Sword of the Gods: The Chosen One (86 page)

The creature snapped
at his head.  It left open its chest, a mistake any first-year cadet learned to
avoid.

He had no choice.  Training
took over.

He stabbed the
creature in the heart.

The creature's
death-cry reverberated through his very soul, making
him
cry out along
with it.  No!  He pushed it off of him, pulling out the knife and pushing his
hands over the wound to staunch the bleeding.  The other warriors rushed in to
finish it off.

"No!" he
shouted.  He waved them off, his eyes blurry as he pleaded with the creature. 
"Don't die.  Please don't die."

He waited for the big
male to speak to him.  To say
something.
  To explain why it had felt the
need to attack him.  But it didn't.  There was intelligence in those golden
eyes filled with pain, but no words came from its mouth.  It breathed, and
breathed again, and then it was silent.  Staring at the blood on his hands,
Mikhail raised them up to the sky.

"Why?" he
shook his fists into the sky.  "Why why why?"

The female was already
dead, filled with spears.  The warriors danced around her like carrion birds,
celebrating the death of the noble creature.  Pareesa helped Firouz to his
feet, a little worse for the wear, but he would survive.  Warriors slapped him
on the back and congratulated him on his kill.  Tears streamed down Mikhail's
cheeks at how
wrong
this all felt.

They stopped
celebrating when they realized he was crying.

"I'm sorry,"
he told the beast whose name he couldn't remember, but knew he should know.

He stared at the blood
on his hands, red against his pale flesh.  Wrong.  He ran his hands through its
pelt and put his head down to listen for its heart.  It was silent.  He'd
killed it.  Even though he couldn't remember this creature's name or where he'd
seen one of them before, in his soul he knew he'd killed one of his own.  He
put his forehead down upon the still-warm comrade he'd just killed, sobs wracking
his body as he drooped his wings and finally allowed seven months of mourning
lost memories to spill from his shattered psyche.

The warriors gathered
around in silence, not understanding why he grieved.

"Mikhail?"
Pareesa asked.  She placed a hand on one wing.  "Are you okay?"

"This was
wrong," Mikhail hiccoughed, forcing himself to regain some sense of
composure.  "I don't know why, but I feel as though I just killed my own
brother."

"These are
lions," Pareesa said.  "Big cats.  Sometimes we have to hunt them or
they'll eat our goats."

Pareesa put her hand
on his shoulder and gave it a squeeze, surprisingly strong for such a young
woman.  It was the gesture of comfort one equal gives to another, this warrior
princess.  He tried to suppress the sobs that kept shuddering in his chest, but
he couldn't.  They didn't understand.

"Where he comes
from," a soft voice said.  "There are lions who are also people. 
Just as
he
is part eagle."

He looked up to stare
into the blackest eyes he'd ever seen, so black it was impossible to tell where
the pupil ended and the iris began.  The scrawny black-eyed girl had kneeled
before him and the dead creature, a tear streaming down her cheek at the sight
of
his
tears.  He shivered at the sensation of his soul being laid bare
before those bottomless black eyes.  It felt like being naked.

"I think
so."  Mikhail was trapped in those eyes like a prey animal, so much like
Ninsianna's, only black instead of gold.

"They are but
animals," Siamek said.  "Smart animals, which is why we fear them,
but still just animals."

"It's very brave
what you did," Varshab said, "killing a lion with nothing but a
knife.  Only the bravest warriors dare come up against a lion."

He cringed as he
noticed the warriors had pulled their spears out of the female and were pulling
out their obsidian blades to skin it.

"You must take
its pelt and carry it back to the village," Kiarash said.  "It will
show those few who still question your methods how brave you are."

"Only Jamin has
ever killed a lion single-handedly," Siamek said.  "We call this
beast the king-maker.  Only a great leader dare take on a lion alone."

Mikhail ran his hand
through the great beast's pelt.  It was not the creature he'd first mistaken it
to be.  He could see that now.  But in the moment … it had seemed like…

"It's just an
animal," Pareesa said.  "See?"

It wore no uniform, no
rank pins.  It's claws were dirty and chipped, with no sign of being groomed
and its fur unkempt and not brushed.  The fingers on the paws were too short,
too paw-like, and it didn't have opposable thumbs.  Something about the way its
hip and shoulder joints were shaped also didn't look right.  Whatever his
subconscious had been screaming out at him, this creature was close, but not
exact.  Regardless, he reached down and closed its eyes.

"I think … I
think Gita is right," Mikhail wiped clean his cheek.  He shook his head,
frustrated at the memory which lurked just beneath the surface, but refused to
come free.  "I think where I come from we have
people
who look like
this."  He glanced up to thank the young woman who'd provided him with a
logical explanation for his bizarre emotional reaction, but she'd disappeared.

Two of the warriors
helped Firouz hobble over.

"Thank you,"
Firouz said.  He pointed to the big male gazelle he'd taken down for himself,
the buck which had been leader of the herd.  "I'd killed it and was
carrying it back when they came out from behind those tall grasses.  I didn't
even see them coming."

Mikhail rose to his
feet.

"Had you not
broken rank," Mikhail's wings trembled with rage.  "This wouldn't
have happened.  You were supposed to fill the hole in the line!  Not go chasing
after your own glory!  This is why eleven people were killed during the
raid!"

Anger filled his body,
begging to be let off its leash.  He could
feel
it there, a wound so
deep, so palpable, so black it felt like the chill of death.  The warriors
backed off.  Firouz cringed in fear.

'You must control
your anger.  Anger opens the door to other things...'

The warning of a
Cherubim master he only vaguely recalled replayed over and over again in his
mind, words to an incantation to calm his emotions.  He stepped back, his mouth
moving as he whispered the words to the prayers they'd taught him to control
his rage.  The emotion seethed beneath the surface like an ancient volcano,
trying to get out.  The Cherubim had taught him that he must never lose control
of his anger.

He was a foot taller
than Firouz and with his wings he was huge.  An image of how he must appear
popped into his mind and shamed him.  He was acting like a bully.  He whispered
the prayer, more focused this time.  Calmness poured through his body like
water, soothing the angry cauldron simmering beneath the surface, covering the
ancient wound he couldn't remember receiving with dirt and whispering for it to
lie at rest.

'It was nothing but
an animal…'

It would be an
abomination against the goddess to kill such a noble creature and not use every
part of it as
SHE
intended.  He didn't need Immanu to tell him that.  He
handed his knife to Pareesa.

"I can't do
this," he said.  He turned so he wouldn't see the other warriors, already
skinning the dead female lion.  "This animal is too much like a creature I
know to be a friend. 
You
do it for me.  Present its hide as a gift to the
Chief and make sure they bury the both of their remains side-by-side with
honors.  When you're done, I'll come back and say the death rituals."

"But it's just an
animal," Kiarash said.  "We only pour water over its nose before we
skin it to give thanks to the goddess."

Mikhail gave him a
look that communicated he wouldn't be questioned on this matter.

"I'll fly back
and get Immanu."  With the blood of his brother still on his hands, he
took to the air to fetch his father-in-law.

~ * ~ * ~
* ~ * ~

Galactic Standard Date:  152,322.11 AE 

(three
months prior to the crash)

Colonel Mikhail Mannuki’ili

Mikhail

“Colonel
Mannuki'ili,” General Jophiel said. “We've received intelligence that the
Sata’an Empire is amassing resources in Zulu Sector.”

“That’s pretty
remote, Sir,” Mikhail said. “Isn’t that uncharted territory?”

“That sector
doesn’t belong to either empire,” Jophiel said.  “There's nothing out there …
at least not that we know of.  Now, all of a sudden, Shay’tan has every vessel
he owns heading out there to trade.  He's up to something.”

“What are your
orders, Sir?” he asked.

“Take a scout ship
and start shadowing these so-called traders,” Jophiel ordered.  “Find out where
they're going and what they're up to.”

“That’s too remote
for a scout ship.  What's my jumping off point?”

“I'm stationing you
with an old friend,” she said.  “Report to Colonel Israfa on the 'Light
Emerging.'  I'm positioning his command carrier on the border between Zulu and
X-ray so it doesn't arouse too much suspicion.  You'll be black-ops on this
one, eyes-only, but Colonel Israfa is in the loop.”

He noted the
unconscious way she caressed her swelling midsection.  The corners of her mouth
turned downwards in a sad little smile.  Mikhail had known her too long to be
fooled by her professional demeanor.

“He's a good man,
Jophie,” Mikhail said softly, using her familiar name.  “You shouldn't have
sent him so far away.”

Her expression
softened as a smile tugged at the corner of her lips.  Wistful…

“Take good care of
him for me, will you?” Jophiel asked.

~ * ~ * ~
* ~ * ~

September - 3,390 BC

Village of Assur

Ninsianna

Ninsianna
awoke to the rhythmic sound of his heartbeat whirring through the brachial
artery of the arm she used as a pillow, her cheek resting upon his chest. 
While she'd been sleeping he'd captured her hand and placed it over his heart,
his large, strong hand gently caressing her smaller one.  He was awake already,
watching her with that unreadable expression he habitually wore.  Ninsianna
called it his ‘default expression’ because he always donned it whenever he had
something on his mind.  The village was ecstatic with the bounty they'd brought
back and divided amongst the whole village of fifty-three gazelles and two lion
pelts, but for some reason he refused to speak about it.

“Good
morning.” He stroked her hair.  She liked that he was fascinated by her long
black hair.  She'd allowed it to grow even longer since she'd met him because
she knew it pleased him.