Sword of the Gods: The Chosen One (45 page)

“Listen!"
Ninsianna said.  "The Chief is about to explain the rules.”

Chief Kiyan explained
how the competition would proceed.  The prize was a small urn of olives
obtained in a trade with the Ghassulian tribe in the Ghor valley.  Olive trees
rarely grew more than a few miles from the Akdeniz Sea, so the prize was
considered precious. 

For the first round,
all contestants would throw the spear into a field marked with measurements. 
Anyone who couldn't throw 15 paces would be eliminated.  In the second round,
the contestants would throw spears at a target 30 paces away.  Anyone who
couldn't hit the target would be eliminated.  In the third round, the
contestants would run through an obstacle course and then hit a target.  The
one who hit the closest to the inner circle without being disqualified would be
the winner.

“Have you ever thrown
a spear before?” Yalda asked.

“I'm not sure,”
Mikhail said.  “I can't remember..”

“Here, let me show
you.”  Zhila grabbed a spear from the pile and posed in a fierce throwing
stance that was amazing for one so advanced in age.  “The secret is not in the
throw, but how you put your weight behind it when you release the shaft.”

Picking up a second
spear from the pile, Mikhail found the center of gravity and hefted it into the
position Zhila demonstrated.  The shaft felt familiar in his hand.  “I think
I've had training throwing a similar weapon.  But I'm not an expert.  It feels
as though I haven't wielded such a weapon in a very long time.”

“When you throw,”
Zhila said, “picture your entire body becoming part of the spear.  Like this…”

Zhila hefted the spear
17 paces into the field, a remarkable feat given her advanced age.

“You should compete,”
Mikhail said with admiration.  “That will qualify you past the first round.”

“My eyes are too bad,”
Zhila said.  “I can still throw, but I can't see the target well enough to hit
it.  And my knees ache too much to run the obstacle course.  Such games are for
the young and strong!”

“Let’s start!” the
Chief clapped his hands.  An excited murmur rose up as spectators gathered behind
their chosen champions to cheer them on.

“Your spear-throwing
lesson is over,” Ninsianna laughed, hefting her spear with practiced grace. 
“Now it's time to take your lumps!”  Mikhail had
seen
her hunt fish. 
Beating her was not a given.

The Chief took the
first throw.  His spear sailed a good 50 paces.  The crowd clapped approval. 
Then his son Jamin threw.  His spear flew 50 paces as well.  Like father, like
son, Mikhail thought to himself, although the Chief was a much more admirable
man than his sullen, spoiled son.  One by one, other villagers threw their
spears.  Immanu and Needa lined up behind their champion, Ninsianna.

“So, I see our new son
has defected to our neighbors,” Needa joked with a deadpan expression.

“That's because Yalda
keeps him plied with bread,” Immanu said.

Immanu was right.  The
widow-sisters
did
keep him fed.  It made more sense for
him
to
haul water from the river to irrigate their crops, and
them
to thank him
by keeping him plied with hot, soft flat bread, straight out of Yalda's oven,
than for the two women to waste such talent bent over in the fields.  Besides …
anything
tasted better than Needa's cooking…

“Look!" Needa
pointed.  "It's Ninsianna’s turn!”

Ninsianna wound up in
a graceful pose that brought a memory to the surface of a temple painting he'd
once seen of She-who-is engaged in a hunt, and let fly her spear.  Although she
didn't possess the weight to heave her shaft quite as far as the Chief had
done, she made 46 paces, more than enough to qualify and better than most of
the young men.  Mikhail tried not to beam too blatantly with pride as she
strutted back to her parents and gave them a high-five.

“That's how it's
done!” she bragged.

Several more
contestants threw, including a slender young girl and the black-eyed female. 
Even children as young as six or seven were expected to try for, and surpass,
the fifteen pace mark, which appeared to be the point of setting the first
qualification bar so low.  Mikhail scrutinized the way the others threw, his
sharp eyes watching for patterns in the body movements of the most successful
contestants.  Then it was his turn.

“Become one with the
spear…” Zhila reminded him.  “Everything else is secondary.”

Gripping the shaft,
Mikhail schooled calm to ease his jitters.  A phrase came to mind in the
clicking Cherubim language.  Familiarity with the shaft in his hand increased. 
He must have had training with a weapon that was similar, but not identical to
it.  Spinning the shaft to strengthen the memory, images of sparring with the ant-like
Cherubim came into his mind.  His training had been in use of a tapered,
double-ended staff with steel tips … a defensive weapon to fend off an armed
assailant.  Not a spear.  But the Cherubim staff could also be thrown. 

“Stand back,” he said
to Yalda and Zhila.

Pulling the shaft into
chamber against his body, he spun the weapon several times in moves designed to
fend off hits from another, similar weapon.  At a critical point, he wound up
in a maneuver similar to the one Zhila had demonstrated earlier and threw his
weight behind the shaft, even his wings moving in unison as he pictured himself
becoming one with the weapon.  The throw was good.  It flew straight and true
past the chief's staff, past the end of the field a good 80 paces away.  The crowd
stood in shocked silence before erupting into cheers.

“The newest member of
our tribe has given us a tough act to follow,” the Chief announced.  “Do we
have any contenders for second place?”

Several more villagers
threw their spears.  Mikhail noted that, except for the very young or old, most
members of the tribe were able to meet the 15 pace qualifying mark.  Any enemy
who attempted to unseat the Ubaid from their lands would have a tough time.

“Distance is good, but
as every warrior knows, you've got to be able to actually
hit
your
target,” the Chief announced.  “Now we'll see who can hit a target at 30
paces.”  As he spoke, several warriors dragged man-sized targets made of lashed
poles and straw into the center of the field.  A series of concentric circles
had been drawn on what would have been the heart area of an enemy to make a
bull’s eye.

Once again, the Chief
opened the event by hefting a spear 30 paces to hit the bullseye, followed by
his son Jamin.  One by one, other competitors followed suit.  Many disqualified
themselves by missing the bullseye, but almost everybody hit the actual
target.  Ninsianna threw a perfect throw, hitting the bullseye dead center.

“When are you going to
ask that girl to marry you, dear?” Yalda asked.

“Huh?” Mikhail was surprised
to hear the question that had been on his mind for several weeks now uttered
outside of his own head.

“Every man needs a
little woman who can bring home a rabbit for the stew pot,” Zhila said.

“And Ninsianna can
bring home the rabbit better than most,” Yalda cackled.

“It's your turn,”
Immanu interrupted them.

Ninsianna came
prancing back to give her parents another high-five.

“Top
THAT
!”
Ninsianna threw her arms into the air in a V and did a little victory dance
with her parents.  They slapped her on the back.

Yalda and Zhila’s
jesting had rattled his concentration.  His Cherubim training helped him move
beyond the emotions and focus on a single goal, hit the target.  Spinning the
spear to coax the reluctant memories out of his scrambled brain, stronger
memories of time spent living amongst the Cherubim masters, learning how to
hit, to throw, and to control his emotions flooded into his mind.  More
choreographed moves were loosened from his amnesia as he warmed up in
preparation for his throw.  The other contestants all finished throwing and
turned to see what he would do.

Clicking a few
sentences in the Cherubim language, he was ready.  Spinning a defensive
Cherubim kata, he reached the portion of the routine where the energy turned
offensive and unleashed the spear.  It hit the innermost ochre circle painted
in the heart-area of an attacker and punched through the man-shaped target
beneath, landing 15 paces beyond.

“He's disqualified!”
Jamin shouted.  “The spear is supposed to stick in the target!”

The other Ubaid
grumbled.  Would the Chief favor his spoiled son?  Or announce what they knew
to be right?

“Jamin," the
Chief said.  "I went through the target as though it wasn't even there. 
If that had been a man, he would be dead right now.”

“But…” Jamin objected.

“But nothing,” the
Chief snapped.  “The entire purpose of this competition is to encourage our
people to be ready in case we are attacked.  The throw was good!”

The Ubaid cheered. 
Yalda and Zhila clapped him on the back of the wings.  Ninsianna gave him a
knowing “I told you so” smirk while Immanu and Needa congratulated him.

“You'd better start
baking more hot bread, wife,” Immanu joked.  “Before our neighbors lure our new
son away from us.  We need to think of a way to put that throwing arm of his to
use.”

“I'm a healer, not a
cook!”  Needa cuffed her husband off the side of his head and elbowed him.  “If
you want soft bread, bake it yourself!”

Out of the corner of
his eye, Mikhail noticed Jamin sulk over to his warrior friends to complain.  That
made no sense.  A soldier's duty was to defend others, not gain glory for
yourself.  Mikhail couldn't remember his past, but he'd just regained memories
of repeatedly getting his tail feathers whipped by the multi-limbed Cherubim
masters.  He could only remember admiration, not grudges because they were
better than he was.  From the way Jamin's hangers-on moved along to speak to
other attendees, it appeared his fellow warriors agreed.

“Next,” announced the
Chief, “our warriors will run the gauntlet to hit the target under battle
conditions.  We'll take a short break to allow our contestants to prepare.” 

Several warriors moved
the targets further down the field, while others dragged in a series of
obstacles to climb over, crawl under, or step through before reaching the
throwing line.  Spectators dumped buckets of water onto the ground so that the
course became a muddy, slippery mess.

“You'd better take
that off,” Yalda pointed to his shirt.

“Unless you want it to
be ruined,” Zhila finished.

“Why?” Both male and
female contestants were stripping down to their loincloths and changing into
rags. 

“As you run through
the obstacle course,” Yalda explained.  “The spectators throw mud and straw at
you.”

“Our clay is filled
with yellow ochre,” Zhila said.

“No amount of washing
will get it out,” Yalda said.

“Oh.  What
should
I wear?” Mikhail asked.

He watched Ninsianna
slip off the nicer of her two linen shawls and put on the old, worn one she
wore to plant the fields … the one that was so small it barely belted around
her waist to cover her breasts.  A leftover, she'd told him, from when she was
younger.  He knew she only wore it because she'd noticed nudity made him
uncomfortable, but he hadn't possessed the guts to tell her that the way her
breasts not-quite peeked through the too-small shoulder wrap was almost
more
titillating than when she stripped down to her loincloth to fish.  He was
gradually becoming desensitized to the sight of bare-chested humans, but when
Ninsianna did it, it caused him to become distracted.

“The men usually go
bare chested,” Yalda said.

“Supposedly so as not
to dirty their spare kilts,” Zhila said.

“But the real reason
is they enjoy parading around for the women,” Yalda said.

“And we don't mind at
all, do we Yalda?” Zhila elbowed her sister in the ribs.

“No, we don't mind,”
Yalda laughed.

“Strip!” Zhila ordered
him.

Mikhail was surprised
not only by the widow-sister's prurient thoughts, but also the ease with which
they finished each other’s sentences.  It was one of the things which had
attracted him to their company in the first place, the closeness the sisters shared. 
Suppressing a sigh, he stripped off his shirt and handed it to them for
safekeeping, but refused to strip down to his underpants.  His flesh prickled
with the feeling of being watched.  He wished fervently he wouldn't look even
more
peculiar being the only male in the village to ran this gauntlet fully
clothed.

Immanu and Needa came
back carrying buckets of straw and wet, gloppy mud from the river.  They handed
a bucket to Yalda and Zhila.

“You wouldn't throw
mud at
me
, would you?” Mikhail asked.

“We shall be throwing
it at you harder...” Yalda said.

“Than anyone else...”
Zhila said.

“It's part of the
fun!” they said together.