The Mongols attacked at dawn, the main force of the myangan rallying after the chorus of Black Sabbath’s ‘War Pigs’ blared on the radios of every mount, the haunting rhythm of the guitars rising to a horrifying cacophony.

It began with a barrage of high-explosive missiles, launched from RPGs and jury-rigged cannons that extended from the back seats of certain mounts. The volley struck at the walls of Saryozek, sending bits of metal flying, shrapnel tearing at its defenders (who fell from the ramparts and splashed into the moat, staining the muddy waters red-black), at times even tearing at key defensive positions and guard post, though this was mostly by accident.

It was a loud, ham-handed attempt at an attack, since the myangan possessed no heavy artillery that would punch through the walls of Saryozek. But it would keep the defenders also occupied, unable to notice the small team that broke off and head to the mountain behind Saryozek, to seek entrance and strike at the tender meat behind the scavenged-metal carapace of the city. The defenders could not, after all, strike back, themselves lacking any artillery capable of forcing the Mongols to break rank.

“Arm the bone-cannon” Nurzan said to the Arystani via his HAM radio, looking down at the firework show, with Temir and Nergui by his side. A short, affirmative squak issued in response. Nergui looked at Temir, who leaned closer to the window.

“Come closer. You’ll want to see this.” Nurzan said, pointing at the walls. They appeared to be moving, to be shuddering. To Nergui it seemed like a trick of the light, as if it only seemed to him that the separate metallic plates that made up the wall shook and parted, perhaps shaken by the ferocity of the Mongol’s attack.

But when the plates shifted and began to shed from the walls and he saw the red-blue patches of…meat beneath, when he saw the screaming men, who chose to jump a good twenty meters down from the ramparts, preferring to risk death or severe injury than to face that…

When he saw the great big pustule of flesh growing from the exposed part of the wall…

When he witnessed the pustule extending, expanding, growing what could only appear to be a crude imitation of a limb…

When that limb grew to such height that it could distend and rest its tip at the top of the wall, growing a muzzle as it went…

He knew exactly what Temir was trying to tell him.

The bone cannon didn’t make a sound as it fired. It only squirmed, grew at the base, swelling obscenely, made a sound like garbage disposers do, when overclogged with meat…

And fired. Whoomph.

The shots ceased afterward, drowned out by the clattering and the smashing sounds outside, that exhoed all around. Nergui needn’s see it with his own eyes to imagine some sort of impossible projectile; perhaps a mass of bones, held together by cartilage, rolling out of its mouth, overshooting the moat and crashing into the mounts, taking them along as it rolled. The sounds that followed, after the initial blast was done, seconds before the blaring of the horns from the Mongols that signified retreat, sounded a lot like clattering, chakity-chakity-chakity, as it the projectile broke apart and rained down. Nergui thought of shards of bone and pieces of muscle as long as a man and thicker than an RV, raining down on the ground. He thought of blood raining from the heavens to shower the unfortunate bastards below.

The bone-cannon stayed in its place, until a half-dozen braves scaled the walls and prodded its trunk with cattle-prods, making its entire length shiver and jump, retreating back into the mass from where it came, in its nest in the wall. Outside, the sounds of battle had subsided. Inside, there was screaming that was swiftly silenced.

And in Nurzan’s throne-room, there was only silence, broken by the soft, weeping noises that Temir made.

***

The back of the mountain against which Saryozek lay was like the face of a dead god, its features twisted by agony and made sharp and crooked with age. The vegetation that covered it mostly consisted of hardy shrubs, no firs or maples to be seen, their roots finding no purchase in the dead, dry soil.

"Might as well get to it" Baraat said, as he left his mound, hobbling up the craggy stone face of the mountain, Steel-face in tow. A contigent of six men was left behind, to mind the mounts and make haste with their escape, should things turn sour. Short range radios in hand, they would wait for the all-clear or their order to run, as Steel-face had advised them.

The rest of the men moved up the mountain, quickly outruuning Baraat, whe crutches were constantly slippin on the rocks. He would fall, the young wolf, or stumble on a shrubbery bush, let out a curse between clenched teeth and get up to walk another half-dozen paces. Not once did he ask for Steel-face's help and Steel-face did not once offer his in turn.

They were halfway up the traversable face of the mountain, a few hundred meters before it became a sheer cliff face, impossible to traverse on foot, when Baraat stopped, tossed one of his crutches down (letting it clatter down the rocks, smashing into spliners as it went) and ordered the men to stop.

"We are looking for cave entrances, tunnels or anything that might look like a warren. Saryozek has a way out and we're going to use it against it!" Baraat said, before turning to Steel-face "Fetch me a shovel"

"Perhaps it would be best if you let the digging to us, zuun-lord. With your condition, you could..." Steel-face began.

"Just get me a damn shovel so we can get the damn thing done. It's bad enough I'm stuck here, I hate to think I'll have to sit on the rocks all day."

Steel-face barked a laugh and handed Baraat one of his spare, collapsible shovels. Using his crutch as a stand against his chest, Baraat began to poke at the dead ground, looking for a soft patch in the hard, October dirt. Finding one, he plunged the tip of his shovel against the rock and pried it loose, striking into the wet earth underneath.

Steel-face sneaked glances at the boy, already sweating, his breathing ragged and his motions clumsy as he struck and dug into the earth, sending clumps of dirt flying. He wasn't much of a digger, this much he knew, but he wasn't zuun-lord material either. He was getting his hands dirty, he wanted to prove himself. One would think taking down a T-34 on your own would have been enough, but not for him. Baraat, Steel-face noticed, as the hours poking through the rocky facenof the mountain dragged on, would look at his men even as he toiled and cursed but wouldn't utter a word of command or chastise the slackers. The boy wanted to lead by example, like Steel-face used to do, before he became bitter and sick of the responsibility of ensuring the survival of his men. He was a loud-mouthed, careless scrapper, but his arrogance was easily quenched.

Perhaps there was hope yet, for the boy.

The sun was slowly creeping to his refuge behind the mountain and Steel-face could see Baraat barely standing on his feet, when one of the men shouted:

“I got something!”

Baraat dropped his shovel, hobbled up the rocks, pushing Steel-face out of the way to look at the man’s discovery: it was a cave entrance, hidden behind a large rock, which descended into the bowels of the mountain. Turning on his flashlight, Baraat shone down, looking for a bottom that would make it a possible dead end. The cave snaked down for about twenty meters, a corridor of rock held up by wooden bearings, stretching down into pitch darkness.

“Is that it? The entrance to Saryozek?” Steel-face asked.

“It could be a mock-tunnel, or even a dead end. Then again, this might just be an old mine shaft and all we are going to do is lower ourselves down into a long, claustrophobic death.” Baraat said, clicking his tongue. “Only one way to find out. I’ll need you to lower me.”

“Lower you down there, zuun-lord? We can’t be sure if this place is trapped, or rigged to explode. You could just end up getting killed, going down there!” Steel-face retorted.

“You’d rather I sent you down? Check the place up for me? Make sure it’s all good and safe, Steel-face?” Baraat said, as he motioned for one of the men to bring him a length of rope.

“No, zuun-lord, what I meant to say was…”

“I know what you meant, Steel-face. I’m still going. Now tie me up and make sure you don’t drop me. If I die, I have ordered Kushi to burn all the mukhomor rations, so you better make sure I come back.”

“Yes, zuun-lord” Steel-face said, grinning as he tied the knot around Baraat’s waist just a little bit tighter than usual. Baraat looked down into the dark depths once, turned to look at Steel-face, steadied himself (doing his best to hide the terror that had turned him parchment-white) and then jumped.

The rope went slack and there was a crashing sound a few seconds later, followed by a long, harrowing scream.

***

Heng could only listen to the monstrous sound that came to Saryozek and the screaming of the men in the opposite side of the coward’s stockade on the other sside of the RV. She had heard the bone-crushing sound and the blaring of the mounts’ horns, the screams of the dying and the wounded that followed once the endless clattering that followed died down.

Something had happened in Saryozek that had driven back the myangan’s advance in one fell swoop, but she couldn’t quite grasp it. It hadn’t sounded like a high-caliber cannon, or like anything manufactured for that matter. Heng was reminded of the sound movie monsters made, when they crushed the skulls of college students in movies. Wet, short and unforgiving. But where in the movies, the sound had been soft and haunting, now it had thundered across the camp, sending the Mongols packing.

There was something in Saryozek that she knew was not quite human. Reaching out her hand, Heng struck the side of the RV and shouted at the prisoners on the other side:

“What the hell was that? What happened?”

There was screaming and babbling, forcing Heng to sit on the floor of her cage, leaning back to make it swing like a pendulum. Sticking out her feet, she struck the side of the RV with greater force, making the entire thing quake. The unseen prisoners were suddenly very quiet:

“I said: what the hell happened?”

“It was a monster! A thing from Hell!” a woman screamed.

“It was the Devil’s own mouth, leaning out from the city! Spitting bone, spewing blood!”

“Was it a canon? Did they arm a canon?” Heng asked, trying to dispel their nonsense, to cease their babbling.

“Canons don’t bleed. Canons don’t breathe!”

“They don’t spit bone either, or scream.”

Heng took a deep breath and struck the side of the RV once again.

“I don’t need these games, damn you! I want answers! What happened? What really happened? Why are the Mongols running?”

“Because Hell is in Saryozek. And we’re trying to get in.” the voice of Gansukh Kiryat responded from behind her, his hand grabbing her hanging cage, stopping her motion. Heng turned to look at him: his features were distorted by terror, his eyes wide and empty like bullet-holes, drained of color. The myangan-lord fumbled for his keys, shaking like a leaf as he undid the lock of Heng’s cage, halping her out. “ut you go”

“We’re leaving? Now?”

“I saw twenty mounts crushed by something out of a nightmare. They keep something in there, something strange and inhuman. We are leaving this place, right now.” Gansukh said, pulling Heng by the hand away from the coward’s stockade.

“What about Baraat Buriyat? Aren’t I supposed to stand trial?” Heng said, fighting against Gansukh’s grip.

“I wouldn’t worry about Buriyat. He’s behind the mountain, trying to break into Saryozek. He thinks he’ll find a way in. But I do not want a way inside that place. He can die trying in here, if he wants it so bad.” Gansukh lied.

“So you’re going to retreat? Just like that, you are going to retreat?” Heng said, finally breaking free of Gansukh’s grip just as they turned past the coward’s stockade, when she saw it: the mess of bonefragments, as big as an elephant’s ribs, embedded in crushed mounts, the blood-stained ground and the smashed remains of cars, along with the writhing, screaming dying. “What is this? What could have done this?”

“The devil himself.” Gansukh said, as he led Heng on into the camp, toward his quarters. This time, she did not resist. In his mind (and her own in turn) the siege of Saryozek was over. Better to brave the winter, to risk Caucasian frost on the road, on the A353, than to stay here and perish, facing monstrosities.

***

Between his own mount and the one he had tricked the boys in his arbat, Kushi carried about half a ton’s worth of biodiesel, stolen from the Tngri. The oil-drums, filled to the brim sloshed and clanged in the back seat of his mount, as he made his way away from Saryozek, up the old cracked-asphalt road, to seek refuge in the trees.

They had been discovered halfway up the hill, followed by a half-dozen screaming Mongols. He saw a few familiar license plates among them, recognized the colors on the hoods of the cars. The men that were coming after him were good friends, arbat-lords and grunts he had ridden with for more than a decade. But now, Kushi was thought a fuel-thief. In these times, not even his own mother would forgive him for this. Perhaps she would even take the flailing knife from the executioner’s hands, make the first incision herself, God bless her soul.

The second mount stopped as soon as they saw they were in pursuit, stopping by the side of the road and kneeling with hands at the back of their heads. Kushi counted his losses: two hundred liters of biodiesel, lost, returned to their original owners. He stepped down the gas pedal, making his mount’s tires screech on the asphalt. The now-welcome weight of the device strapped against his chest filled him with righteous fury.

“Arbat-lord? We should stop, these men are from our side!” the boy said. Kushi fumbled for his cigarettes in his flak jacket pocket, produced one and kept his eyes on the road. “Arbat-lord, what is going on? We need to stop! Are we stealing this fuel?” the boy continued, his voice distorted by pure, unadulterated panic.

There was a moment’s pause, scored by the fierce roaring of the mount’s engines as it climbed up the steep hill, before the boy reached for his gun. He was fast, the gun already halfway out of its holster by the time Kushi noticed. But he was young and very much afraid. Kushi’s fist had jabbed him once in the throat, stopping him dead in his tracks, then a second time, in his chest, knocking the boy’s wind out of him, the back of his head crashing against the door’s window.

Kushi reached out and undid the passenger door’s lock, flinging it open. The boy slipped out and held himself by the sides with grim determination, gritting his teeth. Kushi punched him one last time in the chest, sending him flying out and crashing onto the windshield of the mount in pursuit. There was a baleful scrreching and then a crash, as the mount careened backwards and into a pine. Kuhsi was about to grin, then his mount was shaken violently, side-winded by another one of his pursuers. He was thrown to the side, his passenger door flailing, his sideview mirror smashed against the chassis.

“Oh no, you don’t.” Kushi grumbled, as he smashed back into the car, pushing it against the side of the road. On the steep incline, there was little purchase for the tires to cling on. Gravel and dust sprayed all around them, clanging against the underbelly of the mounts. Kushi pulled back, giving himself some space to speed up, almost reaching the crest of the incline and then smashed into the pursing mount again, watching as its crew (two of his former best friends) screamed as they grasped feebly at the console and kicked at the pedals, before finally tumbling down.

Kushi wished he hadn’t killed them, but he couldn’t really care. The driver’s side had caved in, the driver’s window had been cracked and smashed in places. The drums had nearly toppled over and the driver’s seat’s crank had been loosened by the impact. As he went down the hill, he found himself pressed against the steering wheel, screaming, his foot mashing down on the breaks, his speedometer pushing well past 90. He was careening down, directionless, screaming until he was out of breath. The radio played the chorus of Black Sabbath’s War Pigs.

No more war pigs have the power…

It was the huge rock in the middle of the road that finally stopped him, halting his mad descent, sending him flying through the windshield and smashing him across the asphalt.

Hand of God has struck the Hour…

***

Steel-face pulled the rope the moment he heard Baraat’s screams. The zuun-lord’s weight was on it only for a few seconds, before finally going slack, disappearing. Steel-face pulled at it furiously, expecting anything at the end: a severed limb, a length of intestine, even the boy’s head, dripping gore.

He didn’t know what it was about the sight of the chewed-up end of the rope that got him so scared. He simply wrapped it around his waist, screaming at his men to lower him down, just do it, you maggots! As he tied the knot as hard and as fast as he could. The Mongols had barely grabbed the length, than Steel-face jumped down the hole, rappelling down the shaft.

The screams echoed once again, from someplace deeper now: Baraat was still screaming. This is good, Steel-Face thought, as he nearly lost his footing. The boy must have only broken his leg, crawled away. He shouldn’t have come down first, not here, not now. Steel-face searched for the boy with his flashlight, finding only his crutch, abandoned and splintered. He hasn’t gone far, Steel-face said, doing his best to ignore the rust-red drag marks on the floor of the tunnel. The boy is alright, the boy is alright he reminded himself, even though he could see the smashed AK-47 that was splayed out on the floor, its loading mechanism crunching beneath his boots.

“Any of you bastards up there who doesn’t come down right the hell now will be fed his own ears for dinner!” Steel-face barked through his hand-held radio. There was a short burst of static and then the familiar acknowledgement of:

“Sir, yes , sir” through the speaker.

Steel-face searched himself, arming his Ak-47 but strapping it on his back nonetheless. This tunnel was too small, the supports too old to fully hold up the tons of rock above them. The discharge of the automatic could bring the entire place down on his head. If all else failed, this could very well be their one and only way out. Checking his side-arm’s magazine, Steel-face put his hand on the hilt of his combat knife and followed the screams, growing all the more distant and waning.

I shouldn’t be doing this, Steel-face thought. The dumb little bastard brought this on himself Steel-face repeated the mantra that had kept him alive to this day. Three decades worth of pain, of kicking and clawing his way up the food chain, of living a life fit for wolves rather than men. A life that had him plunged into the meager existence of an orange-overalled caterpillar, if only so he could emerge a metal-studded, broken-face butterfly. And now, at the end of the world, Steel-face had discovered conventional morality. He’s just a dumb boy and he’s my superior officer Steel-face repeated to himself.

The screams had now turned into whimpers and groans. Something clattered around the corner, like glass marbles ground against a linoleum floor. Whatever had happened to Baraat Buriyat, it was just around that corner. Steel-face grit his teeth and turned, before he had time to think against it.

He saw Baraat Buriyat, his hand gripping the hilt of his saber, his face suddenly pale and splotched with red. He barked an order at Steel-face, hoarsely, something that sounded a lot like run, but not quite. It was just then, when what had dragged the zuun-lord in the darkness beneath the mountain stepped out of the shadows and into view.

Steel-face had only read one book in his entire life: it had been a leather-bound edition of Ramayana, translated in Mongolian and pretty much the thickest book in Puresvuren prison’s library. He had picked it as his mandatory reading, as a means to get the warden of his back but had found himself spell-bound by it, particularly by the image of the demoness Putana, who had attempted to kill Rama and had had her million arms broken and pierced before finally being forced to flee. It was the image of that monstrosity that had stuck to his mind and embedded itself in his nightmares even in the years following his release.

But now, as he saw the lumbering, roaring, spitting thing with the half-dozen arms bearing down on him from the darkness, that atavistic terror rushed back into Steel-face’s brain and handed the reins to the ghost of the monkey in his skull, the last remnant of his ancestry.

The thing opened its crooked mouth and bellowed, blood-flecked spittle spraying all around. Its legs (two pairs, thick as tree trunks) pounded at the ground. It had crossed the distance in a matter of moments, the guard of Baraat’s saber (the bleade embedded halfway in the thing’s shoulder’s) slapping Steel-face in the mouth. He shot once, the bullet careening to the depths beyond, before the thing crashed its fists into Steel-face’s gut and crashed him against the rock wall.

It was the bite of the AK-47’s stock against Steel-face’s spine that kept him from passing out. It was the scent of rotting meat on his face that jerked him back into full awareness. The thing from his nightmares picked him up like a ragdoll and slammed him on the ground, knocking the wind out of him. Steel-face rolled away, just as two of its feet came down where his head used to be. Drawing his combat-knife, he slashed at where he believed the tendons should be. But the blow was ill-timed and clumsy, the blade embedding itself to the hilt in one of the nightmare’s calves.

Steel-face struggled to pull it out, before deciding against it. By that moment, the nightmare had grapped him by the strap of his neck, the leather biting into his shoulder and neck and pulled him up. Steel-face found himself in front of a multitude of needle-like teeth, which framed his head, about to bite into his skull. Steel-face raised his gun, pressed it against a patch of muscle and skin that seemed to him sufficiently soft and yielding and pulled the trigger again and again.

The nightmare spewed blood in his face, as Steel-face pulled the trigger again and again, before finally falling back. Letting out a moan that sounded like drowning cats, it let him go, spitting blood as it went, before finally falling on the ground with a thud. Steel-face looked at it, its hands pawing at the gaping wound in its neck, where he had shot it point blank, spilling its blood on the tunnel floor. Baraat Buriyat was getting up, his expression that of slowly-fading horror, as he looked up at Steel-face.

He saw the zuun-lord wrap his right hand around the hilt of his saber (now two fingers short) and pull it out of the grip of the nightmare’s muscles by pushing against it s back with his boot. The nightmare growled and tried to grab at him, but with a swift thrust, Baraat had plunged the sword in the exposed gore of its neck. With a fierce twist, he ripped at it, turning it so until the creature’s struggles finally ceased.

Steel-face stared in silence, as Baraat Buriyat released his saber and brought it down on the nightmare’s skull, again and again and again, the steel slashing at skin and muscle, digging into bone, splattering its brain. He kept at it even after the men had come down and stopped only when he was finally out of breath.

“Zuun-lord, I…” Steel-face began.

“You came to your officer’s rescue. When we are back in the myangan, you will be arbat-lord.” Baraat cut in. “Now move! And let us hope that this was the last thing Saryozek had left to throw at us.

This is madness, this is suicide. This is hell and we’re trying to get in. Steel-face thought, as he realized that he and half-dozen good men were following Barat Buriyat into the bowels of the mountain.

***

Pain exploded behind Kushi’s eyes, stirring him into consciousness. It burned through him, like white-hot light, its intensity eclipsing even the white-gold face of the sun above. He finished his scream, the one that had begun as the rock came up to him and crashed against his mount, throwing him from the windshield, stopped halfway by virtue of being knocked out as his skull crashed on the gravel.

It wasn’t long before the terrible pain subsided and turned itself into a dull, throbbing sensation that enveloped his senses. There was a ringing in his ears and a great poppy field that overlapped his field of vision. His tongue and teeth felt loose in his mouth, overwhelmed by the congealed blood that had ran freely down his broken nose before finally drying.

“Gotta get it ready…gotta make it good to go…” Kushi mumbled, looking up the crest where his pursuers would have come bearing down on him, if the signal for a charge hadn’t sounded. He was alone now, an old farmer and his busted mount, to be picked up later when the battle was done, perhaps by a bunch of uppity, snot-nosed little bastards like Baraat or younger, perhaps.

“Never had to work…little shits…never had to do a single thing in their lives…” Kushi said, spitting on the ground. There was something stained nicotine-yellow in the pond, but he chose to ignore it. He’d had worse, back before the fat lady sang for human civilization. Turning to check his mount, he found the fender and the entire hood twisted by the impact, turned into an inhuman frown.

“Fucking thing…fucking bastards…fucking wife…” Kushi mumbled, as he kicked and pulled at the skewed hood, before walking over to the trunk, popping it open and producing his old, now useless M-60, the one he had pilfered from way back, in Mandalgovi. It had been the biggest, meanest piece of ordnance in the military base’s arsenal and he had stolen it before his superiors could see it. He had imagined himself one day holding it up in one hand, discharging hot high-caliber death of his enemies like John Rambo did, like a great white death-god from the top of his mount. But it had been useless then, its moving parts long since jammed by rust, the entire thing unsalvageable and little better than a very impractical club.

“Useless piece of shit…” Kushi grumbled, as he rammed the barrel between the hood and the chassis and gritted his teeth, leaning down on the M-60, using it as a crude lever. “Come on, you piece of garbage! Come on, you worthless goddamn lump!” Kushi screamed and he did not quite know if it was the hunk of metal he was addressing or himself. Perhaps it was the sight of his bloodied, calloused fingers, broken and bled a hundred thousand times as he toiled in the garlic fields. They were poor fits for a warrior’s work and now his aching back was making a shoddy job of releasing the hood.

“Damn your father’s eyes, you…worthless…sack of…shit!” Kushi roared, as he kicked at the M-60, jamming it further. He let out a stream of obscenities, the ones he used to scream at the soil itself, at his father and his ancestors, at his wife as he struck at the cold hard earth in the middle of a storm, with his landlord on his back and his dreams sweating down from his forehead, feeding the hungry, barren soil. “Opne, damn you! Open!” Kushi screamed, as he pressed his foot down on his lever, the M-60’s barrel giving way and bending just as the hood of the mount popped open. The gun was useless now, but so was he, Kushi thought.

“Please work, please work…” Kushi pleaded, as he looked down at the distorted, jumbled mess that was the engine of his mount. The coolant was leaking, but the radiator probably still held. He reached down and checked the engine’s oils. There had been some leakage, but not much. He could handle his repairs, at the very least. It was his only solace, whenever his tractor would sputter and stop in the middle of the day and his wife would scream at him from the kitchen window, telling him how they needed a professional this time, how the tractor broke down because of him. “Got to hell, Odvit honey” he would whisper as the tractor’s growl drowned her out for good.

“Go to hell, Ganuskh Kiryat. Go to hell, Saryozek. Go to hell, Batu-Khan and Bruce Willis and the entire goddamn world!” Kushi said, as he tugged and checked on the mount’s engine and found it to be in a passable working condition. He could make this work, for as long as he’d need it to work. When he was done with it, he was going to be a hero.

“No, no, screw being a hero. Baraat Buriyat was a hero and now he’s a zuun-lord and he’s stuck inside a bloody mountain. I don’t want to be a hero.” Kushi said, as he walked to the driver’s seat, smashed the last bits of glass and tried the ignition. The mount choke, coughed, hack, started, then died again. “I don’t want my own zuun” said Kushi, as he turned the key again. The mount made a mock starting noise and then died again. “I don’t want to meet the Batu-Khan and I don’t want to go to someplace warmer.” Kushi said, through gritted teeth, as he slipped through the window into the driver’s seat and stepped down on the gas. “I want to burn and to crash and I want it to be quick and loud so people will remember!” he shouted at no-one in particular, as he tried for the ignition again and this time, heard the rumble and roar of his mount as it started up, rumbling. There was a sound like pebbles tossing and turning in a washing machine, but Kushi chose to ignore it.

“I am going to be better than Bruce Willis and hotter than the sun!” Kushi shouted, as he turned to check on the oil drums. They were banged, but still full. He pulled out the device from the front of his jacket (battered here and there) and flicked the switch, then tested the wires. The current sent a jolt through him that numbed his arm. It was going to work for as long as he would need it to and that is all that mattered. Laughing uproariously, Kushi reached into the glove compartment and took the chalk-white pile of dough out of the mock vodka bottle.

“When I die, Satan will know I’m coming! I’ll crash into Hell and they’ll know it’s Kushi Ursut who came to the rescue!” Kushi rambled, as he began to mold the clay, pulling it this way and that, breaking it into lumps. Turning to the back seat, he punched two holes into the tops of the drums with his knife, that he plugged with the clay and stuck the wires inside, before finally fixing the device on top. He thought of Chuluun right then, how he would have loved this. Then he thought how the boy would have probably decided to take his men along with him in his crackpot plan and probably shoot at the few level-headed stragglers and realized how he regretted that he missed his chance to choke the life out of him that day when he found the boy elbow-deep in his secret hash stash.

“One thing I regret: I didn’t kill that cunt myself.” Kushi said, after slapping the clay once, embedding the wires inside. It would go off, along with the rest of the fuel the second he pressed the button, turning the mount into a great old firework, with the force of a ton of dynamite, mushrooming outward, obscuring the sun, turning the walls of Saryozek into flaming slag. He’d light his cigarette on that bit of burning slag, then deliver his big line. The line that would make it all worthwhile. Then he could die.

Kushi checked his packet of cigarettes and shook the last knockoff Marlboro out, placing it between his lips. He drove up the slope, the myangan breaking apart around Saryozek somewhere in the distance, the scent of blood and fear and pants-staining terror hanging thick in the air. Kushi breathed it in and chewed on his cigarette’s filter. This was the smell God made, when he heard the Mongols coming, he knew that much.

Kushi gunned it down the hill, the gas pedal flattened against the mount’s floor, the remote control with the flashing red button beckoning on his lap.