The boy was gorging himself before I ripped him from her breast. He responded with cries that only served to drown his mother’s bleating. It is well known that mother’s milk thins the blood. Going forward, the boy would be fortified with goat’s milk thickened with ram’s blood. The pink concoction would prepare him for the furnace. He’d be hammered, folded, and tempered into fighting steel.

A foul smell startled me out of the daydream. The boy, dressed in a silky baby blue romper, was soiling himself in my lap and giggling heartily.