Index Chapter 1: Karl p. 2 - 6 Chapter 2: Preparation p. 7 - 13 Chapter 3: Bandits p. 14 - 21 Chapter 4: Internment p. 22 - 26 Chapter 5: Renewal P. 27 - 32 Chapter 6: The Cartel P.33- 46? Chapter 1 Karl The smoldering lingering, worn out fire spewed an acrid aroma throughout the bowels of the mud plastered hut that the members of the Klingor clan called home. Little Karl slept fitfully curled into and among a pile of dirty rags that adorned a far corner of the kitchen. The hard packed dark earthen floor had become an extra appendage, a part of him. It smelled dank and damp but was warm and secure, like a hand enveloping him; it formed and folded around him, holding him securely. His coughing had grown more and more disconcerting and constant over the past few months, so much so that Max had had to move him as far as possible away from the rest of the family. There were no doctors in Vilneus, but even if there had been one, there was little that medicine, modern as it was in this year of the Lord 1745, could do. Bleeding, leeching and inhaling sulfur, though all in all very dramatic seemed useless and too demanding at this stage for little trembling Karl to endure. Karl was four years old but trapped in a two year-old's body. Everyone in the family knew, and felt, that he would never see his fifth birthday. His frail form virtually never stopped quivering and quaking between coughing spells. Karl was the fourth son and the sixth child of Max and Evelyn Klingor. Evelyn had succumbed herself to the coughing sickness just one short year before. With her though, it had been quick: mercifully for her; and, mercilessly for the family. It was as if her life breath had been literally sucked out of her. She fell ill on a Monday morning and by Tuesday night she was but an inert corpse. Max had said a few words over her body to the assembled children, then he had set to work digging her grave in the shade of that gnarled, twisted willow tree that draped itself over the stream: this was the same spot they used to call theirs. After he had carried her and placed her gingerly in the earth, he called the family to help push the earth over her. He painstakingly crafted a wooden marker and set it at the head of her new eternal home. He drew Si aside afterwards and told him that no matter what happened or when, to please bury him beside her. He made Si solemnly swear to it. Karl though who now lay curled and contorted, agonizing in the corner of the kitchen, could remember very little of her. All he could think of was the coming of the next coughing spasm and the passing of the last one; the precious, though queasy moments between, while he gasped for the acrid air with ever deeper breaths. These were his joie-de-vivre moments so to speak, drinking in the cool acrid fumes into his inflamed, wretched soon to be useless, lungs. He looked longingly at his family busying themselves with living and staying alive at these times. These moments of peace though had become rarer and more precious as the disease progressed to the very deep depths of his ravaged soul. Max Klingor, his father, a devout Jew like his recently deceased wife Evelyn, twitched unconsciously in time with his youngest son's agonizing coughing spells while he slept seemingly among his other five children. They slept under a giant worn quilted sheepskin comforter. Time had ravaged Max terribly; at age 30, he looked grisly and grayed, nearly 50. His bearded face was only partially visible over the comforter. The other five children squirmed from time to time, totally buried under the blankets and the giant quilt over all; boys and girls slept together like a teeming mass of snakes, in a trance like state. The covers shifted from moment to moment. Max's head though, like a topmast, stayed above it all. With his eyes closed solidly against the frigid night, he blindly surveyed his fiefdom. After all was said and done, it had been a very good harvest year and just last week he had sold the last of his crop of carrots and potatoes to a commissary agent presently stationed in barracks near Moscow. It had taken three weeks to complete the harvesting, including bagging everything. The week had been spent in loading wagons, day after day, evening after evening. All in perfect order, according to the agent and to Max who had been worried lest the frost had bitten his mainstay. His valley, located as it was, was the best in the area for frost. It had been passed down from his father's father, to his father and then to him. There were no banks in Vilneus at this time. The payment from the commissary agent in gold was a dangerous thing in these dangerous days. Days when errant Cossacks or renegade Turks, bandits in groups of three or four or more would fling themselves mercilessly on a family-- raping, murdering, robbing at will. Every man had the fear in him. Max was no exception, even though his children held him so in reverence: he did indeed have the fear in him. Every year, every harvest season, he did as his father's father had done; the harvest money he took posthaste to the Vilneus marketplace where he placed it in the trustworthy hands of a perpetually smiling Jewish merchant who was much better connected than him to the outside world. What this merchant actually sold seemed to be more good cheer than anything else. This merchant's family had been handling his family's money forever it seemed. The merchant kept a tally sheet for Max where he kept a running balance for Max after each transaction. At the end of each season, Max would sit with him at the small table that stood eternally in the nearly empty shop and discuss it for a few minutes over a mug of rare cold beer. Max's family was fairly self sufficient and Max didn't really feel the need for anything especially since his wife had passed away. So he simply hadn't felt like spending anything at all in the past year. How much money his family had squirreled away, and where it all was, were tightly held secrets. Of late Max had begun taking his eldest son Si, now 14, with him on these money trips. Si had been working on the farm for nearly 100% of his whole life. From the moment his fingers could dig, he was working. In the evenings, at the rough hewn dinner table, he had listened attentively as his father or mother had instructed him in reading, writing and arithmetic- the essential three skills as they saw it. All the children would gather round the tallow lamp as alphabet and arithmetic skills were explained over and over again, year after year. As Si saw it though, there was a fourth, more important skill: fighting. This he practiced with his siblings and with the phantoms in the fields. Those phantoms though took his punches and kicks without complaint, unlike his brothers and sisters. Chapter 2 Preparation Si trained himself to fight in every conceivable way he could imagine. He fashioned a slingshot and perfected his ability to an amazing level. He meticulously created targets out of dirt and straw. He actually caught an occasional rabbit for the family dinner pot in this way. He had carefully crafted a bow and then with the sinewy skin of a rabbit cut into thin strips, he had created a rather unique twisted but taut bowstring. He kept the string in his pocket next to his skin to keep it warm and supple, to always be ready. The age was one where each man's home was indeed a virtual castle. To Si this was a fighting age. Fight or perish. Si had few friends as he had little chance to travel further than the farthest field stretched. Being able to travel wide eyed into town with his father had opened his world up significantly. He enthralled his brothers and sisters with his stories of the what strange sights he had seen on his voyages into Vilneus proper. Not only the sights but also the stories of the strange people, boys and girls, and things that moved and bells that pealed. They gathered in front of him at night after a trip and beseeched him for more details, prodding him with their eager smiling and nodding faces as they encircled him. He felt so famous for a few moments as he soaked up their admiration. On his 14th birthday, Max had solemnly entrusted Si with the care of two of the three guns he possessed. The one which intrigued Si most was the musket which adorned the far wall of the bedroom. Laboriously Si cleaned it, polished it, caressed it. It was always kept loaded, as were the other two guns. The smallest one was a double barreled pistol which Max always kept around his person, stuffed in his belt or pants, depending on the day--just in case. As Max had it figured, if they were attacked, either him or Si could get at least one of the attackers quickly, allowing the other, either Si or him, to come to the rescue with either the musket, or the second single shot pistol, depending on the case. Meticulously Max mapped out his battle plan to an eagerly attentive cadet Si. Max was amazed at Si's diligence and care with the two guns and it was soon after the harvest was brought in that he had revealed to Si his secret weapon: a small shiny ship's cannon in mint condition. It was a five- pounder manufactured in Germany, a place which Si could not even imagine. Si's eyes nearly popped out of his head when he saw it. 'How had his father hidden something like this!?' he thought almost out loud. He stood gaping at it as Max started his explanation. The phantoms in the fields seemed to be eons ago, a former lifetime. Something about his father's tone and the details of his explanation made Si realize that he was no longer playing a child's game. Unlike Karl, he did remember his mother. He remembered her caresses when he was hurting and her sweet smile when everyone gathered around the table at dinner time. How she would let Si serve the younger ones; either way, it had and has been a joy to him. There was a bond of trust his father was extending to him and Si eagerly stretched to accept it, even if it would become an onerous burden in the future. He knew from the way Max clutched at and was never ever separated from his gun that these were troubled times filled with troubled affairs. Listening to his father ramble on about the canon enlivened him, made him feel so much more a partner, so much more an adult rather than the child that he really wasn't. Although Max had balls for the canon, which he assured Si could travel two hundred yards, he hadn't ever planned to use them. Most of them he had reduced to shrapnel sized chards and chunks of iron, painstakingly chiseling them night after night. He had purchased the canon for a trifling in his youth and had managed to purloin it away from someone who it turned out had been its rightful master. Getting black powder for it on the quiet market was an easy matter as it had turned out. Keeping the powder dry though was a whole different story. Max had decided on some earthen jars which it had turned out actually absorbed water and rendered most of the powder a little useless. He dried it and tested it, but in the end he wound up refreshing it with a bigger new batch. The 25 5- pound iron balls had been a much trickier matter. The army commissary agent had had a hand, a large hand, in arranging the matter and of course Max had paid a premium for each and every one of them. The agent had not truly believed Max's story about using the balls for a hobby, but rather than challenge Max over it, he determined to stay quiet and just charge Max more for them, which of course Max compliantly did to avoid any embarrassing questions. Max did notice that the agent was randomly inspecting bags all the time, perhaps looking for those balls, Max thought wryly. He had built the canon into a false wall at the front of the house. It was positioned so that it could take in an arc which included the whole yard in front of the house with a shrapnel load. There were four field stone walls extending diagonally outwards from the corners of the house, at the house itself they were nearly 8 foot tall, tapering away to nothing about 20 feet out. These walls reinforced the hut significantly and more importantly it focused people to approach the house from the road right to the front door. A high shuttered window was on each side wall, making the sides appear uninteresting and inaccessible. The rear door was like the front, a solid wood affair that was usually kept solidly bolted shut at night. Each door had a peephole slot that Max had meticulously crafted with a sliding cover; the peephole could double as a firing hole. He had painstakingly flared the muzzle of the canon to allow his shrapnel the widest possible dispersion with the minimal possible movement. He had built an elaborate but simple box so that the muzzle was hidden by straw and the person firing was protected by wood clad in tin, as if on a ship at sea fighting in a naval battle. The main difference here was that the prey were pirates of the most murderous kind. Max's and therefore now by default Si's major concern was for the successful defense of their home. One of the biggest hurdles was that the guns all took significant reloading time: the musket took nearly one and a half minutes; the double barreled pistol nearly two minutes; the single shot pistol two minutes; and, the five-pounder required close to three minutes. With practice and preparation Max and Si concurred that those times could be severely reduced, if not almost eliminated. They set their minds on ways to cut the reloading times and included Gwen and Jon in their thoughts. In a battle situation, the reality was that they could probably only count on getting one good shot off per weapon. If there were more than four attackers they could be in what Max referred to as a terrible 'mash'. Si, not totally resourceless though, figured he could slingshot a man or horse for good effect with a piece of metal shot. Perhaps his bow could come in handy? Max didn't disagree with him, but he didn't really see the benefit of learning how to do either himself. He was practical usually, and not at all famous for being open minded or very creative though. The bow though Max, after a bit of thinking on it, did see some residual possibilities for. He asked Si to make another bow and an extra couple of strings, just in case. Max set himself to the task of creating or buying some arrow tips and obtaining some real arrows for the bows. This was surprisingly very easily done in the market one Sunday. Max also set about trying to obtain a cartridge loading rifle which he had heard of but not yet seen, nor it seems had anyone else heard of, anywhere near Vilneus at least. He put the word out and about that he wanted one and usually that was good enough as gotten. Si stood, at 14, nearly as tall as Max, but it was obvious with a quick first glance that Max vastly overpowered his son. As they strolled the cobblestoned market streets on the day following the commissary agent's visit, they saw a funeral caravan winding its way along the streets. Max told Si to wait for him by their wagon while he went to investigate. Funerals were rare these days and in Vilneus the last one Max had been aware of was a year ago for his wife and that had been an extremely private family affair. Approaching the periphery of the gathered crowd watching the funeral, Max espied a straggly but familiar face of a grandmother from one of the other nearby valleys. Upon seeing Max, she v-lined towards him. They hugged, her shaking calmed for an instant, he held her and sat her down on the curbing. This grandmother was a distant, very very distant relative it had been revealed to him, many years before, so he was feeling heavily saddened as he noticed that there were 5 caskets on the wagons she was with. After a few moments of silence which felt like hours, Max started questioning her. The father it turned out had also sold his harvest, though to a different commissary agent. The same night that he finished the shipment of the crops, a band of seven or eight men on horseback had swept down upon the farmstead, rousing the sleeping family as they murdered them all in their beds; all except for the grandma for some unfathomable reason, who in the end was made to give up the gold. It was she though who was the definite matriarch of the family. Though she was devastated by the story she told Max, she had a noble quality about her. She sobbed uncontrollably, but slowly regained her composure as Max escorted her back to the waiting funeral procession. She walked away, accompanying the pauvre funeral. A rabbi was leading it solemnly. He was waving an ornate smoking incense holder from side to side as he walked, not for any religious reason, just he felt they should imitate the other church. There was more to the story than just the fact of the murders; the gruesome tortuous details that the grandmother had revealed to him brought tears of rage, tears of frustration, flowing invisibly down Max's robust cheeks. He had a thirst for revenge, a seeking of intolerance, a seeking of understanding. His silence and his slowness on the return trip by wagon worried Si: seldom had he seen Max weighed down by more than that which was before his very eyes at that very moment, fleeting as it may be. CHAPTER 3 The Bandits As the weeks passed by turning September into October and then twisting it into November, Si noticed more and more of a change coming over Max. Max was taking trips into town more frequently; and, frustratingly for Si, he took them alone. What Si had failed to observe though was that his father was now entrusting the safekeeping of the family to Si, such was his changed belief and trust in him. As part of the defense plan, Si, with Max's consent, brought the two next oldest children into the plan. The reason being that it seemed that the reloading time was the weakest link in the plan. Jon and Gwen were instructed meticulously on reloading each of the weapons. The militarization of the Klingor farmstead continued on a daily basis. Max had heard that the marauders were following a roughly circular route well to the north and east. The six or seven or eight or nine of the group varied, but the principle modus operandi didn't vary: they pillaged like Huns, they were utterly inhuman, incompassionate. Max and his neighbors all had the fear in them. In the town they had even been talking of forming a local militia unit for self defense....a tax was suggested and surprisingly agreed to, providing the money was to be used for the purchase of materials to improve the community's defensibility. Planning meetings were organized and self help and group help ideas were discussed. It was decided that every house and business should strive to be a fort as a short term defense of at least one hour should be possible. Even assuming the neighbors heard, it would probably take at least one hour for someone to be able to come to help. Karl continued his miserable existence in the corner of the kitchen coughing and moaning the nights and days away. Hours turned to days, days turned to weeks, weeks to months, yet still he lingered. Max cursed himself as he thought though he loved him, that Karl lingered on just to spite them. Despite his condition, despite his uncontrollable coughing fits, despite his rags, despite the cold and damp earth which he embraced as his own flesh and blood, Karl noticed, even though no-one else did nor could, that the pain in his chest was lightening. By the second week of December, after what had seemed an eternity of coughing two important things happened to change his world. The first was inevitable. It happened as the late afternoon sun was weakening and just before the early evening set in on their northern snowscape. The snow had set in in early October and it seemed determined to stay. It wasn't the soft flaky stuff you could make a snowman or snow ball out of. It wasn't remarkable; it was grainy, granular like course salt and just as pliable. It crunched underfoot like thin glass, multitudinous layers thick; it had a texture that stood for a moment under a man's weight but gave way instantly to his cane or as it happened on December 12, 1745, under horses' cloven feet. Karl, having been so close to the ground for so long, heard it first: and, though he had lain for the last six months prostrate and given up as nearly dead by those around him, he summoned his air painfully within him and shouted out a single word which steeled and solidified the will to survive within each member of the Klingor family. "BANDITS!" Once uttered there was a very small moment of utter silence in the house as everyone froze in terror. Si broke the trance-like condition with a barked order to Max. "Musket!" It was all that was needed. Si moved into position behind the front door 5 pounder while Max positioned himself by the slot in the front door: musket firmly hefted against his shoulder, he sighted down the barrel. The girls put out the lights, the tallow and wax smoked as they were extinguished. Coats were put on; the flints were readied, the musket was cocked back, securely, flawlessly, effortlessly by Max's experienced and strong fingers. The two pistols were brought forward from the bedroom and the double barreled one was tucked post haste into Max's belt. Jon and Gwen prepared to reload. Everything seemed to be ready. Si was assembling his bow and slinging the quiver on his back when he sighted the marauders hanging back about 300 feet, trying to size up what they were facing. How Karl had sensed them there was a mystery to Si. The afternoon's late sun, was a good hour from setting. They looked an awful array of some nine or ten mounted men. From the distance, about 300 feet, it was obvious that they were evaluating the target. The lights being extinguished, the barrel of the musket protruding from the door, these things told them scores; the last time that had happened, the old couple inside had had an inviting hoard under their bed. The two shots the old man had shakily gotten off had missed their marks totally. Slitting their throats for the joy of watching them die.... With this thought in the backs of their minds, they ignored all caution and pushed their horses onward. Pell mell they charged forward through the snow across the frozen lake of a field. Si didn't flinch for a moment. He readied the five pounder. Over the months he had pre-aimed it to what Max and him had assumed was the most logical point of attack or approach to the front of the the cabin. Si had even arranged a woodpile near to the house that was nearly 8 feet high running from the window away from the house. The window controlled then the whole of the front of the house. The arcs covered by Max and Si were wide enough to encompass the only accesses, for there was also a small stream with steep banks to contend with under the blind corner of the house and the window on that side had a companion sun slot, such as would be on a ship targeting the other side of the woodpile. This had been added some months before when Si and the rest of the children had moved and lugged and then re-moved again the woodpile. Si had his mark set. The range was set at about 120 feet. As planned he waited stealthfully as the first of the group passed his marker. He bit his lips in nervous but cold blooded anticipation. His hand started to ease back on the flint striker. A second attacker passed the marker. The rest of the children huddled tightly together in different corners of the room. Poor Karl had been bundled away under the bed like a sack of potatoes. Gwen stood at the ready to help Si reload the five pounder. This meant that she had the powder load ready, the shrapnel bag open and measured out on the dinner table and the seal of wads of woven cotton duly dipped in Max's secret blend of home made corn whiskey then squeezed dry on her skirt. This was an improvisation of her own. Max frowned at her, but let his frown bend into a smile, as their eyes met. Gwen had readied six loads in a likewise manner for Si. All of a sudden the cannon roared to life felling four of the bandits in a hail of hot shrapnel. Two of the horses squealed in pain as they squirmed under their inert loads. The three men in front took the cue to attack, not even bothering to regard the carnage behind them. Three others hung back, but moved in a little closer to crane their necks to try to see what was happening and just in case their friends succeeded, like vultures they circled at about 200 feet out. They were all old soldiers, deserters, but scoundrels through and through. There was a rugged and obstinate will to succeed to the finish, which the death of or wounding of a temporary traveling companion would not waver. Camping out night after night in the wild, unshaven, unwashed, catching love at knife-point, they were a dirty and yet remarkably focused group. Once they set upon a target , a goal, they were like a pack of the hungry wolves who have scented the fear in the departing prey--no matter what they will dismember the prey; moreover, they will devour any of their own who are unable to be fully operative. In a strange way this ragtag group had a wolf-like devotion to the grisly task at hand. Methodologically, meticulously, they unleashed a volley at the source of the blast. Max's do-it-yourself design though deflected the volley down and harmlessly into the ground at Si's feet. At 100 feet their pistols as weapons were no match for the canon with its 200 foot range. Si and Gwen had been furiously re-loading the five pounder, while Jon set up the striker. Gwen shoved in the powder, he the shrapnel load. In six seconds, they had it ready and Si aimed again at the three approaching the front gate. They had covered about 75 feet, having paused momentarily to reload their pistols themselves. The angle was very sharply reduced. As Si sighted along the naked steaming barrel of the canon, he could clearly see their ragged faces as he fingered the striker. He deliberately aimed this time, the squealing and squirming horses out by his marker had unnerved him slightly: he didn't like to see animals suffer. The attackers' moans though were like music to his ears though. The explosion of the cannon shocked him with its abruptness. It seemed more dramatic at close range. The front two fell instantly, their faces gone . The third reeled slightly but continued his attack. Si swiftly seized the single shot pistol and took careful aim through the canon's port. Almost eyeball to eyeball, from about 6 feet, Si fired point blank at the moving body. It shuddered violently as the bullet lodged itself squarely in his chest. His horse stopped instantly, perhaps momentarily deafened, perhaps shocked; why ever had no meaning, Si didn't really care. He was busy with Gwen reloading the canon and Jon was busy reloading the pistol. Max was at the door aiming at the remaining small group of 3 about 100 feet away. They had witnessed the carnage of their former friends with a wolf-like attitude, "more for us" and had been starting to move in for the kill. The sight of Max with the leveled musket pointing their way was the last straw--they started to turn, but not before Max got off a shot seriously knocking the life out of one of the three. The other two panicked and set off at a gallop. Max gave his musket to Gwen to reload and motioned to Si and Emil and Salina to come with him. Max held his cocked pistol firmly in front of him as he advanced out the door of the house. Si did likewise with the single shot pistol. Approaching the first body, Max gave it a sharp hard kick. There was no reaction: he was dead. Charging Emil and Salina, he said, "Search him, strip him, empty his pockets, pile the clothes there!" He was pointing at a point near the marker Si had set. "Any weapons, gold, papers, take it all inside the house..... Now, move quickly as it will be dark soon!" "Their clothes, their boots, everything and anything burnable will make good kindling." "Si," he continued, "-- you get the horses; if they're wounded, slit their throats quickly across the jugular veins. If they're in good shape, tie them up by the wood pile. Take off their saddles and search all of the equipment. Bloody blankets and other clothes, bring to be burned. Lay everything out on the ground." Abruptly he stopped speaking. Everyone scattered and set to their assigned tasks. Max set about his task and checked each of the bodies. One was still alive. A gun shot very quickly ended that.