The Call

Afghanistan, October 1988

ALEXEI stood at attention in front of the colonel’s desk. His office was a suffocating hole, a portacabin on the grounds of Tajbeg Palace. Autumn brought no relief from the choking, dusty, putrid heat of Kabul. There were no windows in the colonel’s office, and the air was sweltering and close. A fan in the corner span slowly and uselessly, and a bare bulb above Alexei’s head flickered irregularly.

He could hardly breathe. He hated cities and all enclosed spaces. The bonds that restrained his soul were unbearably tight anywhere men believed they were good. He choked on lies and civilisation. Yet he did not let his panic show. To the colonel, Alexei was as impassive as ever. Unfailing. Unblinking. Unknowable. The colonel despised him, like only a man sure in the knowledge that he was ‘less than’, could. For Alexei was all the colonel wasn’t. Alexei was tall, he was short. Alexei was strong, he was weak. Alexei could. The colonel could not.

Alexei disliked the colonel too of course, but it was impersonal and superficial, akin to the disgust a man feels when he spots a rat amongst garbage but forgets about it when he crosses the street. Yet, Alexei knew that this rodent had been given power over him by a cabal of civilised men in Moscow. The same cabal that had recently ordered the withdrawal of all Soviet forces from Afghanistan. A place so dear to Alexei, meant nothing to the presidium.

Alexei didn’t love Afghanistan for the memories of fallen comrades. He didn’t love Afghanistan for the natives. He loved Afghanistan because it was the last frontier, the land that time forgot. The last place on earth where a man could bathe in the legacy of war and make his mark on history. It was a forge, where a man could hammer himself into something beyond human. Years ago, after Alexei had fought in his first battle and revelled in the lust for horror that lies hidden in the hearts of all men, he promised himself that he would never leave.

Alexei had stood still for several minutes as the colonel flicked through a file on his desk. Before he turned each page, he dramatically licked a fat finger, savouring the taste of his own sweat. Alexei knew the perversity of bureaucrats but being in the same room as one made him queasy. He felt the walls begin to close in on him when the colonel finally spoke.

“When was the last time you saw captain Drakon?”, he spluttered from his fish lips without looking up. His voice was soft and high.

“One year ago comrade colonel. Before he left on his final mission”. Alexei answered in a monotone voice which disguised his curiosity. He presumed that he had been summoned to face a dressing down because of the… falling out with his CO. Yet he was being asked about the Drakon. Why?

“And what did you discuss?”, the colonel continued.

Alexei remembered the conversation well, not for the topic, but for the Drakon himself. Usually so imposing and always impossible to read, he was different. Physically, he was the same – perfect posture, broad shoulders and a chin held high. Yet his eyes showed a deep internal change. They were wide as discs and darted at any sudden movement. Then sometimes, they glazed over and revealed a sensation which seemed like deep bliss, as if he saw a perfect sunrise in every little thing. Of course, Alexei didn’t ask if he was alright. He would never disgrace either himself or the Drakon in word or deed.

“Preparations for coming missions, when he would likely return, and instructions for running the unit whilst he was gone, comrade colonel”. But the Drakon had never returned. A week later, they were told by some apparatchik that he had died bravely whilst rescuing captured soldiers. No-one could believe it at the time, but as the weeks passed, the men of Group Zenith accepted that their hero was gone. Alexei had mourned him.

He saw the colonel lead back in his chair, his belly popped from under the table and rested on the edge of his desk. His beady black eyes, made even smaller by his fat face, looked at Alexei for the first time since he entered.

“Captain Drakon is still alive”.

Alexei couldn’t help it. His lips unpursed slightly, involuntarily. When he realised what he’d done, he clenched his jaw viciously, and cursed himself. The colonel caught the reaction and smiled in pathetic satisfaction.

“On his last mission, he was sent to rescue prisoners from the mujahedeen, this is true. What isn’t true, is that he died doing so. When he missed his check-in, we sent a squad to find him. What they discovered… indicated that the captain was no longer loyal to the state”. He spat out the last few words as if he couldn’t believe that someone wouldn’t at least ask permission before committing treason.

“What evidence, comrade colonel?”

The colonel hesitated.

“See for yourself sergeant”. The colonel slid the file over to Alexei.

The colonel began what was probably a pre-prepared lecture on the dangers of individualism and the inherent fascism of special forces units, but Alexei could no longer hear him.

He was mesmerised.

The file contained a dozen polaroids depicting a massacre from a dozen different angles. Twelve scenes of absolute carnage. There were scores of dead, Soviets and Afghans, and the Drakon had clearly not drawn a distinction between friend and enemy. Yet, there was something more there, something about the placement of the dead. The streaks of blood in the dust showed that the corpses had been dragged, and unattached limbs had not been left where they fell. They were not the result of violent explosions; it was clear to see that they had been hacked off. The pictures had been taken at night, so the images were only a flash in the dark, denying Alexei the ability to place himself in the scene. But the last image needed no context. It showed a symbol on a wall. A creature chasing its tail in a circle – a dragon. It had been painted in blood.

As he stared into the image, a jolt of energy zipped up Alexei’s spine, causing his neck and head to jerk, briefly and uncontrollably. Anyone watching Alexei would have mistaken this twitch for a shiver, an all too human reaction to the horrible scenes on display before him. They would be wrong. Alexei was enraptured by the promises made these scenes. He did not see the bestial acts of a lunatic. He saw all the hallmarks of divine inspiration. These were deliberate killings, full of meaning and scope. This was not warfare, but an act of sacrifice, an act of worship. Alexei, who, after many battles had grown bored with the mere cheating of death, now felt a new horizon open up. This violence held the promise of transcendence. And someone began to whisper in the back of his mind. Quietly, sharply, and not in a language he understood. But it was there, and it was constant.

“Does that symbol mean anything to you, sergeant?”, asked the colonel. Lecture complete, he’d been watching Alexei.

From the depths of the spiral, Alexei replied “it’s an ouroboros comrade colonel. It symbolises eternity”. At this last word, the whisperer let out a protracted, blissful sigh, and feelings of relief and joy that Alexei had never before known spread through his entire body.

“Well whatever it means, this all must stop. We’ve been finding this symbol in more and more places across Afghanistan over the last twelve months. We’ve sent five separate missions out to kill Drakon. We’ve lost contact with all of them. He must die before the withdrawal sergeant; we cannot let crimes against the state go unpunished”.

Alexei had still not looked up from the photographs, so the colonel snatched back the folder from his hands. Alexei’s reverie ended, and the whispers ceased. He suddenly remembered where he was, and saw that the colonel was staring at him, those piggy eyes expectant.

“Of course comrade colonel. Captain Drakon has clearly gone insane. Justice must be done”.

The colonel nodded, believing he had won a victory.

“Given your…familiarity with Captain Drakon, you are best placed to carry out this mission. You know his tactics and how he thinks. You will find him and kill him. You will leave tonight, and you will leave alone. We cannot let others know that the Drakon still lives. Besides, we cannot spare the men”.

This was intended as punishment. The colonel could imagine nothing more terrifying than being out in the wilds of Afghanistan all alone, and presumed Alexei felt the same. Yet Alexei could think of nothing more wonderful. The colonel grinned at the thought of leaving Alexei to be beheaded by mujahadeen. Alexei grinned, albeit internally, at the thought of being alone in the dark.

“We do not have his location, so you will need to find him yourself. We leave Afghanistan in February. If you haven’t killed him by then, don’t bother coming back”.

Alexei was dismissed. He wound his way back down the hill below Tajbeg Palace and descended in the gutters of Kabul. Unusually, the stench and the crush didn’t bother him. His heart and mind and heart were doing summersaults.

That night, he slipped out through the ring of iron which guarded the city. Guided by whispers, he began his hunt for eternity.

 

The Message

In six months, Alexei had found a dozen towns struck by the Drakon. All were gutted. The inhabitants gone with no signs of a struggle. The only evidence of his passing was the mark, painted in blood on a wall. They always came at night and disappeared with the dawn, leaving no clues as to where they went next.

Questioning Afghani civilians yielded no results. The ones that would talk to a Russian…the ones he made talk… told conflicting tales.

Most knew them to be alshayatin. Demons.

But the mountain people of the Hindu Kush, who held to the memory and custom of their ancestors, called them something else.

Almalayika. Angels.

Of what god however, they wouldn’t say.

They didn’t wish to call them from the dark places.

The months of extreme frustration were made strange by Alexei’s dream. The same dream, every night. He joined a hooded figure, cloaked in yellow robes on a mountaintop, surrounded by frozen wastes. Alexei couldn’t see a face or an inch of flesh but could tell the entity was unspeakably old and the mountain was his home. It drew him close with comforting whispers. When Alexei was close enough, the entity enveloped him in his cloak, and in the pure dark he saw galaxies, stars and the sun and moon, obelisks of obsidian and dragons curling around fires. Alexei always awoke screaming. He loved falling asleep.

Then, one day, visitors.

The assassins were hardly subtle and were easy to ambush. Alexei heard them long before he saw them. Accustomed to the silence of Afghanistan’s plains, any disturbance was obvious to him, and noise was carried far by the winter winds. They had tracked him across a long, flat grassy step. The plane was utterly featureless, nothing but fields and sky.  The three men rode horses which was wise given the country, but the beasts were too laden down with equipment and were obviously exhausted. Keeping low in the tall grass, Alexei was invisible. He stalked them for fun.

He fired three shots – the rounds cracked through the horses’ skulls. They collapsed on their sides without so much as a whimper and pinned the assassins. The three men screamed, trapped under 1000lbs of dead animal, lower bodies crushed to bits. Alexei walked slowly towards them and saw that their weapons had all spilled out of reach. He made sure all could see him as he withdrew his long pesh-kabz from the sheath on his hip – perfect for peeling skin.

The interrogation was unsatisfying. The men were from his old unit, he knew them well enough. They had been sent by the Colonel to find and kill him – he wanted to know that Alexei was dead before he scampered back to Moscow. Amidst squeals, the assassins admitted that they were to bring back his head in exchange for promotion and a dacha in Yalta. As night approached, Alexei was close to despair. Not because of the betrayal, he didn’t care about these men, nor did he ever trust them. He despaired because the violence he inflected left him unfulfilled and counted for nothing. He wanted to transcend the inconsequential, but he was still stuck in the mire.

Then the whispers found him again. Sharp voices cut into his brain and dropped him to his knees. His eyes bulged from their sockets, and dark veins closed in at from the corner of his vision. The muscles in his neck and back seized and spasmed, whilst he was rooted to the spot. His vision was held to the setting sun. As one star disappeared the others flooded in and where the sun had been he saw the velvet darkness fold and contort, twisting reality into a spiral of light, flickering reality, resting above the dead in front of him. The whispers rose into a scream. Then all was quiet again, and Alexei collapsed, exhausted.

But for the first time, he understood the whispers’ message. He gathered himself and turned once more to the mess he had left.

He set to work and when he was done, he set the dry brush alight. As Alexei rode off, the fires illuminated a perfect spiral, made from human and animal. The whispers soothed him like a child who had woken crying from a nightmare.

 

The Invitation

THE horse’s ears pricked up. Its nostrils flared. It whined and stopped dead. Alexei heard nothing but had long since learned to trust the instincts of animals. He slipped from the saddle, unslung his Kalashnikov, and crawled around a small. He saw what had spooked the horse. A town just past the entrance to the valley. A haze obscured fires which burned somewhere within the village. He could only make out the outlines of a handful of mud and brick buildings. All detail was obscured, and there were no signs of life.

It had been a week since Alexei had left his message. He nursed a small hope, which was quickly turning poisonous, that this was the reply. He sprinted through the haze to the first mud and brick building. It was thick and acrid and clung to his lungs. Alexei wrapped his shemagh tightly around his face. Tears fractured his vision.

Hugging walls and checking corners, Alexei’s hopes plunged as he found that the buildings were as empty as all the others. After the third house, he rounded a corner into a broad alley.

Through the smoke and tears they looked for all the world like people sitting around a campfire. Alexei approached, his rifle now hanging loosely from his right hand. He stood in their midst. Intestines leaked from jagged gashes and eyes hanged from skulls. Throats were torn out and heads hung on by sinew alone. All had been stripped naked, all wounds were on display. Those that still had faces frozen in their death screams.

Alexei found what produced the smog. The fires were pyres, and bodies were still burning. The eviscerated cadavers were arranged in a spiral around the sacrifice. Backlit by the fire, they played out a tragedy in the smoke. Shadows, called from the dark and unveiled by the embrace of flesh and flame. They flickered and hovered about their former hosts, resisting the pull back to this world. Through Alexei’s blurred vision, they seemed like they were dancing. He couldn’t look away. He wouldn’t. He was drunk on horror which churned and swirled his blood. His pulse was in his ears, and he dreamed of the dark from which the shades were dragged, and his heart was filled from the pool of the void.

He suddenly snapped his rifle around to his left and dropped to one knee at the sound of a low drone, carried by the wind. He stood, back pressed to the alley wall, and sidled to the end where it led to the main street. He peaked around the corner slowly.

Pyres. Further.

The dead. Further.

The crucified. Wriggling. Gasping.

Alive.

Alexei’s heart leapt, hope renewed. Had his message been received?

He approached slowly, behind the pyres on the street so he could see them, but they could not see him. Six yet lived in this town. They were nailed to a wall on the far end of the way, and their bodies were free from any injuries. Only the nails through their wrists and feet bore them any resemblance to their friends and families. They were pinned youngest to oldest, left to right. 15-50, maybe. That they were alive meant their attackers were still close, no more than a day away. These were the first survivors Alexei had found. Butterflies fluttered in his stomach.

He moved in front of the fires, removed his pakol cap and pulled his shemagh down low. With his face covered, he could be confused for an Afghan. He could be confused for help. He could brook no confusion now. In front of the dying men stood a Russian, 6ft tall, blond hair and blue eyes. From his singed throat he rasped in Pashtun, “the first to tell me what I want to know, lives”.

The cold wind was their answer. Their moans had stopped and the heads had lolled down to their chests. The only sounds they made were the occasional gasps for air. Whether from exhaustion or the refusal to talk to a Russian, they kept their silence.

Alexei had no time for this. His future, his dream, faded with every passing second. He walked up to one and yanked his head back. Alexei looked into his eyes and didn’t see defiance. In fact, he saw nothing at all. He understood now. They had been made to watch as their village died around them. They had seen their friends fed to the fires, their brothers and sisters savaged. Their spirit no longer offered them anything. They were already gone. They wanted to become shadows, like the ones they still loved. Alexei had made them the wrong offer.

He stepped back and announced:

“The first one to tell me what I want, dies”.

He levelled his rifle at the row and, like a choirmaster, coaxed a wail from his new choir.

Most were too exhausted to make much sense. “Beasts” one gasped. “No, they were djinn!” the youngest cried, his voice strangled by the acrid air and his own sobs. Alexei turned away dismissively. This was not news to him. He walked up to the eldest. He writhed the least and gave little away. He had not yet found his voice.

“And what do you say old man? Were they djinn?”

“Нет. Они были драконами”.

“No, they were dragons”.

The Russian took Alexei aback, and his heart skipped a beat. He looked closer: scars and wrinkles, burns and blisters. He was a muj, once. Alexei continued his interrogation, now in Russian.

“How many?”

“Twelve, but they took orders from only one”.

“What did he look like?”

The old man looked at Alexei for the first time. The venerable warrior, who had seen so much, who would have had so much pride in his bearing, who, even nailed to a wall had kept his dignity intact, finally broke. His breathing became panicked and laboured as his spirit could no longer bind together his shattered body. Alexei saw fear in his eyes and his mouth gaped open and closed repeatedly. The broken man cried out:

“You!”

Ever since he was a boy, Alexei had been told that he was the spit of his father.

“Where did they go?!” Alexei demanded, composure deserting him as well.

The old man turned his head and nodded towards a mountain in the distance. The vision of the entity and the frozen wastes shot through Alexei’s mind, and a shiver ran up his spine. One final question.

“Are you ready?”

The muj’s head sagged in resignation. Alexei put his pesh-kabz straight through his heart and the warrior expired with a sigh of gratitude. Now his shadow would join the others.

Alexei replaced his shemagh and returned to his horse, his heart light.

He left the others to suffocate.

 

The Ascent

The foot of the mountain was only a kilometre from the town. The haze spread even this far, and even with the breaking dawn he couldn’t see the summit. He could, however, see tracks under his feet where Drakon and his band had ascended. They left him a trail to follow.

Alexei left his horse behind, took what supplies he could carry, and began the ascent. The going was difficult. There were few footholds as dirt and sand gave way to crumbling rock, and the slope became ever more vertical. For two days he climbed, by which time had jettisoned all his equipment. Rifle, water, everything. All he had left was his knife and the clothes on his back. The mountain was barren and half frozen, but Alexei was not cold. Since he had left the town, he had swelled with anticipation. He was caried by hope. He felt his soul fill every cell in his body, his spirit intercourse with his flesh. The higher he climbed the stronger the feeling grew. He knew he was reaching the point of transfiguration.

By the second night he was at such a height that one misstep would mean certain death. He sidled along a ledge, face and chest pressed against rock, and, still embracing the mountain, swept around a tight corner. He hit a smooth face, and nearly bounced off the mountain. He held on but saw no path up or around the face. The only way to advance was through a tiny, splintered gash in the rock, down at knee height. Alexei gently slipped down the face and entered. The dark was absolute. He advanced and the passage became narrower, more oppressive. Alexei’s was cut to ribbons by millions of years of time and pressure. Yet he neither panicked nor despaired. A whisper from the end of the tunnel drove him on.

The mountain spat him out face first, and Alexei landed in a heap. He felt the soft press of grass beneath him and heard the gentle lap and bubble of a stream. He stood and saw snowfinches dive for insects and bees hum around wildflowers. The breeze spoke a gentle holy roar as it parted the leaves of fruit trees. Alexei looked up, drawing deep from the cool mountain air, and saw that moonlight had broken through the clouds. It was cold and clear, firm but not harsh. It held the grove in a crystalline, perfected state. It didn’t strip the natural scene of its vitality but purified it of all blight. Alexei knelt at the mountain spring and sucked down cold water. Rivulets of blood mixed with stream. He felt born again.

He walked back past the tunnel from which he had spilled, and stood at the edge of a cliff, beyond which was nothing. From this corner of the grove, he had an unobstructed view of the world below. In the delicate light, he could just see the town in the valley basin. He had come far, buoyed and powered by his physical spirit and the dream of his nature’s perfection, the dream of casting off the shadow of the world. From here, he could see that nothing really lived. Afghanistan had once been so alive, sinews coiled by conflict. An entire people lived on the edge of life and felt the thrill of walking with death. Now they felt nothing.

Yet there was still hope for them to feel again. Drakon’s map, his designs promised something beyond mere wars of survival. He wanted to pierce the veil, to recall to the world forces and powers that slept, but still dreamed.

‘Would that they had eyes to see’, Alexei muttered with deep longing.

He turned back to the mountain. The first face of his final ascent was smooth and flat like a garden wall but instead of summiting immediately, Alexei stood rooted to the spot. He was transfixed by the mark, an ouroboros painted in fresh blood which streamed like tears from the dragon’s head to the base of the rock face. The spiral dragged him in. He pulled away, struggling against the gravity of eternity. He studied the mountain for a path up, and saw strange lights dotted about.

The whispers guided Alexei home. They encouraged him. The higher he climbed the higher their pitch, and the more beacons he passed the more joined in. A thousand in visible voices. He reached the final beacon, which faded like the rest.

He stood on a narrow ledge just below the peak, rocks pressed at his spine and neck. Above his head, an outcropping leaned out into the dark, which even on his toes he couldn’t reach. To grab the ledge he would have to leap off the mountain. Too high and he would crack his head and fall. Too far and he would miss, and fall. The angle was all but impossible to overcome. Suddenly the whispers were behind his eyes, the black veins returned to his vision. His hesitation displeased them, and their tone now assaulted and condemned him. Alexei gasped him anguish and jumped.

In the half second before he reached for the ledge, the whispers ceased. Held by nothing, Alexei felt everything. He had freed himself totally, all the bonds that contained him were destroyed. In the moonlight and emptiness he had surpassed his humanity. He was above all. He caught the ledge and pulled himself up, onto a staircase carved from black, sparkling granite. It should not have existed. He staggered up the stairs.

 

The Angel

The summit was almost flat, a gentle slope led to four standing stones at the far end, the tallest two in the middle and the other two on either side smaller, but roughly the same size as each other. The middle two were capped one larger stone, creating a doorway. The flat was neither wide nor long, perhaps only 50 paces in each direction. Before the door was an altar, made from the same granite as the staircase. Before the altar, was a pyre.

Twelve Soviet and Afghan men stood facing each other. All were stripped to the waist, and all had marks of the eternity on their skin. Some had been painted on. Others had been carved on. At the end of the row stood one man. They had made a guard of honour. As Alexei passed one by one the men dropped to a knee and bowed their heads. If they had looked up, they would have seen that Alexei’s eyes were wide and his lips were parted and dry. The life within him was overwhelming and his heart was in his throat. He didn’t need to look up to see the night sky because he felt a part of it, and he was among stars. They showered and fired and gathered around him as he measured each step towards the altar and the priest.

Drakon’s body was a mass of scars, pockmarks and burns from battles past, gates through which the dark had entered, and wisdom had mixed with blood. There was one that he had given himself. He had carved the eternity into the middle of his chest. In the moonlight, the scar tissue gave the impression that his heart had once tried to break free, and even now strained and bulged against skin. Drakon kneeled in front of Alexei like the rest and presented his knife, head bowed. An offering to a new god.

‘My son’.

‘My father’.

Drakon stood and wrapped an arm around Alexei as he used to, with tenderness, and laid him on the altar. The pyre had been lit and the stars exploded. The twelve surrounded the table, their knives drawn. Alexei knew all and saw all as one by one they carved the eternity into his flesh, and he did not reproach them and he transcended them. Blood seeped from him and the lights in the dark were drawn in through the spirals and he was one. Passed beyond their sight the Angel accepted their offering and approached the stones. It pressed against them, the eternity of his being imprinting them with his mark as many had done before. The Angel turned and the Drakon was already bound to the stake by the twelve. It stood in front and was passed a torch by a disciple. Screams chased away the dark and new star rose perfectly through the portal of stone. The sun brought silence and the twelve prostrated themselves before the Angel. It stood among them and whispered a secret.