This was Kabul, so hardly anyone noticed.
The next day found me in the slums of Char Qala. I heard his name everywhere.
Vor Gul was back in town, they whispered. He had a target, they said prophetically. So many were talking it was confusing.
I spent the day moving from home to home, but no one knew anything further. It wasn’t until after midnight that I heard his name only twice. Once from a young man who was praying to grow up and be like him, and the second time from a group of men on the eighth floor of an abandoned hospital, planning their next target.
I listened to them and waited for the man I had been made to kill.
After Shira and Emil left, my maker brought out a knife. “An interesting thing about golems,” he said, “is that they are not so hard to make. Making them last, now that is the difficulty.”
The ancient Navajo woman entered the room with two younger girls dressed in traditional garb. Their leather dresses had white and red beads sewn to make symbols I didn’t recognize. The old woman turned to one of the younger ones, “Get a bucket and a towel,” she said in Navajo. “There’s going to be a mess.”
One girl ran out, but soon returned.
“What are you going to do?” I asked my maker.
“A ceremony that can only be done once.”
The girls began to finger paint symbols on the table while the woman scattered small white petals along the ground. When they finished, I made to lie down once more, but my maker stopped me.
“This is not for you. This is for me.”
He lay down and handed me the knife. I felt a moment of panic.
“What is it you want me to do with this?”
“There’s a way I can pass my art along that can let you live forever.”
Isaac’s memories of my maker flashed through my mind like a movie trailer of important events. An echo of an emotion sparked in my chest and I realized I didn’t want this man to die.
My maker saw me and shook his head. “We’re ready to begin,” he said, then closed his eyes and began to chant.
I held the knife for a long time, then used it as I was told.
Vor Gul never showed that night, but the plan to attack the children was in place. Neither Sam nor Scott was at the skate park, which meant their guards were gone as well. Nine children played on the ramps, roaring up and down them on skateboards. Nine innocent children who were pawns in a political game that was going to get them killed.
Vor Gul.
I heard the name clearly and spun toward it. An up-armored SUV waited at the curb. Scott sat in the passenger seat. Two men in back and the driver stared at me with laser eyes.
I saw Scott’s mouth move again. Vor Gul.
How long had they been waiting for me? How many of them were there? Or were they merely here to witness the deaths of the children? Nothing like the murders of children to spark humanity’s rage against the militants. Families ensconced in their living rooms might not care about foreign men killing other foreign men, but when foreign men killed children, that was a different story.
Vor Gul. He said it again, and this time smiled. He made a motion with his hand, and the SUV roared away.
I’m not sure how long I stood there, but it wasn’t until I heard the name spoken yet again that I moved.
Vor Gul.
I turned reluctantly, already tired of this game. But instead of another SUV or Scott or even Sam, I saw a young man walking unsteadily, clothed in a heavy jacket. He mumbled to himself. Both of his hands flexed and unflexed. I watched a moment, then realized what he was going to do.
I ran toward the children skateboarding in the park. They’d been promised a dream which was about to become a nightmare. My shemagh flew free and for a moment I was a bird, descending, wings out and flapping behind me. Then the wind took the cloth and I was once again a golem. The children were too far for me to reach, but not far enough away to be outside the kill zone.
The bomber reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a cell phone. He dialed a number and began to speak into it as if he was FaceTiming. The Dari translated in my mind. “Vor Gul, I do this for you. I do this so people will see, so that they will attend, and know the terrible violence that has been brought upon us. Praise be to Allah.” He held the phone out in front of him to give Vor Gul a view of what was about to happen, then began striding toward the skateboarding children. Any moment now and he’d detonate, sending shrapnel and hate into those whose only crime was to fall prey to a woman who’d taught them to skateboard for a foul purpose.
As a golem I fell upon him, bringing him down, flattening him, covering him with my body. For one brief moment I was a man with the courage to ignore my mission and do what was right. I was Isaac, the better part of him fueled by his desire to do good. I was Yoram, fueled with the ability to be reborn. I was the American Golem whose ability to avenge was unmatched. Then he detonated and I felt myself flung in a million directions as the pieces of me separated and rained down upon this small piece of Afghanistan.
I no longer had ears, but I could hear them scream. I no longer had eyes, but I could see them run. I was almost elemental, the blast having blown me into so many pieces I was indiscernible from what I once was.
I remained in place as the police came to investigate, then the military, then the Americans. They cleaned up the remains of the bomber, then put tape around the area I occupied.
Night fell. Then dawn came. Then night fell again.
I was present even though my body wasn’t. But that was okay. The rains would eventually come, and when they did, they’d push pieces of me together, until one day there would be enough of me that I could reform. My maker had made sure I had the knowledge. His was my first murder. One day, I’d be the American Golem once more. One day, I’d have enough of me to resume my chore and exact nqm on Vor Gul—and Scott and Sam.
And until then?
Until then, I’d watch and wait, bearing witness to life from my low angle.
Yes.
One day.
One day soon.
When the rains come and wash me together.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Weston Ochse is the author of twenty books, most recently SEAL Team 666 and its sequel, Age of Blood, which the New York Post called “required reading” and USA Today placed on their “New and Notable Lists.” His first novel, Scarecrow Gods, won the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in First Novel, and his short fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His work has appeared in comic books and magazines such as Cemetery Dance and Soldier of Fortune. He lives in the Arizona desert within rock-throwing distance of Mexico. He is a military veteran with 30 years of military service and recently returned from a deployment to Afghanistan.
WEAPONS IN THE EARTH
Myke Cole
“The Mattab On Sorrah are but one of many goblin clans that dot the endless plain. They are villagers, farming outside their walls and withdrawing into their fastnesses at night. But goblinkind is as diverse and varied as mankind. There are itinerant traders and fishing villages. There are stone cities. The Black-Horns clan is entirely nomadic, spending their lives on the plain, finding one another by celestial navigation, as close to their kine as they are to one another, treating each cow like a member of the family.”
—Simon Truelove,
A Sojourn Among the Mattab On Sorrah.
Blackfly hadn’t spoken a word since they had been captured.
Twig surveyed their ragged band. A week in captivity had weakened them all. Stump’s broad shoulders drooped; Hatchet looked impossibly thin; and Twig himself had lost the tip of his nose to the hungry frost. Blackfly was only a little girl, tiny and shivering. White-Ears’s mind, clouded at the best of times, strayed deeper and longer into the fog, until Twig wondered if the ancient goblin would stare silently into the distance until the cold claimed him.
Worst of all were the kine. The twenty animals lowed and nosed in the frost-covered grass, de
sperate for forage that the winter had stolen from them. Bloodsuckers clung to their diminishing flanks as their bodies, weakened by hunger, could no longer resist them. It tore at Twig to see them so. The kine were food and milk and warmth to the Black-Horns tribe, the beating heart of Twig’s world since his birth. They were family.
White-Ears extended a gnarled hand over a small rock, His skin looked like old leather long gone brittle. The white paint that marked him as a Sorcerer was long gone, a tracery of pale flakes the only reminder that captivity had not stripped him of his magic entirely. Old age and a feeble mind were doing a fine job of that on their own.
“You cannot force the flow,” the old goblin wheezed. “You have to listen to it, feel it. Then you can . . . tell it what you want.”
Twig felt the old Sorcerer’s magical tide eddy erratically as White-Ears gestured at the rock. “You are too excited,” White-Ears went on. “You have to be still.”
The Sorcerer closed his eyes and breathed deeply, his stooped back straightening as his magical tide suddenly focused. The rock begin to shimmer, twist, stretching into the shape of a small knife blade that Stump could use to cut the bloodsuckers from the hides of the kine.
Twig caught his breath. White-Ears was the oldest goblin in the Black-Horns tribe. In his youth, White-Ears’s magic had been legendary. When his mind was clear, it still could be.
But White-Ears’s mind was rarely clear these days.
The Sorcerer grunted, farted loudly. His tide wavered and pulsed. The stone froze, half-formed, then the grass around it sprouted madly, stopped.
“Eh?” The old goblin blinked, looking at the half-formed stone knife as if it were the first time he’d ever seen it. “What’s this?”
One of the kine—Clover, her belly huge with the calf growing inside—mooed softly and pushed White-Ears gently aside to crop at the sudden patch of fresh grass. She was hungry; all the kine were.
Stump would never disrespect an elder outright—none of them would—but disgust was clear in his eyes. He was one of the biggest of the Black-Horns. The short rations and cold nights of their captivity had done little to sap his strength. He tested the stone knife’s edge, cursed at its dullness. “Let me get them gathered up before I try this.”
He turned away, picking up the long stick he used to herd the kine, clucking as he drove them closer together. The Three-Foots would be along soon to check on their prisoners, and Twig knew that they would look for any excuse to beat them. Best to not be caught idle.
The huge creatures lowed plaintively, grudgingly taking a few steps only when Stump swatted them hard enough to nearly break the stick. The winter was coming in earnest, and the grazing was poor here. Earth Sorcerers like White-Ears could use their magic to coax the grass into new life, but White-Ears continued to blink at the half-formed rock, confusion written on his wizened face.
Clover finished the fresh grass, then pushed her broad black nose through the frost, glancing up at Twig, mooing a question.
A large bloodsucker had moored itself to her flank, its ridged back pulsing purple as it fed on her. There was just the one for the moment, but Twig knew that as she grew weaker, there would be more.
“There, girl,” Twig said, patting her head. “We’ll get you fed.”
But his stomach twisted. He didn’t know how he’d feed Clover and her unborn calf both. Clover ate for two, and that meant twice the forage. There was barely enough to go around as it was.
Twig felt his own magical flow, gathered it, reached out for the grass. He could feel the song of the earth around him, the secret language of the plants, the stones, the kine mooing and pawing at the frozen ground.
But he could not sing it. His Earth magic was weak, half-formed. The green below the icy curtain taunted him, its high joyful voice carried on the current of the Earth magic flowing through it. That song promised food for the kine. It promised shelter from the knife-tipped wind. It promised liberation from their captors.
But Twig’s magic was not up to the task—“Soft,” as the elders called it. He could only listen and seethe.
Blackfly clung to the ragged hem of White-Ears’s robe, tiny, shivering and hungry. She was a dried-out husk of a child now, no tears left in her.
Hatchet sidled up alongside. His eyes darted inside a giant head that looked too big for his scrawny body. Twig would have thought him as starved as the kine if he didn’t know that the goblin always looked that way. “You shouldn’t be trying your magic.” Hatchet’s voice was thin, reedy. “And you shouldn’t be encouraging that old coot, neither. You know it’s forbidden. The Gibberer will have your guts.”
Stump sucked in his breath at the contempt, instinctively turning and tapping his fingers against his eyelids toward White-Ears. Twig followed suit, adding a slight bow, his stomach turning over at Hatchet’s rudeness to an honored elder. It was only a week since the Three-Foots had fallen on them, but that had been enough time to wear ruts in their sense of honor. White-Ears only looked up at their obeisance. “What? What’s this?”
“Nothing, grandfather,” Twig said, glaring at Hatchet, who suddenly looked at his feet, shame clouding his features.
“I meant no disrespect,” Hatchet mumbled.
“Magic’s our only way out of this,” Twig said. “My magic’s Soft. So White-Ears is our only hope.”
“Soft?” White-Ears’s eyes suddenly looked clear. “Not Soft. Fearful, angry. You cannot sing to the Earth until you are still, boy.”
“We cannot wait on magic,” Stump said. “We should run.”
“The Three-Foots are the fastest runners and best trackers on the plain,” Twig said. “And us with a grandfather, a little girl, and herding twenty head of black horns? One near calving? They’d—”
“We’ll get our fix by the stars!” Stump cut him off. “We’ll find the rest of the tribe! We can stand and fight then, in numbers.”
“They’d be on us before nightfall. We wouldn’t have a chance to get a fix, much less find the others. And keep your yob closed on that, lest you want them torturing it out of us and taking the whole tribe unawares.”
“Here we are,” White-Ears said. The old Sorcerer held a perfectly formed stone knife in his hand, the afternoon sun glinting off the razor-sharp edge. “See, lad? You have to be still.”
The wind picked up, carrying the heavy, wet chill that promised snow. It whipped over Twig’s remaining ear. The Gibberer, the Three-Foots’s greatest Sorcerer, had taken one, and the other had been numb for days, maybe past healing. But even if the remaining ear couldn’t feel, it still heard the Gibberer’s heavy footfalls across the frozen crust that was slowly winning its battle with the grass. Other Three-Foots warriors were with him.
Stump snatched the knife from White-Ears and thrust it into his ragged leather trousers.
Twig tried to look busy, hissing a warning to the others. The little knife couldn’t do much, but it wouldn’t do to let the Gibberer find them with it.
The crunching of the Gibberer’s feet grew closer. Twig pretended not to hear, hoping against hope that the Gibberer was on some distant errand, that the footfalls would start receding. But the terrible huffing breath warmed his shoulders as the monster came to a stop behind him.
Worst of all was the pulsing of the Gibberer’s magical current, the most powerful Twig had ever felt.
“Ey.” The Gibberer’s voice was the rasp of stone on iron. It burbled out of a throat twisted and stretched one too many times. Flesh Sorcerers were taught to never use their magic on themselves. It was madness to risk it.
But the Gibberer had abandoned sanity long ago.
“Ey,” he rasped again. “Rat.”
The Gibberer called them all rats. Stump was “Big Rat”; Hatchet was “Scrawny Rat”; Blackfly was “Little Rat”; and White-Ears was “Old Rat.” Twig’s esteem in the Gibberer’s eyes must have been low indeed. He’d never earned an adjective.
“Rat,” the Gibberer slobbered. His self-magicking had rendered h
is mouth unfit for speech. “Talking to you. Turn ’round.”
Twig did as he was told.
The Flesh Sorcerer’s magic had twisted him until he bore only the barest likeness to the goblin he’d once been. His body was swollen, rippling with lopsided muscle. Veins throbbed across the surface like wriggling tree roots, pulsing beneath patches of scraggly hair. His head and neck had vanished into the center of a powerful chest, below the arch of hulking shoulders. His eyes were misaligned: the lower one a tiny speck, the higher one as big as a raven’s egg. He wore one of the human weapons around his neck as a talisman, the little L of black metal the human warriors called their “Glok.” It could kill from afar if one had the metal arrows it spat, but this one looked bent, and Twig doubted it would work.
The Gibberer was named for his jaw. It hung to his knees, slavering, the gums rising over swollen purple lips. The Gibberer’s teeth reared up nearly to his lower eye, yellowed tusks still crusted with the browning remains of his last meal.
“You look at me. I’m talking to you,” The Gibberer gibbered. A long runner of slaver dripped from the corner of the giant, malformed mouth, leisurely making its way down to the frozen grass.
“I am looking at you,” Twig said, trying to meet the thing’s eyes. It was a task made considerably harder by the fact that they were practically in the Gibberer’s armpits, different sizes and out of alignment.
“What you doing?” The Gibberer drooled. The bigger eye swept the surface of the grass. “Magic?” Twig froze, but the Gibberer only twisted his huge jaw up in a grim imitation of a smile. “You got no magic.”
Twig could feel the Gibberer’s powerful flow surging against his own.
“Ever meet a human, Rat?”
Twig knew better than to ignore the question. Not answering the Gibberer had earned him a beating once. The second time, the Gibberer had magicked his ear into a bloody, twisted antler. “Hear me now?” The Gibberer had asked. Twig had sobbed and screamed until the Gibberer had rolled his eyes and made Twig’s ear fall right off.
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