not get what he wanted, so now we shall move someplace else."
Jamin's cheek twitched, that suppressed rage that felt like the smoke-hole of a volcano he had once visited to the north, the place the Ubaid went to trade for obsidian to make the best knives. He stared at the man who had not yet turned to make eye contact with him, as though he were of no
concern.
"Why did you not move to help your brother?" Jamin asked.
"Half-brother," Nusrat corrected. He glanced down the hill where Lubaid shook the dirt from his robe and glared up the hill at them, trying his best to gather his dignity. "Lubaid is the younger son of a higher-ranking sister-mother, and not the brightest one, if you know what I mean? Why not let you do what I cannot?"
Jamin had noticed this tendency before, brothers-in-blood who shared a father would work together, but the mere dilution of having a different mother often meant the brothers were at odds depending upon the social status of the wife they had been begotten upon and how well she related to another brother's sister-wife, not only within their father's affections, but also the connections those marriages had secured from outside the tribe. He knew Nusrat and Aturdokht had not been begotten upon Marwan's first-wife, the highest ranking one. Beyond that, he knew little about them.
"Your father wishes me dead?" Jamin stared down at what had to be three thousand people moving through the tent-city below, rolling up tents and moving them into separate piles.
The group circled around a rare desert oasis, more people than existed in the entire village of Assur. Already the hills had been grazed bare, though they could not have been here for more than a few days. Too many people congregated in one place depleted the area's carrying capacity to feed them all. It was the reason the Ubaid had been forced to evict the Halifians from their lands when they refused to keep their herds small enough to not devour their grain.
"My father doesn't care one way or another," Nusrat shrugged. He gestured towards the hills around them where goats and sheep searched for the last few remaining blades of forage in this place where the two great rivers began to move closer together, creating little places such as this where the water collected. "All he cares is that we get what we need to survive."
"Then why did you just let me live?" Jamin asked, "if there is a bounty on my head?"
Sword of the Gods: Prince of Tyre (Sword of the Gods Saga) Page 61