“That's something Shay’tan would do,” the Emperor sighed. “He scapegoats another when he makes a mistake. This is my mistake, and I'll bear the consequences of it.”
“But, Sir!”
“But, nothing,” he said. “Resignation denied. I'm assigning a full-time Delphinium nanny to help you care for Uriel on your command carrier. I have assembled a team of experts to figure out how I can let Alliance hybrids have more access to their offspring without jeopardizing the stability of the fleet. You're my first test subject.”
“Oh?" Jophiel was not sure what to say. “Test subject?”
“I'm also recommending you promote that wonderfully efficient personal assistant of yours, Captain Klik'rr, to Major,” he said. “And assign him a half dozen assistants to take up the slack. It's about time we started promoting the newer sentient races into the upper ranks of the military. Don't you agree?”
“Th-thank you, your eminence!" What he'd just handed her was better than her wildest dreams.
“Now let me see that fine son of yours.”
Over the next hour, Hashem played with Uriel and picked Jophiel’s brain for ideas about how to allow the hybrid races, who were the legs his empire stood upon, to have their cake and eat it too. At some point, one of the Emperor’s lab technicians came in to take the Mama and baby lizards back to Gemini-28 and release them into the general population.
The conversation turned back to the Emperor’s favorite subject, tinkering with the DNA which made up life. The new genetic traits he'd just instilled in the gourocks would be dominant. Within several generations, most gourocks would inherit the adaptation which would allow them to survive their changing climate. All but the poor little guy who'd been rejected. If his own mother rejected him, it was unlikely any mate would accept him, either. Sending him back to the homeworld to die was pointless.
As she went to leave, the Emperor gave her a gift.
“Here … he won’t be happy here alone." He handed her the cage. “Everybody needs a family to belong to. Maybe Uriel will enjoy having a water dragon for a pet?”
Chapter 86
July - 3,390 BC
Earth: Village of Assur
Colonel Mikhail Mannuki’ili
Mikhail
Mikhail paced down the six-deep line of warriors, sizing up his new recruits. Some stood proud and tall, men who could take down a boar with a single spear and wore their swagger as though it were a fringed wool kilt. Others appeared ill at ease, here because the Chief had ordered every man capable of picking up a spear to spend two hours each afternoon learning combat skills. Most clustered into groups: warriors, craftsmen, farmers and goat herders. He scrutinized each clique for clues about whether or not the groupings would prove useful, or needed to be broken up during training.
The elite warriors had all been ordered to attend … and obeyed. All except for Jamin, who was nowhere to be found. This was a group he would need to break up, their advanced weapons skills distributed evenly amongst their weaker peers. But he needed to wield a democratic hand or resentment would undermine anything he tried to achieve. He turned to the man the Chief had assigned to be his liaison.
"Kiarash … are you ready?"
One of the Chief's two main 'enforcers' stepped forward. Wisdom … and more than a few battle scars … etched the heavily muscled, middle-aged man's face. Although Jamin had been in charge of the elite warriors, his leadership had only gone so far as his father's appointed 'babysitter' allowed it to go before alerting the Chief his son was out of line. Everything about the man spoke of solidity, confidence, and quiet competence.
"Have you given the matter we discussed earlier any thought?" Kiarash glanced over to where Jamin's elite warriors stood together as a unit, some glowering with resentment, others filled with curiosity. In the center stood their de facto leader now that Jamin had pulled a no-show.
"You called that one correctly," Mikhail frowned. Just because he'd anticipated what the Chief's son would do didn't mean he was happy about it. Chief Kiyan wanted Mikhail to mentor his son, but Kiarash had made his own recommendation in case things played out the way they expected. Unlike the chief, Kiarash believed in second, but not third chances. Mikhail was tired of offering the olive branch to a man who hated his guts. He made his decision.
"Siamek! Front and center!"
"Yes?" The tall, slender warrior stepped forward, his dark eyes wary, but lacking the hostility they'd possessed the first time they'd crossed swords at his crashed ship. Although not heavily muscled in the way that Jamin was, Siamek was agile and strong. If Kiarash's assessment was correct, Siamek could follow a chain of command without losing his ability to think independently.
"That's 'yes sir,'" Mikhail corrected. "If you're going to help lead these men, you need to set the proper example. Whenever you address a superior officer, you need to address them as 'sir.'"
A flash of anger shone in Siamek's dark eyes, which was replaced by disbelief, and then surprise as Mikhail's words sank in. He was being elevated to a position of leadership?
"S-sir," The unfamiliar word tumbled off of Siamek's tongue. He glanced over to Kiarash, who nodded. Siamek straightened up, his spear held perpendicular to the ground as he stared straight ahead.
Mikhail turned his attention back to the assembled men. A half-dozen women had also answered the call, including Pareesa, his littlest archer. They were all Pareesa's age, clustered together like birds, heads pressed together in whispers as though they were gathered at the village well.
Pareesa flashed him a proud grin. These were her recruits, and by the way they'd come wearing shawls belted high around their waists like kilts, she'd apprised them they would be getting thrown to the ground.
"These are unsettled times." Mikhail walked to stand between the two men he'd chosen to be his first and second lieutenant. "I didn't ask to be put into a position of leadership, but the fact remains that I come from an army who knows how to work together so that one soldier's weakness doesn't become the weakness of his entire unit."
The elite warriors averted their eyes. Jamin's moment of hesitation had only been momentary, but everyone in the village had seen it. He was lucky Siamek had been competent enough to follow through on the Chief's orders or he might have ended up with a Halifian arrow in his back. He began to pace up and down the line, twenty-five long, six deep, 152 in all.
"When you train together as a team, one soldier's strength can inspire every man on his team to become more than what he was before. I can't lay claim to being an expert on every aspect of warfare. In fact, as most of you have heard, if not for the dog tags Ninsianna found wrapped around my neck," he tugged the dog tags out of the neckline of his shirt and held them out for everyone to see, "I probably wouldn't even know my own name."
Nervous laughter rippled through the men.
"I don't remember a lot of what I was before I came here to your village," Mikhail said. "But as you all witnessed during the recent battle, there are some things that I just know. I can't tell you why I can remember some things, such as how to pick up a stick and use it as a spear..."
He borrowed Kiarash's spear and threw it to stick into the side of a far-off goat shed.
"…and yet I can't remember my own father's name." He stepped back to stand between his two lieutenants.
"There are some amongst this tribe who would give you a supernatural explanation as to why I'm able to do these things, but the truth is really quite simple. What few memories I do have all involve some type of training. Long, hard, brutal training amongst men … and women … who were all better fighters than me."
A murmur went through the men. He could tell they found it hard to believe that anyone had ever bested him. He allowed himself a rare smile.
"Believe it or not," Mikhail gave them a sheepish grin. "Some of my fondest absent memories involve having my tail feathers handed back to me by the Cherubim monks. Again. And again. And again."
The noise rippled into laughter. Humor.
Unfamiliar territory, but he'd slowly been learning when to interject small confessions into the conversation to let people know his natural reticence didn't originate from what Ninsianna called a 'holier than thou' attitude. Mikhail began to pace again, not simply because it afforded him the opportunity to look each man in the eye and gauge his reaction, but also because it gave him someplace to channel the nervous energy rustling through his feathers. Without his memories, he had no idea what type of missions he'd led except for a vague recollection that the designation 'Colonel' on his dog tags meant he must have led men at some point in his career.
"Why should we follow you if you can't remember anything?" Firouz, asked. "Aren't we just wasting our time?"
He stopped and made eye contact with two elite warriors standing side-by-side, Firouz and Dadbeh, young men whose first act upon seeing him for the first time had been to attack him.
"I don't know how well these skills will generalize to teaching you," he said with unabashed honesty. "This is a different world, with different weapons and different rules than the world I come from. But if we all work together, perhaps we can come up with something that works? Because the way things are going right now isn't working out so well. Is it?"
The two men shifted uneasily on their feet. Two pairs of eyes turned to Siamek for guidance. Siamek hesitated, and then gave them a nod. The young men looked Mikhail in the eye and grumbled agreement. It wasn't a standing ovation, but as Kiarash had predicted, without Jamin here to stir up discontent, the other warriors would give him a chance to prove his point … or fail miserably.
"I just spent all morning hauling water to my field," an older man complained. "And I still have to go home and repair my goat fence. And then after that I need to haul even more water to my fields because by nightfall every ounce of water will have evaporated. When will I find time to do this training you speak of?"
Agreement rippled through the men. There was a reason so few belonged to the elite warriors. Only those whose families had the luxury of allowing their sons to be someplace other than bent over in the fields usually became part of the elite.
"My first day in this village, Chief Kiyan informed me that Assur doesn't have the resources to maintain a standing army," he said. "Unfortunately, that has not changed. We are in the middle of the growing season and the water isn't going to haul itself into our fields so that our crops don't wither and die. But we were just attacked. If we can't hold onto our lands, then planting them serves no purpose."
"If we don't plant food," an older man with many children said, "we'll starve. What good is staying on our lands if our children starve to death come winter?"
"Yeah," another man said. "They don't have to evict us. All they have to do is harass us until we starve ourselves to death!"
"I have no recollection of ever having to plant my own food," Mikhail said. "The only thing I can recall is training to be the very best soldier I could be."
A dissatisfied grumble moved through the men.
"However, the Emperor's armies are not the only warriors I ever trained with. Before I was sent to train with the Emperor, I trained with another race of warriors. The Cherubim. For some reason, that training has survived strongest in my memory. Amongst the Cherubim, there is no such thing as idleness. Everything they do is designed to serve two purposes. To accomplish some chore. And to keep their fighting skills sharp so that, at a moment's notice, they can drop everything and go defend the Eternal Emperor."
His eyes turned inward.
"One of the few memories I have is of encountering a gardener one day on my way to class," Mikhail said. "She was an ancient woman, too old to be kneeling on the ground pulling weeds. As she weeded, she moved all four of her arms in a different direction, carefully pulling out the weeds as though she were deep in a trance. I asked her what she was doing and she said it was the most important lesson a Cherubim novitiate could ever learn. She made me kneel down in the dirt with her and taught me this movement, even though I only have two hands and she had four of them."
Mikhail moved both of his hands in a circular motion, first one and then the other. He then added the movement of his wings she'd made him learn even though, without hands at the knee-joint of his wings the way that Shay'tan had, he'd never been able to pull any weeds with those limbs. He turned back to the warriors scrutinizing him with a curious expression upon their faces.
"I found out later that the reason there were no female Cherubim in any of my classes was that there are no female Cherubim. Except for one. Jingu. The Cherubim queen." There was a murmur amongst the men. "The mother of the guardians of the Eternal Emperor herself saw to it that I would always know how to defend myself, as small and weak as I was compared to my Cherubim mentors."
He turned to Siamek.
"Stab me with your spear."
"Wh-what?"
"I want you to stab me with your spear."
"But … really?" Siamek gave him a half-hearted jab. Mikhail knocked it to one side with a fan block which looked remarkably similar to the weeding movement.
"I want you to stab me for real," Mikhail said. "As though I were a Halifian. And you … and you … and you. I want you to stab at me as well. All four of you. At once. Go for it."
After much hesitation, the men began poking at him with the butt-end of their spears. It had been a long time since he'd learned this exercise, but the Cherubim had so deeply instilled the movement into his muscle memory that he was able to effortlessly deflect each and every jab. It helped that these men didn't really want to hurt him. An appreciative murmur went through the group.
"You were taught that by a queen?" Dadbeh asked.
"I was taught to weed a garden by the queen," Mikhail said. "I didn't find out it was a defensive kata until later, when Master Yoritomo threw me into the middle of a group of older students and told them to go at me. Compared to the Cherubim, I am quite the scrawny little runt. I think Jingu wanted to make sure I didn't get too badly chewed up and spit out."
"Weeding?" Dadbeh laughed. "You want us to learn to … weed?"
"Keep stabbing at me," Mikhail challenged. "I can keep it up all day."
The warriors gave it their best shot, their attempts at jabbing him increasing from mere half-hearted jabs to fairly ferocious, coordinated attacks once the warriors realized he was getting the better of them. After nearly five minutes of nonstop jabbing, they finally admitted defeat and began to good-naturedly joke about learning to weed. Mikhail ordered them to line up once more, and then carefully unsnapped the pulse rifle from his holster and held it flat in both of his hands.
"I can't explain why She-who-is erased all memory of learning to use this weapon, even though if you stick it in my hand my body knows what to do with it, and yet I can recall, in intricate detail, my time spent weeding the garden with the Cherubim queen."
He stuck the pulse rifle back in its holster.
"Why don't you use that weapon to defend us?" Siamek asked. His expression was not one of disrespect, but curiosity. The twenty-million credit question every man in the village wanted to know.
"You have a story about a man who finds a magic tallow lamp?" Mikhail said. "A spirit appears and gives the man three wishes. This weapon is like that. I used up two of my wishes the day your men attacked Ninsianna because I was too badly wounded to defend myself. I'll not use it again unless I'm desperate because I only get so many wishes and then the spirit won't grant them for me anymore."
Shame flushed Siamek's face. Mikhail broke eye contact, not wishing his distrust about elevating the young man to a position of authority to show, nor to have his answer appear to be an accusation. That first meeting had tainted every experience that had followed like rancid meat. If he was going to train these men to defend the village, he needed to be a better man than Jamin and move beyond his anger.
"I can't tell you why I don't remember how the sky canoe you all saw fall out of the sky got here," Mikhail said. "And yet I can remember marching with a group
of men and women just like you, for hours on end, until it felt as though our legs would fall off and we would die of thirst."
He bent to pick up the two buckets of water he'd hauled up from the Hiddekel River earlier today.
"To fend off our enemies," he said. "We need to work together and figure out what you know, and what I know, and somehow put it all together so that the next time the Halifians come at us, we'll hit them so hard they will never again attempt to evict us from our lands."
The men gave a hearty cheer.
"That means we must pull double duty," he said. "We need to get creative about how we foster the skills we need to fight together as a team. The archers use these … water buckets … to help them build up the strength to draw their bows. Since we all need to march down to the river and haul water to our fields anyways, I thought it would be the most appropriate place to start. Agreed?"
"How will hauling water help us fight Halifians?" one of the older warriors asked. "It's just … water."
"The first thing any soldier must learn is how to think as a unit,” Mikhail said. "Not an individual. Therefore, when we go down to the river, instead of walking, we'll march in lockstep, as though we are all shamans performing a sacred dance, and carry the buckets of water like … Pareesa? Get up here! Demonstrate what the men are supposed to do!"
"Yes, Sir!" Pareesa pranced up like a gazelle and gave him a wink. The little imp enjoyed the attention. She stood with one hand on her hip, her attitude cocky as she lifted one of the buckets in a bicep curl Mikhail had taught her."
"That doesn't look hard!" Dadbeh said.
"That's right." Pareesa stepped up to stand directly in front of the elite group of warriors and held both arms out at her sides in a 'T'. "If a skinny little girl like me can do this, then it should be a piece of cake for the boys, right?" She accentuated the word boys to insinuate she didn't find them to be men.
"We can do better than you, little girl," Firouz teased.
"Then go ahead and try," Pareesa taunted.
Sword of the Gods: The Chosen One (Sword of the Gods Saga) Page 44
