2006, 13th January

Basrah, Iraq

Magnus pulled up the collar of his fatigues to somewhat shield him from the harsh sunlight.

“You’re in a mood again.”

He huffed at this observation from Anders, walking at his side.

The natives gave their company a wide berth, peering suspiciously at their armed contingent from either side.

Anders glared right back, chin in the air.

“Stop that, it’s idiotic. Don’t go picking more useless fights than the one we’re already in.”

Anders turned to Magnus again, incensed.

“We are warriors, Magnus. It’s what we were born to do. I know you don’t like it, but-”

“Don’t tell me what we were born to do, Anders. I can damn well decide that for myself.”

Anders rolled his eyes at this.

“And yet here you are. Full of this idealism, whining every step of the way, but here you are. Right where you are meant to be.”

Magnus’ brow clouded further, unable to refute this statement.

“Enough of this bickering, lads. We’re nearly at camp. Magnus, one side, now.”

Hearing his commander’s bark, Magnus stood to a side as the rest of the contingent walked on by.

“Right. So listen, boy-”

His commander adjusted his hat on his sweaty brow, face red from the heat.

“Listen, boy, I know you’ve been getting into it with the yanks of late and- just- we’ll have less of that, yeah?”

Magnus raised a brow.

“Time for a slap on my wrist, then, I take it.”

“Of all the- why do you make everything so difficult.”

The commander grunted.

“Look, our company gets paid by the country you seem so intent on pissing off. Just don’t bite the hand that feeds, is all I’m saying.”

“They don’t sit right with me, or the way they treat the locals. Are you asking me to back off when I see that happen right in front of me?”

“That’s how soldiers are, lad, human. You can’t hold everyone to our standards. Hell, even the men from the other PMCs we travel with-”

“That’s how low the bar is now, sir? If the men I saw were contractors and not US military, I wouldn’t have left off where I did. I would have finished them.”

The commander’s face assumed a deeper shade of purple.

“You’re lucky you’re too good a soldier to be left by the wayside, Magnus. Now fall in with the rest of them, take some time off. We both need it.”

Magnus walked back to camp, wondering how fortunate his abundance of skill really was, for anyone involved.

Four hours later, the sun had gone down, and Magnus still hadn’t managed to settle in one place.

The sweat and dirt seemed to seep into every crevice of his body.

His turbulent thoughts didn’t help matters.

He decided some fresh air was in order.

He made a point of leaving his firearms behind, deciding he didn’t need to react with every movement in the shadows with bullets.

He didn’t need the guns to defend himself anyway.

He walked straight out of the cantonment, not pausing to exchange any words.

None tried to stop him along the way.

He wondered if he could simply walk away from this god forsaken war on foot.

Or at least far enough that he would leave his own train of thought behind.

He found himself in a corner of the neighboring settlement he didn’t quite recognize.

Cries echoed from within one of the hovels, muffled, but not quite muffled enough to escape his hearing.

Apprehension notwithstanding, he walked right in.

There wasn’t much light to see beside the light shining down from the sky though patches of missing roof.

It was more than enough.

He ventured further inside, realising he wasn’t alone any longer.

Not that the new arrival tried all that hard to conceal his arrival.

A soldier, shuffling his feet due to his drunkenness, the stench of alcohol plain on his breath, stumbled awkwardly though the dimly lit corners.

A woman huddled in a particularly dark corner, her body curled over a bundle that was clearly emitting the cries that had attracted him inside in the first place.

A child.

He smelt the blood on the woman, as the soldier drew closer.

The woman heard the shuffling as well, and drawing a revolver, trained it at the corridor from where it approached, never daring to take her clasp off the child’s mouth.

Kricht.

A wet tearing sound, then the shuffling stopped.

And a silhouette appeared in the corridor.

The revolver roared, once, then twice, bathing the hovel in a blinding, golden glare.

The child began to shriek, and the woman shrank further into the corner.

The silhouette in the shadowy corridor, which had appeared alarmingly large momentarily, seemed to shrink back as the glare from the firearm faded, and Magnus stepped in front of the woman.

Kneeling down in front of her as she recoiled inward even further, he picked the revolver from the floor where she had dropped it as it had gone off, and tossed it aside.

“Ease up on the pressure. You’ll suffocate the child.”

The woman withdrew her hand from the child’s mouth, her gaze never leaving Magnus.

The wailing continued, unabated.

“It’s too late to drown out the sound anyway. We should leave before the American’s comrades come looking for him.”

And he rose to leave, not looking back.

She noticed his shirt, damaged, tearing at the seams, stained through with blood, but the man appeared to have no visible wounds.

Perhaps she had missed her mark.

She rose to leave after the man, cradling the child over shoulder.

The first step she took out into the darkened corridors, she nearly slipped over the slick blood covering the floor, steadied by Magnus’ hand shooting out to grab her.

She looked down at the soldier who had pursued her, throat torn open, laying on the floor.

She screwed her eyes shut, a strangled sound somewhere between a gasp and a cry escaping her throat- the first sound Magnus had heard from her.

He bodily led her out onto the street.

Not as deserted as he would have liked- he could see lights peering through the windows of several nearby hovels.

He steered the woman bodily through an irregular pattern, getting lost through the settlement before finally leaving it behind them.

Without the sun beating down on them, the temperature had gotten reasonably low.

Finding a relatively abandoned patch, Magnus turned to speak to the woman.

“What are you called?”

No reply was forthcoming.

“What is your name?”

Silence.

“I’m reasonably sure you understand english- understand what I’m saying. You wouldn’t have followed me out of that settlement otherwise.”

“Ayesha.”

“Hmm. Stay here with the child. If you see anyone other than me approach, hide over on the side there. You can’t leave by yourself, and we have no supplies between us. I’ll get back here with my gear in ten minutes, tops.”

He turned to leave, then threw her a final glance over his shoulder.

“Remember what I said- You can’t survive out there on your own. You’re going to have to wait. If not for your sake, then the child’s at least.”

Ayesha watched Magnus disappear into the distance.

And then she turned and fled.

The child began to stir within her grasp once more.

It started to bawl.

She clutched at it’s mouth again.

There were precious little shadows to conceal them, but she stuck to the sides of the road all the same.

She flinched at every sound around her, often even at the sounds of her own footfalls and the sound of the dirt grinding beneath them.

The first rays of the sun had begun to peek over the horizon when it seemed her luck had finally run out.

A rush of sound, footsteps scraping over gravel, accompanied by the growl of engines, yellow beams of light stretching over the road illuminated her retreating back, even as she hunched her shoulders forward protectively over the form of the infant.

She heard a variety of unintelligible sounds carried to her from behind her as the men caught sight.

Then the guns went off.

Ayesha fell to the ground, body curling over the form of the infant.

No sensation of having been shot.

She wondered in that split second, if she would even feel a sensation, or that life would leave her before she had a chance to know it.

But that end never came.

Gargled cries and deafening gunfire, along with more sinister sounds, ripping, snapping, rent the air as she bodily shielded the child, face pressed to the earth.

The noises grew dimmer gradually, and the men’s howling soon turned to shrieks of pain.

Ayesha lifted her head cautiously as a uniformed soldier limped by beside her, fatigues torn and bloodied.

Three blossoms of fire and blood erupted from his chest as gunshots ripped through him from the back.

Ayesha shrieked, retreating from the man’s limp form, falling bonelessly to the ground.

She had the acute sensation of someone standing right behind her.

“You have no clue where you’re going, do you?”

She turned to find Magnus, frowning slightly, shirt bloodied and torn.

The sunlight illuminating the horizon revealed no wounds on his form.

The same could not be said of the men piled behind them.

Ayesha quickly turned her gaze away before her stomach could betray her, fighting the rising bile back down.

“I asked you to wait. You were lucky I found you when I did.”

“Please-”

Ayesha’s frustration spilled over, overtaking her common sense.

“-You’re the same as them! I don’t know what you want, but I don’t trust you!”

Magnus paused, then looked downward momentarily at his bloodied boots, then up again, and spoke.

“You won’t survive the trip to Khorramshahr without me. Trust me or not, without me, you will die. And that child won’t make it either.”

Responding to the woman’s flustered look of confusion, Magnus shook his head.

“You want to escape to Iran via the water. You’re not the first to have tried.”

Magnus picked his sack off the ground, slinging it over his shoulder, then trudged forward.

Ayesha took one last glance at the dead piled behind her, burning the image of carnage into her mind.

The men had been torn to pieces, unrecognizable piles of gore, red smeared over the street.

Their jeep had been tipped onto its side, one side crumpled inward, as if another, heavier vehicle had collided with it at considerable speed.

She turned forward to look at Magnus, coated with blood, not wounded in any appreciable way, or even winded, really.

She knew she was looking at her only path away from this war.

She clutched the child protectively to her chest, then followed.

Basrah had not seen the ravages that Baghdad did, but Magnus still led them though an impossibly winding path, not counting on the decreased military presence to keep them out of harm’s way.

They walked all the way, content to spend their time in silence.

Their water supplies were getting low.

Ayesha hoped they would reach the Shatt Al Arab soon.

Magnus assured her they were near enough.

The darkness of night fell upon them again, and Magnus set up a gas lamp for them to set up camp around.

Ayesha was less enthusiastic.

“That could blow up in our faces if someone took a shot at it. It’s not even hard to spot.”

“Someone could put a bullet in your skull by the light of a bonfire. Dead is dead.”

She sat back in a subdued silence after that.

After a while had passed in silence, Magnus spoke again, gesturing to the child.

“Where’s the kid’s father?”

Ayesha stroked the sleeping child on it’s brow.”

“I don’t know who the father is.”

Magnus shifted in his seat almost imperceptibly.

Ayesha raised a brow at his discomfort.

“I do not know who the mother is either.”

Magnus sighed, then looked at the child, still asleep in Ayesha’s arms.

This wasn’t the first such story produced by war, this one, or any other, and it wouldn’t be the last.

"So, what are you doing here?"

Magnus frowned at her. "In Iraq?"

"Here. Killing your country men. Helping out some native and a kid whose people you've probably been killing all this while."

Magnus paused to take the stew they had been preparing off the fire.

"I'm not American."

"Where are you from, then?"

Magnus really couldn't remember the last place he had called home for an extensive period of time.

He thought of Seattle, but admitting that out loud would make him a liar, so he settled for his birth place instead.

"I'm from Denmark."

The woman frowned.

"Are they another people that have decided they want to kill us?"

"Not exactly. I'm with a PMC."

"P… MC?"

"Private contractors." Magnus took a bite and savoured it, silent for some time. "We were paid to be here."

"Paid to kill us, you mean. Well, I hope our lives are worth a fair bit, at least."

They sat in silence after that, for there was not much more to be said.

They packed and moved with the dawn.

The roads of Abu Al Khaseeb provided less cover than Magnus would ideally have preferred, but the inlets of water through which the promise of escape lay took them there all the same.

"Shatt Al Arab. That is where the broadcasts said the boats would carry refugees over to the other side." Ayesha said.

"What broadcasts?"

"You wouldn’t understand them. They are strictly in Arabic. The radio has been one of the last sources of hope for our people."

"How do you know who’s sending them out.”

“I don’t. A drowning man may as well latch on to a straw.”

“How safe do you think Iran will be for you?’

“Nowhere’s ever going to be safe enough again. But through Iran… I may leave through there, at least, go somewhere less…”

She paused, struggling to find the words. Magnus sighed even as he scanned the horizon for threats.

“I don’t think the war will reach Saudi. They are too… valuable. You should think of catching a boat down the gulf… if you can.”

A glint on the horizon was all the warning offered before a bullet whistled past the two of them, burying itself in the concrete behind.

“Down!”

Magnus pulled them behind an abandoned vehicle on the side of the road. The dull roar of heavy vehicles thrummed in the distance.

Magnus held Ayesha by the shoulders, turning her to face him.

“When it starts, make a run for the buildings over on those sides of the fields. Try not to keep running in a straight line, and keep your head down. I’ll find you.”

The woman didn’t respond, eyes still unfocussed.

“Ayesha!”

Magnus nodded at the child.

“Remember who you’re doing this for.”

The woman still looked a bit shaken but she climbed to her feet and started to make her way to the buildings Magnus had pointed her to.

Magnus had pulled his rifle from his pack and poked out of the cover of the vehicle at the same time, firing a shot where he estimated the sniper to be.

He noted the spray of gravel where his bullet had found its mark, then peered out over the horizon, to better survey the incoming threats.

Two armoured jeeps and a Tank the colour of sand rolled in toward his location. He couldn’t be sure if it was the US military or if the locals had managed to commandeer the vehicles.

It did not matter regardless.

Men spilled out of the vehicles in front of the tanks, taking cover behind their open doors and taking potshots at Magnus through open windows.

An armour piercing round punched through a door with a deafening sound, and one of the men dropped lifeless to the ground.

The two remaining pulled back to the rear of their vehicles.

And the turret fired a shell.

The men pulled their arms over their earth, as the earth quaked around them with the impact, their vision obscured by the storm of dust it kicked up.

Suffocating, tense silence replaced the sound of the explosion.

“Impact was on target, sir.” The gunner addressed his commander sitting at his back.

"Good. Move in further. We need to cut off the route through the river."

"Err, sir… Something's blocking out the periscope." The driver's voice came back.

A low rumble sounded from outside. The commander marveled at how he had been able to hear it, ears still ringing as they were from the sound of artillery fire.

Something heavy seemed to collide with the side, nearly taking the shell loader off his feet. The rumbling had turned to blood curdling growls.

"Is that.. some sort of animal?"

"This thing weighs almost 70 tons! Another vehicle must have crashed into us. Turn it around."

"Something must have snapped the treads, sir. The engine’s going but it won't move!"

"Then-"

They were interrupted by the harsh sound of something scraping against the exterior shell.

“Turn this turret around to wherever that’s coming from! The periscopes have gone blind for some reason, so we’re doing this on hearing.”

A feral growl resonated through the cramped chamber in the turret, and the man felt his heartbeat triple. Too late to see his loader make a fatal mistake.

The loader impulsively stuck his head out of the hatch, and barely a second later, he had fallen back down into the turret chamber in a spray of blood, head missing.

The commander had turned around in his seat to grab the hatch and slam it shut. The gunner had been reduced to incoherent shrieks.

The growling was directly above them, and judging from the scraping sound around the hatch, the creature wanted in.

“We can't move out, sir…. The treads are snapped and we-”

“Quiet man! I’m trying to think.”

And then the metal of the hatch shrieked in protest, and was finally torn clean off.

Ayesha, clutching the child to her breast, fled the scene of battle to duck into the protection of the structures Magnus had pointed her to.

A hand grabbed her from the shadows and slammed her back to a wall. She started to scream before another hand clamped over her mouth.

It was a boy. He couldn’t have been older than 16.

“You’re here for the boat through the border? Someone’s given us away. The foreigners are here already. Don’t make a sound, or they’ll find us and kill us. Do you understand?”

Ayesha nodded.

The boy slowly loosened his grip and backed away, then gestured toward the shadows.

Children, possibly even younger than he was, emerged from where they had been hiding.

“They’ll take you to the boat. My older brother will row you across. Be careful, I’ll keep watch here.”

And without delaying a second longer, he was gone, and the children had insistently begun to tug Ayesha away.

Magnus rearranged the blood stained tatters that remained of his fatigues, before sprinting off in the direction he had pointed Ayesha towards.

Stepping into the shadows, he instinctively dived under an incoming blow from an iron pipe, whirling to face his assailant.

A native. Barely a child.

He sensed another behind him, turning his torso out of the way of a thrust from a blade.

They kept yelling at him at a language he didn’t understand, and attacked too relentlessly for Magnus to try and defuse the situation.

In his distraction, he did not notice the third attacker leaping from above, puncturing his shoulder with a construction rod.

Roaring, he threw the third boy over his shoulder, slamming him onto the ground.

The first attacker noticed a gap, and tried to move in, weapon in hand.

Through a pained haze, Magnus reacted instinctively, and his hand shot out to strike at the child’s face. Hard.

Too hard.

He was thrown back against the wall, then collapsed bonelessly to the ground, a smear of blood where his scalp had split against it.

The other two paused in horror, then yelling something he didn’t understand, fled, one boy lagging after the other, recovering his wind from having been slammed onto the ground.

He looked at the corpse- no, the child that he had killed, lifeless eyes staring up at him from the ground.

Then, forcing himself to tear his gaze away, he moved further ahead.

But he had already been beaten to it. More soldiers up ahead. The stench of spent ammunition in the air.

The boys who had ran ahead to escape him, now barely recognizable, riddled with bullets.

They had a bundle in their arms- Magnus recognized it- the child.

They were speaking among themselves, but Magnus felt reason slipping away with the form of man.

And a great wolf, the size of a horse and the shade of pale winter bounded from the shadows.

The soldiers turned their weapons on the beast- ineffectual.

Any wounds it sustained were gone the next second. Whatever it’s great snapping jaws came in contact with, they destroyed.

The last of the men was sprawled on his back, dragging himself backward as he left a trail of blood from his mangled useless legs.

The child lay on the floor, wailing, but the beast merely followed the trail of blood.

The shrieks of the dying soldier mingled with the wails of the forgotten child, as the beast tore into his innards with bloody maw.

A gunshot rang through the air, and the bullet caught the wolf behind the ear. It whirled around in pain and rage.

Ayesha.

The frail young woman, picking up a firearm from the corpse of a fallen soldier, aimed it at the beast with trembling arms, even as she placed herself bodily between it and the child.

The wolf shied away even as the wound caused by the bullet began to heal.

Ayesha took the opportunity to grab the child. Warily keeping an eye on the wolf, one hand cradling the child, and the other a gun, she backed away.

And then she was gone.

Magnus sat between the corpses, fatigue, either mental or physical, finally overtaking him.

He could hear someone approaching from behind, not making much of an effort to conceal their presence, as if they were wary of startling him.

“Magnus…”

“Anders.”

The other man settled silently beside him. They sat in silence for a while.

“Are you going to come back?”

Magnus raised his eyes. “Are you kidding me?”

“Magnus, look…”

“No Anders. I’ve had enough. Is that why you came all the way out here? Because you might as well turn back now.”

“I followed your scent, Magnus. The CO was livid. I don't know how I talked him down.”

“That’s not my concern right now, Anders.”

They sat in silence once more. Anders shifted a bit closer.

“I know you’re having doubts, but there’s really no other life we can lead. This is all we have, Magnus.”

He slid closer and pressed his lips to the other man’s silver hair. “We are all we have.”

Magnus merely shrugged him off. “I’m not in the mood, Anders.”

“Damn it, Magnus! You know we can’t live like these people. I followed the carnage outside! I saw the child-”

“Enough!”

Anders flinched as Magnus rose to his feet.

“I may not be able to live like them, but I refuse to live like this any longer. And you can take that back to the CO.”

Anders shouted at Magnus’ back as he walked away.

“Do you even have a plan? What do you plan to do once you leave here?”

“I’ll figure that out for myself, Anders. This is goodbye.”