Sword of the Gods: The Chosen One (44 page)

Summer Solstice - June - 3,390 BC

Earth:  Village of Assur

Colonel Mikhail Mannuki’ili

Mikhail

His knee hurt. 

Immanu had taken him
aside and explained their custom of prostrating oneself before the Chief, but
Mikhail refused.  There may not be many things he remembered, but going down on
both knees and having somebody stand over him, demanding submission, felt so unnatural
that he'd been unable to prevent the anxious twitching of his wings.  After
Ninsianna had been unable to dissuade her father from imposing Ubaid social
customs upon his new 'son,' it had been
Needa
who'd stormed over to
Chief Kiyan's house, pounded upon his door, and let him have it.  Mikhail had
not been there to hear this juicy conversation, but from the whispers that
drifted his way in the days that followed, three square blocks had heard his
new 'mother' chew the Chief out.  The mere thought of it made him smirk, even
now.

That had led to
conversations about what felt natural.  While his
mind
didn't want to
release his memories, his
body
could often be tricked into regurgitating
the information.  If he emptied out his mind and
did
things, his body
let him know he'd done it before.  After an afternoon spent attempting every
known demonstration of swearing fealty, they'd finally come up with a
solution.  Go down on
one
knee, place his right fist over his heart, and
let the Chief put his hand upon one shoulder, not his head.

Staying in that
position for half an hour, however, while the Chief droned on and on and on,
didn't
feel natural
. 
The gravel dug into his knee, his wings
ached from being held above the ground, and his muscles were beginning to
cramp.  By how awkward this gesture was for a creature with wings, he suspected
it was not an Angelic gesture of respect, but a Cherubim one.

“Membership has its
privileges,” Chief Kiyan droned on.  "But it also comes with
responsibility.  The responsibility to contribute something of value to the
society in which you live.  To carry your own weight.  To ply a trade.  To
defend our village in time of need.” 

So far, Mikhail had
one out of the three.  Defend the village.  As for the other two criteria?  He
was giving it his best effort and
trying
not to eat Immanu out of house
and home. 

He shifted focus to
the warmth tingling sensation that originated with Ninsianna's hand resting
upon his shoulder.  He liked it when she touched him.  It did things to him. 
Warm, fuzzy things that felt totally alien, and yet so familiar, as though it
were something he'd been searching for his entire life.  Chief Kiyan's voice
receded as Mikhail noted the way the warmth echoed in his chest.

“Mikhail,” Ninsianna
whispered. 
“
Tá tú ag
ceaptha chun freagra a thabhairt dó
[you're supposed to answer him].”

“Hmmm?” he asked,
coming back to reality.

“You're supposed to
say you accept membership in the village and will protect and honor our
customs,” Ninsianna repeated.

“I'm sorry,” Mikhail
told the Chief.  “Could you please repeat exactly what I'm supposed to say?”

“I solemnly swear to
protect and honor the people and customs of the village of Assur,” Chief Kiyan
said. 

Mikhail repeated the
oath word for word.

Some of his adopted people
cheered.  Some of them clapped.  Some of them got up and stretched with mutters
of
“oh thank the gods the old windbag has stopped speaking”
before
coming over to congratulate him.  With a sigh of relief, Mikhail heaved himself
up off the ground and flared his wings to work the cramps out of them, nearly
knocking over several villagers.

“Mikhail, Mikhail!”
several children clamored about.  “Can we touch your wings?”

“Go ahead.”  He sat
down on a stone wall so he wouldn't tower over the children, but kept his wings
high enough off the ground to avoid being stepped on.  It was a lesson he'd
learned the hard way.  He masked his awkwardness behind an unreadable
expression as the village children patted him as though he were a dog.

“Hey!  Run your hand
in the same direction as the feathers," he said.  "Not the wrong
way.  You’ll break them.”

“When you can fly
again,” a precocious boy ran a feather he'd inadvertently plucked across his
face, “will you take me for a ride?”

“I don't think your
parents would be too happy if I did that,” Mikhail said.  He felt a twinge of
remorse as disappointment crossed the little boys face.  “I don't think I'm
meant to carry any more than my own body weight.”

“Can I climb on your
lap?”  A little girl held up her arms.  He picked her up, not sure what to do
with her.  He looked to Ninsianna for guidance.  The girl put her hands on his
cheeks and pressed her forehead against his, eye to eye.  “Look,” she said, “I
only have one eye.”

“I can see that,
little one,” Mikhail suppressed a smile.  Human offspring baffled him.  It felt
as though he'd never been around any children before.

“Sore ga sarani
akka suru kanō-sei ga arimasu
[it could be worse],” Ninsianna said in the clicking Cherubim language so the
children wouldn't understand.  “
Kanojo wa anata o motomeru koto ga dekiru
[she could ask you]
ningyō o saisei shimasu
[to play dolls].”

“Anata wa
kanojo no aidea o ataeru aete shinaide kudasai!"
 
[Don't you
dare give her any ideas!]

Ninsianna gave him an
evil smile, as though considering suggesting
just
that. 

“Ninsianna,” a young
warrior named Dadbeh called.  “Firouz sliced his leg horsing around with
Tirdard.  It's bleeding all over the place.  Could you please take a look at
it?”

Ninsianna turned to
Mikhail.  “If you'll excuse me, duty calls.”

A stab of jealousy
tightened in his chest.  Ninsianna's hand lingered on the young man's leg far
longer than Mikhail would have liked.  He chided himself on the ridiculous
emotion.  Ninsianna liked to touch.  Whenever she did, it smacked of intimacy,
whether or not it was
him
she touched or somebody else.  What he'd
thought was special, reserved only for him, he now understood was her normal
way of relating to the world.  It made him feel … unimportant.  He watched her
tend the wounded male out of the corner of his eye as well-wishers converged
upon him.

“Why do you let
Ninsianna tell you what to do,” a brassy young woman named Shahla asked.  She
suggestively ran her fingers down his chest.  “A
real
woman would let
you
be in charge.” 

Mikhail suppressed a
scowl.  He only liked it when Ninsianna touched him.  Whenever anybody else
did, it felt … wrong.

“Angelics don't
differentiate between males and females.”  He hoped the ice in his voice would
make her go away.  He might suffer from lingering memory loss, but he wasn't
stupid.  Shahla was trouble. 

“But males are so …
strong,” Shahla ran her hand down the side of her breasts and hips.  “And women
so soft and yielding.  I wouldn't
want
to have to act like a man.”

Shahla was beautiful,
but her forward demeanor put him off.  Which was worse?  When the villagers had
feared and avoided him.  Or when everyone had decided they had an open
invitation to tweak his feathers and prod him like a prize goat.  Sometimes he
just wanted to fly back to his ship and tell everyone to leave him alone!

Like right now…

Warmth sank into his
damaged wing as fingers slipped through the pin-feathers which had finally
begun to grow back.  Healing hands.  He suppressed a smile as warmth flowed
into his heart.  Ninsianna.  He would know her touch anywhere.  He reached back
without looking and took her hand, slipping his fingers through hers.

“
Is féidir liom a bhraitheann tú, chol beag
,”
he
murmured so the others wouldn’t understand his words.  I can feel you, little
dove.

A fearful squeak and
the tug of her hand jolted him out of his pleasant cocoon.  Shahla covered her
mouth and giggled.  He looked up and saw Ninsianna coming at him from one side
wearing an expression like a thundercloud.  Glancing at whose hand he held, he was
held captive by the blackest pair of eyes he'd ever seen.  The black-eyed girl
tugged her hand, trying to break free.  She had the look of a prey animal about
to be slaughtered.

“I-I-I'm sorry,” she
stammered.  “I shouldn't have … I'm sorry…”

He looked from the
painfully thin young woman whose hand he held to Ninsianna.  Although her eyes
were black, not gold, there was a family resemblance.  Not incredibly so, but
enough that he could see why he'd mistaken her for Ninsianna.  The only reason
the girl had not yet bolted, as she plainly wished to do, was because he still
held her hand captive.  He let her go.

 “What's the matter,
Ninsianna?” Shahla taunted.  “Do you fear your man will realize you're not the
only woman in Assur?”

The brassy young woman
grabbed the shy black-eyed one and dragged her towards a group of warriors. 
Mikhail looked into Ninsianna’s eyes and saw that she was upset.

“For a moment, I
thought she was you,” he said.  “Is she a relative?”

Ninsianna scowled.  An
ugly expression she rarely wore.

“More like the village
tramp and her spooky side-kick,” Ninsianna snapped.  “Everybody will be talking
about this now behind your back!”  She pointed to where Jamin leaned against a
goat shed, a look of dark intensity on the swarthy male's face as he
scrutinized them with a malicious smirk.

Was Ninsianna
jealous?  For him?  For some reason, her jealousy pleased him.  He reached up
to touch her cheek the way
she
often did to reassure
him.
  Her
anger melted.  Slowly but surely, he was learning the intricate dance of
non-verbal human social interactions.  He suppressed his
own
jealousy as
a second young man asked her to look at some sibling's injury, abandoning him
to the village children once more.

“And now it's time for
the midsummer competitions,” the Chief announced, grabbing a spear out of a
pile and balancing it perfectly in his palm.  “We shall begin with the spear
throwing competition.”

“Mikhail,” Yalda
asked.  “Will you compete?”

“Yes, you must
compete,” Zhila said.  “I think our fine young friend will be good at it, don't
you, Yalda?”

“Yes, he is very
strong!”  Yalda squeezed his bicep and nodded approval.  “And become even
stronger hauling water to our crops.  We shall see how the other warriors fare
against a man who is not afraid to dirty his tail feathers, shan’t we,
Mikhail?”

Mikhail suppressed the
smile which threatened to burst through his habitual poker face.  His affable
new 'grandmothers' wanted to make a point about the young warriors' insistence
they were too important to help other members of the tribe.  He'd quickly
learned that beneath his new friends' grandmotherly exterior lay the
razor-edged wit of two sharp swords. 

“Yes, I'll compete. 
You must introduce me as your champion.”

The widow-sisters each
grabbed an arm and tugged him out the south gate of the village with surprising
vigor for two women well into their seventieth year.  The warriors gathered in
the flat, rocky plain, some sort of obstacle course already set up beforehand. 
Several Ubaid females also joined the group, mostly young women he'd seen
around the village, but not yet formally met.  Although Ninsianna lamented the
fact that women were discouraged from participating in traditionally male
activities, it appeared it was not forbidden.  The constant threat of
annihilation from hostile neighbors meant strict male-female rules were
imprudent in areas such as the ability to defend one's own self.

“Ahhh … here comes
Ninsianna,” Yalda said.  “She will compete again this year.”

“Too late,” Zhila
taunted Ninsianna.  “We have commandeered your fine young man to be our
champion.  If you want to win the prize, you'll have to earn it on your own!”

 “I see you've been
conscripted into service,” Ninsianna laughed.  “Maybe I'll be nice enough to
share a few of the prize olives after I have kicked your tail feathers.”

“We shall see,” Zhila
pursed her wrinkled lips as though she were a trader.  “I know a thing or two
about a good throwing arm and our champion has a good strong one.”  Zhila
squeezed his bicep in approval.

“Hey … what am I … a
prize goat?” Mikhail suppressed a laugh.

“Yes!” all three women
said at once.

“It's been a long time
since we were strong enough to compete ourselves.”  Yalda's cataract-clouded
eyes turned inward to competitions of years past.  “Zhila used to be quite
good, you know?”

“Ahhh…” Zhila said,
“but that was many years ago.  These days I count myself fortunate to toss my
walking stick into the corner.”