Partisan
The Invasion of Miraval: Book One
Justin Bohardt
Published by Justin Bohardt at Amazon KDP
Copyright 2014 by Justin Bohardt
Amazon KDP Edition, License Notes
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Table of Contents
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About the Author
Also by the Author
Dedication
In the 1990s, I found an ancient VHS copy of a miniseries called V hiding in a corner of the public library. I was only two when it was released on television and had never even heard of it before, but it had aliens and I was sucker for anything sci-fi. I probably have not watched the original V in twenty years, but the dedication from that series has stuck with me for a long time:
“To the heroism of the Resistance Fighters- past, present, future- this work is respectfully dedicated.”
When my interest in military history grew in high school and developed into a major in college, I found myself drawn to La Résistance, Les Maquisards, and the Eastern European, Greek and Russian partisans that fought so courageously against Nazi occupation. This work of fiction was written with their valor in mind, and, like V, it is dedicated to all irregulars who picked up a weapon to defend their homes and to fight the fascist madness.
PARTISAN
1
Mine is the heart of a predator- my prey stands before me. No lust for blood courses my veins; no wrath unanswered spurs me on. There is naught I feel but a growling hunger in my belly and the stark, shrill cry of necessity. Another night, you might have wandered before my sight unafraid and left again unchallenged. That is not this night. My mind is clean and sharp, my eyes clear and focused. In this great strife through which we all struggle, fate has brought us together and demanded a mighty trial of us. There can be only one victor and by all the gods who bear witness, that victor shall be me.
The rifle shot echoed out across the lonely wood followed immediately by the sound of an animal staggering and falling into a bush. Blue-gray smoke drifted hazily from a rifle barrel extended through the leaves of a large oak tree. The hunter allowed silence to return to the wood for just a moment before the croak of frogs and the singing of the various insects resumed anew. As quietly as he could, the hunter worked the bolt action on his rifle and deftly caught the spent shell in his hand as it ejected from the chamber, placing it in his pocket for safe keeping.
Moving adroitly in his perch in the branches of the oak tree, the hunter slid the safety into the on position on his MC80 rifle and slung it onto his back. With the grace of a panther, he then dropped down from the tree and landed on all fours, his eyes constantly sweeping back and forth, tracking any movement in the wood. He knew well that he was not the only predator in these parts and that the first rule of the hunt was not in the killing of prey, but keeping other hunters from your kill.
Raslan Dagenham, called Dagger or simply Dag by most that knew him, was a tall, lean twenty-two year-old who moved with a leonine grace when out in the wild. He had medium length brown hair, swept back out of his face and held back by a green woolen cap. Bright brown eyes stared forth from an angular, but not harsh face that was covered with mud, camouflage of a natural variety. A long green tunic was draped across his body. It too was covered in mud and patched in multiple places, as were his brown pants. They were already sporting a new rip at the knee from where a thorn bush had grabbed him as he tracked a deer across the gentle hills of the wood. Faded leather hiking boots completed his hunting gear.
Satisfactorily convinced that his game had not attracted the attention of any mountain lions or bears, Dag moved forward and found the deer he had felled. His shot had caught it just to the right of the eye. The deer had been dead in barely a moment, and he still felt a little disappointment that he had not hit his mark perfectly. Nine times out of ten, he made that shot, but that one always bothered him.
He pulled his rifle off his shoulder and laid it on the ground next to the deer. Dag then placed his head in the deer’s midsection, grabbed a pair of legs in each hand and then hoisted the kill across his back. Still in a kneeling position, Dag grabbed his rifle and then stood back up. He flicked the safety back off the weapon and brought it into a position across his chest, while maintaining the balance of the dead animal now resting across his neck and shoulders. Creatures of the forest would recognize the inherent weakness of Dag being weighed down by his kill, and he had to be ready to defend himself and his bounty.
As Dag began the long march back through the woods to his village of Harren Falls, his thoughts turned to the words that had flashed through his head just before pulling the trigger. It was a prayer that his father, gods grant him peace, had spoken often to him when Dag was first taught to hunt. He had called it the Hunter’s Prayer. His father had been a firm devotee of Ara, goddess of the hunt, although he had little use for prayer or gods in any other part of his life. Perhaps if Raslan Dagenham Senior had taken greater consideration of Vian, god of war and wisdom, he would not have died in the cold trenches on the frontiers during the Great Strife, as the war was commonly known in Miraval.
A feeling of resentment crept up in Dag as he continued down the hunting trail that he had forged over the years, followed by a feeling of annoyance at himself. Dag was not the kind of man to ponder upon that which he could not have. His father was gone and no anger toward the gods, the Dominion, or even his father for going to war in the first place was going to change what he had lost.
A challenging roar brought Dag out of his quiet contemplation. He had just finished rounding a corner of the trail, one that was particularly overgrown, and had come upon a medium- sized black bear. Instinctually, he froze and his hands tightened in their grip around his rifle. The bear shuffled slowly forward, baring its teeth before roaring again. The bear stopped about twenty-five feet from Dag and stared at him.
“You lazy son of a bitch,” Dag muttered to himself.
The bear wasn’t interested in a fight. The long scars on his hide seemed to indicate that he had tangled with a human before, one whose rifle had left those streaking scars: wounds created from a few bullets grazing the bear’s skin. This one remembered what a human had done to it and was not in the mood to fight. That did not mean it was going to pass up the opportunity to try to scare a human into giving up his kill and running away in fright.
Dag checked the safety once more on his rifle, flicking it on and off, the noise sounding loud in the close surrounds of the woods. The bear’s ears twitched and it seemed to study Dag more intently for a moment. Dag did not wish to bring the weapon to bear (quite literally), because if the bear did recognize the human weapon, it might assume itself in
danger and attack. It was far better to appear too dangerous to risk a fight over, but not dangerous enough to demand a defense. The bear seemed to be considering this too and after a moment’s hesitation, it turned and took off into the woods.
After waiting a few minutes for the footfalls of the bear to die away, Dag safetied his weapon once again and took off back down the trail, following it until the path came to a wide dirt road that ran from Harren Falls to the south. It was another thirty minutes hard walk to the town and probably more than that considering the heavy deer still straddled across his shoulders. That was why Dag allowed a smile to cross his face when a rattling and wheezing pick-up truck lumbered into view from the south. The truck was light blue where it wasn’t rust and had wooden slats extending the height of the sides of the bed. The door had a faded bunch of grapes painted onto it.
It slowed and then came to a stop as it approached where Dag stood. “Oi! Dag!” cried a voice through the open window.
Dag nodded politely at the moon-faced man with thinning hair and a pot-belly and responded, “Evening, Torrace. Back from market?”
“Aye,” he responded, pulling a handkerchief out of his overalls and wiping the sweat from his face with it. “Nae much goin’ on there today. Waste of petrol. Barely got cost fer me grapes.”
Torrace and his family owned one of the largest grape orchards on the outskirts of the town, Gravely’s Grapes. They bottled wine and sold it locally, but mostly they sold grapes in Carriage Cross. Most of the farming and ranching communities of the southern Crest sold their wares in their Sunday market.
“Bad luck then,” Dag replied.
“Aye, the worst,” he agreed. “No one wants to spend no money, figuring they’ll need it if things go south with the Dominion. A few coin fer a bunch of grapes now will seem like a right fine deal when their bellies are empty if the Dommies come through here.”
“It’s that bad?” he asked.
“So the news says,” he replied. “Me, I’m not so sure. But who the hell comes to Torrace for advice on the political matters of the day?”
With his heavy provincial accent, most people wrote Torrace off as an idiot when they first met him and for some reason he seemed to encourage this impression. It was probably a means to allow out-of-towners to think they were swindling him when he negotiated sales prices on his grapes.
“So, it’s gettin’ late,” he said. “Better throw that beastie in the back an’ hop on in yerself.”
“Thanks, Torrace,” Dag said tapping the roof of the truck’s cab as he started walking to the back.
“No worries. Already picked up one Dagenham today,” he called.
This put a slight pause in Dag’s step, but he continued, no longer as thrilled as he had been at the prospect of getting a ride. He turned the corner of the truck and was met with, “Well, well, brother, you do so love to play in the mud.”
2
Aleksian Dagenham favored the look of his mother far more so than Dag with his jet black hair, parted down the middle. He had softer features and blue eyes; was shorter and thinner, giving the impression of agility where his brother gave the impression of strength. He was wearing a blue suit with scuffed loafers and had a red ascot draped around his neck. After he watched his brother throw the deer carcass into the back of the truck, Alex offered his hand to Dag, who accepted it and pulled himself up into the truck bed.
“What corpse did you steal that get-up off of?” Dag demanded of Alex as he sat down on an empty wine crate.
Alex laughed and tapped the back of the cab. The truck rolled off, spewing black engine exhaust behind it. “I thought I would at least look presentable for our mother,” Alex replied good-naturedly. “Apparently, you had other ideas.”
“If I had known you were coming back, I would have stayed in the woods another week,” Dag teased back. His brother laughed, but did not say anything. “Why are you back? Semester wasn’t over for another four weeks if I remember correctly.”
Alex’s face took on a stern expression. “Yeah, they’ve cancelled all classes for the rest of the semester,” he replied.
That was not good, Dag thought. That almost certainly meant that the government thought it was going to be needing all of the country’s youth, including its brightest and most intelligent, to be conscripted into the military soon. He shared that opinion with his brother and Alex nodded.
“The news keeps saying that the government is looking for a diplomatic means to resolve the encroaching Dominion threat,” he said.
“Maybe they are just being cautious then,” Dag replied.
“Come on, Dag, be serious,” he responded. “The government bought me a ticket on the train to Carriage Cross. I have a return ticket for two days from now, and I’m not the only one. They wanted me to come say good-bye to my family before I get conscripted.”
“It could still just be a show of force. Station a bunch of troops at the border to show the Dommies that we mean business,” Dag said. He did not really believe what he said, and his brother just shrugged in reply and looked out to the countryside.
The Crest was one of the more picturesque areas of Miraval, a country that was not exactly empty of idyllic picturesque areas. Encircled by cliffs to the east and the Bracken Hills, better known as Maze Rock to the locals, some fifty miles to the west, the Crest was a continuous rise of hills featuring rivers, lakes, gray granite rock formations and woods that stretched as far as the eye could see. The land flattened out some eighty miles to the south near the Pisca Peninsula, the holy lands of Philatheos and the capital of Miraval, Alethia. Harren Falls was just over the spine of the Crest, where the land started sloping back down toward the south, and commanded a beautiful view of the lake and the Dominion lands below from the cliffs that constrained the eastern edge of the town.
Torrace’s rattling old truck came to a stop as in the center of town as he arrived in Harren Falls. The town center was a large roundabout dominated by the colossal (for Harren Falls) white brick pantheon with its ivory bell tower, the long one-story wooden building that housed the town’s offices including the constabulary, a squat brick building fenced in with razor-wire- the militia armory- and the rows of brick townhomes that held stores on the first floors and residences for the store owners on the second. Normally, the town center would be bustling with a bit more activity in the afternoon, but it was nearly empty. Tangrit, the one-eyed, one-armed veteran of the Great Strife who also served as the town drunk, was malingering in front of Hale’s Ales, one of the local pubs. Apparently, he was hoping someone would purchase him a drink. The constables were out in force; three were patrolling the area, which was impressive as there were only five of them. Even the armory, which was generally only manned by Captain Beaurigar, had two men in grey-green militia uniforms stationed in front.
Both Dagenham brothers hopped out of the back of the truck when it stopped. Alex waved farewell to Torrace as Dag threw his prize once more over his back. The truck lumbered away and the brothers turned off Main Street and headed down Harren Avenue. It was a ten minute downhill walk to their mother’s house through one of the residential areas of Harren Falls. A lot of lights were on inside the homes they passed, but they saw no people out on the street. It gave his hometown a ghostly feel, and Alex felt a shiver take him that had nothing to do with the cooler air.
“Go inside and see Mom,” Dag insisted as they arrived at a one and a half-story brick home with masonry fireplaces on each side and a long, wrapping porch on the front.
“You don’t need help?” Alex asked.
Dag looked at him crosswise and asked, “From you? No, I think I’ll manage just fine, thanks.”
Alex headed inside, making a note of how well the flowers in the front garden beds looked. If he did not comment on them first, his mother would talk about her flower gardens for hours. Dag stayed outside and began to work on the deer, disemboweling it, hanging it from the oak tree in the front yard, and slitting its throat to let the blood drain in an
old bucket he had procured from the old shed in the backyard. After he had cleaned up the offal, Dag went to the well pump and threw off his clothes. Stripped down to his underwear, he turned the crank on the well until he had a bucket full of water. The first bucket he poured over his entire body from his head on down, clearing a decent bit of mud and grit from his hair and face. He replaced the bucket and set to cranking the well again.
A wolf whistle broke through the evening and Dag heard a woman’s voice, “Looking good Dagenham!”
He looked across the backyard of his mother’s house to the home that was behind their house and one over. He spied the owner of the voice and grinned at Aria Beaurigar, daughter of the militia captain, who was standing at an open window on the second floor of their home. She threw a wave in his direction, which he returned, before she vanished back from the window.
Aria had always been an interesting sort, at least back when they were in school together. Maybe it was the product of growing up with a military father and without a mother (she had died in childbirth), but Aria had always been a bit of a tomboy. She usually wore her hair shorter than was fashionable, wore pants more frequently than dresses or skirts- even to temple- and was always playing sports and games with the other school boys rather than gossiping idly with the girls in school. Dag had always liked her- she made more sense to him than most girls- but she was always asking him if she could go hunting or foraging with him, if he wanted to go spelunking with her, or what his future plans were. Dag did not understand her interest and besides he always hunted alone. When she was not pestering him to spend time with her, Aria was almost always with her father at the armory, drilling on the training ground or going through the obstacle course on the proving ground. Maybe she was hoping the Miravallian military would open up positions to women at some point in the future. Women were allowed to fight in the militia during a time of war, but they were not currently allowed in the regular military.
Partisan (The Invasion of Miraval Book 1) Page 1
