"Khodo hafiz, Gulbuddin."Kandahar briefly glanced towards his hand, his own expression crinkling when reminded of the absent fingertip where once a ring had been. A glove hid the stump, but he saw where the tip wilted.
Shir O Khorshed. In retrospect, the words were meaningless now, a psuedo-adoption of a dead and dying culture that was in many respects a world apart from Pashtunwali. But it had been
his. The community, everything he had helped to build - he found its loss embodied by his missing fingertip.
Now, who was he?
What was he? A shadow. A ghost? No, a vengeful spirit perhaps. Like the rumours spread among the others he'd served with, of mysterious figures that wandered the hills and the mountains, leaving blood and bones in their wake.
Was he even a man, anymore? Not human, not entirely. The term they'd ascribed to those such as him was remarkably sanitised.
Altered. Different. Out of place.
A stranger.Yes, always a stranger - he'd spent his life as a stranger. In the passes, when his father smuggled arms for the Mujahadeen to fight the Communists. Then, in America - to flee the Taliban as they tore into the withered husk of a nation ruined by war. And once more, when he returned under the American flag as an interpreter for the military, watching as other carrion eaters flocked to the dinner table. Wherever he went, he was a stranger.
So this was, in truth, his natural state - or so it seemed, now he gave it thought. Kandahar's face was ordinary, with no particularly handsome or ugly features that could be ascribed to it. Though a Pashtun, he was sufficiently light-skinned that he could pass among the crowds without standing out. His accent, or specifically his manner of speech, was somewhere between his birthplace and the Sonoran Desert. For all intents and purposes, he was nothing more than another face in the crowd.
Gulbuddin had despised the Russians - the
Soviets, as he called them. Despite some arrangements, he had never loaned any trust to their lot - to the slavs. That, Kandahar understood - the old man had known Afghanistan before the Communists had thrown it into war, mourned its lost potential. It was something he could never have forgiven. Kandahar, for all it was worth, could sympathise with that position now more than ever.
For all that he'd known, the slavs were definitely involved in what had happened to the
community they'd built, striking after the storm just as the plague took hold. The slavs had taken so much and more, their dogs for hire having chained him in an effort to beat the information out of him.
When that failed, they pumped their poison into him, humiliated him, made him
lesser. Withdrawal had been a painful ordeal, a torment of the mind that set in well after he'd clawed his way out of the grave. Even now, he felt the pangs of the opiate's absence - the temptation to fall back into that pit and curl inwards to sleep.
It could not go unanswered. Would not.
He stood outside the building, a rather unassuming looking place that passed for a bar or a private club,with a broad signage.
The Dneiper Tears. He'd seen it once, before the slavs had attacked them. It held significance to them, as the bakery had to him. Small wonder they'd congregate here, especially in such troubling times.
As he stepped inside, the obnoxious thrum of some metallic band filled his ears, the singers delivering lyrics in some screeching tone in one of the slav dialects. The body count in here was a little lower than he'd anticipated, but given wider events it was not such a great surprise - the ongoing outbreak of plague had forced varying quarantine measures, restricting movement. Still, it was enough for what he intended.
To make things right, whole again. Or get a start at it, anyhow.Approaching the bar counter, Kandahar threw an upward nod to the barman who only barely seemed to recognise him - and slapped a crumpled wad of dollar bills on the polished surface,
"That one there, there - the whole thing." He jabbed a finger at a suitably hefty-looking bottle.
It took about half a minute, but the man shrugged and did as asked, leaving it and a shot glass in front of him. Another drinker was seated a few stools away, their brow creasing as they tried to get the measure of him.
Tightening his fingers around the neck of the bottle, he realised that his neighbour's face
was one he recognised.
The feeling was mutual, by the look of his creasing features and tensing posture, "You-" Kandahar didn't give him any time to react, swinging the bottle against the side of his temple. He felt the shock of it running back up his arm, saw the man crumple against the counter and topple over some stools in a heap behind him.
Like a wasp's nest that had been set alight, the denizens of the room began to stir from whatever they'd been doing, clutching at a corkscrew, pool cue or just throwing up their hands, ready to throw some punishment down on this interloper that had nearly caved their friend's head in.
Once voice barked behind him, "Stupid whoreson, should've stayed at your bakery!", a patron had circled around to the entrance, sliding the lock shut.
Good. No exit for them, either. Kandahar didn't give them time to react, throwing the bottle at the closest of the men and charging forward, driving a hard elbow into their jaw before they could swing the pool cue at him. Another, wielding a corkscrew, tried to drive it into his throat from the side but he'd moved just enough that it merely grazed his jacket, giving him a window to shove him into the pool table behind him.
Suddenly, a weight was on his back - a larger man grappling, restraining his arms in an almost vice-like grip and hauling him back, leaving him open to the cue-man, who started raining blow after blow upon him. He felt his own teeth crack, the coppery tang of blood washing over his tongue - and perhaps it was the adrenaline surging through him, or perhaps it was the curse the plague had left behind, but he hadn't felt the corkscrew punture through his ribs as the other man recovered.
Kandahar spat blood into the corkscrew-wielder's face, blinding him for just a second - it gave him a window to drive his knee forward into the cue-man's groin, and slam the back skull against the nose of the big man restraining him, hard enough to break it. That worked enough, giving him a window to pull free - and he threw his weight forward like a man possessed, sending a hard strike for the corkscrew-wielder's temple, then another until he crumpled over and didn't get back up. Cue-man came up once again and got glassed in the eyes for his troubles, which left only one-
Kandahar felt the larger man grasping for him once again, raining more blows down upon his head in a dizzying, white-hot rage. This time, he lost his footing and was forced to the ground, the big man's weight atop and pinning hin down. As they grappled, he could feel the big man clutching for the pistol that he'd kept concealed just beneath his waistline but had been jarred loose in the commotion. With no alternative, he lunged forward and sank his teeth into the man's throat, as hard as he could, and a muffled shriek loosed from his lips.
Kandahar spat a chunk of torn tissue off to one side, snorting as the bigger man rolled off him...
It had taken a few minutes to wash the blood away, giving him time to contemplate and collect his thoughts.
Kandahar's fingers tightened around the faucet, closing it shut. He caught a glimpse of his reflection in the mirror one last time, finding almost a stranger staring back at him, then fastened up his jacket to hide the crimson blotch which had formed around the gash in his shirt.
Stupid. Reckless. The big man had almost stolen his pistol from him. Not that it would've mattered, but a gunshot would've drawn undue attention. Slowed him down. And considering the position that the government were taking on his kind, it was not a situation he cared to deal with.
In the front end of the bar, the tang of blood, sweat and piss lingered in the air. And
alcohol - in the absence of gasoline, he'd poured whatever flammable spirits he could find across the floor. A few crates and barrels in the backroom, now overturned, had served as ample substitute - and the wooden furniture here would catch quickly enough.
It was time he made his exit, Kandahar decided. He'd made sure his hosts weren't in a position to walk away from what they'd done and had taken what he wanted, payment for services rendered in the form of a dufflebag slung over his shoulder.
With a lighter generously donated by the big man, Kandahar lit the end of a soaked rag that he'd stuffed into a full bottle and tossed it at the wooden counter - peeling out of the building's rear exit just as the smell of smoke begin to reach his nostrils.
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