April – 3,390 BC
Earth: Village of Assur
Colonel Mikhail Mannuki’ili
Mikhail
“Are you ready?”
“No,” Mikhail admitted as he caught his first glimpse of the village which was about to become his home. “But it is not right for me to keep you from your people."
Built upon a rise in an otherwise featureless land sat a village upon a hill. Squat yellowish houses made from clay-mud bricks clustered around the apex. The houses on the outermost edge were built with only tiny slits for windows facing out, so close they created a natural wall. On flat rooftops moved about people. Just outside the inner ring were smaller structures, some constructed of wood, others constructed of the same yellowish brick that blended in with the land. Most appeared to be pens for keeping livestock, but a few were houses, newer in construction than the ones clustered around the hill. The soldier in him whispered this village was a place he could easily defend.
Beyond the village, the great river Ninsianna called Hiddekel had carved out fields from the higher desert, creating an enormous flat alluvial plain neatly divided into fields, the rocks from those fields laid out in low walls to demarcate which plot belonged to whom. The river was still in flood tide from the spring rains, but already villagers were busy planting the fields closest to the village, their higher terrain making them the first fields released by the receding flood tide.
It was a Stone Age village, much of it by appearance built within the last generation. Everything looked orderly and well-run. This chief he was about to meet might have his faults, but lack of industriousness was not one of them. He could see why such a leader would want his hot-headed son married off to someone as pragmatic as Ninsianna. It had not been his fault she'd spurned the Chief's son, but the awkward timing of his arrival had caused his relationship with these people to get off on the wrong foot.
He didn't look forward to this meeting. If the Chief rejected him, he would be banished back out into the wilderness. Alone. For Immanu had impressed upon him his daughter was needed here. His own people had not come looking for him. Mikhail fingered his dog-tags. Although he didn't mind solitude, there was a difference between preferring one's own company, and being abandoned. Never had he felt so alone.
“You'll do fine." Ninsianna slid her small hand up to take his larger one, giving it a squeeze. “Papa summoned the shamans who remember the old songs. Much of the original meaning has been lost, but they hope you might help them make sense of them?”
“How many songs are there?" Mikhail asked. The way Ninsianna’s father took every word he uttered as though it were a divine truth made him uncomfortable. He didn't look forward to facing an entire group of shamans who looked to him the same way. He was just Mikhail. A soldier. Nothing more.
“There are hundreds of them,” Ninsianna said. “And thousands more where only a fragment is remembered. We don't use written symbols to help us remember the way that you do. It's all remembered in a song.”
“I hope I can understand what they say,” Mikhail said. “My grasp of your language is still limited.”
“You don't know every word,” Ninsianna said. “But what you do know, you speak almost without an accent. You'll do fine.”
Her lips curved up in that warm, reassuring smile which had been the first thing he'd noticed about her. Beautiful, tawny-beige eyes picked up the hues of the mid-morning sun, making them appear gold. He'd seen such eyes before, but the memory refused to come to the surface. Her eyes inhabited his dreams, whispering for him to trust her, to do whatever she asked, because it was the will of the gods.
Mikhail forced down the emotion which came with that thought, how very badly he wished to touch her. It was not logical to spend so much time fantasizing about her! But with a total lack of memory, he had no idea how to act. Not when a female so enticing had made him the center of her universe. Not sure what to do, he did nothing. But he wouldn't force fantasies of her from his mind, either. The night of the attack had taught him that he kept much darker urges than his feelings for Ninsianna bottled up inside of him.
Checking for the reassuring feel of his sword and pulse rifle, he adjusted his dress uniform, straightened up to his full height, and settled his wings against his back in the tight formation he knew was the proper way to greet one's superior officers. Towering over his savior by more than a cubit, he allowed Ninsianna to tug him towards the mud-brick village.
Chapter 38