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helicopters were to spray him with  death. He paused to inject a wounded mujahid with morphine, then ran on. But as he ran, sheaves of flame rose into the air from down in the valley, from  the very outskirts of Bulola: one, two, three. They were as yellow, as tightly  bound, as sheaves of wheat. Katyushas! That cry rose from more than one  throat, too from Satar's, among others and it was nothing less than a cry of  despair. Satar threw himself flat. He clapped his hands over his ears and opened his  mouth very wide. That offered some protection against blast. Against salvos of  Katyushas . . . There is no God but God, and Muhammad is the prophet of God!   Satar gasped out. Against Katyushas, prayer offered more protection than  anything else. The Russian rockets shrieked as they descended. They might have been so many  damned souls, already feeling Shaitan's grip on them. When they slammed into the  side of the mountain most of them well behind Satar the ground shook under him,  as if in torment. Roaring whooshes from down below announced that the Russians were launching  another salvo. But then the ground shook under Satar, and shook, and shook, and  would not stop shaking.

    Evil dreams, pain-filled dreams, had come too often to the dragon's endless  sleep lately. It had twitched and jerked again and again, trying to get away  from them, but they persisted. Its doze grew ever lighter, ever more fitful,  ever more restless. A hundred twenty Katyushas no, the truth: a hundred eighteen, for one blew up in  midair, and another, a dud, didn't explode when it landed burst against the  mountain's flank that was also the dragon's flank. Thirteen tons of high  explosive . . . Not even a dragon asleep for centuries could ignore that. Asleep no more, the dragon turned and stretched and looked around to see what  was tormenting it.

    The screams on the mountainside took on a different note, one so frantic that  Satar lifted his face from the trembling earth and looked back over his shoulder  to see what had happened. There is no God but God! he gasped, his tone  altogether different from the one he'd used a moment before. That had been  terror. This? This was awe. Wings and body the red of hot iron in a blacksmith's forge, the dragon ascended  into the air. Had it sprung from nowhere? Or had it somehow burst from the side  of the mountain? Satar didn't see it till it was already airborne, so he never  could have said for certain, which was a grief in him till the end of his days.  But the earthquakes stopped after that, which at least let him have an opinion. Eyes? If the dragon might have been red-hot iron, its eyes were white-hot iron.  Just for the tiniest fraction of an instant, the dragon's gaze touched Satar.  That touch, however brief, made the mujahid grovel facedown among the rocks  again. No man, save perhaps the Prophet himself, was meant to meet a dragon eye  to eye. As if it were the shadow of death, Satar felt the dragon's regard slide away  from him. He looked up once more, but remained on his knees as if at prayer.  Many of the mujahideen were praying; he heard their voices rising up to Heaven,  and hoped God cared to listen. But, to the godless Shuravi in the helicopter gunships, the dragon was not  something that proved His glory to a sinful mankind. It was something risen from  the Afghan countryside and, like everything else risen from the Afghan  countryside, something to be beaten down and destroyed. They swung their  machines against it, machine guns spitting fire. One of them still carried a pod  of rockets under its stubby wing. Those, too, raced toward the dragon. They are brave, Satar thought. He'd thought that about Russians before. They are  brave, but oh, by God the Compassionate, the Merciful, they are stupid. Had the helicopters not fired on it, the dragon might have ignored them, as a  man intent on his business might ignore mosquitoes or bees. But if he