[b]Sevan, Armenia[/b]

Sahle's dreams deposited him in his own past. It was in his school years, in those early days when he had been sent to Europe to receive what his father saw as a 'proper' education. He had been young then, on the first step to pubescence. It had been the girls who discovered his sexuality for him. European girls, who were wealthy and bored, and who saw in him, even in his youth, the exotic Nubian prince from old stories. The ones who first taught him were the older girls - those who were nearly out of school - and they had taught him a lot. When he had returned home, he had brought his new discoveries with him.

It was early morning. Addis Ababa was somewhere in the grey forgotten mass beyond the walls, a quiet city in those days, and one he had never cared much about. What he remembered the most, the detailed nucleus of the dream, was the wool skirt hanging from the pine tree in the corner of the courtyard. The tree had been dry, and when the wind picked up it caused the tree to hiss. The skirt was tangled at the top, fuzzy blue thread impaled delicately by needle-tips.

When the tree hissed, it caused young Sahle to cringe. He was paranoid that somehow, it would wake the girls father - a visiting delegate from Russia. He could hardly remember the girl anymore - she had been young, as slender as snake, and she wiggled in his arms in a way that would make him instantly hard. Her hair had been a dark-streaked blonde. He couldn't remember her face. But he could remember her father. He had been a serious man, bearded and tall, and dressed in dark tweed that made him look like a statesman of old Europe. When he talked, it came out as an eloquent growl. What would a man like that do when he found out what Sahle had done to his wiggling daughter?

Sahle had recruited help from his younger brother. It was strange, Yaqob in the dream. His face in childhood existed in tandem with the solemn face of the adult he had grown to be. Even stranger had been his helper, Hassan's daughter Azima when she had been hardly more than a toddler. When she grew up, Sahle would fuck her too. This knowledge caused the dream to slowly fade. He saw the two children climbing the tree, and he saw the adults within. Everything faded. He thought of the schoolgirls when they showed him the broom closet, and he thought of Azima all those years later. He was lost, burning in a fever dream. And he was also horny.

Colors danced in a kaleidoscope pattern set against neon grey. Breasts floated down like raindrops, morphing and confusing him. Where was he? Was there music? He heard familiar voices.

"An old man from Kars was feeding the soldiers." the voice started, "And the soldiers asked why the man lived alone." 

Sahle stayed in the titscape. The voice continued. "He says 'See that fence over there? I laid every stone by hand, building it up for miles. But do they call me Ohanjan the Fence Builder? No.' "

" 'See that tank over there? I built it out of spare parts, piece by piece, and sold it to the government to help fight the Turks, but do they call me Ohanjan the Tankman? Pah!' " 

" 'Look over there at that church. I rebuilt it with my nephews, and we restored it so the priests could hold services in there again. Do they call me Ohanjan the Godly?' " 

The voice began to crack. " 'But you fuck one goat!"' it said before laughing. Sahle watched a final tit-bubble float down. Inside was a goat. It bleated, and the tit burst along with his dream. He woke up.

Sahle was laying on a couch, his back aching from the stiff cushion. Above him, watching from shelves and walls of immaculate white, were dozens of tiny faces. They were small and beady eyed children, boys and girls, with painted cherub faces. Sahle's head swam as he tried to get his bearings. He remembered that he was in the doll makers house, and that a night of partying still burned in his brain. He heard Yared and Marc laughing, and he heard the soft sound of gentle chiseling. 

He took a deep, rasping breath and propped himself up against the rock-hard arm of the sofa. The room was bleached white, each corner and crevice immaculate. Shelves lined the room, stacked with dolls and figures - all in porcelain. There was an overpowering smell of stale cinnamon, masking the the subtle scent of paint. From a window overlooking Sevan, only the sides of buildings were visible in the foreground. They were on the second floor. In the distance, the empty green hills of Armenia. 

Aaliyah was sitting as still as one of the dolls lining the wall, and she was facing the awkward man who this place belonged to. Davit, he was called. Davit was a withdrawn man, but his awkwardness did not feel as if it came from incompetence. He was Sahle's age, but he acted like an old man - distant and uninterested in his visitors. Vladmira had told them what to expect.

"He does not like people." she had said. Sahle remembered her lips, red with lipstick, as they pursed after each word. "Davit did not fight. No. He was not in the war. He has stayed, with his dolls. He found a way to use his talents after the fighting ended." 

Sitting on a wooden stool, he gently put the finishing touches on an ivory mask he had spent the last week carving. They had given him a photo of Aaliyah, and allowed him to measure her face as if her forehead was being fitted for a dress. It surprised Sahle when the aloof little man asked them to come back so that he could put the final details on the mask in the presence of its customer.

He carved these masks from ivory, or made them from porcelain. Veterans scarred in war found the service useful - a man who had lost and eye, or part of a cheek, or half of a face, could cover up the ugliness of their wound and join in on the excitement that filled the post-war country. For Aaliyah, the mask would cover up the scarred pit where Stanley Barnham had drove a knife into her eye.

He sat still, absorbed in his work, his fingers pinched delicately to a small brush. He made small strokes, perfecting the tiniest details on the small mask he held in his lap like an infant. Yared had tried to poke him into conversation when they first arrived, asking him about the dolls that stood their corpse-like watch along his shelves.

"Who is this?" he had asked, fingering the frills of a tall dolls dress.

"Queen Victoria" the doll maker had answered without looking up.

Yared moved on to another. "This?" he asked about another.

"A girl." that had been the entirety of his answer.

The last one Yared inspected was a man, it seemed. He wore a suit, and except for a well-kept cut of grey-black hair, had the same feminine face as the others.

"This one?" Yared asked again.

"President Assanian" the doll maker answered.

Eventually, Yared had became bored, and he entertained himself by telling jokes to Marc, who was still riding high from their last lines of Sotelo's blow.

Sahle's eyes wandered to Vladmira. He felt guilty, but he could not help but think about her. She held herself in a way that made him think of nothing but the flesh under her tight clothes. Oh what flesh! It was as if she had designed her every pose with him in mind. She sat in her own corner, her legs folded and her body leaned to one side so that the shape of her hip was completely evident. Sahle had been surprised to see her again. He had expected Vasily, or Oziryan, to meet with them instead. Maybe even one of Oziryan's lackeys. For a perfect creature to do such a menial task... it was like seeing a Queen serving drinks in a bar. It made no sense.

"Are you having a show tonight?" she asked, cutting through the silence.

"No." Yared replied. "The Old Man is out of town. We're shut down for a few days."

"Why do you still work for him?" she asked. "There are better payers in this city." Sahle watched her legs as she shifted in her seat. How much would it take to see more of her? He felt guilty, but he hated that it was something to feel guilty about more. Why should that be considered wrong? Why couldn't he taste the pleasures of Armenian hedonism and still care for Aaliyah? There were chains there that he did not like. 

"The city is filling up with acts" Aaliyah noted.

"Be still." the doll maker hissed. Aaliyah stood straight up and obeyed.

"That is true, friends." Yared said. "People keep coming here every day. All those young soldier boys trying to forget that war. Some of them think they can sing."

"Where would you work." Sahle broke in, "If you were us?"

Vladmira looked up, her blonde hair brushing against her skin as she thought. How much a model woman she looked in that pose. "The Azerbaijan" she answered. "Near the lake. They do televised shows every Saturday. That is where a person could get their face out there.

For a moment, Sahle considered it. Then he remembered. He could not risk his face being out anywhere. 

"That's not my thing." he answered. "The Old man runs a cushy little club."

"Pity." she said. "You would have looked good on the television."

Sahle's heart skipped a beat. Then he thought of him and her in bed, breasts heaving and bodies mingling. He became aware of his own breathing. Then he felt guilty again. That damned guilt. Had Aaliyah saw anything there? Was she jealous, or did she know what he was thinking? When did women become a stressful thing? When he was young, before he had to flee into the desert and become Samel, he could move from woman to woman as casually as he changed his clothes. How easier that had been. He loved Aaliyah, but... he wasn't sure why there were guidelines there. At least, he didn't understand now what he thought he understood before. His lust for Vladmira had changed it.

"I understand that Spain and Ethiopia has are at war." she said. "You people are from Africa, this is right?"

Sahle felt his stomach knot. He had left home for good, but some part of him wished he could go back. In some ways, he had allowed himself to think that he might return some day, a thought that comforted in those times when he felt out of his element. Would his family survive this invasion? He doubted it. It felt as if his childhood was dying a slow death behind him. It was depressing. Now he wanted to go somewhere and get high.

"It is strange, friends." Yared said. His voice was somber, "When I heard of the war, it felt like I just left. I remember it."

"I heard the fighting is in Port Said." Aaliyah added. He could hear what she mean. Was it in Egypt? Was it going to be fought where I lived? Was it happening in that place we had just left? The latter fact caused Sahle's skin to crawl. Port Said. That is where they had lost the Spaniard, and where Sahle had nearly been discovered by his own sister, the Princess Taytu.

Taytu. How would she fair in this war? They had not gotten along as children, but she was his blood. 

How strange. When had he became so sentimental?

"We were just... we were just in Port Said." Sahle squeaked, his mouth dry.

Vladmira lifted an eyebrow. "Yes." she said. "Those thugs started chasing you there. Oziryan has said."

"How much do you know Oziryan?" Sahle blurted out. For a moment, he felt naked. What would they think he meant by that? Would they suspect his jealousy now? He waited for a response. 

No reaction. He had to be more careful with his words...

"Oziryan keeps a close eye on the people he knows he can use." she explained cryptically. "You may become useful like this too."

"It is done." the doll maker exclaimed. He held the mask up to his face - a yellow-veined ivory sliver of face; a cheek and an eye. The front had been painted in brown enamel, matching Azima's skin. The color followed the grains of the ivory so naturally that it looked as if brown had been its original color. More impressive, however, had been the eye. A deep-souled brown eye, the iris's attended to with such delicacy that it made the mask feel almost dangerous to some instinctual corner of the mind. No amount of paint could catch the soul of the eye, but the doll maker had came near. Sahle realized that was what made the dolls in the room seem so sinister. It was in the eyes. 

"It will attach by this strap." Davit explained, producing a piece of thing leather. "I will keep this copy for a few nights, to make copies of. For now though..." he handed the mask to Aaliyah. She held it like a child receiving a gift, playing with it in her hands. She was smiling. Sahle felt warmly elated for her. For a moment, he forgot about Vladmira in the corner.

She held it up to her face, covering the place where the wound was. It was an odd thing, seeing an unmoving copy of that corner of her face with its unblinking enamel eye. In some ways, it brought more attention to the disfigurement it hid. These masks were rare, but occasional, sights on the faces of soldiers. For a young woman to have such a thing though...

Still, it was hard to ignore the artistry. That was the beauty of it. Davit the doll maker was a master at his hobby. And Aaliyah loved it. She stared herself in the eye, grinning like a young girl newly in love. "It is lovely." she exclaimed, reluctantly handing it back. "Thank you Davit. Thank you."

The Doll maker smiled courteously and nodded. Aaliyah embraces Sahle, falling into his arms. "It is lovely." she repeated. He felt her warmth in his hands and couldn't help but smile as well. 

"There is a matter of my payment." the doll maker turned to Vladmira. "Ivory is expensive, and this was a special work."

"Yes." Vladmira answered. "You have Oziryan's assurances. What you asked for will be delivered."

[b]Port Said, Suez Canal[/b]

The sun was setting, and the ruined buildings of Port Said were casting shadows on the cratered city. 

"I shit muhself" a man moaned. His voice slurred as if he was drunk, but his problems were much worse. He lay on a stretcher nearby, his stomach torn open. In the gathering dark, the bloody mess on his belly was washed in shadow. 

"I shit muhself. I... I shit muh..." he continued to mutter. 

"We are threatened." a Captain said. His uniform hung limp from his torso, unbuttoned and stained, and he stood bare chested as he argued with Elias on behalf of the commanding officer who headed the expedition. Leyla knew that the Army could do whatever it wanted - Elias was hardly the highest ranking man on the field. A more impetuous commander would most likely not bother to ask the Walinzi agents before making a decision, but this one had been chosen wisely. "The Spanish have the airfield. They are moving quickly." the Captain gestured to the west.

"A counterattack would play into their hands." Elias argued. Leyla had never known him to be a strategist. "If we face them directly, they will win. They have the resources. Your job is to delay." 

"I shit... I shit..." the wounded man crooned. Leyla wanted to put a bullet in his brain. She wondered if he had actually shat himself, or if he was confused from his wounds. The air smelled like smoke, and blood, and dust and saltwater. These battle scents were strong, and their acrid stench overpowered everything else. If he had shat himself, she couldn't smell it.

The Captain stood a head taller than Elias. Leyla found it intimidating, but Elias didn't look effected. Both of the men didn't seem to notice the dying man nearby them. "If they cut off our retreat, we will be lost." the Captain argued. 

In the background, the battle for the airfield was winding down. It had created a racket, of bombs and rifle reports, the only war sounds now that the [i]Aksum[/i] and it's Spanish sparring partners had went silent. The tittering of gunfire had been a constant, and its play near the airfield had blended together to make one long roar. Now it was starting to go quiet.
 
"We draw back, but slowly." Elias argued. "Let them to slip further into the city. It will be more dangerous for them there.

"I shut... I shut muhself." the dying man continued to mutter. She could hear the blood in his voice. Leyla could hardly ignore him. She had seen dozens of men die that day... maybe hundreds. Why was this one effecting her? When a couple of shaggy-haired soldiers came and carried the dying man away, Leyla was relieved.

The Captain nodded and walked off.

Elias looked tired. She could see it in his eyes, drooping and bloodshot. His skin was covered in the same grey film that covered all of them - a mix of gun-smoke and pulverized cement. It covered their skin, and made their black Walinzi uniforms look grey. Elias' hair, so often well groomed, was a greasy tangle. She hated to think how she looked

"Is there any way you can get some sleep?" she asked, 

Elias shook his head. "I don't know that they will be able to do anything tonight." he answered. "It is dark, and the city is still mostly ours. Hopefully, they won't risk what they do not have to."

"What does that mean?" she asked.

Elias took a deep breath. "We can work through the night. Give Ras Hassan all the time he can use. I hear he is going to turn the highlands into a fortress..." his eyes went glassy as he looked south. Stress was eating at him. So much had been put on their shoulders. The fate of a continent, and of the race that called it home, rested entirely in their hands. 

In the background, scattered gunfire cracked through the air. A sour-smelling breeze wafted through the remaining cement and stone hulks left behind by the ruined buildings. It was warm, and the dust it carried grated against her skin. Adrenaline was wearing down, and she could feel herself becoming tired. There was a subtle blur in her vision, and her skin felt clammy. It was no time for sleep, though. Elias was right in this.

Their work had slowed. There were only a few buildings left on the ocean front, and they were hardly large enough to send into the canal. They had held off sinking the Aksum, using it as a threat to keep Spaniard cautious in their approach. In some places, soldiers had been tasked with bringing metal debris to the canal and boating it to the center to be sunk. Elias had lamented the fact that they had no divers to anchor the it in place.

Through the thin haze of battle-fog, the moon was starting to take the sky. Elias and Leyla walked silently toward the canal. Behind them, where the fighting trickled on, the rare explosion would catch her attention. She would look back toward the airport. Fires burned a dull orange, as if the final touch of a sunset surrounded them at all sides. Flashed of red flared up where mortars were still in use. Even in this lull in the fighting, the battle was still alive.

Small trucks delivered metal debris of all kinds, most of it big. Leyla watched as soldiers unloaded a twisted metal beam, half the length of the vehicle that had delivered it. They helped it into a commandeered fishing boat, where two Walinzi agents finagled it into a comfortable position. Elias pulled a small flashlight from his coat. When it clicked on, its beam joined several others.

A rumble distracted them from the other side of the river. Another controlled demolition. Smoke bellowed out in thick pillowy clouds as a thick minaret tumbled into the canal. Ancient stone struck the water with a splash. 

Elias chuckled. "That isn't going to make us friends." he said. For a short moment, she felt as if they were back on mission in Armenia, making jokes as they observed people on the street, preparing their report for their old director, Amare Debir. She thought about the last time she was him, on the shores of Pontus, surrounded by braying baby goats. That had been before Constantinople, where she had killed the Ottoman Sultan and ended one of the oldest powers in Europe. Had Amare survived the chaos that followed? Had he safely made it wherever he meant to go?

They climbed into a second boat. Elias handed Leyla an oar, and they gently stirred into the canal. Cool air hung close to the calm black-green water, and her hands began to feel chilly. A wooden plank was floating nearby, splintered on both ends and soaked dark. It made her wonder how safe this venture was. On shore, men talked under their breaths. Leyla could not hear them over the sound of their truck's idle rumble.

The twisted steel beam was long enough to span two boats. Leyla watched the boat behind them carefully, keeping in line with it as much as she could. Elias held the front of the beam on his shoulder, his knee pressed against a bench for balance. She glanced at it. The steel was corkscrewed and charred, and it was bent the center so that it was not straight. Would it even matter? As far as she could tell, it would be a waste of time. The agents in the second boat carried with them a buoy to tie to the beam so that it would float. In Leyla's mind, it wouldn't matter. It was simple debris, and it would be pushed away.

What were they doing? 

She payed attention to the battle behind them. It sounded like it might be picking up. Were the Spanish launching another attack? She considered that sound must carry better out here in the open water. Still, she glanced back. An orange fire-glow filled the city, peppered with the strobe flashing of combat from the direction of the airport. The possibility of an offense while they were in the open water made her paranoid. She subtly began to row faster. 

They passed a mine. It was a spiked metal ball, bobbing quietly in the water. They had laid many of its kind throughout the canal. To hit even just one could potentially devastate the Spanish advance. Even in the widest parts of the canal, such a thing would slow their advance by days. Every hour counted. The longer it took, the more ordinance was moved into the mountains of Ethiopia. Time allowed more men to enter the army, for the fever of anti-Spanish sentiment to spread, and for more war drums to sound across the continent. She imagined elders talking to their sons about their own glory days. Stories of Belgians in the Congo, and Brits in Somalia. And of course, stories remembered from when they were boys, told to them by the elders of their youth about the time when the African King surprised the world and brought the white men of Italy to their knees in the same passes that Hassan now fortified. Young men were hearing all these stories now, and they were working their blood hot. When the Spanish landed, there would be a rifle behind every tree, and a machete behind every bush. 

They came to the center of the canal. As the men began to work, she watched the ENS Aksum. It was a dark mask of shadowed steel, showing only the thin dance of water reflections and a few dull orange glows mirrored from the city. The Aksum had been silent for some time. Leyla did not know if it had ran out of ammo, or if it was only saving what it still had left. The one thing that comforted her was that there was no way she could imagine its part of the mission failing. How could the Spanish possibly get it out of the way without it sinking and blocking their path? Even if she died here, at least her death would have helped to accomplish that much.

The metal beam stabbed into the water with a muffled splash. She watched as it bobbed back and forth, suspended by a buoy. It jabbed up, passing within a few inches of Elias' head. He dodged, and motioned for her to row. She questioned what they were doing again. How could this not be a waste of manpower? If Elias had been struck by the beam, and if he would have died from it, how idiotic would that have been? A casualty without sacrifice. A vain waste of time.

They rowed back to shore, watching the glowing fires of the battle beyond. Was it getting closer? Anxiety began to bloom inside her. When she saw the men waiting on the shore, waving their hands to get their attention, she knew something was wrong. She felt exposed on the water. If they came within the aim of enemy guns, they be open targets. She scanned the shoreline, looking for any evidence of Spaniards. The time it took to reach land seemed agonizingly long, and when they came ashore, she heard the news that she had been afraid to hear.

"Agents." a soldier grunted, "We have a new trouble."