Sword of the Gods: The Chosen One (24 page)

“Ayahhhhh!!!”  The
attackers rushed forward. 

Mikhail cut them down
as though he were reaping stalks of grain.  His wings pounded the air to keep
him just aloft enough to spin as he hacked off limbs, decapitated heads, and
stabbed those still moving in the heart in one fluid motion.  Ninsianna shivered
at the ease with which he slaughtered his attackers, as though they were
insects  Five … no … twelve … no …  fifteen.  It was over before Ninsianna had
time to count to eighteen.   

“Ninsianna!” 

The last attacker
called her name as Mikhail swung his sword to reap the nineteenth deadly stalk
of grain.  The thug tripped backwards, his poor footing saving his life.  The
first ray of light burst above the horizon, a single ray streaming to shine
directly upon the attackers face as though the goddess wished to announce,
'this
is the man who is about to die
.' 

Oh, gods!  It was
Jamin!

“No!”  Ninsianna threw
herself on top of the Chief’s son just as Mikhail was about to decapitate him. 
“Please Mikhail!  No!  It's Jamin!”

Blood splattered from
his sword onto her face as he swung down for the death-stroke.  It stopped, so
close to her neck that she could feel the coldness of the blade.  Her heart
beat with terror as she realized there was no recognition in his eyes, only a
darkness so vast and empty it caused chills to run down her spine.  Trust. 
Mikhail thought she'd betrayed his trust.  Stretching her body across the
chief’s son, she reached her hand up in a plea.  Words bubbled to her lips that
were not her own.

“
Haec sunt mea latrunculorum frusta!
”

Mikhail froze.  His
response vibrated the very air, dark and terrible. 
"Fraudarit me,
coniunx. 
Quem ipsa non
quaerit.
"

She-who-is spoke
directly through her to the avenging Angelic poised above her, sword raised to
smite both Jamin
and
her for her perceived complicity in this attack. 
The goddess spoke with haughtiness and defiance, her power so palpable as
SHE
used Ninsianna as her mortal vessel to speak to her champion that it made her
body sing. 

"
Habes pollicitus es me formaeque, maritus
meus.
 
Is unus est, electo meo.
 
Non alterum unum.
"
 Whatever
SHE
had just said, Ninsianna could
sense She-who-is expected to be obeyed.

Mikhail removed the
sword from her throat, but he didn't lower it. 
"
Quem ipsa non quaerit.
 
Videbitis.
"

Ninsianna's lips moved
with the goddess' words, a feeling of victory racing through her entire body
even though she had no idea what she'd just won.  The unfamiliar words tumbled
from her lips.

"
A sponsione tunc.
 
Quo
iure nos videbimus
."

"Assentior."
  Mikhail's wings fluttered as though all of a sudden
he were off-balance.  Recognition crept back into his eyes as they transformed
from that terrifying emptiness into an unearthly blue glow.  Saying something
in a strange clicking language that was both different from the language spoken
by the goddess and also unlike any language a human would use, he fought to
regain control of his … not emotion … but rather
lack
of emotion …
before finally lowering his blade.  Ninsianna felt the goddess release her hold
upon her body and knew she'd just been saved.

“Mikhail,” she reached
towards him.  “It is I, Ninsianna.  Your friend.  If you kill Jamin, his father
will give you no quarter.”

Ignoring her hand, he
leaped into the air, flapping his wings to gain height, and crash-landed on top
of his ship when his broken wing failed to support him.  He crouched like a
panther in a tree, surveying the carnage he'd just wrought.   He didn't speak,
but watched her with a cold, inhuman stare, muttering to himself in the
clicking tongue.  Trust.  By protecting their attacker, she'd lost his trust …
and very nearly her own life!  Had the goddess not intervened… 

There was only one way
to demonstrate she'd had no complicity in this attack.  She kicked Jamin in the
side as hard as she could. 

“Get up, you goat's
rump!” she screamed, jabbing him in the throat with her obsidian blade.   “What
the
hell
were you thinking?   You're responsible for this carnage!”

“Don't let him kill
me!” Jamin's black eyes were wild with fear.

“Who are these men?”
Ninsianna didn't recognize them, but by their attire they appeared to be
enemies.  “Halifians!!!  Why do you consort with Halifians?!!”

“We came to save you
from the demon,” Jamin said. 

“Your father
authorized this?”

“No … he forbade the
men of our tribe to interfere,” Jamin said.  “They are mercenaries.  I hired
them to save you.”

“The only person I
need saving from is
you
!  Now get out of here before I let him kill
you!”  For good measure, she kicked him a second time. 

Jamin got up and shot
a fearful glance to the roof of the ship.  Mikhail crouched, waiting to spring,
his sword stretched out in front of him.  Despite the language barrier, the
threat was understood.  Jamin ran for his life.

“And don't come back!”
Ninsianna shook her fist at him like a victor claiming her spoils.

The sun lifted above
the horizon, bathing the dark-winged creature crouched above her in golden
fire, his face still an inhuman mask.  She'd never seen him like this, but
she'd often seen men come home from raiding parties or a hunt with the blood
lust still raging through their veins.  The best thing to do was leave them
alone until they returned to normalcy. 

Unlike the men in her
village, however, Mikhail didn't rage.  He didn't talk.  He didn't complain. 
And he didn't brag.  He didn't speak to her at all.  He just crouched,
watching, no emotion on his face except the eerie blue glint to his eyes.

“I'm going to start
cooking breakfast,” Ninsianna said, half in his language and half in hers. 
“You can come down when you're ready.” 

Normalcy was the best
policy when these things happened with the village men.  She hoped it would
work with
him
.

Surveying the hacked
bodies, she half-heartedly felt their necks (if they still had a head attached)
to find a pulse.  She was not surprised to find none.  As a healer, she'd
become inured to the sight of either blood or gore, but never had she walked
into the aftermath of a battle where so many had been killed by a single
warrior …
or
where the bodies had been so ruthlessly hacked apart..  It
was enough to make even
her
retch. 

Mikhail had been
attacked without provocation.  His response had been justified.  She must act
accordingly.  Pouring water onto her hands to rinse the blood, she went inside
the ship to gather cooking implements and headed over to the stream so she
wouldn't have to cook their breakfast amongst the dead.

“And while you're at
it,” she called over her shoulder.  “Could you please get rid of these?”  She
made a shooing motion with one hand as though asking him to empty out his own
chamber pot.  “In this heat, they'll start to stink after a few hours.”  

She knew he couldn't
understand everything she said, but she hoped he got the gist of it.  She was
striving for normalcy. 

“Everything is
perfectly normal…” she muttered under her breath.

* * * * *

Sometime later he
fluttered over to where she washed laundry in the stream.  Breakfast had come
and gone, as had lunch.  While she'd pretended not to watch, Mikhail had
silently moved the bodies.  Wherever he'd dumped them, she didn't want to
know.  Let their
own
kin come looking for them to perform the death
rituals! 

“Let me look at
that.”  She gestured to the spear hole in Mikhail's leg. 

Blood soaked his
pants, but the wound didn't appear to be bleeding heavily.  The spear had only
hit flesh, not one of the vital areas that carried blood from the rest of the
body.  Mikhail had a remarkable ability to heal, but she wanted to clean his
wound and stitch it up so it didn't fester.  Without a word, he sat on his
customary boulder and waited.

“They were Halifians,”
she said.   “Sworn enemies of my tribe.  I don't know what they were doing with
Jamin.”

Mikhail watched her
with his sharp eagle's gaze, scanning her face for the slightest ripple of
emotion, exposing which direction her true intentions lay.  Although his eyes
didn't possess the inhuman blue glow of earlier, Ninsianna shivered.  Now she
knew what it felt like to be a mouse.

“I shall tell my
father when he visits again,” she said.  “He will speak to the Chief.  Jamin
shouldn't be consorting with our enemies.”

Mikhail didn't answer,
but she didn't expect him to.  She spoke more for her own benefit than his. 
Although he couldn't understand everything she said, nor did she know the words
in his language to explain, she knew it was the normalcy of her voice, and not
the words themselves, which would win back his trust.

“You must remove these
so I can look at it.”  She motioned for him to remove the strange leg coverings
that he called 'pants.  “Unless you want to lose another garment when I cut
them off.  It's your choice.”

Without a word, he
rose and undid his belt.  Sliding the pants down to his knees, he sat back
down.  Ninsianna tried not to stare at the tight-fitting loincloth covering his
private areas or the fact such a tight undergarment afforded her a good idea of
what lay beneath.  Although she'd not yet shared her bed with any lover, as a
healer Ninsianna had attended to wounds near a man's private areas.  She was
relieved to learn her new friend resembled a human male in
that
respect
as well.

“This will hurt.”  She
poured water into the wound to rinse it. 

Mikhail didn't flinch,
but as she dabbed, her sensitive fingers could detect the twitch of pain he
forced himself to suppress. 

“I must stitch this up
so it heals or it will keep seeping blood," she said.  "I have some
bangha in my satchel if you want something to kill the pain.  It will make you
sleepy.”  She'd offered the cannabis to him several times already to aid his
sleep and numb his pain, and each time he'd refused.  Perhaps he would accept
it now?

“No,” he finally made
eye contact.  His face was impassive, but his eyes had lost the inhuman blue
glow they'd possessed earlier when he'd transformed himself into an instrument
of death.

She pulled her bone
needle out of her satchel and rinsed it with water.  She only had a few strands
of horse tail hair left.  She would need to ask her father for more.  Working
as efficiently as she could, she stitched up his leg.  It took 17 stitches to
close the wound, 34 separate punctures of the broad bone needle into his flesh,
and not once did Mikhail flinch.   

“All done,"
Ninsianna's fingers lingered on his thigh to communicate she was sorry for
having to hurt him.  "If you take these off, I'll wash and mend them for
you."  She pointed to his pants. 

Mikhail nodded, his
expression wary.

"I saved you some
food."  Her voice sounded high and shrill even to her own ears.  Normal. 
She needed to act normal.  She took a deep breath and forced her voice to
convey calm.  "Would you like something to eat?”  She gestured towards the
food she'd cooked earlier.

“Yes.” 

He watched her with
that closed expression he used to hide his thoughts.  At least it was an
expression she recognized, not the inhuman one he'd sported while in killing
mode.  Her tribe valued warriors, but his abilities surpassed anything she'd
ever seen, or even heard sung about in Papa's songs of legends, even more
awesome than the legends of Lugalbanda, her warrior-shaman grandfather.  The
goddess had sent him to her.  She must accept him for who he was and deal with
it.

Acting as though it
was lunch for any other day, she gathered the tubers, wild onions, fiddleheads,
and a small bird she'd captured and cooked earlier and served them on one of
the strange platters from his ship.  He wolfed them down.  He had to be
ravenous after skipping both breakfast and lunch, but he kept his eyes on her
the entire time.

Taking his bloody
pants, she waded into the stream, washed out the blood, and hung them in the
sun to dry.  He went into his ship and came out wearing an identical clean
pair.  The rest of the day was spent in silence.  Ninsianna talked her way
through the daily routine as if everything were perfectly normal.  Mikhail only
answered yes or no when prompted.  There were no language lessons that day, nor
did Ninsianna dare ask him how he'd become so efficient at killing.  Even if he
remembered, she had a feeling it was not something he liked to talk about.