“Thank you, Sir!” Raphael saluted. He led the way as though he was an excited private second-class, off of the bridge and down the hallway to the elevator that led into the bowels of his ship.
“Besides,” the Emperor said as they made their way to the cargo bay, “we both know the only reason Jophiel hasn't promoted you to Brigadier-General yet is because she doesn’t like to appear to be playing favorites. You don’t put a mere colonel in charge of a command carrier."
"Sir?" Raphael gave a noncommittal answer. His relationship with the Alliance's highest ranking military commander … and mother of his only child … was complicated due to the Emperor's strict anti-fraternization laws. So long as soldiers served in the military, for hybrids an obligatory five hundred years, they were forbidden to form permanent relations except to sire offspring to fill their ranks.
"Has she said yes yet?”
Raphael grinned. After their son Uriel had nearly died, the Emperor had given Raphael special dispensation to seek his highest-ranking military commander's hand in marriage rather than risk allowing Jophiel to resign.
“Not yet, Your Majesty,” Raphael said. “But I ask every chance I get. She fears it will undermine morale if she is granted preferential treatment.”
“Keep asking,” the Emperor said. “She'll say yes eventually.”
Oh, gods! Raphael certainly hoped so! The distance she had put between them to stiffen her resolve gnawed at his heart like a voracious animal! He escorted the Emperor through the command carrier's labyrinthian corridors. As they went, soldiers from every manner of species lined up at attention to catch a glimpse of the Emperor as he passed, a sight many would never see a second time.
Raphael's mind turned to what purpose Shay'tan might have for setting up a base on the planet Mikhail had discovered.
"Besides preventing us from solving the hybrid inbreeding problem," Raphael asked, 'what other plans might Shay'tan have for the human homeworld?"
The Emperor's bushy eyebrows furrowed in thought, plotting, no doubt, Shay'tan's next few moves. As they walked, Raphael's underfeathers stood up in their follicles, an instinctive response to the power which accompanied proximity to the Eternal Emperor. Lights glowed brighter and everything took on the clean scent of ozone. His feet made no sound as he trod upon the deck, a sharp contrast to the soft thud of Raphael's combat boots, indicating the Emperor was not completely here in corporeal form. They paused just before entering the crowded flight deck.
"One never knows what the old dragon has up his sleeve," the Emperor said. "But whatever it is, you can be certain it involves making me look like a fool."
Raphael feigned interest in one golden primary feather to avoid flashing a tell-tale grin. The Emperor's chess game against Shay'tan was legendary.
"You must find the human homeworld before Shay'tan sends reinforcements," the Emperor said. "Mikhail is a formidable soldier, but he lacks the training to shape these people into an army capable of fending off annexation by the Sata'an Empire."
A chuckle escaped Raphael's throat. 'The Emperor's Personal Attack Dog' had no tolerance for dealing with politics or other people's egos. Despite the many involuntary promotions the Emperor had tried to shower upon him, the reclusive Seraphim had studiously avoided accepting command of anything larger than an elite Special Forces unit.
"What's so funny, Brigadier-General Israfa?"
"I'm sorry, your Majesty," Raphael laughed. "I meant no disrespect. I just pictured Mikhail leading a group of spear-chucking humans against one of Shay'tan's battle cruisers." He pantomimed throwing a primitive weapon. "It would be like asking a rock to herd a school of fish through the desert."
For emphasis, Raphael donned his best friend's trademark unreadable expression, the one Mikhail wore whenever he was thrown into a social situation that made no sense to him.
It was a laughing old god who strode into the hanger bay to inspect his men, the rediscovery of humans and thought of the reticent Seraphim being shoved kicking-and-screaming into a command position buoying Hashem's already jubilant mood. The last thing Mikhail wanted was to be 'promoted' and forced to put up with the kinds of political manure Supreme Commander-General Jophiel did on a daily basis!
Mikhail would rather battle Shay'tan himself than be subjected to that kind of living hell!
Chapter 3
September 3,390 BC
Earth: Village of Assur
Angelic Air Force Colonel Mikhail Mannuki’ili
MIKHAIL
It was an undisciplined bunch which met in the field along the banks of the Hiddekel River, every size, shape and social rank the Mesopotamian village of Assur could muster. Elite warriors mingled with the soft sons of potters. Hides belted around the waists of field laborers clashed with the elaborate fringed kilts of the upper ranks. Only one thing united these people after an exhausting day spent laboring in the fields … resistance to learning his half-remembered snippets of Alliance Basic Training! Smiting enemies was easy compared to convincing them his endless drills had anything to do with becoming an army.
“Today we will practice combat against two opponents at once,” Mikhail said. He marched down the line of villagers, if the drunken zigzag could even be called a line. "Just as we would come to the aid of one of our own men, so will your enemies. You must anticipate this or you will end up dead."
His littlest protégé fell into step behind him, stretching her legs to mimic his longer stride. Tall, spindly, with the dark hair and pointed features, at thirteen summers his petite 'shadow' had the uncanny ability to master any weapon that was put into her hands. He'd appointed his young mascot 'second lieutenant' to keep her out of mischief.
He stopped short to address one of the men. Pareesa crashed into the back of his wings with a surprised 'oh!' Mikhail turned to her with a bemused expression.
“Should we wrap our fists?” She held out her leather bindings, her brown eyes sparkling with eager anticipation. She wore her shawl belted high around her waist, so short it more closely resembled a man's kilt than a woman's dress, and had plaited her hair into two braids wrapped around her head so that no man could use it to get a grip upon her.
“We won't be punching one another just yet, little fairy,” Mikhail said. He suppressed a smile, determined to project the gravitas of a proper military commander. “Just grappling and throws. Hold off on the hand wrappings until we begin to spar."
Disappointment danced across Pareesa's face. It had been easier dealing with his prodigy when he had simply thought of her as a little girl, an illusion his wife had shattered when she had laughed at his cluelessness and announced the reason Pareesa practiced so hard was because she bore for him an affection. Of course, Ninsianna thought that about all women, having a propensity for jealousy. Mikhail did not feel qualified to adjudicate what might constitute an affection, having no memory of ever having borne such an affliction for anyone except his wife. One thing was certain. He hadn't acted like that.
To him, Pareesa merely seemed an over-eager student. Young, she may be, but last month Pareesa had taken her first kill … a knife headed for his back! He turned back to address the warriors, singling out two in particular.
“Say two enemies jump you at once?" Mikhail pointed to Dadbeh and Firouz. "How will you defend yourself?”
“He who fights then runs away,” Dadbeh joked with a near-perfect impersonation of Mikhail's unreadable expression, “will live to fight another day.” Dadbeh's build was slight, with mismatched eyes and a broken nose, but like Pareesa, he was fast and good with a spear. He would have been an ideal warrior had he not possessed an annoying tendency to turn everything into a joke.
“Bok gawk!” Firouz flapped a pair of imaginary wings and scratched the ground with his feet. “Bok gawk, bok bok bok!” Firouz was average height, with swarthy skin and a beak of a nose that made him look like the fowl he impersonated, eliciting a roar of laughter from the other warriors.
Mikhail retreated behind the just-mocked exp
ression which, for those who knew him, was his equivalent of screaming 'I just don't understand you humans!' Were they making fun of him? Or was there some other meaning for their behavior he had yet to ascertain?
He pushed down his annoyance and filed the odd behavior away under things to ask Ninsianna later. Only the fact the pranksters were talented warriors prevented him from sending them to the Chief to be reassigned less demanding duties, such as emptying every chamberpot in Assur.
The laughter continued as the pair mocked a self-defense move he'd taught them months ago and pretended to peck out each other's eyes. Mikhail drew himself up to his full height and crossed his arms to signal his displeasure. Had a Cherubim master given him such a look, he would have snapped to attention, but the humans were oblivious. He finally had to order them to fall back into line.
“Pareesa, Siamek,” Mikhail turned to the two lieutenants who were supposed to help him manage this unruly bunch. “Let’s demonstrate the move I taught you yesterday.”
“Sir!” Siamek moved with practiced, if stiff grace into position. Tall and handsome, with a lithe yet muscular build, the three rows of fringe sewn onto Siamek's kilt marked him as belonging to a high-ranking family, but he was otherwise unprepossessing, competent to serve, but no more eager to be in charge than Mikhail was.
“I’m too short to reach your shoulders!" Pareesa bounced on her toes like one of those little yippy dogs that perpetually begged for attention. "I barely come up to your chest." As she wriggled, her hair came out of her braids, causing them to bounce up and down along with her as though she had a dog's floppy ears.
Even he had difficulty maintaining an inscrutable expression in light of such vigorous enthusiasm. He knew her too well to believe her complaint about her height. From past experience, the little imp would compensate and make him earn his victory.
“Just do your best,” Mikhail said. He suppressed that alien facial expression that kept ambushing him the longer he lived amongst humans … a smile. Instead of allowing himself to succumb to the irrational urge, he moved into a ready stance, legs spread to move in any direction, and pressed his wings against his back so as not to gain an unfair advantage. The troops quieted down in curious anticipation.
His eyes met Siamek's acorn-brown ones, his nostrils flaring as he scented the air around them.
“Now!”
They grabbed his shoulders from both sides. Because Siamek had the longer reach, Mikhail used a roundhouse block to deflect his hands and grabbed his wrist, using Siamek's momentum against him as he yanked him forward onto a raised knee, giving him a hammer fist on the way down. A half-heartbeat later, Pareesa was right behind him yelping a blood-curdling squeal. An appreciative murmur went through the troops.
“You can let me up now,” Pareesa groaned. Mikhail held his punches when he gave a demonstration, but it still left bruises.
“Sorry.” Mikhail glanced at the black-and-blue handprint which encircled his own wrist, a trophy she had given him two nights ago. The little fairy would repay the favor the first chance she got. The moment he let her go she was back on her feet, dusting herself off. He gave Siamek a hand up.
“Thank you, both, for demonstrating," he turned to the larger group of warriors. "Now let's break up into groups of three and practice this maneuver.”
Just short of 200 warriors, about one-fifth of them women, milled about in noisy disorder as they sorted themselves into cliques. Elite warriors refused to pair with field laborers. Potters and weavers eyed woodworkers and flint knappers with distrust. Older warriors from the Chief's generation looked down upon the younger troops with disdain. Men refused to pair up with women. Mikhail waited for them to sort it out amongst themselves. When that failed, he cleared his throat and flared his wings. He was relieved when Siamek herded his reluctant 'soldiers' into the requested threesomes.
"Line up like men!" Siamek shouted. "Or we shall make you all march in formation carrying buckets of water until dawn!"
A raucous laugh caused the men to pause and look over to where a young man had just emerged from the reeds, a wild boar thrown over one shoulder dripping blood down his chest from the spear which had been thrust into the animal's heart. Taller than most Ubaid, muscular, fast, and with the arrogant bearing of one who had been groomed from birth to assume the position of chief, Jamin's black eyes glowed with hatred.
"He should be the one enforcing order," Jamin's head jerked in Mikhail's direction. "Not you, Siamek. Why do you bother training with this demon?"
Siamek's eyes darted between his best friend and Mikhail, his earlier poise shattered by torn loyalties. Siamek trained because the Chief had ordered it, not because he wanted to be here. Mikhail had put him in charge because he was the best man for the job, but that didn't mean he trusted him.
"It should be you training these warriors," Mikhail forced his voice to remain calm as he addressed the chief's son. "Not me. Your father put me in charge because you refuse to learn the new training methods."
Jamin leaned on his spear, a weapon he could throw with deadly accuracy. His eyes drifted from the still-bloody spearhead, knapped from the finest volcanic obsidian, to Mikhail's empty hands.
"Let me know when you start teaching them how to use a real weapon and perhaps I'll consider it," Jamin laughed, his grin that of a jackal baring its fangs.
Pareesa's slender hands clenched into fists. "You weren't laughing when I shot one of those 'not a real weapon' arrows through your hand! Would you like another demonstration of their ineffectiveness?"
Mikhail stepped between Pareesa and the man who had vowed revenge after Ninsianna had broken off their engagement. There was bad blood between him and the son of the village chief. From the first day his ship had crash-landed on this world, their rivalry had poisoned everything.
"The foundation of any system of warfare is the ability to defend yourself using nothing but your empty hands," Mikhail cut Pareesa off before she could do something foolish, "and to work as one unit with your fellow men. Only then should you rely upon weapons to defend yourself."
"That's easy for a man who possesses a firestick that shoots lightning," Jamin pointed at the pulse rifle strapped to Mikhail's hip, "and that sword you use so well. When will you teach us to use those?"
The questioned rippled through the larger group of warriors. No matter how many times Mikhail explained his pulse rifle was a weapon of last resort because its energy source was almost depleted, or that they lacked the technology to smelt minerals from the rocks, his assertions always elicited disbelief. If he had fallen from the sky, possessed wings, and could fly, why not simply summons this Emperor he could only vaguely recall and ask him to give them more?
Varshab, an older warrior from the Chief's generation, placed a restraining hand upon Mikhail's forearm. Middle-aged, of average height but with the knotted, muscular build of a man who had worked hard his entire life both as a warrior and in the fields, Varshab was the one man Jamin respected, or feared, enough as his father's enforcer not to taunt.
"Much as we would like to join you in the hunt after a hard day in the fields," Varshab gave Jamin a stony stare, "we are not all as gifted as you at evading our responsibility to defend this village. Perhaps you might watch and learn something?"
A murmur of agreement rippled through the warriors. They didn't want to be here, either, but unlike Jamin, who preferred to hunt than pull his weight, none dared disobey the Chief.
Jamin glowered at his father's enforcer, but held his tongue. It was, Mikhail knew, the exact same chastisement the Chief himself had laid into his son when he had stripped him of command.
"Fine," Jamin said. With a thud, he allowed the dead boar to drop to the ground.
Apprehension warred with Mikhail's relief at the thought that, at last, Jamin would resume his role as leader and free him from pretending he was something he was not. His relief was short-lived as Jamin plopped down on top of the dead boar as though it were a throne and laid his spear across his lap
, a deadly scepter.
"I will watch for anything worth learning," Jamin said. From his hateful glare, Mikhail knew learning was the last thing on his mind. He was here to scrutinize all the ways Mikhail fell short and do what he could to undermine him.
"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."
Sword of the Gods: Prince of Tyre (Sword of the Gods Saga) Page 4
