Sword of the Gods II: Prince of Tyre

Chapter 3-2

"Everybody move back into your threesomes," Mikhail ordered. He donned his sternest mask, praying that for once the warriors would follow orders. It was, ironically, Siamek who came to his rescue.

"You heard the man!" Siamek unceremoniously shoved people back into place. "Fall in!"

With a grumble, the warriors moved back into line. Mikhail made a mental note that subtlety did not work with humans, another item to scrutinize on the long list of non-verbal human communication. He waited until Siamek enforced order before continuing this evening's lesson, thankful that the autumn air had begun to cool the harsh Mesopotamian sun, his only relief from Jamin's hot stare.

He turned to his two lieutenants and gave a weary sigh. "Let's demonstrate that move again, okay?"

Pareesa and Siamek moved back into position. Siamek crouched and scrutinized his eyes and hands, knowing he'd catch the first hint of movement there. Pareesa had the appearance of a lioness about to spring on prey. He wasn't sure what Pareesa did to outmaneuver him so much of the time. All he knew was the kid was so fast he had to work to get a grip on her.

"Go!"

They rushed at him. This time Pareesa nearly evaded his grip and forced him to flare his wings to avoid getting pulled to the ground while Siamek got in a good blow on his way down. Black-brown feathers flew everywhere, including the double-handful Pareesa ripped out of his wings.

"Ouch…" Mikhail gave her a stern look. "We're only sparring." The copper taste of blood told him Pareesa had also given him a split lip.

He helped Siamek up and rubbed his ribcage where the young man had landed a ridge-hand strike, acknowledging his skill by saying loudly enough for the others to hear. "That will bruise."

Siamek's gaze shifted to where Jamin sat watching both of them like a cobra eying a mouse, and then met Mikhail's gaze, his expression wary. It was an awkward dance they performed, two men who did not trust one another. Mikhail gave him a respectful nod and the young man relaxed. The other warriors circled around Siamek, congratulating him for getting in the blow. Jamin shot them both a hateful glare.

"Good going!" the warriors cheered the two lieutenants.

Pareesa danced back to the women warriors, their hands held high as they each gave her a victory slap and eagerly grabbed at her double-handful of sable trophies, his plucked feathers. That was part of the reason he tolerated her always being underfoot. For some strange reason, humans viewed women as incapable of fighting. If Pareesa could compensate for her lighter mass with speed, then so could the older women.

A buzz of anticipation rippled through the ranks now eager to try the move themselves. Getting the men to try something showy was never a problem. It was convincing them to perform the more repetitive aspects of training, to fight together as a single army. Each trio began to perform the move, cracking skulls and jutting knees into awkward body parts that earned yelps of pain and, in one case, a bloody nose.

"Pareesa … Siamek," Mikhail ordered, "spread out and look for bad habits."

As he moved through the trios, correcting errors and demonstrating the proper way to do things, the tension began to ebb from Mikhail's shoulders. He almost forgot about the twin black orbs of hatred boring into the back of his wings from his seat upon the slaughtered pig. At least the pompous jerk was silent.

A skirmish at the far end of the line caught his attention. A dozen men and women clustered around the two pranksters, Firouz and Dadbeh, cheering them on as they performed a dance routine. Mikhail stood in front of them, arms crossed, waiting for them to acknowledge his presence. The others moved back to practice, but Firouz and Dadbeh remained oblivious to his displeasure. He flapped his wings to get their attention.

"Is there something you don't understand?" He ruffled his feathers, perplexed at their odd behavior.

"No," Dadbeh shot him a goat-turd-eating grin. "We're good."

The two warriors went back to performing their dance.

"Ah-hem," Mikhail flared his wings to be imposing and cleared his throat. "Shouldn't you be performing the maneuver?"

"Yes," the two men said together. Dadbeh stuck his fingers onto his head and rushed at Firouz, while Firouz made an overhand stabbing motion as though he were throwing spear. Other warriors circled around and began to clap.

"You're supposed to be practicing!" Mikhail was a patient man, but these two would try the patience of She-who-is. An emotion which had been creeping up on him the longer he dwelt amongst these irrational people gurgled in his gut.

The other warriors faltered in their practice. The occasional grunt of pain broke Mikhail's stony silence as someone failed to block a blow from a teammate because they were watching the tricksters instead of the person attacking them.

"We are practicing!" Dadbeh wiggled the two fingers he had perched on top of his head as though they were horns and made a low, grunting noise. "Errgh! Errgh!"

"Come, stag!" Firouz called with great dramatic presence. "I call thee! Come bless my spear with thy flesh!"

Dadbeh danced towards Firouz, tossing his 'antlers' as though he were a rutting buck. Firouz made mock stabs with an invisible spear. At this point, every warrior in the group had ceased their training and circled around the pair. Rather than help rein them in, Pareesa cheered them on.

His authority was being undermined by his own lieutenant? The one Ninsianna insisted bore an affection for him? Heat flared through his veins like a fire-breathing dragon. Shay'tan's tail! This was worse than being disrespected by the goat!

"You're supposed to be helping me instill order," Mikhail growled under his breath. "Not encourage them."

"Just watch." Pareesa pranced like a child eager to show off her new doll, reminding him of her tender age.

"Smite that stag and offer its heart to the goddess of the hunt!" several warriors called in a sing-song manner. Whatever stunt the two pranksters were pulling, every member of the tribe was in on it except for him.

"Come, Stag," Firouz called. "I call thee to offer thy heart to She-who-is." He pulled a stick out of his belt, a mock knife?

Dadbeh rushed at Firouz, making a lowing noise like a beast. Firouz grabbed Dadbeh by the shoulders and leaped to pull him off-balance, pulling him to one side so that as soon as Dadbeh went down, his legs snaked around his back so he could not get back up. Mikhail recognized the usefulness of such a move to subdue a larger creature without being gored by its antlers. A niggling sense of recognition ate at the back of his mind. The maneuver seemed familiar, but he could not place it.

With a shout of 'goddess be' Firouz stabbed his 'stag' in the heart and rose to stand above it, pretending to hold its heart above his head.

"Oh! Oh! Oh!" Dadbeh's tongue lolled to one side of his mouth. "I die for the glory of She-who-is." He jutted his feet in the air and kicked, making a great spectacle of dying.

The other warriors, including Pareesa and Siamek, burst into laughter. Heat surged into Mikhail's temples, making the vein throb in his forehead. He clenched his fist, forcing the unhelpful emotion back where it belonged, and rammed his anger behind the unreadable mask he'd been using as a crutch.

"You're next," Dadbeh pointed at Mikhail as he rose to his feet. "Jamin says if we're going to fend off the Angelics who hired the slavers, we must learn to take down you first."

A viscous laugh wafted over from where Jamin sat perched upon his dead pig like an emperor sitting upon a throne, mocking his ineptitude as a leader. An uneasy silence rippled through the warriors. Until recently, Dadbeh, Firouz, and Siamek had all been part of Jamin's elite group of warriors. The ones whose first act upon crash-landing on this world had been to attack him while he'd still been weak and injured.

"He means, um…" Firouz justified his friend's slip of tongue. "He's just talking about the rumors Jamin heard that it is your people who are buying our women from the slavers. Not … uh … you."

"What?" Mikhail's blank mask slipped as he glanced in Jamin's direction. Who in Hades had told his rival about Ninsianna's prophecy? Every night She-who-is sent Ninsianna a vision about a white-winged Angelic who was consumed by evil. While they had told the Ubaid about the lizard-demons, only Ninsianna's parents knew about that part of the goddesses prophecy.

That black pit of rage he'd felt lurking beneath the surface, the one his Cherubim masters had warned he must never lose control of, left him with an eerie coldness. He stared at the group of faces, these faces he had been charged with teaching, but who bore him so little regard. They might as well have been the faces of his enemies for all the respect they gave him. The rage bubbled closer to the surface, calling to him, whispering.

'Call upon me and the power is yours…'

An emaciated girl stepped forward, one of his female warriors. Enormous black eyes stared from a face so thin and pale it felt as though he were staring into the eyes of death. His own visage was reflected in those perceptive dark mirrors, wings flared like a carrion bird, a weapon to be aimed, not a leader. What he saw was ugly, not the man he wanted to be. The mirrors blinked. He clamped down on his anger and forced it back beneath the surface, covering it with a whispered prayer.

He glanced over at Jamin, who had stood as though he wished to challenge him. Oh, how he wished he had smote the arrogant jerk the day he had hired mercenaries to attack him in his ship! If Ninsianna's ex-fiance spread rumors it was his people who were responsible for the mysterious kidnappings, it would undermine his position even more. Although his adopted people valued his fighting skills, he had not yet earned their trust.

"Mikhail," Pareesa touched his wing. "They were only talking about the Stag Dance. Remember? That's the move I used to almost take you down. They've been practicing it for weeks. Dadbeh and Firouz wanted to surprise you."

To surprise … him?

His anger evaporated, releasing that foul, dark wound which gripped his psyche, one memory whose absence he was certain was a blessing. Firouz and Dadbeh both wore an expression of hurt, not arrogance or hatred as Jamin wore, because he had misconstrued their intention.

"Before I teach advanced moves," Mikhail's tone was conciliatory, "you must allow your brothers in arms to catch up with you so you do not find yourself fighting without an army at your back. Keep practicing on your own and, when the time comes, I shall have you teach the others. Agreed?"

Raise both eyebrows … here. Display emotion with sheepish humility. It was all part of the awkward lessons he was learning about the non-verbal, dominant language of human communication.

The two pranksters recognized he offered them an olive branch. With no sign of their former good humor, they moved back to rehearse the defensive maneuvers. His faux pas sat upon the men like a shroud, their moods subdued as they practiced under the watchful, hateful gaze of the man who should have been in charge of this training, and refused.

Mikhail fingered his dog tags, tracing the stamped cuneiform which spelled the lie, colonel. Some leader he'd turned out to be! It was little wonder the Alliance had not responded to his distress call. His hand slipped down to the pulse rifle holstered on his hip, its power source too depleted to use as anything but a last-shot desperate measure.

As far as these people were concerned, he was nothing but a hired gun.