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Its  great, blazing eyes met Sergei's, just for a moment. Its mouth, greater still,  opened wide. Sergei jerked his assault rifle up to his shoulder and fired off all the  ammunition he had left in the clip. It wasn't that he thought it would do any  good. But how, at that point, could it possibly hurt? Fire, redder and hotter than the sun. Blackness.

    Truly, Satar said to his father, there is no God but God. Truly, the older man agreed. His left foot, his left leg halfway up to the  knee, were gone, but the wound was healing. The Russian medic  now among the  dead had done an honest job with it. Maybe Satar's father could get an  artificial foot one day. Till then, he would be able to get around, after a  fashion, on crutches. Satar said, After the dragon destroyed the Shuravi at the edge of the village,  I thought it would wreck Bulola, too. So did I, his father said. But it knew who the pious and Godfearing were, or  at least He chuckled wryly. who had the sense not to shoot at it. Well . . . yes. Satar wished his father hadn't said anything so secular. He  would have to pray to bring him closer to God. He looked around, thinking on  what they had won. Bulola is ours again. This whole valley is ours again. The  Russians will never dare come back here. I should hope not! his father said. After all, the dragon might wake up  again. He and Satar both looked to the mountainside. That streak of reddish rock . . .  That was where the dragon had come from, and where it had returned. If Satar let  his eyes drift ever so slightly out of focus, he could, or thought he could,  discern the great beast's outline. Would it rouse once more? If it is the will  of God, he thought, and turned his mind to other things.

    The dragon slept. For a while, till its slumber deepened, it had new dreams.

    The black tulip roared out of Kabul airport, firing flares as it went to confuse  any antiaircraft missiles the dukhi might launch. Major Chorny whose very name  meant black took a flask of vodka from his hip and swigged. He hated Code 200  missions, and hated them worst when they were like this. In the black tulip's cargo bay lay a zinc coffin. It was bound for Tambov, maybe  three hundred kilometers south and east of Moscow. It had no windows. It was  welded shut. Major Chorny would have to stay with it every moment till it went  into the ground, to make sure Sergei's grieving kin didn't try to open it. For  it held not the young man's mortal remains but seventy-five kilos of sand,  packed tight in plastic bags to keep it from rustling. As far as the major knew, no mortal remains of this soldier had ever been found.  He was just . . . gone. By the time the black tulip crossed from Afghan to  Soviet airspace, Chorny was very drunk indeed. —«»—«»—«»—

He Woke in Darkness
     
by Harry Turtledove
    Early on a cold and dark December morning—a day after I bought this tale from Harry Turtledove, and long after he’d written it—I was startled by the morning news. The synchronicity of the story on the radio about an arrest stemming from an event of decades past and the unsettling story in this magazine seems to prove that some historical incidents will haunt us for years to come. Harry’s newest book, Settling Accounts: Drive to the East will be out in August from Del Rey. He recently edited The Enchanter Completed , a tribute anthology to L. Sprague de Camp that has just been published by Baen Books.
    * * * *
    He woke in darkness, not knowing who he was. The taste of earth filled his mouth.
    It shouldn’t have ended this way. He knew that, though he couldn’t say how or why. He couldn’t even say what this way was, not for sure. He just knew it was wrong. He’d always understood about right and wrong, as far back as he could remember.
    How far back was that? Why, it was ... as far as it was. He didn’t know exactly how far. That seemed wrong, too, but he couldn’t say why.
    Darkness lay heavily on