She paused a moment to catch her breath on the uphill climb. The village was so high up the mountain that the air was thin. She slid the jug over to her other shoulder, an action she never would have undertaken in public, and for good reason. Twisting the small of her back caused a flash of such sharp pain that she could not suppress a grimace. She continued up the path now, grumbling in her placid, quiet way. She groused about her body, which was no longer able to contain its suffering. The fear that someone would discover this made her avoid people’s gazes in Ghimri.

But why hadn’t Shamil taken the whole family to Ashilta? Why not move there once and for all? Because Ashilta was too far down the mountain? Too close to the Russian lines, too easily accessible? Regardless, he had still chosen the mosque of Ashilta for the ceremony of investiture. She herself had grown up in the shadow of its walls, and she believed what they said: the mosque at Ashilta was the greatest, the most beautiful, and the only one left standing. The mosque at Ghimri had been beautiful too, but the Russians had razed it to the foundations after desecrating the place with their excrement.

She glanced anxiously up at the overhanging rock. All she could see was a slab, barely distinguishable by its color, slightly darker than the uniform ash gray of the mountain. On this dark September morning, Bahou-Messadou imagined the village as it had been two years ago. She thought she could see the tiny one-story houses, like cubes with flat roofs, that served as the thresholds of the houses above them, piled one upon the other like boxes, arranged in an open circle like an amphitheater.

The first and largest row of buildings hung on the cliff, facing the void. The last was tucked up against the summit of the mountain. In between was a jumble of balconies and terraces, with a minaret and a few doorless, windowless lookout towers, a labyrinth so tightly constructed no stranger would ever venture in.

Everything, even the steep, narrow, tortuous alleys too narrow for two horsemen to pass, seemed designed to discourage the visitor and drive back the invader. In fact, with every fortresslike house defending the one just above it, the village could only be taken by assault.

Shamil had left nothing to chance. He had had the ramparts reinforced and had towers and redoubts built. Conscious of Russian artillery power, his choices were all motivated by a single question: despite all his preparations, could the infidels’ cannons reach his eagle’s nest? His chief, Khazi Mullah, the first imam, had reassured him. How could the Russians drag their heavy cannons up to these heights? How could they hoist so much weight up paths made for guerrilla warfare, trails so vertiginous that even the animals avoided them?

Of course, the Russians had taken these questions into consideration as well. Unfortunately for the men of Ghimri, they had found answers.

As the sun rose, Bahou-Messadou looked out upon a landscape she knew all too well: a field of ruins, charred rocks and squat tree stumps. It had been two years ago yesterday, or perhaps tomorrow. What would happen if these pigs descended on the village again while Shamil was gone?

She had no illusions. If the Russians took the second path, high above the river and just as dangerous, there would be no sharpshooters or horsemen waiting to ambush them. They would find only the silver river of the Avar Koysu at the bottom of the abyss; the gray, overhanging cliffs; and the birds of prey hovering over the invisible herds. No one would block their path. They could take over the wells, the towers, and the tiny fields they had already burned to the ground. They could make themselves right at home. The family chiefs who had not followed Shamil to Ashilta would pay them allegiance. No holy war would take place at Ghimri.

And yet once, not so long ago, the men of the Caucasus had loved their freedom so fiercely that no young woman would have accepted a husband who had not laid at her feet the heads of a dozen infidels, their hands nailed to her father’s door.

Bahou-Messadou despised her neighbors’ cowardice. In her clan, those who favored peace were called the hypocrites. Somewhere deep inside, though, she pitied their weakness.

How could the survivors resist the invaders when, two years ago, such valiant warriors as Khazi Mullah, the first imam, and Shamil, who was then his lieutenant, had not been able to?

The Russians had decimated their ranks with weapons unknown to the village. They had blown up the mountain, dug into the cliffs with explosives, and climbed vertically from one ledge to the next, hoisting their cannons with pulleys and winches from one level to the next. Their soldiers had dropped like flies under fire from Shamil’s troops, and they had suffered great losses, but no matter. As the casualties fell, others took their places. The Russian army had an unlimited reserve of officers, soldiers, and serfs. Shamil said they had tens of millions of slaves.

So the war was lost before it had ever even started, the hypocrites argued today, and for a dreadful reason: it violated the Koranic proscription to combat an enemy superior in number. Shamil and his men were four hundred against thirty thousand. Thirty thousand Russians had swept down upon these boulders, spreading death and devastation. And since then, the corn and the barley no longer grew in the small fields and the children cried with hunger. The rocks had turned the color of ashes, and no wind or rain washed them clean. The soot that coated everything formed a dark, greasy layer over the snow. Was this the victory God conferred upon those who served Him?

Day by day the rumors swelled. Shamil was not one of the chosen. He was weakening Islam. He displeased God.

In the silence of the night, Bahou-Messadou could no longer ignore their words, and she wondered. To her son, resisting the Russians was all about crushing everyone who opposed the holy war. But wasn’t this fight against the teachings of the Koran?

Allah have pity on Bahou-Messadou’s presumptuousness! How could she, an old, ignorant woman, dare to think such thoughts when Shamil was opening the path to Salvation?

And yet, she was incessantly tortured by doubt. She prayed for the pardon of her son and the pardon of Allah; she did penitence by carrying burdens that crushed her body and spirit. She brought the water from the ravine and pushed and dragged loads of earth and stones far too heavy for her for the reconstruction of Ghimri. She worked in the fields and did all the domestic chores that the men of the clan would not lower themselves to do, repeating the gestures for which Allah had created her. The men had their weapons; their role was to live up to the honor of fighting and killing and dying courageously. Hers was to lighten their woes and support them on their journey through life.

Bahou-Messadou walked past the ruins of the old well that the Russians had poisoned by throwing carrion and cadavers down it, past the watchtowers and the first courtyard. As always when she neared the village, she held her head high. She tried to straighten up fully, and God punished her for her pride. She bumped into a rock. The jug slid from her shoulder, and she hadn’t the strength to hang on to it. The ewer clattered onto the ground, the copper clanking over the rocks. She rushed to pick it up and stood listening for a moment, afraid a dog’s barking might wake up the women of the village.

But no, the shepherds’ dogs were out prowling around on the mountain. And the others, those that had guarded the meager store of fruit and the chickens, had been killed. All was still silent. She patted the ground to measure the extent of her mistake.

The water trickled down in thin rivulets. In her mind’s eye, she watched the tiny streams of lost purity rush down the incline.

It reminded her of a vision even more disturbing, of thousands of dribbles of purple trickling down to her feet, bathing them in a bloody puddle. The memory washed over her with a wave of nausea. But it hadn’t been blood that had stained her pants to the ankle; blood would have been purer, more noble than this vile poison. It was wine, all the stores of wine that Shamil had forced his people to spill, entire casks of it, denouncing each other and repenting the sin they had committed by making alcohol as they poured it down the hillside.

How long ago was that? Seven years, eight? In any case, it was long before the Russians attacked the village and burned the arable land. At the time, Shamil wasn’t yet thirty. Bahou-Messadou approved his actions wholeheartedly—her husband had been a drunk, like his father before him. But the vineyards, why had he destroyed the vineyards? The most beautiful vines in all the Caucasus grew in Ghimri. Shamil had ripped them up by the roots, removing even the temptation to offend God. Nothing was left, not a single stock, not even a shoot.

She could see him, standing there in the midst of the terraced plots. She saw him, splendid and colossal, digging in the soil with his sword, the soil that had been carried up here, plot by plot, on the backs of women. Her mother, her grandmothers, her ancestors, all of them had labored to accomplish this, at pains only Bahou herself could appreciate. She had been shocked by the destruction of the fruit of such great effort, repeated generation after generation.

She understood that it was a symbolic gesture. And she knew what it signified: the replacement of the old order, the order of men, with the new order of the Sharia, the law of God, which demanded the purification of souls and unbridled war against the infidels.

Her mind returned to the question that nagged her incessantly: what if the inhabitants of Ghimri chose to reject a spiritual guide they had not elected?