[b]Harar, Ethiopia[/b]

It felt strange. While Hassan and his small corp of officers were still dashing across the Danakil, Hassan's mind had been on military matters. He thought of tactics then; how to use his airforce, and what ways the Spanish advance could be delayed before it reached the cities and villages of highland Ethiopia. 

But now he was entering Harar to visit a friend from a different time of his life, and even though Hassan still had business to attend to, his thoughts drifted back into the past, and to his early career. He remembered a stormy night at the mountain-top monastery of Debre Damo and the raid he had been a part of. They had scaled a sheer cliff with simple equipment to surprise the last few aristocratic leaders of a failed rebellion who were hiding with sympathetic monks in their amba retreat. A specific image hung at the forefront of the Ras's imagination. It was of his commander, a long-dead homeguard captain by the name of Iskander, standing among the rain-drenched corpses of a dozen priests and rebels. Ancient stone walls watched silently by, scratched by bullets and charred by bombs, as the battle-worn captain lectured a captive, held at gun point, with passages from the bible.

"The lord has said to me 'Do not fret because of evil doers, nor be envious of the workers of iniquity, for they shall soon be cut down like grass, and wither as the green herb.'"

That was the strongest memory of that day. The rest was an obscured vision of fear and blood. 

In the present, Hassan sat in the front passenger's side of an armored staff car as it wove along the dirt roads of the outer city. Hassan was turned around in his seat, talking strategy with a couple of the officers of his retinue. They had a map splayed between them, balanced on an old board that they found on the ground in Dire Dawa.

"The explosion of the train station in Dire Dawa would be spectacular." said one man, Colonel Ashenafi of the 7th Sefari. 

"But impractical." Pointed out the other, who's name Hassan had forgotten, though he recalled that he was from the 4th Sefari and an Aide to General Idrissa.

"Why would we save a station that we will not be using?" Ashenafi answered. "Sow the fields with salt! Leave the ferengi an empire of ash! We want every step they take to be painful for them."

"We need to save the explosives." the other officer argued. "We can't afford to waste them."

Hassan waved his hand. "Have the men take the station apart by hand then. I agree with the Colonel, let those European pigfuckers suffer." The city became denser as they went on, and they began to travel slower.

The outer city of Harar was a collection of relatively new buildings, though that did not make them modern. There were mud huts and plaster huts next to each other, some thatched and some roofed flat. With the Spanish advance coming fast toward the highlands, this place was overran by the Ethiopian military. There were vehicles parked in every empty lot. Supply officers were setting up the infrastructure that would help move men and supplies back and forth from the front. Beyond the town was the rolling hills of Hararghe, colored in a rich contrast of savanna greenery and red earth. 

"Will the Shiftas raid our enemies in the night?" Ashenafi asked hopefully. By Shiftas, he meant the Ethiopian militias as well as the Afar. Both were free agents, and did not have to take orders from Hassan.

"I have asked a few of their leaders." Hassan replied. "They want blood, my friends. Just as much as we do."

The vehicle came to a stop near the city gate. Hassan leaped out, and his Palestinians came all around him to form a guard. The two officers, with no business in the walled city, went to find a way to communicate to their respective Generals.

[i]Harar Jugol[/i] was the local name for the walled city. It made up half of Harar, and it's entirety was surrounded by an aging brown stone wall. Outside of the city walls, Ethiopia stumbled awkwardly into the modern world, but inside, Harar Jugol made no such effort. These walls, raised to turn back the medieval Oromo tribes that once raided from the south, now pressed its inhabitants together in a tight space and kept them from modernizing their city. It had once been a fortress, but the modern world had turned it into a time capsule. 

Hassan chose to pass through the gate on foot. It had been widened to allow for car traffic, if only down the center road. Still, Harar Jugol was old and not built with traffic in mind. Pedestrians ruled inside the walls, trickling from claustrophobic alleys into the wider market streets, and forcing cars to crawl along at a pace slower than that of the people on foot.

The gate looked more like a facade than a true gate. It had two pedestrian posterns on either side of the main entrance, and useless battlements lined the top with rounded crenels in an Islamic style. Once inside, the economy of space within the walled city became quickly apparent. Buildings and roads were constructed via a plan of tactical chaos. Every small structure seemed to hungrily swallow as much extra space as they could get away with, making an architecture defined by overhangs and zigzagging corridors. The street itself was filled with vendors selling goods from small stalls, and from the backs of trucks. Most of the people were the coffee-skinned Somali, who's garb shared similarities with the Ethiopians so that it was difficult to tell them apart. It was the women who stood out here. They wore brightly-colored dresses and head-scarves, many patterned with golden cloth. 

Hassan's Palestinian guards closed in even tighter around him as the press grew thicker. It was not for want of safety that they huddled, but rather the inevitable fate of anybody in such a crowd. Hassan drank in the smell of the spices, and made a mental note of the things that were being sold in market. Most merchants sold the basics; food and clothes, more often than not. Others sold rich spices. There was plenty of green khat as well, next to stalls selling cigarettes and beat-up trucks carrying an assortment of foreign goods.

Amongst all of this, surrounded by the living history of his country, Hassan wondered what would happen to this place. Dire Dawa had replaced the ancient city as the gateway to Somalia and financial hub of the Hararghe, but Harar was still very much the beating heart of this region. It was afforded some special rights, retaining a bureaucratic independence almost similar to the free-cities of medieval Europe. And it was one of the last places governed, at least partially, by a feudal noble rather than the Emperor's national government. That noble, Ras Goliad, was of a dying breed, and he was an old acquaintance of Ras Hassan's. Unlike Hassan, Goliad's status as a Ras was more than just honorary. 

As they passed further into the city, the roads became tighter. Second stories leaned over the road, trapping in the scent of human habitation. This place smelled oppressively of humanity, like a mix of spices, sweat, and dung. Here, the pedestrian traffic was less noticeable. The few walkers they ran into gave them a wide berth. Conversations died as Hassan went by. Perhaps they could identify the Ras by sight, or perhaps they just knew that a man in uniform surrounded by a number of straight-faced men also in uniform meant something serious. Groups of young women in neon-colored dresses stood and ogled, while gaunt men watched from their stoops with weary eyes. 

They came across Goliad's estate quite suddenly. It could not be seen from a distance, beyond the many old mosques which dominated the city's skyline. It was a rather simple estate-house built into the side of the wall. An old turret tower along the wall seemed to dominate the estate, and Hassan noticed the barrel of an Anti-Aircraft gun poking above its crenels. Hassan realized what the house was by the anachronistic looking militiamen loitering in front of the entrance. They wore white cotton gabi's over their clothes. Some wore pelts, and others wore padded robes that hung from the neck. There were swords hanging from the belts of a few, but almost all were armed with modern rifles. When they saw Hassan, they let him in. His Palestinians waited outside.

The estate smelled like incense and cigarettes. There were rugs on the floors, and padded chairs made from hard wood. An elderly woman was sweeping the floor with a straw broom. She looked up from her work at Hassan, and the face she made when she saw him was that of uncomfortable surprise, as if a priest had just walked in on her mildly sinning. She pointed up the stairs, and Hassan followed her direction.

The staircase was thin and steep. Hassan clung to the wall as he climbed, and though he tried to take each step carefully, the wood rasped under his feet. When he came up stairs, he saw a cone-shaped shield on the wall, across from a window that looked out over the city. He heard muttering from a nearby room, accompanied by a monstrous growling, like that of several animals feeding on a fresh kill.

And so Hassan went in that room.

On the floor, bent awkwardly on one knee, the aging Ras Goliad was feeding a pair of spotted Hyenas. The animals moved with a wild strength that you do not see in dogs. Goliad held mangled strips of raw red meat in one hand and delegated whose turn it was to feed with the other. All the while, he stayed calm, and a lit cigarette dangled casually from his mouth.

"War hounds?" Hassan spoke.

Goliad sniffed and stood up. "Just pets." he replied in a raspy voice. "The Harari feed Hyena's outside their towns to keep the animals from eating their children. I started doing the same thing just as an excuse to leave the walls, but I ended up growing fond of the animals. Decided to keep a few around." Goliad whistled, and the Hyena's sat down like dutiful children in their classroom.

"It's been a couple of years." Goliad turned and smiled. "How are you? How are your friends?"

"Thanks be to Allah, I am doing well." Hassan replied politely, and the two men shook hands and embraced each other like old friends.

Ras Goliad was ten years older than Hassan. The remaining hair on his head had turned white, and it clung close to his scalp. He sported a wiry chin-curtain, though the rest of his face was clean shaven. His gabi fell over the beginnings of a pot belly, but he was of average weight, and it did not look like he had lost much of his former strength. He was simply dressed for a noble, with cotton pants and leather boots worn under a pale gabi.

"I have not seen your daughter since her coronation. Have you heard from her since they arrived in China?" Goliad asked.

"No. I have faith that they are well." Hassan answered. The question of what had happened before she arrived in China, of the crash on Socotra and the days that passed where the entire nation presumed their Queen and heir both lost, it hung over the conversation now like a dark cloud that neither man needed to speak of. Azima and Hassan had never enjoyed a warm relationship. She was his daughter by accident, and he had only adopted her at the Emperor Yohannes' request. But he did raise her. When she grew up, she became a son to him, and he had never realized how much of his legacy rested on her until she disappeared. War had occupied his life then, just as it did now, but for that short period of time she was missing, he had went to battle with the understanding that his life had produced absolutely nothing else. And when the Chinese found her, he had been truly and completely relieved. In some ways he appreciated the Communists more for that than for their declaration of war against Spain.

"And is the Emperor well?" Goliad moved the conversation. "I have not seen him for a year now, I believe. His enemy has murdered his mother. I know that must be hard."

"I have not seen him for a month now." Hassan answered. "With the Ferengi on the march, I have no time for the capital. I hear he is gathering support, in his way. His majesty is good with people. I think he is doing the best that he can considering the circumstances."

"We need to talk about the war." Ras Goliad nodded. "I want to know what you are planning. But..." Goliad pondered for a something for a moment until his droopy eyes lit up. "Come with me, I want to show you something."

They passed through several rooms until they reached a thick wooden door that Goliad struggled to push open. Once inside, Hassan realized that they had entered the tower. The walls were completely rounded, and made of very old sandstone. Fresh beams of wood criss-crossed the room and reinforced the ceiling above. The smell of cedar permeated the space, mixed with the scent of very old dust. Goliad led Hassan up a spiraling staircase until they reached the top, where the open air met them and only crenels stood between them and the precipice. 

"Seventy five milometer." Goliad said, motioning toward the Anti-Aircraft gun he had installed on the tower. "Maximum range at thirteen kilometers. Auto-loader lets me fire forty five rounds a minute, and it's got a targeting system that I can sit in." Goliad said. A stray ash from his cigarette caught the wind and sparked as it blew away. "I would take it apart to see how it works. The autoloader that is. If you had given this gun to me a year ago, I would have."

Hassan smiled. "Do you use it to kill birds? You know a lot about it and there hasn't been any Spaniards this far out yet."

Goliad shrugged. "We set up some targets out in the desert." he motioned toward the empty plains north of the city. "I wanted to see how it functioned. Get comfortable with it so that when the enemy does come, this beautiful girl will be as a second arm for me. And, also, it's fun to use."

"I've never fired one of these, to be honest with you." Hassan replied.

"Really?" Goliad replied, and he seemed genuinely shocked. "Truly? I don't know how you wouldn't have, since you have direct access to our country's arsenal. I wouldn't have had the opportunity to play with this one if you hadn't given it to me."

"I gave you five." Hassan noted. "Where did the other four go? Are they in your garden?"

Goliad chuckled. "No, I have put them outside of the walls. Inside is too dense, they would make people's homes into targets. But this one... I had to have this one. If they target my home, then so be it."

Two servants brought out two thin wicker chairs and a table just then. Goliad motioned for Hassan to sit, and the two men sat down under the barrel of the Anti-Aircraft gun. 

"So, how is the war going? I want all of the news." Goliad started.

"The Spaniards are still trapped in the Danakil. I don't think they completely understood the ground they chose to launch from. It is a very bad spot."

"It's a straight shot toward the capital." Goliad replied. "If they landed on the northern coast, they would have had to slog through the highlands. If they had landed in Mogadishu, that would have placed even more desert in their way."

"I think they would have done better on the northern coast." Hassan retorted. "But really, I thought they would land in multiple places at once."

Goliad sneezed. "That would have cost this Minister Sotelo quite a lot. If he is banking on one front, that means that he does not have the resources to handle the others. Tell me, have you any plans for the western border."

Hassan felt strange saying it outright, but Goliad was an old mentor and comrade in arms. "I am sending several Sefari over to try and overrun the Ivory Coast. They will be going in very soon. That will be very expensive for us, but it will mean cutting Sotelo off from some of the richest oil fields in his Empire."

Goliad nodded. "Do this soon. An oil crisis just as his armies in Ethiopia cross the hottest desert in the world. You understand war, Ras Hassan. Let nobody say otherwise. The more bogged down their supply lines in the Danakil become, the quicker their campaign will deteriorate. If they get thirsty enough, perhaps even a passing Afar salt caravan will be enough to chase them back into the sea."

"It is hopeful thinking." Hassan replied. "If Sotelo is smart, and I do not think that he isn't, then he has stored enough petroleum to dampen whatever effects an oil crisis might have on his armies. But I think it will have an effect on his people back at home. Sotelo is a Prime Minister. If they people hate him enough, they can vote his party out of government."

"That would be good too." Goliad replied. "Do not worry on that account. Our people will make this war difficult for them at every step. I have already gotten several letters from old friends in Tigray. They want to kill Spaniards, and their sons want to kill Spaniards, and none of them will let the opportunity slip. Every amba in Ethiopia has a monk on top of it praying for God to curse Spain, and ever village is filled with young boys polishing spear tips and practicing with their rifles. The people of Hararghe are whispering about a Jihad against the ferengi."

"Yes." Hassan nodded. "I know that Spain cannot win, but that does not mean [i]we[/i] will win. I don't know what it will look like when this war is over."

Goliad sniffed. "We cannot worry about that now. Right now it is the time to just fight."

"We have to plan for the future." Hassan retorted. "For instance, what would you do if this war caused us to no longer have an Emperor? Sotelo is declaring this war on Yaqob, after all, more so than he is on Ethiopia."

"Eh, don't be foolish. He's declaring war on Africa and blaming Yaqob."

"But that does not mean Yaqob is safe." he said. "What would you do if you were made Emperor, for instance?" 

Goliad sniffed. "Me? I'm in my sixties, and you remember how I spent my younger years. All of the Rases of my youth thought they would make a better Emperor than Iyasu, and so my people and your people had to die putting them back in their place. Did I ever tell you what happened when Iyasu tried the four we took on Debre Damos? I was there at their trial."

"No."

"Let's see. Iyasu tried them all himself, and everybody in the room knew that the old man was out for blood. He hated rebels with a strange passion, more than you would expect an Emperor to do, and any time they were in his presence it looked like the old man was going to bust a vein. But there we were, sitting in the hall and waiting for him to pass judgement on them one by one. First came Ras Guggsa, and he spat and cursed and said everything you could imagine to ruin his honor before the Emperor sentenced him to die. Then came Ras Aron, who was a man of few words. But still he died. And then Ras Eba was brought in front of the Emperor. He tried to reach for a weapon, but one of the Homeguard tackled him and dragged him away. Of course, he was sentenced to die, and he did. By the time they made it to Ras Petros-Menas, the poor lad was shaking in his boots so bad that he couldn't produce a word in his defense."

"He died too." Hassan recalled. Goliad nodded and confirmed it.

"I've seen what happens when people try to become Emperor when it isn't their place to do so. Menelik secured the title for his descendants, and every one of them has earned it. Sure, I am a man, and I do not bend my mind and twist my own thoughts to make them like my Emperor's. I have disagreed with all of them. Iyasu was always a little mad, and his son had a messiah complex. Yaqob means well... but he isn't really Ethiopian, he didn't spend much of his youth here, so he has too many foreign ideas. I see he means well, but... well, I am a governor, so I see what happens when his ideas are fulfilled. For instance, his agricultural policy. His crop tithe, the ten percent of the yield he takes from farmers, that might have saved us from famine and so it was a good idea, but keeping it at the same rate every year just breeds contempt. When the bad years do come, the tithe remains and the farmers who live off of their subsistence are all of a sudden required to take from the national grain dole when they could have just kept all of their produce. There is no sense in that. And the 'exchanges' where he has bureaucrats decide the price of grain? That was a bad idea entirely. The bureaucrats set the prices too low so that grain remains 'affordable' according to their standards, and the farmers react by planting Khat instead of grain. Khat isn't regulated, and it sells for much more than grain, but what is the use? Nobody can feed their family on khat, and people end up waiting around for the affordable grain."

"You sound like a man who might want to be an Emperor after all." Hassan jibed.

"No no." Goliad cut the air with his hand. "Not for me. I want to see an Emperor like from the old times. Perhaps it is good to not allow the Rases to come back to power and be able to raise soldiers, I can see why that has caused trouble for our country in the past, but his majesty should at least entrust local matters to the governors. Let us handle the issue of prices in our own regions."

"Then what about the poor? That is Yaqob's worry." Hassan retorted. He wasn't an economist, and had never worried so much about Yaqob's social policies, but he liked seeing his old friend riled up.

"There is the church." Goliad sniffed. "The Mohammedans are good when it comes to taking care of the poor, I've seen that while being the governor here. Do not get me wrong, I have no love for the Ferengi, but I think their capitalists are right. You must maintain an aristocracy, of Rases or governors or businessmen, and you must let them make the decisions for the people. It is easier to determine the prices and rules on your own land than it is to determine the same for an entire Empire. But..." the aging Ras cleared his throat. "That is enough rebellion for one afternoon. Sit here and wait, I remember I had something else that I wanted to show you.

Hassan waited alone. The sun was setting in the west, and the air was beginning to cool. Below the walls, the sound of birds and insects began to grow louder. He was facing north, toward the war, but he could not see any evidence of it. The country felt like it was at peace.

Goliad's frustration with the Emperor was not news to Hassan. Goliad and his father had been loyal to Iyasu throughout that Emperor's reign, and they had ruled from their feudal seat in Tigray while other Rases rebelled against the Emperor. It was loyalists like Goliad, combined with the support Iyasu found in Hararghe and Somalia, that had kept the Emperor on his throne. But the rebellions taught Iyasu and his descendants to distrust the traditional nobility of their own country, and they had all kept Goliad's father, and then Goliad, on a short leash. After his father's death, Goliad had been sent to govern Hararghe. The appointment was a political ploy. Hararghe was the richest part of the country, controlling all trade east of the Ethiopian highlands, so it was a lucrative prize that no man could turn down. But it was a Muslim country, and Goliad was Christian. Iyasu had given this land to Goliad hoping that the Ras would constantly be bogged down by untrusting Muslims and at all times cut off from his own people.

But that was not how it actually played out.

Goliad would never say it, but he was a deft politician. He had left much of the governance of the province the the Islamic courts, only intervening when he needed to keep the peace or maintain a facade of Imperial sovereignty. He had also maintained connections with Tigray by writing letters to old allies and their descendants, and occasionally inviting them to his estate in Harar. In this way, he cultivated the image of a fair statesman and symbol of the old world, and he kept himself out of the way of the Imperial political machine. 

While Goliad was away, servants came up and deposited two bowls of tibs - meat grilled in spices - alongside a basket of hot injera. Hassan stared at the food and did not touch it, but it reminded him that he hadn't eaten since that morning. He waited patiently until Goliad returned.

"Look at this beautiful thing." Goliad beamed, carrying a rather ugly rifle with a green, misshapen stock, and an elongated scope. "I purchased it as a kit from Poland and put it together myself. Can send a seven dot sixty two millimeter cartridge about eight hundred meters. I haven't measured the distance myself, but I know I can knock a bird out of the air at about a half a kilometer away."

"You can see a bird that far off?" Hassan asked, surprised.

Goliad shrugged. "Well, something like that anyway." He shouldered the rifle, put a round in the chamber, and fired at a flock of birds in the distance."

"Food arrived." Hassan reminded.

"Oh yes." Goliad replied with all the interest of a child at an opera. He shouldered the rifle and fired again. "Go ahead and eat, I will get to it soon."

It was only when coffee arrived that Goliad placed the gun on the floor at his side and started eating. By that time, Hassan had already finished half of a bowl, and the spicy meat had caused indigestion to set in, which meant that he shunned the coffee entirely. 

"Tell me." Hassan started to say. He was feeling drowsy now that the sun was setting and he was full. "Did you advise Yohannes to choose me for that mission in the Congo so many years ago?"

Goliad shook his head and swallowed what he was chewing. "No. He asked and I said you were a good soldier, but he already knew who you were before he came to me. Your grandfather's name precedes you."

"I always wondered." Hassan said. "My career has always seemed strange to me."

"The careers of successful people are always strange." Goliad said, lifting the rifle and and shouldering it to fire at another bird. The shot caused Hassan's ears to ring this time. Goliad put down the rifle and continued. "Because success doesn't happen to most people. And besides, you are really good at what you do. I would be surprised if there is a strategist equal to you within the Spanish Empire. In fact, the only person in recent memory who was a better strategist than you was the Rouge General."

"I defeated him." Hassan defended.

"You tricked him." Goliad replied. "Cutting off the arms of children? That wasn't a strategy, that was a dirty trick."

Hassan was used to this admonishment. He had heard it one hundred times from the Princess Taytu. He did not, however, expect to hear it from Goliad. "How is a dirty trick not a strategy? It was an ugly thing, but so was that war, and I ended it with just a few arms lost. The alternative was more war, more rebellion."

"Maybe it is all in degrees of horror, yes. I can see that. Maybe we have to consider what sacrifices must be made for the common good. But maybe too we all need to draw a line somewhere, say there is things we will never do. For me, torturing children seems like a good place to draw the line."

Hassan had nothing to say. He tried to look at it through Goliad's eyes, but all he saw was the end result. Marcel Hondo-Demissie was dead, his rebellion was dead, an central Africa was no longer in anarchy. 

"I've heard the Spanish use gas." Goliad said, biting off the word [i]gas[/i]. He was done eating now, and he held his rifle in his lap waiting for another bird to fly by and present itself as a target. "That poisoned gas which was used on that city in America. If they use it in Harar, I have no way to counter it. They could wipe out our entire base of operations here, and the city with it. I wish to get the people out."

"The Chinese are offering to evacuate some of our people to China so they can wait out the war there."

"No." Goliad replied. "That does not sound good to me. These people need their land. I am going to evacuate the city myself, and find villages that will house their countrymen for a little while."

"That is a good idea." Hassan said. "But you do not have to tell me. What you do with your people is your choice."

Goliad sniffed. "I know, but I need to tell somebody, because I do not think it is a good idea. It is just the only idea I have."