Listening, I heard no other sound. My imagination was creating foes where none existed. Only hours ago death had visited this place. This heap of charred ruins had been my home, and a night ago I had lain staring into the darkness of the ceiling, dreaming as always of lands beyond the sea. Now my mother lay in a shallow grave, dug by my own hands, and my home was a ruin where rainwater gathered in the hollows of the ancient stone floor, a floor put down by my ancestors before memory began. Already dawn was suggesting itself to the sky. Waiting an instant longer, my knife held low in my fist, I told myself, "I will have that gold or kill any who comes between it and me." Fire no longer smoldered among the fallen roof beams, for rain had damped it out, leaving the smell of charred wood when it has become wet, and the smell of death. Darting from the shadows to the well coping, I ran my hand down inside the mouth of the well, counting down the cold stones. Two ... three ... four ...five! With the point of my fine Damascus dagger, I worked at the mortar.
