"And how would you know," Shahla accused her. "She who abandoned me to chase after the winged demon?"
"Winged demon my foot!" Gita's hand clenched around her spear, a a gift, ironically, from Jamin. "You know that you swoon over him as much as I."
"He is a demon," Shahla repeated the words she had spoken so many times, just to make Jamin happy. "Cast down from the heavens to burn in a fiery hell. Had Ninsianna not saved him, he would be dead."
"Hmpf!" Gita turned away, not bothering to pull one of her spooky disappearing acts, the one where just she melted into the shadows and faded from view, but turned, like a normal woman, bold with the knowledge she was learning how to fight. Mikhail was turning the women of this village into men, or so Jamin claimed.
"Says she who abandoned her best friend to train," Shahla called after Gita's retreating back, her straight carriage a sharp contrast to her emaciated frame or the rags she wore instead of clothing. Shahla had not told her best friend about her pregnancy because Gita always spoke the truth, and whether she liked Ninsianna or not, Gita was her cousin.
Gita turned and stared at her with those all-seeing ebony eyes that just knew everything without ever being told. Sorcerer's eyes. That's what Gita's father called them, whenever he got drunk and tried to put them out. Were those black eyes taking in the way her shawl tightened across her belly, no longer flat? Or her swollen breasts? No matter what she did, soon the entire village would know. Just this past morning, she had felt the baby quicken.
"I gave you the choice," Gita said so softly it was almost as though she spoke inside of Shahla's mind. "You still could choose not to be a victim."
And then she did it. Faded into the shadows the way she always did, even though the sun still shone bright above the horizon and it was an open field. Shahla shivered. Those voices that had whispered to her ever since the ceremony of the dead warned her that Gita was no longer her friend.
Yes. She could still choose not to be a victim. She did not dare tell Jamin she was with child, for he would not believe her until she gave birth and the child grew large enough to tell its features resembled him and not some other warrior of the village. But she knew who would. And she knew just how to get them to do it. Them. That loved their trade agreements, and their money, and the prestige that marriage to Jamin would bring to them, more than they loved their own daughter.
Chapter 12
September 3,390 BC
Earth: Village of Assur
Colonel Mikhail Mannuki’ili
Mikhail
For five months the two elderly widow-sisters had tended this field, sinking every last good they'd owned to trade for a basket of two-rowed akiti seed from the Kemet traders, the best barley for fermenting. Descended from a long line of brewers, Yalda and Zhila could ferment the rain itself into a beverage fit for a god, but it had been him they'd entrusted with overseeing their harvest.
Little Nemesis had betrayed that trust by devouring half their field…
He stared at stalks chewed off at the nub, even grains she hadn't eaten scattered upon the ground. Good beer-barley, the widow-sisters insisted, didn't sit on the stalk like ordinary cereal grain, but shattered off the rows the moment you brushed against the ripened grasses. He glanced at the fields around him. Every Assurian, from the smallest child to the eldest granny, bent over their fields harvesting grain before the rainy season started. They cut their stalks and bound them together for threshing later. He, on the other hand, had to place a basket under each stalk and thwack it against the rim to get it to release its brittle grains.
Images of Little Nemesis roasting upon a spit, a pomegranate stuffed into her mouth, taunted him with each portion of the field he was forced to abandon to the rats. Laughter drifted from an abutting field. Young men flirted with the women while together they cut their more securely rooted emmer and einkorn.
No use bemoaning something that could not be changed. Besides … he had no idea what to do with the barley once it was picked. He couldn't cook, and his mother-in-law's cooking was as palatable as eating the soles of his Air Force issue combat boots, the ones that were wearing out from walking all the time instead of flying. It was so much more pleasant to sit with his two adopted 'grandmothers' and avail himself of Yalda's bread and Zhila's ale. The thought uplifted his mood. Switching his mind into neutral, he forced his body to methodically harvest the grain.
"Mikhail! Mikhail!"
He turned towards the voice which sounded so much like his wife's he might have reached for her had Ninsianna not chastised him for making that mistake once before. Ninsianna's black-eyed cousin ran towards him, her eyes wide with panic.
The stiffness of his wings warned Gita to keep her distance. Men would simply kill him or stab him in the back, an injury he had been trained to deflect, but unwanted female attention earned him Ninsianna's ire, her hurt silence a wound he could not bear to suffer. He had learned to send clear signals to all women who came at him. Stay … away … from me.
"The Chief said to come quick!" Gita panted out of breath. "Gasur has been hit." She bent over, sides heaving as her shawl slipped to reveal a ribcage exposing far too many bones. Not for the first time he wondered why Ninsianna's family tolerated a blood relation living in such squalor.
"Needa's family?" He glanced to where the village sat perched on the banks of the Hiddekel River, worry for his mother-in-law foremost on his mind. Ninsianna's mother had come from Gasur, the tiniest village in Ubaid territory.
"Her parents are fine," Gita said. "The archers rallied and fended off the attack, but they killed both their healer, and also her apprentice. They have sent an emissary begging for Needa's return … or her daughter's in her stead."
"No!" The words flew out of his mouth before he even had a chance to think about it. It was hard enough learning to fit into one village, much less two. He could see by Gita's hurt expression he'd spoken harsher than was necessary.
"Where's the Chief?"
"He was in the granary, overseeing the count when the emissary came," Gita said. "I happened to be depositing my ephah of grain when he ordered you be found."
Mikhail glanced at his basket, two epahs in weight. He could carry Ninsianna, but his wife wrapped her arms and legs around him to distribute her weight. The basket weighed less, but he could not become airborne without spilling the precious seed. Emergency or not, Yalda would have his hide for every lost kernel.
"Go," Gita's black eyes were perceptive. "I shall see that it gets counted against your daily allotment."
Mikhail hesitated. He had no reason to trust this girl who his wife disliked for reasons that had never been explained, but he had no reason to distrust her, either, other than the fact the girl looked hungry enough to eat the basket rather than carry it to its destination. He glanced at the other villagers who eyed his harvest with envy. If anyone was going to steal what was left of his barley, it might as well be the scrawny girl who stood before him now.
"I will hold you to that promise," he shifted the basket into her waiting arms. "This epah is promised to Yalda and Zhila, not the communal granary. Will you bring it to them for me?"
The girl stumbled under the weight, but she did not drop it. For a kid who looked as though she hovered at the brink of starvation, the warrior trainee often surprised him.
Without giving her a second thought, he cast his wings skyward to embrace the wind.
* * * * *
The Chief's house was the largest and finest in Assur. Built on the second-highest bit of land, the house sat strategically in front of the well where families went each day to draw their water. It was there that they met with the Gasurian emissary.
"I must go," Needa said. "They are my family."
Mikhail's mother-in-law was a woman in her late-thirties, every bit as beautiful as Ninsianna, but instead of golden her eyes were a common brown. Normally she barked orders like the drill sergeants Mikhail only vaguely remembered from before he had crash-landed here, but she was up aga
inst the one person she could neither coerce with logic nor outrank enough as a healer to simply tell him this was the way things needed to be. The Chief.
"It has been twenty years since you left your village," Chief Kiyan said. "We need you here."
Tall, muscular and handsome, unlike like his fiery son the Chief possessed a measured temperament, every action a calculated risk. Those calculations told him that allowing one of his most valuable assets to travel in these unsettled times would be unwise.
"Immanu?" The look Needa gave her husband was pleading. Average height and muscular, Immanu was as unhandsome as his wife was breathtaking. Wild hair jutted helter-skelter out of his head, as though he ran his fingers through it often, streaks of grey and bushy eyebrows only enhancing his image as the village shaman.
Immanu opened his mouth and caught the Chief's glare. Usually Chief Kiyan treated Mikhail's father-in-law as an equal, but ever since their village had come under attack, the Chief had grown cautious about his sharing of critical resources. Immanu's judgment might carry weight in all matters related to the spirit world, but the Chief's word was final on all things to do with the material one.
"Who will tend our people while you are gone?" Immanu asked. "Or protect you while you are there? They couldn't protect their own healer from being killed. How will they keep you safe?"
"Ninsianna can assume my duties." Needa's finger jutted at the scar which lay hidden beneath Mikhail's shirt. "If she could bring him back from the brink of death, she can heal anyone."
Mikhail watched the exchange with interest, his curiosity veiled behind the unreadable expression he used to hide his feelings. His mother-in-law was strong-willed and mercurial, but this was the first time he had seen her exhibit some of the same defiance he usually associated with Ninsianna.
"It is so," the Chief nodded. "Ninsianna also saved my son. But that does not solve the problem that you have a responsibility to this village."
"Then what about the daughter," the emissary from Gasur gave them a pointed look. "Needa swore she would return to us if ever she was needed. She owes us a debt of training."
Immanu shot Mikhail a look that pleaded 'help me out here, son.' It wasn't often his father-in-law asked him for a favor, but when he did, he expected him to deliver.
"Ninsianna has been plagued with morning sickness," Mikhail spoke the only truth he could. "And many nights her visions prevent her from getting enough sleep. I worry for her."
"She is only in the earliest stages of her quickening," Needa said. "And has no symptoms that indicate the child is in any danger. Other than light-headedness, she can perform all of her duties."
Mikhail knew Needa was right. That didn't mean he was happy to watch his wife hunched over the urn every morning, heaving out the contents of her stomach, or to add another burden to her already overburdened day.
"I have gone before when they were overwhelmed," Needa begged. "Things are quiet here now. Why not let me go for just a few days? To tend the most serious injuries and fill in the gaps in their knowledge?"
Immanu was not the type of man to deny his wife anything, but Mikhail could see the Chief's point. The last attack had strained their resources. Even with Ninsianna it had been hard to tend the villagers who'd been wounded in battle.
"Assur possessed two healers after the last attack," the emissary said, "while Gasur now has none. You took a blood-oath, Immanu, when you took our apprentice from our healer, and now you go back on your word?"
Oaths. If there was one thing Mikhail understood from what little he remembered of his past, it was that oaths should not be lightly broken.
"How far is Gasur?" Mikhail asked.
"Two days journey for anyone but a runner," Chief Kiyan said. "Up and over the Zagros Mountains."
Mikhail did the math. Two days walk south, a ferry across the Hiddekel River, and then east along the Little Zab. He'd flown that direction in his daily patrols above Assur, but never visited any of the villages he'd spotted from the sky.
"What if I carried her?"
"Ninsianna?" The lilt of the emissary's voice was hopeful. Gasur wasn't the only village that had tried to lure Ninsianna away from Assur by sending handsome young men to woo her. The Chief had attempted to tie her to his village by forcing a marriage to his son, plans Mikhail had upset, then strengthened when he had been adopted into the tribe. Chief Kiyan loved his son, but he loved his village even more.
"I shall carry Needa," Mikhail said. "If I can carry my wife," he accentuated his last two words, "then I can carry my mother-in-law. Their weight is about the same."
Needa's mouth opened and shut like a fish. His mother-in-law was by no means a timid woman, but she did not take unnecessary risks, either. She swore Ninsianna was insane for allowing him to carry her into the sky, but her sense of duty to her parents outweighed her fear.
"Gasur was the first village to embrace our training of archers," Immanu reminded the Chief, "and the first to accept our overtures of mutual aid. If we fail them now, it could cause our fragile network to collapse."
Mutual aid… Agreements to help one another in time of trouble were a new idea in the evolution of Ubaid society. The people of the river had well-established trade agreements, but getting them to send actual warriors to train with other villages or respond in times of attack was a hard sell. There lingered a fear that stronger villages would simply annex their land, or that warriors allowed into their midst to train today would return tomorrow to raid their granary.
The Chief rubbed his eyelids with his index finger and thumb, turning Immanu's suggestion over in his mind. At last he turned to the Gasurian emissary and gave him a grim nod.
"I shall allow Needa three days to help your worst wounded get past the crisis," the Chief told the emissary. "While she is there, she will select an apprentice from amongst your ranks. You will send this girl back to our village so Needa may educate her in the ways of healing. I will ask a family to host the girl on my tab."
The Chief would pick up the girl's room and board? Mikhail suppressed a raised eyebrow. Chief Kiyan was an honorable man, but he was notoriously cheap. It spoke to his estimate of Needa's worth if he'd decided it cost less to train someone else's healer rather than risk losing his own.
"And while we are at it," Mikhail spotted an opportunity, "perhaps we should train a few extra Assurian healers so if we have another battle, our village is not overwhelmed. My recollection of hospital ships is fuzzy, but I am certain we had at least three doctors … uh … healers … and half a dozen nurses."
The Chief looked as though he would choke on Mikhail's audacious request, but Immanu, forever the gifted statesman, interjected.
"It would give Needa a reason to want to come back," Immanu said. "Just in case she is tired of putting up with my old bones." His tone was joking, but his eyes said otherwise. Immanu looked as though he feared Needa might wish to stay in Gasur.
"I shall gather my wares and then you will take me there," Needa turned to Mikhail.
"It is too late to begin the journey tonight," the emissary said. "We shall leave first thing in the morning."
"You shall leave first thing in the morning," Needa returned to her usual authoritative self. "He will take me there right away. Injured patients cannot wait!"
Mikhail suppressed a grin. Let Siamek train the village warriors the next few days! Perhaps Jamin would get off of his backside and actually help his former lieutenant train his own people instead of criticizing everything he did? He followed Needa out of the Chief's house like a large, winged dog, happy to get away from the political feather ruffling going on inside the Chief's house.
While Needa went back to the house to gather her tinctures and herbs, Mikhail flew over the village, searching until he found Ninsianna standing waist-high in the river, washing the family's laundry. He set down beside her with a splash, heedless of the water which filtered into his boots.
"Now you've gotten me all wet!" Ninsianna laughed. She repaid him by spl
ashing him in return, leaving a wet stain on the front of his shirt.
Water droplets glistened on her cheek like little bursts of starlight. Mikhail had never been particularly good with words, so he skipped the explanation and gathered her into his arms for a tender kiss. Her soft breasts pressed against his abdomen, she being more than a cubit shorter than him, and filled his heart with joy. His wings curled around her, protecting her, keeping her close to him, this woman he had sworn to love unto death…
'…and beyond…' some small voice whispered from deep in his subconscious.
"Something's up." Ninsianna giggled as he nuzzled her neck, inhaling the scent of soap root.
"The Chief asked me to accompany your mother to Gasur," Mikhail said. "Slavers hit their village."
"My grandparents?" Ninsianna's expression was one of concern, but not especially so. At two days walk, she had visited her grandparents only twice in her twenty summers.
"Both are fine, I am told," Mikhail said. "But they need your mother to come help them. Your father fears sending her to a village that is less than secure."
Comprehension dawned on Ninsianna's face, her dark eyebrows coming together in a frown. He laid a kiss upon the worry line in her forehead.
"I can fly back each sundown, if you wish, and then return to Gasur at the first light of dawn."
Her luscious, trembling lip warred with the determined set of her chin. His mother-in-law insisted she didn't need a protector, but he already knew what Ninsianna's answer would be.
"You must stay in Gasur and protect my mother," Ninsianna said. "The slavers always hit the weakest villages … by stealth or cloak of night … and are known to return like jackals to hit a wounded village again and again."
"What shall you do if you dream?"
A shadow crossed her beautiful features. Mikhail drew her closer, his lips trailing across her eyelids as he wished he had some way to erase the nightmares which chased her into the dream world. If only there were some way he could remove this burden from her shoulders, this prophecy the goddess had saddled her with!
Sword of the Gods: Prince of Tyre (Sword of the Gods Saga) Page 13
