The Partisan

I remember the sound of falling water. It thundered in my ears, the only sensation aside from the clawing hunger and the cold of the stone that sticks in my mind. Sometimes I could hear them talking, not the angered grunts and bellows that the propaganda had prepared me for. Instead it was just sounds, the normal every day sounds of soldiers at rest.

Time passed with only the thunder of the falls, the words in a language I was starting to wish I could understand, and occasional meals to break the monotony of waiting. Eventually even the fear was worn away, eroded by time as though it were the waterfall and my anxiety the stones.

The food was poor stuff. Hearty, filling, and definitely nutritious, but not truly satisfying. After three meals I was ready for a change. A cup of tea even, just to break through the tasteless constancy. I remember hearing a rumour once, that people over in the Heathen Kingdoms lived their whole lives on nothing but those dirt apples, but until my time in that cave I never believed it.

And there I was thinking that Bearlish army rations were bad.

After my twentieth such meal, I was hauled to my feet and blindfolded. A partisan said, if it could be called speaking his accent was so thick, “you come. Now. Officer.”

Considering my position, there was nothing I could do to resist. My muscles seized as they forced me to my feet and I collapsed. Their raucous laughter and the timid questions of my men echoed through the cave, that was always where these fiends hid during the war. Damned hard to find their lairs and even harder to dig them out. Again they brought me to my feet and half carried me away from my soldiers.

For some reason, I was not afraid. Even if they shot me, the odds of them killing my men were low. Prisoner exchanges did happen on occasion, and the morale boost from the murder of frightened boys was always inferior to the thrill of hanging an officer of the hated oppressor. The commandant might find my death to be beneficial, but those under my command would likely be spared.

At least in death I wouldn’t have to eat any more of those damned mashed dirt apples; unless that’s what they eat in Hell. In all honesty, at the time, I wouldn’t have been surprised.

Even with my lack of understanding, I could tell immediately when the insurgent commander started talking. The waterfall could still be heard from wherever they had dragged me, but it was not so loud nor was it so cold away from the holding cells. I imagine that they kept prisoners there to try and break them, then kept themselves somewhere less unpleasant.

The Galgo spoken by the guards was a rough, coarse language that would have been commonplace in any Bearlish factory or mill if only I could understand what they were saying. Whereas the Galgo spoken by the officer was of a different breed; as similar to the common soldiery as my own Bearlish when compared to my poorest infantry recruits.

It was softer, kinder, and certainly more educated. While literacy had been increasing throughout the whole of the empire for decades, it was still noticeable in those days when a person had received an education that outstripped the common labourer. Accents and word choice could tell more about a person than their face ever did. Life was, in some ways, simpler back then.

I was pushed roughly into a chair, which was a nice change from sitting on the cold stone of the holding cell, and shoved against a table. That was unexpected, but I supposed it made sense; anything between me and my interrogator after all. What took my by surprise, though, was that my hands remained untied and the linen blindfold was removed.

Across the expanse of a table that was large and fine enough to have probably been looted from a country estate — or at least it had once been fine. But since then rough usage by an army at war had reduced it to a shadow of itself — sat a broad shouldered, handsome man in his upper middle years. He was clean shaven, balding with neatly cut hair and deep blue eyes. His uniform was clean, if worn, and the officer’s cap on the table before him bore a burnished regimental medal.

He looked at me in silence for a long time, as I blinked in the light — made harsh by the days in the cave and the blindfold. A scar ran up one cheek into his receding hairline, and he sat very straight. I could tell that he had professional training in the way he sat, with back straight and eyes studiedly emotionless, though whether he was a manservant or a soldier by profession was not immediately apparent.

Speaking before one’s host or captor is generally considered bad form, so I matched his blank silence and slowly regained my own bearing. I could not but imitate this man whose face I almost recognized as he sat and watched me. He brought out my professionalism and in some ways reminded me both my old school masters and my drill instructors.

Finally he spoke, “your name?” His voice had lost none of the soft command he used on his troops, and his accent had the same musically lilting quality that all Galgo possessed. His native language was made for singing, and taproom arguments, not for war and the accent gifted the usually harsher sounds of Bearlish that same quality. In addition to which, his intonation again showed him to be have been highly educated.

“Captain Albert Shelby,” I said, my voice raw and unsteady from lack of use. “Arnanish Guards, Second Battalion, First Company.”

“Judging by your eyes, I’d guess you’d done service in Farnatch?”

“Yes, sir. I was in the south near what used to be the White Forrest.”

“Second battle of Ins,” his eyes and mouth tightened in understanding, “rough one that. I was in the north for three years under General Bishop. Did you hear of him?”

I was stunned by this man who had not yet given his name. He was clearly the partisan commander, and the room in which we sat was like the table in its worn splendor. Clearly he met me in his own room. Was that where he did all his interrogations? “I understand he was killed in the Battle of Sondern Heath.”

There was something in that, something about General Bishop and Sondern Heath, though I could not quite put my finger on it. His had been a distinguished corps though most of it, like the rest of the Imperial Expeditionary Forces, suffered the same breakdown in morale and discipline as the Clash of Empires ground on. Capable, I think was the word most often used to describe him. Capable and fierce.

“He was. Funny thing, in one of the official portraits of that victory he was shown in similar fashion to General Garth in the conquest of Kwartec City striding forth with head high as the bullet took him from the head of the advance. I was there, the reality is that one of the Empire’s finest commanders was shot accidentally during a trench raid six hours before the rolling barrage started. Funny how we glorify the victorious dead isn’t it?”

“May I ask your name and rank, sir?”

“Ranks aren’t the same out here as they were back in… during the other war. However, seeing as I’m the one giving the orders here… Commandant Phillip Braith is what I go by. Though you may call me Philip since we’ve no subservience to one another.”

I heard a muttering behind me and turned slightly to see two guards in clean, though far the worse for wear, forest green tunics. They held their rifles at their sides and stood in a fair imitation of parade rest. Well trained troops, or at least they were putting on a good show.

The room was a Spartan affair, despite what I previously said about its faded glory. Some paintings hung on walls made more to hide the rock of the cave than hold up a roof and a large wardrobe stood in the corner. Hanging in a place of honour was the flag of the Republic of Arnan; then I only knew it as the battle flag of the insurrection but, after the rebels win, such a thing transitions into the national standard.

Along one wall was a simple bed with army blankets and one thick comforter folded at the foot. Evidently Philip was not a man for high comforts, but he made some concession to nature when the nights ran cold. Along the other wall was a wood burning stove, possibly looted from the same estate as the table, that held a steaming kettle.

Were I a betting man, I would guess that the door guards could only speak Galgo. Though Philip appeared completely bilingual — unless I missed my guess by a country mile he would have also spoken some Farnatchie from the war — it made sense that his men would not be. He would not want them to know everything that was said during our interview. Besides which, among the lower classes, particularly those involved in the uprising, speaking Bearlish was… not popular to put it politely.

“I don’t pretend to know anything about you as a person,” said Philip, standing and walking towards the stove. “But if I know anything about the Bearlish it’s the love of tea that you’ve gone and stuck in our heads too.”

He poured water from the kettle into an enormous teapot and carried it back to the table. Watching the Commandant putter around making tea, like my grandfather when I was a boy as he waited for the evening papers, was a surreal affair. I was a prisoner of war under armed guard in the living quarters of an enemy commander and he was making me tea. The whole thing felt as though I had stumbled into a penny dreadful; though you can be certain I kept my comments to myself.

Minutes of silence dragged by.

One of the soldiers coughed gently and the other said something that sounded sympathetic. Not truly professional soldiers, then. But men in their line of warfare rarely need the full discipline and training that men in mine require.

Philip added a frugal spoonful of molasses to the pot and stirred before finally pouring the tea through a leaf catcher into four large, chipped porcelain cups. Taking up two, he strode behind me and, I could tell by the muttered words of thanks because of course I did not look, gave them to the guards. Next he handed me a cup with climbing roses enameled on the side before taking his seat.

After taking the first sip, clearly savouring the drink, he said something to the guards. I could hear what was unmistakably protest from them, but he responded by laying a Bearlish service revolver on the table with a thump. Behind me the door opened and closed.

I tried not to look at the revolver. Tried not to think about what would come next. Tried to enjoy the tea.

“Sorry about the weakness of the tea,” said Philip as though reading my mind. “When you’re in the country like this everything has to be rationed and the people who support us often have little enough for themselves. Would you like a cigarette?”

When I nodded he lit one, placed it in a crystal ashtray, and slid it across the table so it came to rest in front of me with a disturbing familiarity of motion. This was not the first time Philip had performed such a maneuver and I could not help but wonder what happened to his other guests.

“Having you here,” he said lighting one for himself and blowing smoke. “Places me in something of a predicament. Do you know that?”

“Sir?”

“Philip. Please. Now, as I was saying: You and your men are a curious little problem for me. It’s unlikely that you know this, but we don’t get many guests here. Prisoners are expensive to feed for an army like ours and we aren’t much in the habit of taking them. As I’m sure you know, the most efficient way for a force our size to win a rebellion is via hit and run tactics.”

“Worked for the colonials,” I said, taking up the cigarette. By the taste, it was my own ‘Victory’ brand and I expect it was the very pack taken from me when we were captured. A cruel irony that it was now being given to me as a show of good faith from my captor.

“Yes,” Philip’s smile was sad. “The colonies made it too expensive to keep the war going for you. Didn’t help that Portangua was threatening to conquer the whole of the continent and box Bearland out of the global market. Why, without that other war you might still hold the whole of South Karanath.”

“Perhaps, Philip. Look here, I don’t mean to be rude-”

“Of course. I’m sorry son, the mind wanders sometimes when distracted. See, you and yours are not the only thing occupying my thoughts these days. There’s talk of peace.”

“Peace?” The last time peace had been mentioned was the signing of the armistice that ended the Clash of Empires and that was nearly ten years cold. This war — if war it could truly be called — had no end in sight as far as I could tell.

“Yes. Peace. Funny that we should be using that word again, eh? And so much closer to my home. There are rumblings in the Senate about home rule. And equal rumblings from my side that such a half-measure isn’t good enough anymore. No. We want full independence and the fighting won’t stop until we get it.

“Almost seems childish doesn’t it? This kind of arguing over who gets to tell whom what to do. I thought we had left this all behind in the mud over in Farnatch… Why are we still fighting?”

It was a question I had asked myself more times than I could count since my deployment to Arnan.

So many times when I looked at the burned out trucks and the charred bodies, or the collapsed store fronts, or the partisan corpses, I wondered what it was all for. Why were the Arnanish fighting us? Why were we fighting them? Where I was from, we never thought about Arnan except when some news or other circulated in the papers; yet here I was fearing that my life was about to end in an Arnanish cave instead of at home in my old age.

“Returning to the matter at hand, though. What am I to do with you? Obviously, I can’t let you go, least ways not without considerable exertion on my part. And I don’t particularly want to kill you, even if my men would no doubt jump at the chance. Thoughts?”

“I would like to live,” I offered.

“Unsurprising,” Philip laughed out a lungful of smoke. “I’ve never met one who would choose the alternative. Least ways, not when we’re sat down like this. In the heat of the moment though… well people do things we don’t like or don’t agree with all the time.”

I waited. If Philip wanted to kill me then all he had to do was pick up the pistol from the table and do it. There was nothing behind me that would be ruined by the mess, and blood is easy enough to wash from stone. I would just be another body in the countryside, another dead officer, another of the hated Bearlish dead and gone.

The wait was interminable. He just stared at me and smoked his cigarette, blinking no where near often enough for my taste, as though he were chewing on the problem. I tried to match his posture and air. Tried not to look at the gun. I tried not to savour the smoke as though it was the last before my execution.

Philip Braith. The name rattled around in my head like dice in a cup. There was something about the man that I recognized. Sadly, it was slow in coming. The names of many of the rebel Commandants were known to the Bearlish High Command, and thus to many of the regional commanders and through them down to individual officers Captain and higher. The better to keep track of our enemies in the field and more important, the ones already in the ground.

If I knew his name then the odds were that it came from that list. Except I felt like there was something more; some other reason that I knew him. He was famous. Yes I was dead certain that he was famous. But for what?

Philip ground out his cigarette on the table and left the butt in a small pile of ash. Clearly he did not care about the well being of the wood. I was raised differently — or maybe he was testing me again — and ground mine out in the stolen crystal ashtray. His face was familiar too. It was lean, almost hawkish with a thin nose and eyebrows that slanted towards it so that, looking his dead on, he almost appeared like a bird of prey.

“I have made a decision,” his voice was flat. Dead flat, as though he were a lawyer reading out the terms of a contract. “I will not kill you on very specific conditions. First, you and your men will be put to work here; we always need more hands to maintain the camp. Secondly, at my request you will join me for conversation; the common soldiery can be a lark but they are simple men and lack refinement. Third and finally, you and your men will not try to escape.

“In exchange for these courtesies, you all will live. If you are injured, you will be treated. We will feed and clothe you and allow you to each to send one letter to your families telling them that you are not dead. If any of you are found to be trying to escape, those involved will be shot. If one rebels against work, he will be shot. If in that letter our code breakers find a message to your high command, you will all be shot. Do I make myself clear?”

They are not animals, I had to remind myself, finishing my tea before responding. They are not animals, and I had no choice but to take Philip at his word. Completely in his power as I was, there was really no choice in the matter. I could take this option and live, or else I could be shot.

“I agree.”

-0-

To describe the labour that the partisans pushed onto us as backbreaking would be to tell a lie, and since I don’t work for the Times or the Courier, I have nothing to gain from doing so. Instead, the work was merely unpleasant and time consuming.

Every day near to dawn, we would be woken up by some of Philip’s men and pulled from our cave. It was still cold in the cave on the bare, hard stone, but they had at least relented enough to give us blankets. The camp surgeon saw to our various wounds and ailments, and although bland dirt apples continued to be the basic fare, I must admit that I developed something of a taste for them.

Our routine remained unchanged, sleep, food, work, food, sleep. An unbroken monotony that reminded me of my time in the Farnatchie trenches with the sole exceptions of artillery and the looming threat of the whistle sending us over the top. All told I had a lot to be thankful for.

My meeting with Philip was repeated nearly every day, he would call for me and we would sit on either side of that scarred table and talk. Sometimes for hours, something for minutes, but nearly every day after my labours I was brought to the Commandant and we talked. He said it was nice to speak to an educated man, and that was why he called for me, why he let us live. But I knew, perhaps on a deeper level than even he was aware of, that the older man was lonely. He was alone in his command, and no matter how much one might wish it, the soldiers under one’s jurisdiction can never truly be friends.

I hesitate to call that cave a room, though it was clearly treated as such. However, I knew immediately on the day that things started to change, it would not be like our previous conference; there was no kettle boiling on the hob when I passed through the door, and though still well kept, Philip’s uniform was now dirtier than before.

Of course, I knew that things would be different this time. The day before had been more than a little strange, when measured against our previous cycles in captivity. Barely two hours into our chores, as my men insisted on calling our labours, five Arnanish partisans appeared and herded us back into our cave. These men did not speak Bearlish and forced us towards our quarters with prods from rifle butts and curses in Galgo.

Hours later, perhaps as long as into the next day — I could not tell because in that time our meals did not appear — I was pulled from the cave by two Arnanish guards I did not recognize and propelled into the Commandant’s room. They did not bother covering my eyes anymore, I don’t think they much cared if I knew what their base looked like since it was not very likely that I would ever escape.

As soon as I was seated, Philip sent the guards away. This time there was no complaint, they simply left. The gun was still on the table.

“When the rising first started, I didn’t believe in it. I heard about it through the papers when I was on the front and thought that nothing could be stupider,” started Philip as he pulled out a bottle and poured a generous helping of whiskey into twin glasses. Handing one to me, he continued his monologue. “Then, while on leave back home months later, they started the executions. Men and women who had earned the right to be treated with, under the international law that Bearland helped to write, as equal combatants were executed as traitors.”

The day of the executions is still fresh in my memory, it was the day that started the war and the day that which set off the events that landed me in Philip’s room, far from home. Of course, it was a slow burn, perhaps more like the lighting of a slow fuse than setting off the powder keg itself. But still, that action by the colonial administration brought me there, sitting across from a man who had fought on my side of the previous war.

Still, something about him had my mind working. I had lost sleep trying to think about how I knew him, since his face was familiar and did not seem to fit with the name he had told me. Of course he had given me a false name, that was standard practice so I hear, but there was certainly something. It was coming on slowly, I don’t know how but it was. Maybe it was in how his men treated him and how he treated them.

“The war in Farnatch ended, and I returned home.” He had stayed in Farnatch until the end, then. It made sense; I had the feeling he would never abandon his men.

“Not long after they started trying to purge Arnan of rebellion. I’m certain you know how they did that.” I did know. The Black Hats were infamous the world over because of those purges. “I took my gun and vanished. My first battle in Arnan took place in an abandoned farm house, my soldiers and our logistics were still in their infancy and the Bearlish army was still swelled with veterans from Farnatch. We were cautioned to surrender — this I could not do.

“In the end, we were victorious. We drove back the Bearlish soldiers and made our escape. Since then, we’ve been fighting hard, and fighting well. A new kind of warfare some people are calling it, a break from the devastation we saw in the trenches. Yet somehow more terrible even than that.”

He had not yet taken a drink from his glass, instead he just stared at the amber liquid as though he were looking deep into the past. Looking and seeing things he could not un-see, yet did not want to forget. I waited, taking a single experimental sip from my own glass I was startled to find it was of the highest quality.

Finally looking up at me, Philip raised his glass and spoke in Glago, though this time I knew exactly what he said. It was a toast I had heard many times from the fathers of friends and from soldiers I commanded in Farnatch. “To the glorious dead and a homeland strong and free.”

I toasted with him but said nothing. It is unwise to be interpreted as mocking a fighting man in his grief.

“This war has been so long,” he said, actually slumping into his chair. “I’ve changed my name so often, that something I even struggle to remember it.”

Again I said nothing, just looked at him and waited. All things in their own time, as the Patriarchs say.

“My first week after escaping that farmhouse was hard. We slept rough and you know what the weather here is like that time of year. An old woman gave us shelter, she did not share her name, only that her son had died in the Rising. She fed us and kept us hidden in the garret… then the soldiers came. They were the ones, the traitors to us and unfortunate necessity for you, the Black Hats. She died without a whisper, even a smile on her lips as she sang the Martyr’s Song before their rifles rang out.

“I never wanted this war. I don’t know what broke in me after reading about the executions and the purges. I don’t know what happened to me after watching that woman die. As the Black Hats were ransacking her house — we were in the barn garret — I ordered my men down from our hiding place. We were few but more than enough for a surprise attack. We lined up and shot the man they had on guard. When the others came rushing out, we shot them all.

“The old woman we buried with full honours — and marked her resting place in case we ever learned her name.”

Philip fell into remembrance again.

“What happened today,” I ventured. I knew he wanted to talk of the day’s incidents, knew that something was haunting him. Despite the risk, despite the fear, I knew it was better to just have him come out with whatever it was. But the look in his eyes as his gaze rose to meet mine stilled my heart.

Clear blue, and vacant. It was a look I was used to seeing after the war, but one I had never before or since associated with that man. It was a hopeless, desolate, look. The slowly withering look of a man who is waiting his turn to die.

“There were three of us this morning,” he said, unblinking eyes locked on my face. “Three Commandants in this county. I’m the only one this evening.”

He let that sink in. Let those words wash over me as I slowly came to understand what he meant. Suddenly the fine whiskey tasted like ash.

“The funny thing is,” he said, his voice as empty and far away as his eyes. “That this was given to me on our way back through one of our drop boxes.”

Throwing a folded Bearlish newspaper across the table, he waited in silence. As I picked up the broadsheet, he still did not blink, nor move the hands that were still clasped around his glass. Of course what he wanted me to see was on the first page, of course it was splashed across in bold letters that anyone could read. “Peace in Arnan?”

I read through the article slowly, carefully. This was something of such critical importance to the Empire that not even advertisements were present on the page. Just blocks of text detailing how the Senate had met and decided to sue for peace with the official request being made to the President of the political arm of the rebellion by Field Marshal Draug himself. Negotiations were already underway at in the neutral city of Zuropol on the continent.

The war was nearly over.

“My friends died today,” there was the hint of a hope of emotion in his voice. Almost as though he more wished to show emotion than actually felt any. “The same day I read about that. Reminds you of that Franatchie officer who was reportedly telling his men that the war would end at noon and they were all getting an extra soup ration right before the sniper took him, doesn’t it?”

“At least the war is almost over?” It was the wrong thing for me to say, I know that now. But then I could only think that maybe I would survive, that maybe I would get to go home again. Philip looked up at me, his eyes suddenly focused and sharp as nails.

“Yes,” he said. “At least there’s that.”

-0-

Days passed, and the Arnanish guards seemed to be treating us more harshly than before. Their shouted reproofs in Galgo and broken Bearlish came more often and were followed by incentives to work harder from their sticks, but a measure of tea had been added to our rations. All told, I realize now that I had little enough to complain of. Unlike Philip’s Commandant friends, at least I was still alive.

Sometimes one of my soldiers would tell me, through his child’s level understanding of Glago, that the guards were talking a lot about peace. Of course I had to claim I knew nothing, just as much as they did, because how could I tell them that the Bearlish High Command was thinking about ending the war? That even now in neutral Zuropol they were at the negotiating table discussing terms.

I could not do it. I could not give them what might become a fool’s hope. So I lied and claimed to be just as ignorant as they were about the goings on in the outside world. Even if Philip and I had spoken many times about what the restoration of peace would bring for us before that fateful day with the newspaper.

Two weeks passed before I saw the Commandant again.

“You don’t understand do you,” looking up from the evening meal in my cell, I saw with pure astonishment that Philip was standing over me. His face bore that same self-satisfied, almost indulgent expression as it had when first I met him, but there was something lacking. Something empty in his eyes, hidden behind the performance of command. “You really don’t understand.”

Two guards helped, not hauled, they helped me to my feet and I was allowed to follow Philip with them behind me as though I was a person being honoured. The whole experience was surreal.

Passing through the door a minute behind Philip to give him enough time to put the table between us, I saw a new battle flag on the wall. Before my customary seat was a steaming mug of dark tea and a folded broadsheet from the previous evening. At a wave of Philip’s hand I sat and read the headline. “Peace Deal Reached,” it proclaimed. With a surge of tears I was barely able to hold back and a sudden rasp in my voice, I asked Philip if it was true.

“Yes,” he said simply, then picked up his tea and took a sip.

I followed suit, noting with surprise that the tea was strong. A celebratory drink.

“They reached a deal and the papers finally got a hold of it three days ago. The date for the end of hostilities is in just under a month, you may inform your men, of course.”

He allowed me to keep the newspaper and I folded it to fit into a pocket. Philip did not look thrilled at the news though, perhaps the wounds from the war were still too raw for him. Perhaps there was simply nothing left to him, as I had often worried about myself, nothing other than war.

“Through the graves the wind is blowing,” he said as though quoting something. “You might not understand this, but I can’t feel joy at the declaration. I was a proud Empire-man before this nonsense. I volunteered to do my duty in Farnatch in the first waves and served with pride. I believe I even told you about my disgust with the Spring Revolt. But then… then everything else happened and now the wind blows through the graves of my countrymen… my friends who died fighting against yours. And once I thought we were one and the same.”

I elected not to share my opinion. After all the Arnanish and the Bearlish were distinct from our clothing to our language to our interpretations of the Faith. There was little enough to hold us together but the fact that military and economic control of the island lay in Bearland’s hands.

When the silence stretched, when the tea in my cup was drunk and that in Philip’s had long gone cold. I stood very slowly and carefully, making sure to telegraph all of my movements. Even then his eyes flicked to me, suddenly sharp and present in the way that only a career soldier’s could be; his hand strayed close to the pistol that still lay on the table before him.

Moving with slow deliberation, I took his cup and my own, and refilled the kettle. Building back up the fire in the iron stove, I thought about the paper in my pocket and what it meant. I thought about going home, about seeing my mother and lovely Helen again. About being able to ruffle my brother’s hair or escort my sister to the Harvest Dance — she would finally be old enough to go. Thoughts of my family, about Helen, the girl I’d left behind, brought Philip back to my mind. What had he to return to?

I gently laid the cup, once I had poured out the tea, in front of him and he took it up. Blowing on it, he waited until I had reclaimed my seat before saying, “The frontiers are my prison. There’s nothing for me to go back to.”

Not having a response to that, I waited.

“I’ve lost my wife and children, I hid them when the fighting started but I don’t know where they are now or if my boys will remember me after all this time. In the end I think that they were whom I was fighting for. I think… but I don’t know. I’ve been at this so long, first the war in Farnatch, then this rebellion. Who am I without it?”

Sensing that he wanted a response, I tried my best, “I ask myself that a lot, Philip. I wonder what there is left of the man… the boy I was to bring home. Sure, I’m still walking and breathing, but I don’t know if I ever completely can go back… if there’s even a home left for me to return to. But we’re moving towards peace! An independent Arnan and a Bearland whose soldiers have come home. That must mean something. There’s an after, and we’re going to see it. So I suppose I just have faith in the Deity that I’ll be able to find my own meaning after I get there.”

“I only hope,” he said with a sad smile. “That the peace here lasts long enough for me to enjoy what you seem so keen on.”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you remember that day I told you that I was the only Commandant left? Do you know why I was? Because I managed to earn the love and complete dedication of my men, they follow me without question and I lead them through the fire and deserve their trust. They never question, their faith is tried, tested, and absolute.

“For men like me… there is never a long retirement.”

That was it, the last piece of the puzzle. I knew who he was.

“I’m sorry, Philip. I don’t understand you.”

“Come now, son. You know damned well what I’m saying, remember your history classes in school. What always happens after a war for independence? It happened in the west, it happened in ancient times, it will happen now.”

“Civil war.”

“Yes. Brother against brother in a way and with a savagery that even this little rebellion can’t hope to match. Maybe it will start immediately, maybe it will take time. Maybe it will be over fast, a quick bid for the throne with hopefully not much blood. Maybe not. It hardly matters.

“All I know is that whatever government comes out on top, whoever occupies the houses of state, they will be leery of their own grip on power. When they start making decisions that the people don’t like, and all governments do, the common people will start to wonder amongst themselves. ‘We’ve come through two wars to get here,’ they’ll think. ‘Maybe just one more will put the right person at the wheel this time.’ And anyone who sits in “The House” will know that. They’ll know what they risk every time they vote to raise taxes or something silly like that.

“So they’ll look to remove the symbols of the war. The leadership and the people who hold loyalties, who know that just by calling they could bring forward fighting men with experience to cause havoc. The leaders whose soldiers love them even more than they love the Republic and would follow those leaders into Hell and out the other side with the Deceiver’s head on a pike.”

“I share your longing for peace, my friend. Deity knows how tired I am of war. I only hope that it lasts long enough for me to enjoy a comfortable retirement.”

Philip Braith, better known to the world as Colonel Arthur White the Hero of Sondern Heath, blew on his tea again before taking a sip. His was one of the very few units in the whole of the Imperial Army that maintained the disciple necessary to attack by the end of the war. He was famous for the love his men showed him, for going over the top with them and charging the guns. His soldiers swore that he was invincible, that bullets bent their paths so as to miss him.

“Before the next trouble starts and you’re declared to be a threat come and call on me,” I said, not knowing then anymore than I do now what I was promising.

If he called, his soldiers would answer. If he stood up and spoke against the government of the Republic of Arnan, people would flock to him. His banner would bring a force that might not topple the regime but could certainly make it bleed.

I had never thought about such a thing before, but looking at the man across the table from me who suddenly looked so very old, I comprehended a great deal. He had been right before, when he collected me from my cell and said that I didn’t understand. Then I did. I knew what even peace would cost him.

We sat in silence for a long time after that speech. Each of us lost in our thoughts of the forthcoming peace as the tea slowly grew cold.

0–0

This story was inspired by the song “The Partisan” as sung by Leonard Cohen. Please go and give it a listen if you liked what you read :)