Last Christmas

Our church has been here for two thousand years. It was founded by Saint Thomas. We have survived the Sassanids, the Arabs, the Mongols, the Ottomans, and our own dictator. We will not survive our liberation.

Thousands have fled to the monasteries, to Arbil then Sweden and the Commonwealth, some even into the arms of our liberators. Half our population is gone. The extremists say they will kill us if we don’t flee or give them money. Only a few are wealthy enough to pay. Like the Jews before us.

I have not fled our village. I am the last. I am no longer young, with no living family, no heirs. Only their graves to tend. One day, my neighbors will kill me, too. In the way of both our martyrs, I almost welcome it.

The stones of our sanctuary were laid as a mountain refuge in the time of Tamerlane when our people were forced into hiding by the bloody locusts of his horde. Now, the doors stand open, their hinges broken, the cutout crosses of their handles scorched from within. The holy symbols have been burned, the sanctuary ransacked. The priest was abducted and the elders fled the across the mountains. To the south, the red patriarch sits in the capital, quietly murmuring his prayers in our oppressors’ tongue. Only the graves have gone unmarred. I am uncertain how long their soil will remain consecrated. Or if it ever was.

Each morning, I gather a bucket, a broom and the stiff-bristled brush my wife and daughters once used to scrub our kitchen. Each day I fill the bucket with clean water from the river and wend my way through the deserted village to the church.

For thirty-nine mornings I have scrubbed soot from its walls and bloodstains from its floor, stone by rough-cut stone. I work the brush until the water in the bucket becomes as murky as our river filled with snowmelt in the spring, as tinged reddish-brown as the Tigris after Tamerlane. Winter has come early this year. The water numbs my fingers until they creak with age and ice.

I rise as bent and sore as the old woman who used to perform this task for the priest each week, as village women had done for centuries. I don’t know why I do it. Perhaps I think I can lure our people home again. Perhaps I just want the church to be clean before our neighbors convert it to a mosque.

I keep hoping that one day I will sweep out the last of the tainted water, that the floor will come as clean as a newborn on the day he is baptized in the font. Today is the last day. Tomorrow, I rest whether the church is clean or not.

Since my release from the army a quarter-century ago, I no longer go to Mass. My wife and daughters were the religious ones. The church was their domain. They attended each Sunday with the rest of the village. I only accompanied them on Christmas and Easter, the two highest of our holy days. After surviving being drafted at the age of forty-two, I thought my life was such that I could afford to seek forgiveness only twice a year. Now, I don’t care that there is no priest to hear my confession or direct us in the service. Without my wife and daughters, without my grandchildren, how could I celebrate tomorrow as a holy day?

Three generations had disappeared in the time it took to dial a mobile phone.

I used to run the liquor shop in our village. My eldest daughter’s husband would have taken over soon. Today, the shelves are empty, the counter and floors swept clean of broken glass. The foreign aid workers have fled for the safety of Arbil. The foreign soldiers retreated months ago, waiting to see who will win before they begin their long journey home.

Years ago, our women dressed much as theirs and walked the streets unmolested. Then came our liberation, and with it returned oppression as a tyrannical majority insisted we conform to their more conservative ways. Now, our blood once again stains these streets as it did when my father and grandfather were young. Our own soldiers only watch, content as long as the violence points away from them.

My father was educated abroad, just after the English had liberated us from the Ottomans. I followed in his footsteps, spending a full year at university in England before the first coup called me home. At the time, many of our people thought a republic would free our country from the corruption of the Hashemite kingdom and foreign intervention. Until coup begot coup and war begot bloody war. The spirit of nationalism was repaid with dictatorship, though even he left our congregation mostly intact. Unlike the men and women to the north he wanted us to gas. Now, the Kurds offer us sanctuary as we flee our mutual enemy. But I know the enemy of our enemy will not forever remain our friend. A hundred years ago, we fled the other way.

Now, even the English are allies where once they, too, were enemies. When I was young, we wanted to be just like England. We filled their universities with young men like me eager to study science and engineering. At home, we modernized and improved our country, and hoped they would respect us. We thought we were building a secure future. We thought oil would be our salvation. Like children with their parents, we thought one day they would treat as equals. We were wrong.

That was a lifetime ago, back when my hair was unmarked by gray, my face unlined by fear. The cruelty of growing old is that I can recall the details of that one Christmas spent abroad better than I can remember the beauty of my wife’s face.

England was full of shiny new optimism that year, much like we were in the first days of liberation. Petrol rationing from the Suez crisis had ended a few months before I arrived. So many buildings were newly finished after being rebuilt from damage in the war. We still remember with shame that we tried to choose the wrong side in that global conflict. In our defense, we were uncertain at the time whether England meant to be our friend, our enemy or just our secret master. Much as today with her more powerful ally who occupies our land.

My roommate invited me home with him for Christmas that year. I remember how privileged I felt at spending the holiday with him and his family instead of alone in London. Christmas was a time for family, and I had none in his country. Just like here today.

His village was so distant from dismal, dreary London. As the train rolled west, the countryside glowed with life, so verdant, lush and fertile, even in winter, unlike the sparsely treed mountains near my home. England had an abundance of water, falling nearly daily from her leaden skies. If my country could be colored brown and blue, England would be captured best in greens and grays, now gently trimmed in white. I was used to snow in winter, but nothing quite like this. In our mountains, snow meant hardship. Here, it was like a warm, winter blanket tucked around the land, securing it till spring.

When we arrived at the station, we found the village decorated as though it had been beset by a thousand Persian fairies. Their Christmastide was more inviting than our own celebrations that remained discretely veiled from view. Each door displayed a woven evergreen circlet with tiny ornaments tied to it with bright red ribbons, like a cheery English marker to ward off Pharaoh’s final plague. Each shop and home was lighted as if by a thousand candles from within, their windows warm and welcoming despite the cold and snow outside. Like our church at Christmas bathed in light from the votive candles we burned in memory of the dead. It was the first time since arriving that I’d seen how welcoming this foreign land could be.

The family’s home was adorned with all manner of Christmas decorations. On the table, an arrangement of sharp-leafed winter greenery with red berries. In the front room, an evergreen draped with glass ornaments, electric fairy lights and shiny strips of metal, with a guardian angel perched on top. Friends and family sent each other special cards to mark the day that were then displayed on a hutch beside the fire. I marveled at the shear expense directed at this one of our major holidays, the least important of two. I was amazed that every home had electricity all day and night without interruption, a telephone, a television, most even a car. At home, my family was considered wealthy but we could afford none of these things.

They suspended bright stockings from the fireplace that were filled with gifts by Christmas morning that concealed the tangerine tucked in every toe. The children received mostly small toys and candies. The adults, things more utilitarian. There was even one for me with items I could use at school, pencils, ink, a pair of woolen socks, mittens and a scarf. And drinking straws, plus a little tea and chocolate.

Beneath the tree larger gifts were wrapped in brightly printed paper. When we each opened them in turn on Christmas day, I found my roommate had given me an umbrella for the unending London rain. I gave him several boxes of his favorite Turkish cigarettes that I had acquired from a family friend near school. The packages marked for his younger brother contained miniature racing cars, a building set and a jigsaw puzzle. The kind of gifts I wished I could have afforded for my grandsons to this day.

Christmas Eve, the family attended the village church, and I accompanied them. Outside was an ancient graveyard with the tomb of a patron-knight slumbering in chiseled stone. My roommate’s father tried to impress me with the church’s age, roughly the same as ours at home, not realizing that our sanctuary was considered young by the standards of our country. His village church had begun to show its age and lack of upkeep as his country slowly began to drift away from its traditions. My roommate told me it was only full a few times a year with people much like me, men and women who only attended for the festivals not the weekly sermons. I still wonder if it stands today?

Inside, the floor was polished wood instead of dusty cobbles. They sat on long, wooden benches with low backs where we sat in rows of high-backed chairs. Their doors were solid, their windows small with lead-latticed glass, their interior bright, white plaster offset by nearly black wooden beams. Our church had large, arched windows open to mountain sky. Our interior walls were all rough-cut stone.

The service was not our Mass, but very reminiscent. Their priests had divorced themselves from ours centuries ago, but kept many of the same traditions. The service was conducted by candlelight in English, a thought that would have brought a frown to our village priest. And where we recited a different liturgy, the English liked to sing, creating an odd mixture of reverence and communal celebration. One I could have gotten used to had I stayed.

That and the table full of food for Christmas dinner, all of it rare, exotic, and cornucopian in quantity. Until our wars decades later, I never suffered hunger, but have never seen so great a bounty. A great bird stuffed with spiced breadcrumbs served with a tart berry jelly, miniature cabbages from Belgium, potatoes soaked with butter, wine infused with spices, a special cake with snowy frosting and romping plastic deer, a special pudding with brandy sauce and cream, a mince pie finished off with sherry trifle.

After dinner, we listened to music on the radio, Handel’s Messiah I think, and a service of Nine Lessons and Carols from Kings College, near where we went to school. Then the family gathered around excitedly to watch the Queen’s first televised address. I remember her talking about the speed with which the world changes and the need to hold onto our religion to guide us in public and private life. I remember her welcoming Ghana and Malaya into their Commonwealth and longed for my country to be added one year soon. How I envied them that day.

I had always hoped to take my wife and daughters back with me one day so that they might finally believe my tales of that foreign Christmas. Now, I never will.

Each Christmas Eve, I recounted my story to them like a patriarch or a prophet, though last year only the grandchildren feigned interest. My daughters had grown as cynical as their husbands. Even Leyla only graced me with a tolerant, spousal smile.

But we still celebrated in the way I had imported from that foreign land, as much as our circumstance would allowed. For decades before liberation, everything was rationed, even petrol in our oil-soaked country. One year, my wife saved all her spare household money to buy a string of fairy lights that we hung around the doorway of the shop. Another year, she bought a plastic tree from China, its needles all silver, sparkly and new.

After the liberation, the foreigners whispered and snickered when they came to buy their holiday beer and wine. I pretended not to notice. Despite my English, I don’t think they knew I had been educated in their country. I would never go into their homes and insult their traditions, especially if they were patterned on my own. Like insulting a child for not being able to afford his distant cousins’ ways.

Now, the needles of that tree have tarnished and thinned. Many of the fairy lights have flashed and flickered out. Like our dreams quickly after liberation. Our holiday may now be recognized officially, but last year Mass was cancelled in Kirkuk.

There is a gift for my wife waiting beneath that tattered tree, wrapped in shiny blue paper sprinkled with little silver doves. Like prayers for the peace we did not have. Inside is box with a pendant on a gold chain like one she’d seen in an aid worker’s discarded magazine. She had mentioned it to our daughters as she’d thumbed through the pages one slow, sunny, autumn afternoon. My middle daughter pointed it out to me.

I bartered a week’s profit in the form of beer and brandy to a foreign soldier who purchased one just like it for me on his mobile phone. He delivered it, pre-wrapped from the company that sent it, the Saturday before my wife and daughters attended Mass that final time. Once he had loaded the cases in his truck and driven off, I delicately undid the tape to confirm what really lay inside, then carefully rewrapped it, refolding the paper like a military map. I placed the box beneath the tree after she left for church to tease her when she returned like I always did.

My wife would always wait until Christmas morning to reveal her gift to me. Even now, I haven’t discovered where she hid it. It would show up somewhere unexpected, wrapped in cloth or brightly-colored scraps of paper tied with simple yarn. Some years, it would appear beside my bed, or with my breakfast on the kitchen table, or in the cash box of the shop.

There is no box waiting when I arise on this Christmas morning. There were chores to attend before I performed my final duty at the church, wood to chop, water to carry. We no longer have intermittent electricity or sporadic running water. Even fuel for the generator is hard to find, though I’d rationed off enough to run the remaining fairy lights for an hour or two today.

My aging body protests at carrying through the new morning routine. Increasingly, it is not a matter of which joint aches as which doesn’t. I dress in layers of my best lambswool, like a Kurd, before pocketing Leyla’s gift at the last moment and setting off for center our village.

Overnight, the streets had been dusted with snow. Just like my year in England, though I find little comfort in that memory now. The wind is sharp and cold, the sky heavy and leaden. Clouds flow down the mountains, much like those winter mornings in the English countryside, only the air is dry and dusty, the scenery dun and sere, and none of the homes I pass are warmly lighted. They all stand deserted, their doors intermittently complaining at being abandoned to the wind. The village emptied when the army finally arrived and said they could no longer keep us safe. As if it were they and not the foreign soldiers who ever had.

By the time I arrive at the graveyard, the sun has risen high behind the clouds and casts a tarnished silver light. I wish I’d cut a wreath from the evergreens in the mountains above our village to lay beside my family’s graves. But that would have meant pilfering red ribbons from one of my granddaughter’s dresses, a prospect I could not bear. And I had no glass ornaments to make it sparkle anyway, only tears.

As I enter through the arched gate, I hope my girls will recognize me as I whisper my love before their graves. I hope Leyla would remember that I kissed each of our grandchildren’s markers in turn, like she did their foreheads each night before bed, if I saw her again one day soon. After the scenes I’d witnessed during the first of our unending wars, I’m not sure I believe the stories the priest told us of reunions in the afterlife. But I want to. I so badly want to.

Inside the church, I set upright the last of the intact chairs. Where the alter used to stand, I light all the votive candles I had salvaged, one for my wife, one for each of our three daughters, their husbands and all our grandchildren. For a moment, the interior glows like that English church at Christmas, the candlelight casting out the stains that stubbornly remained. Like a summer day blinding you to any ugliness with the brightness of the sun. I watch the candles burn like the bright future I once pictured for my grandchildren until they slowly flickered out.

The sun is low when I departed through the graveyard to say a final goodbye to Leyla. I remove her gift from my pocket and leave it on her gravestone. I know the box will go unopened, but can still imagine the joy lighting up her face as she discovers what I’ve done. I will need that imagined memory to bear me through the winter. I know I won’t return to this place before the flowers bloom at Easter, if even then. I am no longer young. Winter could easily claim me as it has many of our old each year. As I turn to leave, the wind slices through my coat like a Kurdish knife. The snow begins to fall again like softly frozen tears.

My feet crunch home through the echoing and deeply shadowed streets. At the threshold of my door, I spot a box wrapped in a bright red paper neatly tied with a silken bow waiting beneath a fine layer of snow. For a moment, I am confused, as if waking into a better dream where the past two months do not exist. Perhaps someone else had survived, someone who, unlike me, remains in hiding. I look around the snow-blown streets, but see no one, not even an eye peering from behind a shutter. I hear nothing but the stalking wind. Even our dogs have defected to our neighbors’ warmer homes.

Carefully, I pick up the package, weighing it in my hands. The box is heavy but doesn’t rattle when I gently shake it as if I am a child, my head cocked to listen for the slightest sound inside. I sniff it. It smells like new paper, with perhaps a trace of perfume, jasmine maybe, like Leyla sometimes wore. Could she have hidden my gift with a friend who now is passing it on to me? The wind stings my eyes, nearly freezing them shut. I miss her so, her and all our daughters. How I long to see them all one final time. To tell them that I love them before they trundle down the road to an unknown future.

I carry the box to the relative warmth inside, setting it on the table before I hang my coat on the peg behind the door. I settle in a chair and stare at it as the snow from my outer garments begins to drip like the tears rolling down my face. Even as I begin to untie the bow, I anticipate the gift that awaits me.

© 2010 Edward P. Morgan III

When the Americans Came

“Ignore them, Nadif. You can escape, return, and slip back in unnoticed.”

Asad always said things like that. He thought school was something to be escaped. He didn’t understand that some of us didn’t agree.

Of the ten of us in Miss Amina’s class, Asad was the bravest. We all thought he would lead the neighborhood militia one day. Like his uncle, Abdi. When the Americans came, his uncle was given an AK to guard our block. After that he was a big man in the neighborhood. People said he had more AKs that he had bought or stolen. My mother said Abdi was a fat fish in a shallow pond that would dry up one day.

Asad wanted us to leave school and go with him. It was lunchtime. Some of us from Miss Amina’s class were kicking a ball around in the shade of the courtyard. It was flat and didn’t bounce much. Asad said the Americans were coming on a big raid. One of the militias had shot down a helicopter. He said his uncle needed us to defend the block. All the other men had been called to the city center. Asad said Abdi would give us all AKs.

Asad knew if he could talk me into going with him, some of the others might go, too. Not Erasto or Dalmar, who had no interest in the militias, but maybe Gebeyre, Osman or Siad.

We all thought he was exaggerating, but none of us wanted to say we didn’t believe him. That would shame him and make him mad. So we looked down and shuffled our feet.

“Nadif, you are the man of your family. It’s your duty to help defend the block.” Asad always knew how to bully me. He sounded like his uncle. Then he half-whispered and became my friend again, “At least come see that I’m telling the truth.”

I hung my head. I had to go with him or be shamed myself.

I knew he was telling the truth about the raid. Something big was happening. I could smell tires burning around the city. I could hear men shouting with excitement as they hurried past our gate. I could see the helicopters over the courtyard, many more than most days. It was like the day last summer that Asad and I had found a beehive and dared each other to poke into it with a stick to get some honey. Bees flew out from everywhere. We both got stung many times, but didn’t cry. Neither of us wanted to be called a baby or a coward. But we didn’t get any honey.

I didn’t want to go with Asad that day. Miss Amina didn’t let us leave the school anymore, even to go home for lunch. I didn’t mind. I was happy at school. When the Americans came, Miss Amina had started teaching us English. At home I taught what I learned to my sister, Aziza. She was a year older and didn’t have time for school.

My mother said I had to study hard so that I might work in Kenya or even South Africa one day. Maybe America, if I was very lucky. She said I had an auntie in Columbus. But I had to learn everything I could before the Islamists took over and only let us study one book. When that happened, she said Miss Amina wouldn’t be my teacher anymore. I didn’t understand. I liked Miss Amina.

I didn’t like the Islamists. My father had fought with the government militia in the civil war. Not because he wanted to. My mother said it was the only way to get us out of the camps. The Islamists said the warlords should kill the men in the government militia. So they did, including my father. Some people in the neighborhood said the Islamists stopped crime and drug dealers and gave us schools and doctors. My mother said everything they did was just to get people to like them so they could win. When they did, she said everything would change.

At first, the people in my neighborhood were excited when the Americans came. They said they were here to put an end to all the fighting. After spring and summer, people said the Americans only brought more fighting. They said we'd had enough of that in the civil war. What we needed now was food and peace.

When the Americans came, the UN brought food. But we got very little. My mother would take Aziza with her to the center where they gave out rice and milk. They didn’t allow any men in line or boys older than nine. I turned ten that year, so I never got to go. Sometimes my mother and sister brought back strange packages of things we didn’t like to eat. But we never saw much of it anyway. Abdi stole most what the women brought back to the neighborhood before they could take it home. He gave it to his friends in the militia. He said it was so they could protect us from the Americans. Sometimes an American gave Aziza a few pieces of candy that she hid in her dress. Candy that was hard and as sweet as honey, but with strange flavors from far away.

I wished I had a piece of that candy that day. Then I could have bribed Asad to leave me alone. But I didn’t. And everyone was looking at me. I knew I had to go. The others would wait to hear what I had to say. Asad was my friend, not theirs.

We left the courtyard through the covered hallway that led to the gate. Miss Amina was supposed to watch us during lunch, but she and the other teachers were listening to a radio in one of the classrooms. Sometimes she looked out at us but not very often. It wasn’t hard for us to sneak by.

Outside, we saw men with AKs hurrying toward the market. We heard gunfire from all over the city. Not the small arguments we heard most days. A lot of AKs, like the street battles during the civil war.

We kept to the shady side of the street. It wasn’t an avenue, so it wasn’t very wide. A few cars and pickup trucks full of armed men zoomed past, kicking up a lot of dust. The militias were gathering. Black smoke rose from near the airport and the stadium. Tire fires meant the militias had set up roadblocks. We could hear the drumbeat of helicopters overhead. It would be a big fight.

A few men eyed us as we hurried past. I was scared. There weren’t any women on the street that day carrying wood or water. That was a bad sign. Men sometimes hid behind women when the Americans came or grabbed up boys to fight. They said the Americans wouldn’t shoot unarmed people. Sometimes they said they had special magic that meant the bullets couldn’t hurt us. My mother said never to believe them. There was no magic. The Americans would shoot back at anyone shooting at them. They couldn’t always see who was and wasn’t armed. Women and children often died.

Asad was wearing his buffalo shirt that day. He didn’t know what the words on it said. All he knew was it had a strange, horned beast on it in blue and red that looked powerful, so he liked it. He thought it would protect him. I could read the words and letters from Miss Amina’s English lessons. Buffalo Bills Super Bowl XXVII Champions. I knew the beast was like a water buffalo only different. I knew the shirt was for an American football team and a game they’d won this year. I didn’t think they played football in America. We never heard about them on the radio during World Cup.

Men kept looking at Asad’s shirt and glaring. They couldn’t read it either. They only knew it was American.

Asad turned down a narrow alley with doors on both sides and a small gap of sky down the center. He ducked into a shed hidden between two buildings.

It was dark and dusty inside. Daylight came through the open door, which Asad shut once I was in. After that, the only light came through the wide cracks in the door. It took a moment before I could see again.

Asad pulled a heavy bundle from behind a stack of cardboard boxes. He laid it on a wooden crate in the striped sunlight by the door and unwrapped it.

The AK was almost as big as he was. Its metal was black. Its wood was dull. I could see the grain was worn. It was one of the short ones that folded out. Its curved clip was almost as long as Asad’s arm.

“Is it loaded?” I asked in awe. I had never seen an AK that close before. Of course, I’d seen AKs. They were everywhere. But I’d never been close enough to touch one. Not that the men who carried them would let me. Men saved money for a year to buy an AK where we lived. I ran a finger down its side. The metal was cool and scratched.

Asad slapped my hand. “Of course it’s loaded. How would I kill Americans if it wasn’t?”

“Is it heavy?” I asked with my hands behind my back.

“It’s not too bad if you use the strap.” He put his arm through the thick, green strap and lifted it over his shoulder. He held it like the men at the roadblocks. Even with the strap, he leaned back some like it was still a little heavy. I wondered if I could carry it. Asad was taller and stronger than me.

“Have you shot it?”

“Not yet. But Uncle Abdi showed me how. Here’s the safety.” He pushed down the metal lever on the side with his right hand. It clicked twice then once more when he pushed it back up like he had gone too far. Then he put his finger on the trigger and swung the barrel back and forth across the room. He looked exactly like one of the older boys from our school who had joined a militia. He’d come back one day to show off his AK before Miss Amina had chased him away with a broom.

“How many do you have?” I asked, peering toward the boxes.

“Just one,” he said, sliding out from the strap and placing the AK back on the cloth. “Uncle Abdi will give you the rest.”

“I think the others will want to see them first,” I said. I didn’t think Asad would try to trick us, but his uncle might. My mother said that was how boys ended up in Ethiopia or worse.

“He doesn’t keep them here. This one is mine. He gave it to me this morning.” He quickly threw the cloth back over the AK.

“Does Abdi know you’re asking us to help?” I don’t know why I asked him such a shaming question.

Asad looked up as if I had slapped him. “Of course he knows,” he snapped. “Anyway, he wouldn’t mind. We will need more than two of us to defend the block to when the Americans come.”

“But what if he only has two AKs?” An AK cost thirty American dollars in the market, or four cows in Kenya. Asad’s uncle was not a rich man.

Asad didn’t look like he’d thought of that. It would be shaming for him to promise us AKs and not have them to give. But his uncle would have made no such promises. Asad slid the bundle back behind the boxes. “Anyway, we should get back. Don’t tell of the others where I keep it.”

“I won’t,” I promised. I knew Abdi would beat him if someone stole it.

Outside, the fighting had picked up and was moving closer. We could hear machine guns in the city center. All the way back, I was hoping none of the teachers had locked the gate. They had, but Dalmar let us in.

“Miss Amina was looking for you,” he said to me without looking at Asad. “I told her you ate some bad food and were squatting in the bathroom.”

Asad hurried away, not wanting to be locked inside when the Americans came. I returned to our classroom just as Miss Amina was about to get started. She stared at me as I sat down but didn’t say anything.

Our classroom had a steel door that led into the alley. Usually, Miss Amina had it open so we could see the blackboard better. While I was out, she had closed it. There was some light coming through the screened window from the courtyard. There was a little more from the little windows over the steel door. Some days she would also open the curtain that led to the courtyard, but not that day.

Miss Amina returned to the English lesson she had started that morning. She asked us questions when she saw we weren’t paying attention. I think she thought it was because of the fighting outside. But I hadn’t had a chance to tell the others about what Asad had shown me and they all wanted to know. Even Erasto. But each time I tried to whisper, Miss Amina shushed me and got back to the lesson. She didn’t get very far.

The fighting got louder until it sounded like it was on our block. Suddenly, it was. Back and forth like an argument between husband and wife where even the smallest children took sides. An RPG exploded. The plaster shook. Dust drifted down from the ceiling.

“Everyone be calm,” Miss Amina said. “We’re going to move into the courtyard. We’ll be safe there.” She gathered us up like a hen does her chicks, making sure none of us was left behind. She shooed us toward the courtyard with her arms wide.

Then we heard a lot of shouting and more gunfire, very, very close. And a loud, angry buzz like a beehive far above the ceiling. Everyone stopped and huddled next to Miss Amina who tried to protect us with her arms. She told us to get down. We all did, but didn’t leave her side. No one cried or said anything. All of us had been through this before. We knew we needed to be quiet so we wouldn’t be noticed.

There was a lot more gunfire, then angry curses. Men in heavy boots were running and shouting, in English I think, right outside the door. Gunfire followed them from all around, even from our roof. It sounded like an entire militia was firing down the alley. It sounded like a gun battle from the civil war. I could see Miss Amina was scared. For a moment in the dim light, she didn’t look much older than my sister. I hoped Aziza was ok.

Outside, someone thumped against the metal door. We all froze. It was latched but Miss Amina hadn’t thrown the bolt. More AKs fired. We could hear bullets thudding into the walls like heavy rain. Then there was a crash and we were blinded by sunlight. A soldier rolled into our classroom chased by more bullets. Not a militia soldier, an American in a dusty, swirled uniform. With a helmet. And a gun that wasn’t an AK pointed out the door. He didn’t fire it, he just kicked the door shut while lying on the floor.

More gunfire pounded the door until it sounded like someone beating a steel barrel like a drum. Senti coins of sunlight appeared on the floor. Bullets broke apart Miss Amina’s blackboard, cracking the English she’d written on it into smaller and smaller words. Pieces flew across the room, whizzing by our ears like biting flies in summer. They tore at the flag hanging behind her desk, making it dance like the first wind before a storm.

The American jumped up beside the door and threw the bolt. Then he turned and saw us squatting with Miss Amina on the floor. We all just stared, wondering if he would turn his gun on us. Some militiamen would if they thought we would give them away.

Instead, he put one finger to his lips and said, “Shh.” We knew that word even in our language, knew exactly what he meant. Miss Amina barely nodded, never looking away from his eyes. He couldn’t see it, but we could feel her arms shaking, just a little, as she held us closer. Until he smiled.

More gunfire and cursing, in our language, right outside the door. More holes of sunlight the size of hard candy. Bullets kicked up little puffs of dust from the floor like the first raindrops of a storm. Someone tried to break down the door. The bolt and concrete held.

The American started looking around for another way out. He was young, not much older than some of the militiamen. Not a boy, but not a full man like I remember my father. But he was big, taller and heavier than most of our men, though ours were just as strong. With blue eyes. I wondered if all Americans had blue eyes. My people didn’t. Maybe some of the UN people did, but I’d never seen them close enough to know. And he was sweating. The afternoon sun was hot, even this time of year, especially in long sleeves and pants.

He crept toward the curtain that led to the courtyard like a cat avoiding a pack of dogs. He pointed his gun all around the room, but never at us. When he pulled aside the thin cloth, he stopped and looked back. His face was like a mask from another tribe, one I didn’t know. Not a scary mask, a friendly one like a guardian spirit. I raised a hand and waved. He smiled again and waved back. Then he disappeared behind the curtain and was gone.

A few moments later, we heard gunfire from a different alley. Then the high pitched cry of a boy in mourning echoed through the school. After that, the AKs became more distant. The battle had left us behind like its unwanted children, scared but still alive.

We stayed huddled in the classroom until Miss Amina said it was safe. Everything went quiet outside when the men were called to evening prayers. Then we gathered in the courtyard with the other children and teachers. The battle started again when prayers were over.

Miss Amina said it wasn’t safe to go home. So we stayed at the school all night, sleeping in the classrooms and on the dusty stones of the courtyard. Fighting was everywhere in the city, like the old days. Sometimes it was close, sometimes far away. Sometimes it flashed like lightning across the sky. From the courtyard, we could see fires glowing around the city. They burned all night.

By dawn, the AKs were only calling back and forth across the city like stray dogs, like any other morning. Like the wives of drunken men after the African Nations Cup, we crept home trying to go unnoticed. Miss Amina said there would be no school for at least another day.

When I got home, I found my mother crying. She was wrapping Aziza’s body on the table. She said a bullet had come through the wall and killed her. The militia’s or the Americans’, she didn’t know. Now there would be no one to carry water or go with her to the UN center. I had no one to teach the English that I learned. I tried to teach my mother, but she wasn’t interested like Aziza had been. Most of the bloodstain is gone now, but the bullet hole is still there. Like the hole in my heart where Aziza used to be.

I found out later that Abdi had also been killed that day, in an alley right behind the school. Asad wouldn’t talk about it. He gave me his buffalo shirt the next day, saying he didn’t want anything American anymore. Besides, he’d learned it was a lie. But he also wanted nothing more to do with the militias. I never heard what happened to his AK. I sometimes wonder if he hid back in the shed.

Not long after that, Miss Amina stopped teaching us English. A year later, the Islamists made her leave the school. The Americans left, too, but they didn’t wait a year. The UN stayed until the Islamists started killing them. Now the militias don’t get their rice and milk. Neither do we.

The militias say they won a great victory that day. I don’t know. The Americans killed a lot of militiamen, hundreds people say. And a lot more women and children than just Aziza died. That doesn’t sound like a victory to me. But the militias are still here and the Americans are gone. So I guess they won something.

I still study hard in school so that maybe I can go live with my auntie in Columbus one day. And I practice my English when no one else is listening. My mother says I should go to Nairobi when I’m older. It’s closer and easier to get to. And the Islamists might let me go.

I never saw another American after that day. I keep hoping they’ll come back. Maybe then they’ll bring peace. And even if they leave again, maybe then I could go with them.

© 2010 Edward P. Morgan III

To Slay the Dragon

"Forgive me father for I have sinned."

"When was the day of your last confession?"

"One year past, but I have never confessed this crime."

"And what is the nature of your sin?"

"I killed a man."

"Many men have killed in battle, my son."

"I didn't kill him in battle, father. I killed him while he slept."

---

Men think of me as a soldier. I am no soldier. My father was, but I am not half the man as he. That day, I had no sword, no axe, no hauberk, not even a spear, except the one I'd stolen. Only a leather jerkin and my ever-present saex. Back then, I wasn't a kingsthane, just a smuggler. Until yesterday, men followed me because they thought I'd killed the Dragon. In that, they are right. I killed him. But not in the way they sing.

You must remember, father, this was a score of years ago, half a lifetime past. Before the Danes set fire to Lindesfarne. Before King Offa had completed his dyke. Before he went mad and began killing all his kin.

I was there the day Offa conquered Scropp's Fort for Mercia. With that victory his westward expansion was almost complete. We thought he was destined to be the High King of all the Angles and Saxon that day. All that remained was Northumbria and consolidation. The Severn would form part of the boundary between his kingdom and the foreigners.

Foreigners, that was what we called them, though it was our boats that had landed on their shores generations ago. We built our kingdoms as we pushed them toward the setting sun. For their part, the foreigners called us after our ever-present knives. Saex in our tongue. Saesneg in their own. They had become intimately familiar with them when Offa granted a bounty on the ears of any foreigner found within his territory without his permission. In retaliation, they killed our Saex-wielding men wherever they were found. Not for money, but for joy.

Or so the story goes.

Where our leaders and warriors call them heathens, I know better. They had converted to the one true faith generations before we arrived. Unlike our people, a few of whose grandfathers still remember the old gods' ways, hammer, sword and sacrifice.

In those days, I didn't care about another man's language or religion. The color of his coin told all I needed of the tale his character. The foreigners had goods my people wanted. I am not a brave or ambitious man by nature. Bartering was easier than stealing. Sneaking goods across the border cheaper than paying tax or toll. The true reckoning wasn't with Offa's easily bribed ealdormen, but with the ever-shifting alliances of these temperamental foreign kings. They called themselves dragons.

It wasn't the dragon of Powys whose seat of power King Offa had stolen that worried me the day Scropp's Fort fell, but the dragon who dwelled in the dark hills of Gwynedd farther north, bordering the sea.

His was an ancient line. Six generations past, Caradog, one of his great-grand sires, had captured a noble Christian maiden named Gwenffrewi, sister-daughter of a local saint. He threatened to ravage her if she would not submit willingly. When she resisted and fled for sanctuary, Caradog struck her head from her body in a rage. Where her shining tresses came to rest, the earth wept in sorrow at the foreshortening of her beauty. Our Lord paid her wergild with a bounty of his tears. A holy, healing well sprang forth, consecrated by her uncle, Beuno, God's own venerated overseer, whose piety made her whole and returned her to this life.

At least that is the tale the foreign bards sing for the pilgrims drawn to Holywell, or Treffynnon as they call it. I suspect the truth is much less noble. It often is.

That day, another Caradog sat atop Gwynedd's throne, one with a son with a cruel reputation they simply called the Draig. The Norns told me our world would be a better place without him.

When Scropp's Fort fell, I was in the midst of a bargain, Anglic cattle, Saxon silver and Kentish tin for a like quantity of Gwynedd copper and Irish gold, with some local honey wine thrown in for equal measure. The mead was my true interest, the one part of the deal that would turn a profit when traded farther south and east.

The King of Powys thus believed I had betrayed him, leading Offa's thanes to the hall where we were to negotiate our exchange. I was as surprised by Offa's actions as he was. Had my sister not been in Scropp's Fort that day, I simply would have dismissed the failed venture as God's will.

As soon as I heard Offa's men were on the move, I ran to get her out. Too late. Winifred had wisely fled the market at the first news of Offa's approach. From there, she made her way to a farmstead tun near a ford on the Severn where I had been gathering cattle for our trade. Straight into the teeth of a retaliatory raid. The Norns had conspired against me.

Ours was a three-party deal brokered by the King of Powys between he and I and the Draig of Gwynedd. Scropp's Fort was our exchange point and Powys' hall, Amwythig in their tongue. It was the ancient seat of his people's power, his last stronghold east of the Severn. What had begun as a negotiating raid by Offa to intimidate Powys into paying tribute had ended with all the foreigners retreating across the river to protect their amassed trade treasure from being seized. Offa quickly found himself in control of the hilltop motte, as surprised as anyone. How he had found out about our trade, or whether he knew at all, I do not know.

All that mattered was the foreigners thought I had betrayed them. The Mercians put any stragglers to the sword that day, with the women given to the warriors for sport. Powys was too busy trying to hold the fords and keep the Offa's axemen on the east side of the river to deal with me. The Draig wasn't so constrained. He had no border to defend and fifty household guards accompanying him, all cousins, to see his bounty safely home. Which is what he meant to do, in trade or no. I now believe Caradog betrayed us both, Powys and myself, to escape Offa's wrath, weaken his southern rival and profit a small herd of Anglic cattle at my expense. I suspect that Offa knew, or at least turned a blind eye, as I had not sought his permission before initiating the trade from within his lands.

I lathered my horse getting back to the farmstead. The tun, as its name implies, was enclosed but its walls and manor were meant to hold against small bands of raiders not an attack by fifty warriors who knew both the land and their profession. A mile away, the rising smoke foretold that I had not ridden hard or fast enough. Though if I had, I would have shared the villeins' fate.

The manor house was still smoldering as I watched it from the wood. I saw no sign of either work hands or foreign warriors. With the exception of the roof collapsing, the tun was as quiet as an open grave. When the wind shifted, only smoke watered my eyes, not the hint of rancid bacon left too long by the fire. For a moment, hope swelled my heart.

Had anyone hidden safely in the wood, they should have spotted me and signaled. I told myself a tale that they all had fled to a neighboring farmstead and would return again come morning. I sniffed around the ruined manor, reluctant enter. The smoke still smelled clean, as it did from the smaller buildings that had also been set alight. Then, I noticed the thatched-roofed cow byre still standing, well away from the house. My dread grew as I approached. Any hope I'd felt earlier died forlorn.

The byre doors stood open. The smell of rotting compost assaulted me from within. Inside, I found all the men along with every boy above the age of ten. The sound of the ropes and rafters creaking beneath their combined weight continues to haunt my dreams. They swayed in the noontide breeze like a dozen ripened sheaves of hops or malt over-wintering to dry, their faces contorted by blood, their bowels and bladders empty.

Of the women and maidens, including Winifred, I found no sign even as I stirred the ashes in the manor house and other ruined buildings. I knew their fate, driven back across the river with the cattle. The wives would become slaves or chattel, the maidens rewards for the Draig's warriors, or prizes sailed across the Irish Sea. That was the way of these foreigners. No wonder Offa ordered his thanes to take the ears of any foreigners they found east of the Severn. Not that they needed much encouragement. Mercians still say these foreigners are as barbaric as the Danes who raided Lindesfarne. More so because they purport to be Christian.

When the wind swung around again, I found two infants and a toddler along with a resistant mother in a burned out cottage beyond the enclosure wall. The moment I saw their twisted, blackened bodies, I knew as a true Christian man exactly what I must do. Kill the Draig. And retrieve any of the women that remained in his possession.

As I said, father, then I was no warrior. I had no army of housecarls ready to ride at my command. The Draig and I had never looked each other in the eye, had never seen each other face to face. I would use that to my advantage. As a prince of Gwynedd, he would be simple to find, harder to approach. There would be no help from Offa, whose ambitions were sated for the moment. I had to craft a cunning plan, plotting in secret, biding my time alone.

Discretely, I met with my trading contacts, careful not to betray my desire for revenge. I sent children into the tuns, baileys and market fairs to gather rumors. As today, orphans were everywhere and largely went unnoticed. Between the berry harvest at Lammas and the Feast of St. Matthew in the fall, a plan slowly emerged in my mind.

At first, I thought about a pilgrimage to St. Winefride's at Holywell. I had heard the Draig would pay tribute there on her feast day, two days after the celebration of All Saints', in thanks for his successful raid.

But there wasn't where I planned my confrontation. I knew the ways of these foreigners, knew their superstitions. On the eve of All Saints' Day there would be an ancient festival, disguised to fool the church. That night he would sacrifice one of my cattle grown fat on summer grasses before he gave away his captives as rewards the next day. Dark spirits were said to roam from house to house that night. I intended to be one of them.

I also knew that Caradog did not abide by the old ways in the same way as his son. He would have nothing to do with the ancient rites, at least in public. Which meant the Draig would have to go elsewhere. My urchin network said he would celebrate on his way to Holywell, in a manor near a church village called Llan Sean Ior. There, I would intercept him.

A month before All Saints' Day, I began my journey. For a week, I'd planted rumors in the Scropp's Fort market that I was chasing a new deal in Kent. I made certain to be seen hurrying away southeast down Watling Street one morning with a donkey loaded for a long journey. Three days later, near the village of Wall, beyond the haunted, stone ruins of Wroxeter said to be a foreign capital more ancient than Scropp's Fort, I abandoned the old road in favor of the forest paths and trading tracks I knew so well leading deep into the archdiocese of Lichfield. Ten days after that, I exchanged the donkey for penitent's clothes at a small, isolated chapel outside of Chester. Then, I drifted toward that ancient fortress settlement on the River Dee with the handful Saxon pilgrims bound for Holywell to make offerings and draw a little healing water. From Chester, I crossed into Gwynedd unnoticed, hidden among the diseased and lame that no one wanted to look upon in their dark, Anglic wool.

Here, my journey became more perilous. Outside of Holywell, I was forced to give up my first disguise. People would notice a pilgrim moving in the wrong direction along the ancient road paralleling the stormy sea. I had little knowledge of the lands or terrain I traveled through. I spoke some of their foreign tongue but it always felt like gravel in my mouth. I would be quickly marked as an outsider. So I darkened my hair and made myself into a mendicant tinker, a skill I had become acquainted with through trading metal for many years. It didn't take me long to establish a reputation of passable mediocrity as I seeded the story of working my way to Deganwy for the itinerant beggars' bounty to be found at Caradog's generous hand on All Saints' Day. Only I knew I would never see his court. I just hoped I would arrive at Llan Sean Ior in time to rescue Winifred from whichever foreign lord or warrior was destined to be her fate.

Winifred was both young and pretty, desirable qualities to these foreigners in a second wife or servant. And a virgin, which gave her greater worth as a reward. My deals and trades in recent years had been focused on accumulating her a dowry, to make her an attractive match, perhaps to a housecarl or ealdormen, even a foreign lordling, anyone who could improve our family's fate. Both hers and her children's through a good marriage, and mine through better contacts for trade. I wasn't picky on which side of the border Winifred was wed. Upon the death of our parents, responsibility for her upkeep had fallen to me. I intended to be repaid. I would not be denied the benefit she would bring. No foreign prince was going to milk my cow for free.

For two weeks, I meandered toward the Draig's manor house as autumn crept toward the harvest moon. Along the way, I found work as a laborer on days when my meager tinker skills would not keep me fed. I paralleled the old road that itself paralleled the coast. The land was as foreign as the language I was forced to speak. The woods dark and untamed. These foreigners raised more sheep than barley and even those on hillsides ringed by trees. In the distance to south each day foreboding mountains loomed, some already frosted with snow like the thinning hair atop an old man's head. The foreigners called them aeries, the nesting places of their noble eagles, hidden strongholds too formidable to approach. I prayed Winifred hadn't been spirited away to one already or she would be beyond my reach forever. On days when the north wind sliced through my peasant's wool and worn leather jerkin, I could almost smell the Irish Sea.

I stalked the Draig along uncleared, hilly tracks overshadowed by ancient trees between remote villages. Squat, round towers were nestled like griffin eggs abandoned amongst the forest glens. I was as miserly with the miles I traveled each day as a dragon spending its horde of gold. Along the way I learned the Draig was in residence in his manor at Llan Sean Ior. I reached my destination just hours before sunset on the eve of All Saints' Day.

The churchyard was marked by a low, stone wall, a graveyard separated inside by another wall and a gate. The church itself was a chapel of dark stone, as small and durable as a minor fortress. A furlong outside the churchyard gate, stalls and trestles packed a market festival. Outlying villagers and itinerant craftsmen sold everything from copper pots to dyed woolens to roots ready for winter storage to sharp steel knives to salt gathered from the sea to glowing spoons and bowls of yew to pouches of medicinal herbs to small charms of ivy and hoops of wild roses to turnips carved into candle lanterns with wicked, evil faces. The air was full of the scent of roast mutton still crackling from the fire, and of speckled bread fresh from the sanctioned brickwork ovens. These foreigners liked raisins and currants in their bread instead of just plain, hearty barley. Or maybe it was a local specialty baked just for this occasion. Other stalls sold freshly churned butter by the brick or by the knifeful, and honey by the pot or spoon.

I had collected enough local coin over the previous fortnight that I could afford to eat well. They had little brown ale but cups of the honey wine that should have been mine in trade were in the hands of almost all the men and several of the women. These foreigners liked their celebrations sweet. As I ate from a crusty bread trencher, I made certain my saex was safely tucked beneath my shirt, inside my jerkin, as it had been since I crossed the borderlands. To be caught as a Saxon and a Mercian this close to the Draig's court would surely mean the rope once they determined who I was.

Such a revelation seemed unlikely. When they weren't eating mutton and drinking mead, the foreigners were singing and dancing to unfamiliar tunes laid upon a harper's strings. Unlike the son of a Saxon king, the Draig didn't hide from his people on feast days. He wandered amongst the crowd, silver cup in hand, laughing, singing and dancing, slipping coppers to the children and peasants, including me, who he didn't treat much like Offa did his villeins.

All afternoon and evening, I nursed my mead cup like my hatred, making certain my face revealed no such emotion. Others weren't so stingy with their coin for drink. As I watched the revelry approach drunkenness, of Winifred I saw no sign. I thought she and the other captives would be held at the Draig's manor house awaiting his court tomorrow where they would be given away after morning mass.

As the sun broke through the leaden sky late in the afternoon, the Draig hung seven criminals from a sturdy gallows near the long shadows of the woods before the cheering crowd. Thankfully, I recognized not a man among them, though I could see several were Saxon. I wanted to kill the Draig then, to drive my saex deep into his heart. But that would not free my sister. So, I had to wait. In that moment I felt what drove Offa to unite our people and conquer these tribes of foreigners hiding in the hills.

At dusk, two huge bonfires were lit and left to rage as shadows danced on the gnarled trees beyond their flames. People paraded between them as an act of purification. They drove the cattle through next. My cattle. The Draig slaughtered not one but two as a sacrifice to his people. Later, their bare bones were cast upon the flames. All the other fires in the village and manor were extinguished to be relighted tomorrow from a common flame. Only the church did not accede.

As the gloaming deepened toward full night, the foreigners began to make small offerings to a fey queen and the spirits of their dead. The name of each person in the village had been inscribed on separate stones placed upon a special fire that was allowed to burn down. The owners of any stones that went missing by the morning would die within the year. Or so the people said.

Once the women and children were safely abed, the Draig's young warriors, dressed in white tunics with masks or blackened faces, stalked the other celebrants, who mocked fighting them with spears. By midnight tales were told of a dread black boar roaming the darkness in search of unwary children to devour, of a headless woman on the prowl through the forest, of tailors stitching bewitching spells into the garments of unsuspecting people with needle and magic thread.

Unlike the other men, I was as still as sober as a boy before his first feast day. Though as a Saxon trader, I knew how to pretend to be much drunker than I was. As the mead loosened men's tongues, I listened at the edges of their conversations. Talk soon turned to the captive women to be awarded the next day. I quickly learned they were not in the Draig's manor hall, but within the sanctity of the stone chapel, guarded by the village priest. Men avoided the churchyard that night as they thought it a place where spirits gathered, along with stiles and crossroads. I knew then how Winifred and I would escape. If I could steal one of the Draig's horses, so much the better.

One by one the foreigners lay down and fell asleep near the warmth of the dying bonfires. None, including the Draig, sought the shelter of either house or hall, despite the night having turned clear and cold. As the full moon climbed the silent sky without the barest breath of wind, the clearing became as still and quiet as a barrow at midwinter. I feigned sleep awhile, until the volume of their snores allayed my fear and uncertainty.

Quiet as a cat in a churchyard, I rose and looked around. No one stirred. The night cut through my peasant wool like the north wind through the cracks of a villein's rough-cut door, barely pausing at my tinker's jerkin. I knew if I started shivering, I would give myself away. Near the ashes of the fire with the naming stones, I spied a white, woolen tunic one of the youths had discarded. A plan formed within my mind. On padded feet, I crept toward it. First, I donned the wool and immediately felt warmer. Perhaps it was the only the proximity of the now dead fire. Cautiously, I scooped my hands into the ashes, wary of any lingering embers but finding none. I laved my hands in soot then rubbed them over my face and hair. That quickly I had transformed myself from a peasant tinker into a spirit of the dead.

Slowly, slowly I searched among the stones for a name. While I can no more read or write than any respectable warrior or trader, I had seen the Draig, like all vain men, made certain his naming stone was larger and more unusual than any of the others. Careful not to clink one against another, I searched the pile until I found the oblong stone, a rampant dragon carved into its surface by the type of craftsmen these foreigners favored to decorate even the items of their daily use. Quietly, I tucked the token inside my shirt. It further warmed my heart, which I took as a sign from God. A good omen.

Again, I surveyed the sleeping men until I found the Draig curled upon his side in a place of honor near the warmth of both bonfires, silver goblet near one hand, the other loosely curled around his spear. I crept upon him between the fires, using their dwindling flames and heaps of glowing embers to shield me from all but a few eyes should any open. Carefully, I removed my saex from hiding before taking those final steps. I knew I should do the deed quickly. Every moment was one in which a warrior or a peasant might arise to drain his bladder or go in search of a warmer bed. Instead, I couldn't help but watch this young man sleep, so peacefully, unaware that the Norns were about to snip short the skein of his fate. As I said, father, at this point in my life, I had never killed a man. Even the necessary slaughtering of livestock I usually left to others.

The Draig breathed heavily but evenly. The sleep of the drunken, the innocent or the just. I knew he was neither of the latter two. A part of me wasn't certain how to go about it, how to kill this sleeping man in cold, cold blood. So I stood a moment, watching him breathe, watching his chest slowly rise and fall. I stood transfixed so long that I began to detect the pulse in his neck, just beside his Adam's apple. Something in that rhythmic beating echoed within my head until all I heard was rushing blood, his or mine I am uncertain. That brought a series of quick visions from the byre, visions of men I’d known each fighting for his life and breath at the end of a rope, as the prisoners' shadows had danced against the ancient trees earlier that evening. How did this man deserve to live after what he had caused to befall men whose only crime was where they lived by happenstance?

Without thinking, I bent over to study my foe. My saex, unbidden, descended until its point hovered bare inches above his pulsing neck, the fires flickering along its blood groove in perfect time as if thirsty for his blood. The same light glinted off the rings of a hauberk shirt at his collar like the scales of a true dragon concealed beneath his tunic. Only a man afraid slept in mail, a man constantly wary and wondering about others seeking vengeance for his sins. I became that dark, avenging angel, that spirit of death the night's celebration had been meant to ward away.

I aligned the point of my saex a hairsbreadth above his throbbing neck vein. Deliberately, I positioned my other hand over the bone-work pommel so that I might use my weight to drive my blow home. Still, I hesitated, momentarily uncertain. Until I saw an eyelid flutter. Then, I did nothing but react, as any man would, my right hand guiding my saex as my left forced my full weight behind it, like a man separating a leg of mutton at the joint.

The point of my saex sprayed blood high and hard in a noisy, damp arc against my chest like a young man relieving himself of the past night's ale just before dawn. The blade's razor edge sliced outward as I pushed my weight upon the point, cutting through flesh and vein, windpipe and sinew, a second vein, and out the other side, biting deep into the dirt. Blood then ceased to spatter but pooled on the ground like a black mirror, one reflecting a face I did not know back up at me in the moonlight. A mask contorted by fear and rage with huge, white eyes. A face that still haunts my dreams these nights a score of years later. Only as I glanced away did I hear the faint gurgling from the wound as the Draig stared up at me, his eyes fully recognizing the spirit that had spun open the tap of his life to spill upon the ground.

Weakly, he fumbled with his leaf-blade spear, desperately trying to bring it to bear, a warrior to the end. I gently removed it from his hands, shaking my head in silence. He no longer struggled. His lips moved as a he mouthed Our Lord's Prayer. A moment later, his eyes went glassy as the sounds from his open throat ceased and he stared to his fate beyond this world somewhere in the sky. Heaven or hell, I neither knew nor cared.

I levered my saex from the dirt, rocking it back and forth to free it from its earthen sheath. I wiped the blade upon his tunic before restoring it to hiding. For some reason, I kept his spear with me. Perhaps I thought it would complete my disguise. Perhaps it was a trophy marking my first kill. Perhaps I thought I would need it to intimidate the priest. Or perhaps, I just needed to lean upon it. I also slipped his silver goblet inside my shirt and cut the purse strings to his coin pouch, which quickly followed, scant wergild for the men he'd murdered at the farmstead tun.

I arose like a ghost, a spirit no longer completely anchored to this world. I felt I was drifting and detached. The world, though dark, seemed bright and sharp at the edges, each tiny sound crisp and clear. As I picked my way through the sleeping bodies toward the churchyard, I began to feel giddy, as though long suppressed laughter were welling up inside me. I fought hard not to let it out.

Like a man in a dream, I slipped into the churchyard, avoiding the front door to the chapel that I knew would be barred. The back door opened after a few soft wraps of my knuckles upon the solid wood. I supposed the priest thought he had a penitent come to confess his evening's sins. I know not what he thought as he peered out cracked the door with a candle lantern in hand and found my blood-spattered visage awaiting him. His face went pale. He mumbled something in either the priest's or his foreign tongue. He made the sign of the cross and tried to close the door. He hesitated just long enough for me to easily block his effort with my spear haft, then kick the door open with a foot. Eyes wide and full of fear, he slowly backed away.

The priest caused me no trouble. I said only three words to him that night, all in the foreign tongue. The first was their word for maiden. He pointed to a room behind the sanctuary. I gestured with my spear, which he understood meant I did not intend to let him out of sight. Though from his expression, I doubt he had the courage to brain me with a candlestick. I must have looked the very image of death to him that night, black face, wild eyes, white tunic heavily clotted with blood.

He opened the door. I motioned him to awaken the half dozen maidens sleeping on straw pallets upon the floor, huddled together against the cold. Of the older women, there was no sign. But I could tell by the size of the building that there was no place else to hide them, except in the priest's quarters. I didn't put it past him. "All?" I questioned, narrowing my eyes for intimidation. I needn't have bothered. He just nodded quickly, hoping his cooperation would spare him the fate of whomever was splashed upon my chest. He needn't have feared unless he fought me. He was a priest. I am no Dane.

When he awakened the women, they were frightened, on the edge of tears and crying out. Until I called Winifred's name and spoke to them in their native Saxon, telling them I had come to set them free. What that meant, neither they nor I knew. In truth, I cared what happened to none of them but Winifred. I told them to raid the priest's quarters for cloaks and anything they needed. I reached inside my shirt and handed the eldest the Draig's coin purse. I told her to lead the others east through the woods for many days until they crossed the river and wished them luck. That was all I had to offer.

I turned back to the priest and uttered my last foreign word to him. "Horse." He said something long and quick in the foreign tongue of which all I caught was “plowshare.” I prodded him out the back to show me where with Winifred in tow, shivering in her kirtle against the frigid night. Outside, I pulled the bloody, white tunic over my head, turned it inside out and put it over hers. It helped stop her shivering. I was too anxious and afraid to notice the cold. We needed to put many miles behind us before anyone awoke and raised the alarm.

The priest guided us to a small, open shelter where they kept the parish plow horse. He wouldn't be fast, but was well suited to my purpose. He would have to carry both of us for several days until we reached Mercia. Once again, I felt God had provided for his righteous.

I left Winifred to bridle him and get him ready. There was no saddle, but she managed to conjure up a horse blanket before I returned. I took the priest back to the chapel and locked him with the sacramental wine. The other women had disappeared as if they, too, had been nothing more than spirits on this night, existing only in my dreams. It would be another month before I learned their fate. On my way back to the horse byre, I stole bread and cheese, and scooped another handful of ashes from the cold kitchen hearth, which I rubbed on Winifred's face and hair as soon as I returned, much to her confusion and disgust.

Our ride was long and hard that night. As I'd predicted, the crossroads were all clear owing to superstition. I set off for the old road to the north instead of the hilly track by which I'd come. Upon reaching it I set the horse to a steady canter, galloping through each village astride the road. At the first stream we crossed, I threw the stone from my shirt far beyond the ford. I kept the spear in case we had to ride someone down. We rode throughout the night, walking when we had to, seeking shelter only as dawn bloodied the eastern sky.

We repeated the pattern for two more days. We outpaced the news to Chester, arriving on St. Winefride's feast day. I traded the silver goblet and last of my coin for some decent food and clothing. Again, I kept the spear, my only prize or token from that night. After resting a day, we wended our way back to Scropp's Fort, uncertain of our welcome.

By the time we reached the outer embankment, the news had overtaken us. All of Gwynedd was in chaos. Caradog was left without an heir. Wild tales accompanied the death of the Draig, each more fantastic than the last. Not believing the foreigners' stories of a headless woman riding through the villages on a demon horse driven by a dark, avenging spirit, Offa had quietly offered a rich reward to whoever had performed the deed. Gold, not silver.

At the gate to Scropp's Fort, we were met by Offa's housecarls and accompanied to his hall. He heard my tale but remained unconvinced that I, a minor smuggler and Saxon trader, could have slain such a mighty warrior. I have always been a storyteller, so I embellished my tale, just a bit, replacing my sturdy saex with the Draig's own spear. I was ashamed at having slit a man's throat like a thief common to the night. Offa noted the dragon etched into my spear blade. I wished I hadn't sold the silver goblet or thrown the Draig's naming stone into the river. My sister confirmed what I said, but still he could not decide whether to credit it or not. He sent his spies to find proof my words were true. For a time, my sister and I were entertained as guests of his winter hall, which was just a warmer, better-fed word for prisoners.

Our status changed when one of his scouts rode in to Scropp's Fort several weeks later leading two bedraggled, young women. While I stood silently to one side, they told their tale of a cattle raid on their farmstead tun the day Scropp's Fort fell, of how they were taken prisoner by a foreign prince, of how the older women and younger girls were sold as servants, of how they were held in a stone chapel to be given to away as prizes. Of how they were rescued on All Saints’ Eve by a man covered in blood with a spear who freed them to the woods and took one of their number with him. They both swore my sister was that maiden. When asked if they knew the man who had rescued them, they each pointed a trembling finger at me.

That was the day my fortunes finally changed. The two women were quickly married off to men far away in East Anglia. Winifred was given to an ealdorman in Kent, complete with a dowry of silver from the gold that Offa paid me. I was made an ealdorman myself and given a manor on lands formerly belonging to the foreigners, complete with a small herd of Anglic cattle of my own. Warriors, good, strong men, flocked to my hall, eager to serve as housecarls of the man who had slain the Dragon with nothing but a spear.

As the years has passed, the story grew embellished with each retelling until I rode a horse for war across the long border in a polished mail hauberk with a shield and saex and spear, and slew a scaly, green dragon in single combat, rescuing a maiden from its lair and claiming its glittering horde of gold. Now, even the foreigners tell the tale of such a dragon being slain, though they prefer to credit the killing to St. George rather than a Saxon.

Only now do I suspect how much Offa knew the day Scropp's Fort fell. A year before his death, after a night of heavy drinking, he confided in me how much he had longed for Gwynedd to be heirless on the day Caradog died. At Rhuddlan Marsh he got his wish, though much too late to exploit it. Now that Offa's son is also dead, both kingdoms lay in ruin. I played no small part in the suffering that will cause.

Looking back now as a warrior, I can see the Draig was only defending his father's realm against foreigners intent on stealing his lands and ravishing his women. I know because I have repaid the foreigners a hundredfold for any evil done to me. The Draig was a warrior prince and a better Christian than I fear I'll be when I see Death's wild eyes staring down upon me, dying with a prayer upon his lips.

I, too, will die soon, father. These wounds have done their work. I feel God's hand upon me now. Only I, and now you, know the truth of what happened that All Saints' Day Eve, and how much braver the Dragon was than I.

---

"Can I be forgiven, father?"

The priest sat quietly at the man's bedside a moment, wondering if he had finished or was just pausing to catch his ragged breath, wondering how such a man could think that God would sanction such a noble deed. He would never understand such men. Surely, he knew God was on their side, whatever reversals Mercia might have suffered since Offa's death.

When the silence endured until he was certain the man was waiting for an answer, he said, "May God grant you peace and pardon, my son. I absolve you from your sin. And by the sanctity of the confessional, your secret dies with me."


© 2010 Edward P. Morgan III

With Extreme Prejudice

There is a darkness that settles over me, a shadow mirrored by the sky. I know we will fly out from under it, but I suspect the leaden mood will linger. The task ahead is grave. It settles on me like a funeral service, which is what it will be for someone’s family. Hopefully not my own.

The call came early or late depending on your time zone, while I was still groggy from the night before. Don’t let anyone fool you; no one parties like the Japanese. Only a meet and greet, no active negotiations. For a few hours, it felt good to forget how that relationship would transform when they went from prospective clients to paying customers. That day, the party would end, at least for me. They would continue to drink and sing and flirt with the cute waitresses. They could afford to ignore reality and distance themselves from the consequences of their actions. They had me.

Early mornings at the airport were always the same. The only thing that changed was whether they charged for wi-fi and what overpriced coffee shop occupied the terminal. The crowds were always similar, businessmen and women preparing for a busy day ahead, couples with young children traveling home for a family crisis, overnight students and young tourists slouching across the line of seats waiting for their connecting flights. I wish I were in the last group, snoozing through until boarding or until security nudged my feet to remind me that sleeping was not allowed.

Instead, I had to identify targets and strategies based on the files my employer had just forwarded to my phone. This one looked like carnage. It would probably make the news. Hopefully not before I was long gone and on to the next mission, wherever that was. New York, Madrid, London, they all dominated the cable channels these days. Each left its scar upon society. And I was the ghost wielding the knife, disappearing before anyone knew I’d been there. But there was no escaping the devastation I left behind.

Reviewing the files turned off the portion of my brain that felt remorse, the empathetic and emotional. Now it was all down to organization and formulas, who to take out first, how the panic would spread, the objectives, the targets, the acceptable losses and collateral damage. It became an intricate game of social Darwinism; how many amputations were needed so the larger body could be saved. Salvation required sacrifice. That’s where I came in.

By the time I boarded, I’d identified where to set off the primaries. From the initial shots the panic would spread, herding victims into the desired locations, the cafeteria, the conference rooms, the auditorium, anywhere they could be gathered and dealt with quickly as a group. This time I’d have local security on my side, paid mercenaries ensuring no word of the massacre leaked until all the casualties had been dealt with. There would be no repeat of the debacle in New Delhi last year.

Just before I landed, I noticed the flagged file. This time I had an inside man. The inexperienced always thought that would make things easier. It never did. Invariably, they ignored the timetable thinking they could draw it out another six months to when their relocation wouldn’t be an inconvenience, disrupt their holidays, or make their kids change schools. Or they’d start planning too early and tip off someone in security, compromising the entire mission.

As a last act before they blacked out my electronic access on approach, I tagged the files I wanted to flash to hardcopy. I’d print them out and ink them with the final markups. I hated leaving a paper trail but sometimes it was unavoidable. I set an alarm to destroy the printouts on my way out along with all my electronic files. Infosec and plausible deniability.

At the gate, I paused to watch the television coverage of the World Bank protests. Without realizing it, they were providing cover for my operation, dominating the news cycle until I was clear. The irony was that many them supported my brand of social Darwinism thinly disguised as capitalism, though most didn’t believe in evolution and wouldn’t survive the laissez faire of a true free market economy. Soon, they would be secondary casualties in the crossfire of their own culture war. How many would be among the wounded left untreated, the dying without care? When the carnage changed their lives forever, how many would extend their empty hands, suddenly embracing Das Kapital over the Wealth of Nations? But consistency isn’t my concern, only the primary, the one target purposefully buried in the static beneath the noise.

On the tram-ride through the airport, I worked on getting into character. At the main terminal I picked up the bar-coded package from FedEx with the final instructions, a location, data access and a badge. They’d even spelled the name right, unlike the last job where they had substituted a B for initial T. Not that I was offended. It wasn’t like it was my real name. But there was still security to get past, remote, electronic and human which mismatched IDs would complicate. There could be no suspicion until after I’d cleared the building and was on the next plane to the next location or to a safe house until the next crisis mandated the public’s twenty-four seven attention, an escaped balloon, a politician’s foot tap, a pop singer’s rehab, a wide receiver’s arrest. The myriad of trivial distractions that allowed people like me to flourish with complete autonomy and anonymity. If religion was the opiate of the masses, cable news had become their crack cocaine.

This time there was another wrinkle. The primary target wasn’t identified in the manifest. I would receive an onsite update. Face-to-face intel briefing, always tricky. That meant their inside man knew more than I did. A situation of trust, one I was never good at. The point of the exercise was to eliminate the primary with enough chaos that no one knew who the target was until they sifted through the rubble. Expensive, but effective. And it wasn’t like I was paying the bills.

After retrieving the package, I used a self-serve terminal to burn a hardcopy of my files. I made the final markups as I waited in line at the taxi stand, then stuffed them into my briefcase with the more sensitive and volatile items I needed for the operation as I climbed into a cab. After a quick review of the SatNav app on my iPhone, I gave the driver an address a few blocks down from the target’s main entrance. I’d street hike it the rest of the way to avoid my transport being captured on the security cameras outside the building. Based on the configuration, experience and intuition, there was a high probability I’d find a secondary entrance inside the parking structure. With a badge, it would be trivial to ghost in behind someone else, eliminating a scan. I knew security and Feds would eventually piece it all together. This was just another delaying tactic to help secure my line of retreat. In the worst case scenario, this could turn into a game of seconds.

The cab ride gave me an opportunity to plot out contingencies. Fortunately, I could make a few educated guesses as to the high value target. Usually a director or vice president, more rarely a program manager. I could identify those by cross-referencing their listed projects with a company news search on Google Finance or their personal profiles on LinkedIn. Sometimes there was a specialist or technical lead. Usually, I would ID them by the Ph.D. on their corporate resume. A handful of times those searches had revealed nothing, but in those cases target hadn’t had a particularly lofty title or advanced degree, just his name associated with a number of critical intellectual properties revealed by patent search. The one time all those searches had failed me, the target had been an IT specialist buried deep in the corporate core. This time, no names stood out. Fortunately, with an operation as large as this, there weren’t many variations on the main theme.

My employer had been generous with their margins, expanding the number to several times the initial thousand that had enticed me into taking the job on such short notice. Surgical strikes required extensive planning and cover stories. This job should be as easy sawing a few branches off an org chart and walking away before they hit the ground. That’s all these operations came down to in my mind, crossing out a few boxes, rearranging the cubes of a few dozen departments, wiping the databases of a few thousand names. All very clean, detached and remote. The real chaos wouldn’t erupt until I was far, far away.

As I arrived on site, I found exactly what I’d hoped for from the street maps, a back access to an adjacent shopping center. Really just a poorly marked door that meant employees didn’t have to brave the weather to purchase necessities or get takeout, a rare perk for them. For me, it became an unobtrusive entrance into the company parking structure that avoided the first line of security. From there, simple patience disguised as a hurried call for a woman to hold the door as I juggled netbook, papers and cell phone gained me and my briefcase access into the building after she glanced at my badge, just to make sure I had one. A smile, an ID and a genuine "thank you" were all it took to enter the target unsearched and unnoticed. The magnetic key incorporated into the badge should have worked alone, but this ensured that security wouldn’t be alerted if I’d already been compromised.

Inside, I ducked into the nearest bathroom to hack into the company intranet for a floor plan. I had a room number for the rendezvous, but I needed to find the least trafficked halls and stairwells to get there. It wouldn’t do to step into an elevator with a company director or VP. Looking lost or asking directions would garner me unwanted attention. Cracking a company intranet from the outside required tunneling through all the firewalls and encryption. Tapping into their wireless network from the inside was easier, especially using the name and employee number I’d stolen off my friendly coworker’s badge. Amazingly, I’d found an easily modified iPhone app to do almost exactly what I needed. I also monitored a freeware RF scanner on my netbook patched through a wireless antenna booster with the alarms routed directly to my e-mail, just to make sure there wasn’t a lot of chatter on the security handhelds or any unusual volume of traffic coming in and out of IT. Everything was as quiet as a graveyard on a midwinter’s night.

I tried not to read the names on people’s badges as I navigated the building to the designated location. I was good at names. I had to be to piece together the information I needed to identify the targets. But I never wanted to put a face to my work. The few I had still haunted me in the quiet moments between jobs. I knew what my work did to people’s lives. It was hard to ignore the statistics. But if I didn’t do it, someone else would. And they might not be so compassionate.

The meet was slated for a large conference room just off an unused lobby that had once been a side entrance but had been enclosed and was now used exclusively for VIP reception, with a tiny, reserved parking area standing empty just outside. It was adjacent to a back stairwell that would provide inconspicuous access. The only drawback was the copy room just up one hall, and the secondary access to the labs just down another. Still, the layout suggested it was one of the least trafficked areas in the building, with the room itself used less than once a month. My contact had done his homework.

I scouted out the location with a walk-by on my way to the closest coffee station. It always paid to check the nearest employee break area. If security were on alert, five would get you ten that you would find a team congregating there.

All clear.

I took a moment to locate a disposable cup in one of the cabinets, then poured coffee from the fullest pot, the odds on favorite to have been cooking on the burner the least amount of time. One hesitant sip told me I wouldn’t need to add any powdered creamer, which could only enhance the flavor of truly hideous coffee, just a packet of sugar. Someone either sprang for name brand, or I’d stumbled onto a coffee klatch’s private stock. Either way, I was content as I snapped a lid on my cup. Coffee was as much a necessity at the point as a cover. Last night’s karaoke and the intervening time zone shifts were starting to catch up with me. I needed to be alert for this meeting, and during my impending escape.

I went back the conference room, popping my head in the door to verify it was empty. Seeing it was, I flicked on one bank of lights and settled in a chair behind a line of tables in a back corner where I had command of both doors. I pulled a lab notebook out of my briefcase along with a stapled sheaf of papers and the netbook, and started penciling notes. Anyone entering would assume I was taking advantage of a quiet room to finish a presentation, or was waiting for an informal meeting. Like a good worker drone, I’d offer to leave if anyone else came in. Unless he was my contact, of course.

I didn’t have long to wait. I’d arrived fifteen minutes early, just to make sure I’d be the one occupying the dominant position in the room, not walking in off-balance as others had tried with me before. In my line of work, it paid to be the one in the blind not the one in the sights. I’d only been sitting about five minutes when an attractive young woman in a corporate-clone blouse and skirt that would have been unremarkable had it fit any less perfectly entered, her fiery ponytail bobbing as she looked somewhat startled to find me there. Even as I began to collect my things and offer to abandon the room, she slipped the door closed behind her and uttered the magic code words with an unidentifiable international accent. "Mr. Tuttle, I presume? How was your flight from Brazil?"

I eased back into my seat, somewhat surprised. Nine out of ten insiders were men, usually angry, white and middle-aged, men defending a territory, men who had been passed over, men trying to endear themselves to a patron higher up. Men shouldering an ax they felt was in constant need of grinding. I had encountered one or two women, but never one so young. This one must be ambitious to stake her future on cleaning up after an operation this large. But my grandfather had often reminded me that two of the three Irish gods of war were women, and any descendant of the land of the Celtic Tiger knew better than to cross them. I didn’t think much more about it before I gave the agreed upon reply, "You know, travel light, get in, get out, wherever there’s trouble."

"A man alone," she finished the protocol with a hint of a smile.

"I finished the preliminaries on the way in," I said, wasting no time with social niceties. "All I need is the primary plus five minutes and I can flash you the solution to bring this place down. Just make sure you and your friends are under cover before the clock starts ticking."

I looked up with my fingers poised over the keyboard, expecting her to come closer before she told me who the target was. When I saw she hadn’t moved, only crossed her arms in front of her, my impatience got the better of me, "Come on, honey, I need a name."

"You don’t remember me, do you?" she asked with an edge of silk polished steel to her voice.

As I studied her a moment, a sense of familiarity began to niggle at me. I became convinced that I’d seen her somewhere before. Still, I couldn’t connect her face with a name.

"Bali, three years ago," she offered almost as a question. I just shook my head, my stomach beginning to fall as though I was already in the express elevator headed down. "Well, I remember you," she added with lilting note of certainty.

Any hope of bluffing my way through this encounter began to fade. Still, I had to try. "That’s nice but we don’t have all day."

"Actually, we do," she said, her arms uncrossing to reveal a corporate issue Blackberry. "And yours is just beginning." She tapped a few keys with perfectly manicured and crimson lacquered fingernails. A tone that no longer sounded dulcet from my netbook informed me that I’d received an e-mail, the last before my access was cutoff and all my processing locked down.

"As you can see," she continued as I stared blankly at her message, unable to read or focus, "your contract was transferred under our corporate umbrella as of this morning. Your bonus has been cancelled and your contingency fees retracted. You’ll also find our latest press release attached at the bottom. Security will be here momentarily to escort you and your briefcase out of the building, right in front of the press conference already in progress. By market open tomorrow, your name and face will be splashed all over Fox Business, Bloomberg and CNBC. I think even the Feds might want a word with you, something about financial terrorism and unpaid taxes. By the time our corporate counter-espionage team helps them unravel your shell corporations and offshore accounts, you’ll be lucky to see daylight again."

I should have planned for this eventuality but hadn’t. She smiled wickedly as the full weight of her snare settled across my shoulders.

"For all the people you’ve made suffer without cause, it’s my turn to say it," she finished sweetly. "You’re fired. The terminations of your associates are already underway."


© 2010 Edward P. Morgan III