Sword of the Gods II: Prince of Tyre

Chapter 6-2

Even his eyebrows rose in surprise at the statistic which had flowed from his lips as naturally as the prayers he said to achieve inner peace. So it was a memory! He hoped it surfaced before he finished teaching the first component. The single platinum dog tag sliding against his chest reminded him he should know more. Colonel. At some point in his life, he must have trained other men, because that part of him that remembered bits and pieces knew colonel was not a rank which was given lightly.

He remained in the rear line to see the differences between how far he could throw versus the average human. It did these people no good if he pictured Angelics performing this maneuver and then the humans fell short in battle.

"First line throws on three," Mikhail said. "One … two … three!" The first line of spears flew distances ranging from ten to thirty paces, taking far too long.

The worst offenders belonged to Pareesa's team, the sixteen soft sons of merchants and craftsmen he'd saddled her with giving supplemental training, including Ebad, the man he'd noted earlier. She'd called them the 'B-team' after badgering him for information on how a proper Alliance military commander would train the laggards and the rejects. It kept her … and them … out of his feathers.

"Second line throw on three," Mikhail called. "One … two … three!"

The second line threw. Some threw fifteen paces; others threw thirty, and everything in between. Perhaps Jamin was right? Their skills with a spear were atrophying? No! Jamin was a goat's behind! Many of these men could barely throw because they had never practiced in the first place.

He stepped back to stand between Kiararsh and Varshab, both who'd studiously avoided being appointed lieutenants. Varshab needed to remain tied to the Chief, while Kiararsh, while technically part of Jamin's elite warrior troop, had only been appointed to babysit Jamin. The Chief wanted his men to remain, well, his.

"We need to adjust these lines," Varshab said quietly so the others could not hear.

"I agree," Kiararsh said from his other side. "But he has appointed Siamek this task. Let him make recommendations. If we do not agree with his opinion, we shall speak up."

Mikhail gave both older men a silent nod, aware that the Chief had sent them to mentor him the same way he watched over Siamek.

"All right, warriors," Mikhail called. "Third line on three … one … two … three!"

Although the third line was back the furthest, overall their spears overshot the first two lines. Something was wrong with this picture. He wished fervently he could write it down. Not only had the Ubaid not yet invented paper, but they possessed no alphabet beyond tally marks to keep track of numbers for trading. Even Ninsianna, whose gift of tongues permitted her to translate any spoken language, could not interpret Alliance cuneiform.

"Everybody retrieve your spears!" Mikhail ordered. He moved over to speak to Siamek.

"I see a flaw in how I have adapted this," Mikhail said quietly. "How do you propose I rectify it?"

"Pareesa's B-team is too weak to be put in the front line," Siamek said. "Much as it pains me to say this, you should command her to teach them more. At ten paces away before they can hit their mark, the enemy will overrun us before the second line can make their throws."

"The same thought occurred to me," Mikhail said.

"The women can't throw much further," Siamek added stiffly.

Mikhail frowned. That second memory, the one that wouldn't shake free, niggled beneath the surface of his subconscious.

"I will leave them in front for now," Mikhail said. "But I would appreciate it if you would work with them. They must increase their upper body strength to increase their range."

Siamek's eyes trailed over to where the black-eyed girl stood watching their every move, her too-large eyes giving her the appearance of a nocturnal animal. Siamek grimaced.

"I would consider it a personal favor." Mikhail crossed his arms in front of his chest. He did not wish to add 'because if -I- do it, Ninsianna will become so jealous she will refuse to speak to me for a year.'

"Now?" Siamek asked.

"First we will practice the throw a few more times," Mikhail said. "We will rearrange the second and third rows. But starting tomorrow morning, get the women together before they head out into their fields to practice their throws."

"Agreed," Siamek said.

Mikhail led them through six more synchronized throws, each time tweaking the lines until only the women stood in the front row. He moved Pareesa's B-team to the far end to participate and learn, while the two rear lines had become six. It felt better, but not right. Whatever the memory was, this was as much as his scrambled subconscious would give him today.

"Alright, ladies and gentlemen," Mikhail called. "It's time for some good, old-fashioned synchronized marches. Get out your buckets."

With a universal groan, they retrieved baskets lined with goat-hide or soaked in bitumen to make them waterproof and marched with Siamek down to the river, carrying them back with their arms held out at their sides to build upper body strength.

"C'mon!" Pareesa shouted at her B-team. "Keep those arms up! If I can do it, you can do it! Why do you men move so slowly?"

Mikhail had to look away to avoid laughing. The little slave driver enjoyed making them repeat their lessons. It was an indignity the B-team submitted to because he had pulled them aside and explained, using gruesome depictions of battle injuries, that he did not wish them to get themselves killed. Pareesa, being Pareesa, carried out his orders like some nightmarish drill sergeant. Either the B-team would shape up … or they would gang up on the draconian little imp and throttle her.

The B-team gave him a pleading look that communicated, 'what did we ever do to you?'

Mikhail's eyes crinkled in a suppressed smile. The warriors seemed to be behaving themselves today, no stag dances, little gossip. Jamin's taunting had caused the opposite effect on their group cohesion. Much as the men and women resented having to do this after a day spent laboring in the fields, they resented even more the fact Jamin had gone hunting instead of training and then rubbed their faces in it.

"Strength training!" Mikhail shouted. The men and women lifted their buckets in a variety of moves designed to build muscles. A raised voice at the far end of the group caught his attention.

"What are you doing?" Pareesa stomped her foot in exasperation as she scolded Ebad. "Did I, or did I not, just spend three days teaching you to stand straight and suck in your belly? You'll hurt your back!"

The look Pareesa shot at Mikhail was 'why saddle me with such an incompetent.' By the time a young man reached adulthood, age 15 or 16 amongst this tribe, he was expected to either prove capable as a warrior or be sidelined into more pastoral tasks. At 17 summers, Ebad had already been relegated to the life of a tradesman until the raids had forced him to reconsider his career choice.

Mikhail decided to take pity on him before Pareesa made the entire B-team do a thousand pushups.

"You're doing better, Ebad," Mikhail stepped towards them. "But picture it this way. Instead of a bucket full of water that you're lifting, what will happen if I come at you like this?"

He rushed in like a raptor diving for a songbird, delivering a hammer fist to the top of Ebad's head. Ebad moved his arm, but not far enough. The blow landed with the lightest of force, but it still caused the young man to drop his bucket of water and yelp.

“How did you do that?” Ebad rubbed his head. “It was over so fast I could hardly see.”

"Normally you would have a weapon in your hand," Mikhail said. "Not a clumsy bucket of water. Try it again empty handed."

Mikhail performed the move again, but this time Ebad blocked the strike. Recognition dawned in Ebad's eyes.

"I can move faster now," Ebad said.

Mikhail nodded. "And when you build upper body strength, you will move faster still. Just like this little imp…" He glanced at Pareesa.

Pareesa rolled her eyes. Her disdain must have been crushing to Ebad's self-esteem, but Mikhail had to hand it to him. Natural warrior or not, Ebad kept trying.

He moved back to the larger group and watched them exercise until the sun dipped beneath the horizon. It was time to call it a night.

"Alright, men!" Mikhail called. "Spears tomorrow and buckets. We're going to practice some good old-fashioned spear-throws at targets, and then we'll do it in a line."

The warriors dumped the water onto their crops and, with a victory whoop, ran en masse to the Hiddekel River to soak the sweat off their bodies before returning home to their families. His tension drained as the men and women stripped down to their loincloths and crashed into the water whooping and laughing. He envied them, the ease with which they expressed their joy at the end of the day.

"Mikhail!" Azin shouted, his best female warrior after Pareesa. "Will you join us today?"

"Yes! Please join us! You must learn how to swim!" the other women gestured, their body language more reminiscent of seductresses inviting a sailor to cast their raft into a white water rapid than women warriors.

Mikhail could swim just fine, thank you. It was stripping down to his underwear and being gawked at by near-naked women which made him choke. He'd gotten better about not shutting his eyes to avoid staring at their breasts, but if there was one defect his wife possessed, it was jealousy. If he felt uncomfortable with the Ubaid tendency to view clothing as an afterthought, their only real prohibition being against publicly displaying one's genitals, then he could see why it would make her unhappy.

"Go ahead without me," Mikhail kept his expression neutral. "I will cool down afterwards."

He lingered in the background, just far enough back so he could keep watch over the now-playful warriors who had their guard down against threats such as the crocodiles which patrolled the river. Pulling his sword, he swung it first with his non-dominant left hand, and then switched over to his right as he conducted katas to keep nimble the various patterns of cuts, slashes, stabs and blocks he used in battle. That always made the women gawk, but it also sent a clear message to potential flirts, 'stay away from me.'

He was anxious to get home, but Ninsianna would be finishing up her father's lessons and not appreciate any distraction. This was one of the few times per day he had time alone with his own thoughts and he had grown to relish it.

Pareesa finished her nightly bath and emerged from the water, undaunted by his flashing sword. She had the decency to toss her shawl around her shoulders before asking questions about what he wished her to drill the B-team on tomorrow morning. Pareesa made her charges get up at dawn each morning for extra practice. After months of archer training, she'd learned that if she wanted her mentor to make eye contact, she needed to cover up.

"Toki ni anata wa watashi…" she asked in halting Cherubim. When will you teach me the Cherubim battle prayers?

"When you earn it," he replied. Despite his sketchy memory, their training had been pounded into his subconscious via years of pure, brute rote repetition of martial arts and weapons drills. Primitive weapons, luckily for the Ubaid.

Pareesa's fairy-like features lengthened into a scowl. He decided to give her a boon for her hard work today … and give his aching feet a rest. Somehow, he doubted he'd spent as much time walking as he did flying before he'd ended up amongst the humans.

"Here … sit." He carefully arranged his wings as he sat down upon a log deposited high and dry by last spring's flood. "Before you go into battle, you must first purify your mind."

"And that will make my eyes glow blue so I can use a sword?" Pareesa's face lit up with enthusiasm.

"No." He removed the scabbard from his right hip and slid the aforementioned weapon into it, leaving his pulse rifle strapped to his left thigh. "It will clear your mind so that you can…"

He trailed off mid-thought. He knew the prayer. He knew what happened when he said the prayer. But he could not remember learning it or why he repeated it to himself hundreds of times each day.

Pareesa waited, her expression sympathetic. She knew him well enough to recognize when he reached for a memory which was no longer there.

"Perhaps you can teach me the words to the prayer?"

"Do no wrong actions," he recited in the clicking Cherubim language. "Do as much good as you can. Always purify your mind."

She repeated the words until she had them memorized. He encouraged her to focus on her breathing. A mind-expanding awareness settled onto his muscles.

He opened his eyes and stared into her brown ones. Sometimes, when he worked with her one-on-one like this, he could swear a much older woman stared out of those young eyes. It was as though she had known these lessons all along and all he did was remind her of knowledge she already possessed.

"Your eyes are glowing blue." Pareesa moved her finger towards his cheek without touching him. "Just a little … around the edges. Why don't my eyes glow blue?"

"Your eyes are brown, little fairy." An awkward smile twitched at the corner of his lip. "But who knows? If you practice hard enough, perhaps your eyes will do it, too?"

"How many times do you say this prayer each day?" she asked.

"Hundreds," he said. "Sometimes, when working with Firouz and Dadbeh, hundreds of times in a single moment so I don't feed their entrails to the goat." He said those last words with a deadpan expression.

Pareesa laughed.

"I feel that way about Ebad and the B-team."

Mikhail's eyes crinkled with amusement. His little protégé would sprout wings, if only she could figure out a way to do so. In many ways, she more closely resembled him than her own people, genetic evidence of a grandmother who had married into the tribe from the far north where it was said there were people with blue eyes such as him.

"Go," he ordered. "Your mother will have choice words for me if you shirk your duty to get your brothers and sisters off to bed."

Pareesa groaned. As the eldest of seven children, he suspected she'd first been drawn to his archer squad to avoid babysitting. He averted his eyes as she pulled off her shawl and rearranged it, belting it around her waist and tossing the end over one shoulder to cover her budding breasts the way a proper Ubaid woman wore her dress. He pulled his pulse rifle and pretended to examine its nearly-depleted power supply.

Pareesa bid him farewell and stalked home. Ebad fell into line behind her, no doubt hoping to catch her eye. One by one the other warriors left until only the deep-throated frogs and a serenade of crickets remained to keep him company.

Alone…

He greeted his solitude with trepidation and relief. He wanted to be free of the clamor of so many people, and yet their presence was reassuring, as though he needed to know a village lay just up the hill, willing to let him lurk in the periphery, perhaps even once in a while partake the fruit of conversation, without truly becoming one of them, for truth be told he'd be very lonely without them despite his need to get away from them most of the time.

The riverbanks now clear, he stripped down to his underpants and waded in, relishing the way the cool water washed away the dirt and sweat. Wading out far enough to submerge his wings, he fluttered them beneath the water and used soap root to wash the dirt from his hair. His hands paused as he cleansed the scar in his chest where Ninsianna had stitched back together his lung. The injury had shattered two ribs and left his heart vulnerable, reminding him he should not be alive.

The last rays of sunlight faded. He flapped vigorously to rinse away the soap root then waded back to shore to pull back on his cargo pants, uniform shirt, socks which had developed holes in both heels, and the combat boots which were wearing thin. Soon, he would need to make a flight back to the wreckage of his ship to salvage his last remaining pair.

He realized he was being watched. The bullfrogs still caroaked, the crickets sang, and the ever-present mosquitos still bit his flesh. Whatever was there was not a threat.

"Hello?" he called into the shadows.

The shadows moved. The black-eyed girl stepped from the reeds, not making eye contact.

"I'm sorry," the girl whispered. "I forgot something."

She was a scrawny girl, with bones that protruded from every joint of her body, but a hard trainer, respectful, and handy with a spear. Her most distinguishing feature was her too-large eyes, darker than any in the village. Raven hair contrasted with pale skin to give her an otherworldly appearance. Even if her clothing hadn't been rags, she would still be plain as dirt, her head too large for her emaciated body, giving her the appearance of a little girl.

She was Ninsianna's cousin and his wife did not like her; that was all he knew. Except for the shape of the girl's dark eyes, black instead of gold, he could see no family resemblance. One day the girl had just appeared at his training. He hadn't even noticed until the day she'd thrown a perfect bull's eye and Pareesa had informed him the girl had been there for weeks.

He looked up to inquire what object she had forgotten and realized she was gone. She was a spooky child, always appearing out of nowhere at odd moments and then disappearing again, as though she were a mirage. No sooner had he finished strapping on his sword and pulse-rifle than she was forgotten.