“I love you,” his face was serious as he kissed her one last time. “Don't take any unnecessary risks while I'm gone. Okay?”
"Okay," Ninsianna promised. And she meant it. Mostly meant it. Sort of meant it? Oh well … she had never been a particularly obedient wife.
Mikhail arranged her red cape so that it covered her shoulders and paused to press one hand against their child growing in her womb. His eyes were too bright, as though he held back tears? Perhaps it was just his eyes watering from the wind? The Chief called to him. With a regretful smile, Mikhail tore himself away. Pareesa and his strange dark shadow fell into lockstep behind him, one on his left, and the other on his right, and then all of his men behind them. Mikhail's army.
Ninsianna pushed back the twinge of jealousy, not because she worried about the fact there were females in his group and not just men, for the past two nights Mikhail had lain those jealousies to rest once and for all, but because they were traveling with him while she, poor creature, was condemned to stay at home! Whoever went would came back with colorful tales related from far-off lands, their purses lighter, but laden with wonderful goods won in wager or earned in trade. With the river rearing up to deluge the fields, it would be epic stories and time spent with family which would carry the Ubaid through the tumultuous rainy season.
"Move out!" Chief Kiyan called. His shoulders had a weight about them which had not been there before, a man who had had his heart torn out by his only living child. She noticed the way her Papa moved to walk at the Chief's side, as though he was a little bit fragile.
The procession move through the north gate. She ran outside behind the last warrior to accompany them and stood to see them off. Mikhail’s wings flared into the wind. He could fly there, but except for patrols to look for trouble, he would walk amongst his troops so they all arrived together. Ninsianna envied Pareesa and her ‘B-team,’ as well as the female warriors who were going with the sole purpose of teaching these skeptical regional chiefs that, yes, in Assur, even their women fought better than the people of the river's enemies.
Ninsianna was surprised at how sorrowful she felt. A snot dripped off the end of her nose. It felt as though she were saying goodbye forever, not just for a few days!
“I never like to be parted from him,” Mama's eyes were misty with tears as she sniffled and hastily wiped her nose before anyone would see. “Not even for a few days.”
“Papa’s never been gone for long,” Ninsianna said.
“You were too little to remember,” Needa said, “but in the old days, when it was constant war with the Halifians, he was often gone for weeks at a time. It was hard.”
“How did you cope with it?” Ninsianna asked.
“You do what you must to get by,” Needa said, “and then you go home and appreciate what you have. That’s all you can do. Come. Help me sort through these seeds. Before you know, it will be planting season again.”
“Yes, Mama,” Ninsianna said. Mama was giving her ‘make busy’ work to keep their minds occupied.
********************
Three whole days…
Ninsianna struggled up the banks of the Hiddekel River with the basket of wet laundry. It was so much easier when the river was low, the current lazy, and the water flat. With the waters rising, the deluge now covered their fields and she needed to be careful where she waded lest the current carry her laundry away.
She glanced up and realized someone was standing over her.
"Shahla?"
Ninsianna stared into Shahla's spirit light using her ability to see, but the goddess had been silent ever since her time away with Mikhail at the ship. Whatever was on the young woman's mind, her spirit light traveled away, but it did not appear dark or jagged the way it had since the incident. If anything, her spirit light appeared to be pink and happy the way Yadidatum's often did.
"Come quick," Shahla gestured to her. "Siamek sent me. Tirdard fell down some rocks while hunting a gazelle and his leg is broken."
Ninsianna tilted her head, surprised Shahla was today so lucid. Siamek was in charge of secondary village defenses with Mikhail and Pareesa both away. They were out on patrol, she knew. Had Tirdard been with them? With one who was prone to fits of delusion, she was not certain whether to follow Shahla or tell her to go away.
“Be kind to everyone,” Ninsianna whispered to herself. “Even if they don’t deserve it.” It was the mantra her Mama had made her repeat ever since she was a little girl. She had started repeating it again after Mama’s little ‘talk’ about her becoming arrogant.
“Siamek wants you to come set the bone so Tirdard doesn’t injure it worse by trying to hobble home.”
“Mama is better at that kind of thing than me,” Ninsianna shifted her basket, eager to get back towards the village and delegate the task of accompanying the crazy young woman to somebody else. “We should go get her and pick up a few supplies.”
“No,” Shahla insisted, her eyes taking on a bit of a frantic air. “Siamek asked for you. He said you must come right away! There’s no time to go all the way back! It will be dark soon. If we don’t go set the bone, poor Tirdard will have to spend the night out in the cold.”
It was just a peek, the peek she'd wanted to make ever since Mikhail had reassured her he had not laid down with Shahla. It was not images of men with wings or rag-doll babies which filled Shahla's mind, but the gruesome image of poor Tirdard, lying on the ground yelping with pain, with the leg-bone sticking through his skin. Ouch! That looked serious!
Ninsianna thought of poor Yadidatum, sitting home worried because her husband had not come home. It was one thing to miss your husband because he was at a meeting. It was another thing entirely to sit home and worry because your husband had not come home. She would humor Shahla and follow her. The worst that would happen is Shahla would lead her to her latest bundle of rags.
“Okay,” Ninsianna sighed resignedly. “Show me the way.”
Chapter 98
November – 3,390 BC
Earth: Annual Meeting of Ubaid Regional Chiefs
Angelic Air Force Colonel Mikhail Mannuki'ili
Mikhail
"Come, my fine feathered friend," Chief Sinmushtal of Nineveh slapped him in the back with far more familiarity than was appropriate. "You must tell me more tales about how these female angels of yours smote you in battle!"
Mikhail cringed. He feigned taking another sip out of the long river reed to pretend he was just as tipsy as the other eleven chiefs assembled here, as well as their shamans, major tradesmen, and chief enforcers.
Chief Kiyan grinned and lifted a mug of a different concoction an emissary that had come down from an Anatolian tribe had brought, made of a fermented grain they called 'rye.' Nasty stuff. At least he'd had enough sense not to drink that one for real. Chief Kiyan, on the other hand…
"Do tell, Mikhail!" Chief Jiljab slurred from Gasur. It was glaringly obvious that every man in this tent except for him had imbibed ungodly amounts of alcohol.
"She didn't beat me," Mikhail forced his face to display just enough good cheer that he wouldn't stick out as the only man who wasn't falling down drunk, though truth be told he did have a slight buzz even from the tiny sips of alcohol he'd been imbibing. "She just … almost … pinned me. Maybe. I'm not sure. I may have let her win because she was my commanding officer."
"Huzzah!" Chief Dadanum of Qattara toasted him.
"Huzzah!" the other chiefs all shouted and slapped their hands in the air.
Mikhail pretended to take another sip.
"And that's Angelics," Mikhail corrected. "Not angels. I don't know why you keep calling my people angels."
"That's what our legends call your people," Immanu said. Other than his rosy cheeks and pink nose, his father-in-law did not appear to be all that tipsy. Like him, he'd approached the vats of the widow-sister's latest concoction with extreme caution.
"When should I push for them to send supplies to train these men and not just the men t
hemselves," Mikhail glanced over at Chief Kiyan. He was amazed that their parsimonious leader had agreed to host and train so many men without first demanding recompense of some kind.
"Assur is down many warriors at the moment," Immanu spoke low so the other inebriated chiefs would not hear. "The Chief will wait until the last night, after the Chiefs have had three prior days to let the idea settle in their mind of these mutual aid treaties you have just made them all agree to, and then he will delicately suggest they carry enough supplies to sustain them."
Mikhail snorted, though it was not a snort of disgust. More … more that he was allowing the tiny amount of alcohol he had just sipped loosen his inhibitions about expressing his opinion openly of how easily it had been to get these men to agree to help one another after they'd downed two vats of the widow-sister's happy juice. All day the first day the chiefs had argued and reached agreement about absolutely nothing. All night the first night they had squabbled and once broken out in a fistfight. Yesterday they had woken up hung over and the negotiations had been much more subdued. The past few hours, however, not only had the chiefs agreed to limited mutual aid, but they'd all appointed him to be the commander of an 'Ubaid Army.'
Oh … joy. Just what he had not wanted! Ninsianna would be most unhappy he was not done his training as they'd hoped he would be.
"Tell us about this creature you've battled on the coin?" Waradkubi asked, the chief from Dur-Katlimmu, a tribe to the far north-west. "This drag-one."
"Dragon," Mikhail said. "And I've never battled him personally. I don't think. Actually … I can't remember much about the dragon other than he's…"
Mikhail stopped mid-sentence.
A sickening feeling wrenched his gut.
Something was wrong.
He attempted to see with eyes and ears the source of panic that arose from a sensation that his heart was racing in terror. He stood up, not paying attention to what he was doing, he knocked three chiefs to the ground as he instinctively flared his wings. His hand slid to the hilt of his sword against whatever threat he sensed, but it was not something he registered with his five senses, but with his heart.
Mikhail searched the calm faces which surrounded him and realized the source of panic must originate from someplace else. Chief Kiyan noticed his stricken look and stood to approach.
"Something is wrong!"
Mikhail turned and nearly knocked down the chief, reflexively striking out at anything that approached in this heightened state of awareness before he recognized it was his friend and chief.
“What is it, Mikhail?” the Chief asked.
Mikhail's nostrils flared. Not here. Whatever was wrong, it wasn't in here. He rushed out of the tent. Hundreds of warriors from different villages milled about attending to mundane tasks, drinking, gambling or telling stories. Crickets chirped reassuringly in the dusk. No movement disturbed their sound or betrayed something moving in their direction from the plain, but the panicked feeling persisted.
Immanu came out of the tent behind him, followed by Chief Kiyan and Chief Jiljab from Gasur. From the tent behind him, the other chiefs had stopped their drinking and demanded answers.
“Son?” Immanu asked. “What do you sense?”
Mikhail looked at his father-in-law and saw the shaman had a similarly distressed look. Whatever caused that sensation of pins and needles, Immanu could sense it as well. He rushed out to the perimeter of the encampment, the place where a few sentries had been placed as much to keep the peace as to watch from encroachment from hostile tribes. They were deep in Ubaid territory.
He glanced up and recognize Pareesa sat here surrounded by her B-team.
“Mikhail?” Pareesa and Ebad asked simultaneously. Pareesa frowned. She knew him well enough to recognize it was not like him to become agitated like this.
Panic was an emotion few had ever seen him display, but panic was what he felt as he rushed around the perimeter of the camp searching for the source of his distress. It finally dawned on him the last time he had felt just such a pull.
“Ninsianna!”
While in the killing dance of the last battle, he’d been able to easily find her, but outside that heightened state of awareness, he had a hard time narrowing down which direction the threat was coming from. His conscious mind hampered his ability to feel. He turned to his father-in-law and grabbed his shoulders.
“Immanu … where is Ninsianna?”
“She’s back home with Needa,” Immanu shifted his focus from the material realm to the dreamtime to contact his wife or daughter. “No … she’s not. I can't contact Ninsianna.”
Panic caused his heart to pound in his throat. He'd felt like this once before … no … even before that. Recollection of another time he had felt this emotion reached up from his subconscious like a specter of horror rising from its grave. Terror. His mother. Screams. He had watched them run his mother through with a sword.
He looked down at his sword in horror as he remembered where he had obtained. In whose memory he wielded it now to smite his enemies.
"Ninsianna?" his voice came out a strangled cry. He stared out into the distance. "Immanu! Where!"
Immanu shifted his gaze into the dreamtime, his eyes taking on some of that unearthly golden glow that Ninsianna had possessed ever since She-who-is had gifted her with the gift of sight.
“They’ve taken her," Immanu said. "That way!” He pointed out into the open plain. “Please! You must save her!”
With a cry of anguish, Mikhail took to the air and raced through the sky in the direction Immanu had pointed, unable to think of anything except the panic which caused his whole body to shudder. A cold fist crushed his heart as he raced to save the woman he loved and his unborn child.
Chapter 99
November – 3,390 BC
Earth: Annual Meeting of Ubaid Regional Chiefs
Pareesa
“Mikhail,” Pareesa called to his disappearing form. She nudged Ebad hard and snapped into combat mode. “Ebad, get the others. Immanu? What happened?"
"They've taken Ninsianna!" Immanu's voice came out a strangled cry. He ran back into the tent to shout what he knew to the other chiefs and came back out carrying his spear. "Pareesa! It's a trap! I know it is!"
"Chief?" Pareesa asked. "Here's your chance to put that mutual aid agreement to the test."
Chief Kiyan shouted pleas into the tent. He was met with resistance from the other chiefs about whose warrior should be in charge of what. Crap! These men had no idea how to institute a chain of command. There were too many chiefs … literally! She didn't have time for this crap!
"B-team!" Pareesa shouted. "Skirmishers! Follow me! Chief! If you can get these guys to find their backsides, we're going that way!"
The B-team surged around her as well as the small retinue of female warriors, spears already in her hand. She was young, but she had already lead her small group to a breathtaking victory and everybody knew she was Mikhail's lieutenant. Warriors from the other villages erupted in chaotic disorder as everybody tried to figure out who was in charge. Chief Jiljab stepped out and gestured to the small group of warriors who had recently trained with their village."
"Go with them," Jiljab ordered. "The rest of these jokers will get there eventually!"
Pareesa nodded at Chief Kiyan with the question. "Sir?"
“It’s a trap," Chief Kiyan's expression was grim. "The only reason they would take his wife would be to take him by surprise. He won’t be … he knows Mikhail won’t function logically if they've threatened his wife. You must save him from himself!”
Pareesa nodded, understanding by he the Chief meant his own traitorous son. Mikhail's greatest strength was his ability to step outside of his own feelings. It wasn’t until the last raid that she’d realized he was also unusually vulnerable, and not just to being provoked into wielding that other gift, the dark gift. Although the Chief did not know what she and Gita had seen the night of the attack, they all recognized Mikhail’s vulnerability w
as his love for his wife.
Pareesa had worked hard to master the next higher level of Cherubim meditations. Although she had not mastered them, she had glimpsed enough to understand what the killing dance was all about.
"Follow me!" she shouted to those men inclined to follow her, understanding that to wait for the rest of these men to get their act together would mean she would be too late. The enemy counted on how long it took for the Ubaid to find their backside with both hands. Let her teach them a lesson on the new way the Ubaid fought.
She and the B-team broke into a run in the direction Immanu pointed.
“Bishamon’ten!" Pareesa chanted in the clicking Cherubim language. "Akuma o seifuku suru! Dōka anata no chikara!”
She prayed to the Cherubim god to help her help Mikhail as she motioned the others to follow her in a lung-splitting run in the direction Mikhail had just flown.
Her need great, she was rewarded by a feeling of power unlike any she had ever felt before. It was with a curious lack-of-emotion that she noticed her emotions being pushed to one side as her five senses expanded to taste the moonlight, feel the sound of her fellow warriors hearts beat around her, and the far-off scent of Halifians mingled with something that wasn’t human carried in the wind from the direction Mikhail had flown. Bow in hand, quiver flung across her back, she left the others in the dust as she sprinted across the plain at an inhuman pace towards the ambush she could taste he was flying into.
Pareesa's heart pumped as she ran at a speed she would never have thought possible. A conversation they'd had once during sparring replayed in her mind:
“If you get distracted like that during battle, it could turn out very badly for you,” she had said after landing a successful blow.
“If I didn't trust you,” he had disarmed her and then handed back her weapon, “you would never get close enough to me in the first place to see me get distracted.”
Sword of the Gods: Prince of Tyre (Sword of the Gods Saga) Page 97