Knights of the New Republic

[Cataphrak]

Somewhere in the Carpathian Mountains, Fascist-Occupied Romania
April 4th, 1958

Captain Jin Kaoyun ate his dinner cold.

They all did, cooking smoke was an easy way to give yourself away to enemy patrols, the Major had said. Nobody had complained. They were all veterans of hard living, the thirteen men and women of Major Zhang Ying's... Jin didn't know what they were really. Officially, they were a diplomatic fact-finding mission, and they had the papers to prove it, though the Major had, as far as he knew, kept them sewn up in the lining of her jacket. As far as both sides of the Romanian Civil War and the world at large knew, they were all still in some divisional headquarters on the blue side of the lines, looking through after-action reports or doing some other kind of useless makework, not scuttling through the mountains like extremely well-hidden goats.

No, they might have been fact-finding, but it was certainly the case that none of them were diplomats. The Romanian radio operator Atanasiu had assigned to them certainly wasn't. Nor were the three "clerks", not with the way they'd moved through the mountains. The two "photographers" might have actually known their way around their cameras, but they had spent most of the time tending to the mules they'd picked up after they'd sent the armoured cars back, the ones carrying the weapons and ammunition Jin had been ordered to "smuggle" aboard the plane in Guangzhou.

Then there were the four hard-eyed Gurkhas and their pet englishman, they weren't even trying to pretend. Officially, they were the mission's security detail. They certainly played the part of the smiling parade troops they'd pretended to be on the airstrip, but Jin had fought with the Gurkhas in Burma, he'd seen those goofy, white-toothed grins turn instantly into masks of killing fury before. He had little doubt that if push came to shove, the Romanian fascists would find them just as terrifying as the Japanese ones had.

As for the Major, anyone who had the slightest inkling who she was knew that she was the opposite of a diplomat, and everyone who'd listened to her little speech when she'd landed knew it now too.

That only left one Captain Jin Kaoyun DSO (when such things had still mattered), formerly of the 38th New Division. Sun Liren had assigned him to the mission personally, which meant that there was clearly some reason for it aside from the obvious one. The commander in chief of the armed forces didn't just put a junior divisional staff officer on a mission like this without purpose.

"Captain."

Jin tried not to start as the darkness next to him seemed to move. The rocks shifted, one of them suddenly took on the shape of an officer's greatcoat. Jin relaxed.

"Zhang Ahyi?"

"When were you going to tell me you spoke Romanian?"

Jin came to the sudden realisation that relaxing had been a terrible mistake. "I- uh- well..."

"I think you know that I know who you work for. I won't insult you by asking you to do anything that violates those vows you swear - you do still do those, right? - but I will ask you to return the favour by not playing dumb around me. Clear?"

Jin gulped, hard. "Yes ma'am." He hesitated for a moment, before risking a question. "When did you find out?"

"On the airstrip." the Major replied. "Your expression... shifted once or twice as the Romanian translator spoke to their leader. I suspect they did not offer a translation which was entirely to your liking?"

"They used a few turns of phrase I wouldn't have," Jin said with a grimace. She'd managed to deduce that based on nothing more than a wince or two at the wrong time? "There are certain idioms in our language that don't translate well to theirs."

The Major answered with an amused grunt. "Then I expect you to do a better job. Tomorrow, we'll be linking up with a band of Romanian anti-fascist die-hards, probably communists. I'll need you to translate."

"What about the Romanian?"

"I do not have the measure of him yet," the Major replied. "Not everyone in this country wears uniforms that match their hearts. When we meet those partisans tomorrow, I can allow no possibility of sabotage."

Jin looked bemusedly at the puddle of darkness where he knew his superior to be. "You are sure they'll be there? I haven't received any intelligence about partisans behind fascist lines."

The Major's teeth bared in a wide grin, barely visible in the twilight gloom. Her foot swept out in a wide arc in front of her, kicking up a cloud of something. Jin Kaoyun's nose picked up the scent of day-old campfire ash.

"I am sure because we've been following them for the past two days." He felt a hand on his shoulder. "This country may seem different, but men and women are the same the world over. Nothing we've seen since we landed has surprised me."

"Are you so sure nothing will?"

The Major chuckled. "If anyone gets the drop on me in this country, I will pay them a hundred Yuan for the entertainment."

Jin Kaoyun chuckled too, until he realised that anything that could get the drop on the Major would probably mean death for them all.

[Cataphrak]

Somewhere Near Vălenii de Munte, 30 km North of Ploiești, Fascist-Occupied Romania
April 19th, 1958

Corporal Li Wuming was not trying to eavesdrop, but given the cramped circumstances of the little cave they were currently in, it was damned hard not to.

Especially given what was being discussed, less than five metres behind him.

"What's this then?"

That was Major Zhang, she and her translator were looking over a map of the area with one of the Partisan leaders, a fellow by the name of Gheorghe, who waited patiently for Captain Jin's translation before replying.

"He says that's the Victorian base."

"Victorians?" Li could almost imagine the Major's eyes narrow. Word had it that the Victorians had sent a mission too, but they'd brought fighters, bombers, and two divisions of crack infantry with them - to fight for the fascists.

"Ask him if their presence is military."

"He says it's just an aid station. They hand out food and antibiotics to the locals. The garrison in town knows to stay clear of them."

There was a moment of silence. Li cleaned out the inside of his De Lisle's suppressor with a soft brush as he waited for the Major's next question.

"You seem to know a great deal about this place."

"He says that he has been scouting this town for some months now. It is a major waypoint on the main road to Ploiești."

"He has done a great deal of scouting," the Major replied, a note of contempt in her voice, "and yet nothing else. I wonder why that is?"

Li had little doubt that Captain Jin's translation was meant to convey the Major's words as accurately as possible, even if it meant upsetting the Partisan leader's feelings. The Major had made it clear to all of them the night after they linked up with the locals: there were to be no miscommunications.

Judging by the angry tone of the man Gheorghe's voice, Li was quite certain that nothing had been miscommunicated.

"He says that there is nothing he could attack," Captain Jin translated. "The fascist forces move in convoys of two or three dozen trucks, always with an armoured car at the head and tail. He cannot fight such odds, nor will he, even with the weapons we have supplied."

"Is that what he thinks he's supposed to be doing?" There was no question of the Major's contempt now. "Fighting real soldiers? That is a game he is bound to lose - don't translate that. Ask him if he has considered attacking other targets: postmen, bank clerks, policemen, especially policemen."

The outrage in the Romanian's voice did not need a translation.

"He says that those men are not their enemies. They are just trying to do their jobs. They are not supporters of the regime, so we do not bother them."

The Major's harsh bark of a laugh was all Corporal Li needed to hear to figure out her opinion on that front.

"Ask him if he seriously thinks all fascists wear uniforms and carry rifles. Ask him if he does not realise that those who simply do their jobs for fascist overlords as just as much guilty of upholding that government as a soldier. Ask him if there is a difference in the end between a policeman who arrests a dissident to uphold law and order or if an Iron Dog who does it for his Conducător." She stood up, giving the map one last look. "Tell him that he will have time to ponder those questions while we will begin the work that he should have started months ago."

The Major turned to the rest of them. "Li! Assemble your weapon. Evans! Wake up Gurung and Rai. All four of you are to meet me outside in five minutes."

Gheorghe did not speak Chinese, but he could not fail to understand Li's sudden movements as he slipped the baffles back over the barrel of his carbine and locked the suppressor back into place. He asked a question in what sounded very much like desperation.

"He's asking what you mean to do?"

The Major looked over her shoulder. "Do? I'm going to go outside and have a smoke. Then I am going to take my men, go into town, kill the first policeman I see, chop him into pieces, and string his pieces up like hams for his friends to find."

"He asks why in the name of God you would do such a barbaric thing."

"Tell him that I would do such a thing because a fascist's strength is not in his weapons or his numbers. It is in terror. In the belief that he can inflict terror without retaliation, without consequence. He believes this because ultimately, fascism is the ideology of a frightened child, thinking that if he hurts those weaker than him, he will be safe." Her voice rose, backed by blazing eyes and a cold, iron conviction. "To defeat them, you must show them that they are just as vulnerable to terror as their victims, that their hatred does not make them safe, that their numbers and their weapons do not make them safe. They cannot be allowed to exist except in a position of complete terror, fearing that every moment will bring the knife that slits their throat."

She reached into her greatcoat, resting her hand on the long handle of the Dadao at her belt. "That is how you kill fascism. Not by breaking its bones, but by crushing its heart."

It was not until seven hours later, as they returned to the Partisan hideout, that Corporal Li finally worked up the courage to ask the question which had been nagging at him all the way through the infiltration into town, all the way through they time they had spent hacking apart that policeman, and leaving his parts for display over the road which they knew the latest fascist supply convoy would pass through tomorrow morning.

"Ma'am?"

"Yes, Corporal?"

"That speech you gave, before we left," Li asked tentatively, "about the fascist's strength being terror and how we had to turn it against them."

"What about it, Corporal?"

"Did you mean all of that? Is that the reason we have done this thing? To instill terror?"

The Major didn't reply for a moment, long enough that Li had been worried that she did not hear him.

"Yes. that is the reason," came the reply at last.

"...but it is not the only one."

[Cataphrak]

They were hunting a werewolf, or so they said.

That was ridiculous, of course. Werewolves weren't real. Surely, there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for the gruesome death of the policeman Grigorcea. Wild animals, perhaps. Or those Communist partisans in the hills which the Câini had warned them about. They were the most likely culprits, surely.

But wild animals did not tear apart an armed man so easily. As for the Partisans, they fought against the regime, but they would never do something this barbaric, surely?

So in the search for answers, the townsfolk of Vălenii de Munte settled upon an old children's tale, a story from a time when men had been afraid of the dark.

And they were afraid of the dark again.

They did not say so, but those who were not afraid would have let their children out of doors after sunset. They would have let themselves travel in groups larger than four or five.

And they certainly would not have gone up into the hills in their hundreds, with torches and pitchforks and hunting rifles, compelled by directionless anger and a fear they told themselves was baseless to hunt down a creature they pretended to themselves could not possibly exist.

They searched high and low, through every gully and every rise of the craggy foothills. They looked through the old ruins and all along the roads. They searched all day, and when night fell, they lit their torches and built bonfires and kept searching long into the night.

By the time the sun rose, they return to town disappointed. For all of their efforts, they had found nothing.

But when they reassembled, they discovered that not everyone had returned that morning. Some were missing. An acquaintance, a neighbour, perhaps even a close friend. There were maybe two dozen of them gone. They'd gotten lost, the ones who had returned assured themselves nervously. Maybe they'd decided to keep searching for another day. It would be fine.

It was not fine.

The next morning, there was a pile of heads on the side of the road to Ploiești: all of the missing men were identified, but none of the women.

Or the children.

----

In truth, Zhang Ying would have done well with nothing but the dadao at her hip and one or two trusted subordinates. Compared to what she was used to, this Romanian campaign had offered almost a surfeit of resources. She had twelve men at her disposal, of which more than half were expertly trained and highly experienced in the art of close-up fighting. She had rifles that barely made a sound when fired, lamps that did not give off light but let her see in the dark, and complete freedom of action without interference.

Not that the local partisans didn't try. But what could they do? They had spent months hiding in the mountains doing nothing against the fascists. Now they spent months more in the mountains doing nothing against her. They had, perhaps, hoped their angry looks would be enough to dissuade her.

They didn't.

Besides, Zhang Ying did not need such men, so faint-hearted that they could not even do what they had assembled themselves to do, starving themselves and living in caves for no result. No, so long as they let her do what she had come to do, as long as they sat still, left her freedom of action and the hills, that was enough for her purposes.

The hills were important, for an unexpected reason. True, they gave Zhang and her men the high ground. True, they split the open terrain into claustrophobic gullies and ravines from which almost anything could be hidden from view, but most importantly, they concealed sound. A noise like a gunshot would echo through the hills, bouncing off against the rock and brush, amplifying down valleys and dashing itself to nothing against rock faces. A sound made in the hills sounded like it could have come from anywhere.

And that was perfect for the purposes of one Major Zhang Ying, National Revolutionary Army.

----

The next day, the town of Vălenii de Munte awoke to the sounds of distant screams.

They came from the hills, said those who heard them, those of women and children. The families of those still missing heard heard the voices of their disappeared loved ones echoing through the valleys. They were screaming for help, they were sure. It was what they had wanted to hear.

At first, the town police chief was hesitant, wary of a trap. He had no delusions about werewolves or wild animals anymore. Humans were doing this, ones who knew what they were doing. He had dealt with Partisans before when he had fought with the Army in Russia so long ago, and he knew the only option was overwhelming force, something which he did not possess.

But he could hear the screams too. They seemed to come from everywhere at once. The people begged him to save their women and children, their pleas growing more numerous and desperate by the hour. That night, when the town tried to sleep, the screams continued, and the dreams of the townsfolk were haunted by the images of what was sure to be happening to their dear ones.

The next morning, the police chief sent out a party to search. There were eight of them, all veterans of the army. He armed them as heavily as he could, handing them the station's three old German machine pistols. He warned them to be back before nightfall, whether they found anything or not.

That afternoon, one man returned, wild-eyed and bloody. Almost gibbering with fear, he told a story of demons in the rocks, their skin the colour of burnished bronze. He told the story of how they did not seem to fear bullets, how they came at his group from all sides and hacked them apart with knives which seemed to cut through necks and limbs as if they were water.

The police chief listened intently, then immediately got on the telephone with the local garrison commander. This time, he would answer with overwhelming force. The local garrison sent a full platoon of infantry, with grenades, machine guns, and a light mortar - surely more than enough to kill anything that was in those hills. He fortified the one survivor of the initial search party with half a bottle of vișinată, and got him to agree to lead the soldiers to the place where his party was attacked.

They left the next morning, fully confident that with real soldiers on the job, they would end this problem once and for all.

They never returned.

----

In Zhang Ying's experience, the problem with most partisans was that they let their egos get in the way.

A successful attack was always something to be proud of, but it was too easy to fall into the trap of believing that the fascists needed to know who was responsible, that they should be made to fear the name of the culprit. That was how groups got sloppy. They left a calling card, a symbol, something which their enemies could use to track them down and destroy them.

It was nothing more than vanity. Worse than that, it was counterproductive.

What was the point of making the enemy afraid of a single symbol? Of associating his terror with something that he could see and identify? No, it was better to simply strike, and strike, and strike again. To be wherever the enemy was not looking, to make him afraid of any point that his eyes could not see. What good would it have done Zhang Ying to show the fascists that all of their fears were only engineered by a mortal woman? No, better to be air, to be darkness, to be wind, to be everywhere and anywhere and anything. Better not to to simply strike terror, but to fill every room with it like a poison gas.

Why make the enemy fear one thing, when she could make them fear everything?

----

Nowhere was safe.

The garrison commander gave orders that townsfolk were only to leave the confines of the town under armed guard. Three days alter, one of those groups disappeared, their bodies found in pieces on the side of the road, as Grigorcea's had. The town was placed under complete lockdown, with guards at every entrance and barbed wire was laid in a perimeter around the town's limits. The next day, it was found cut in three places, with the salted and cured limbs of two of the soldiers who had gone out in the second search party left in piles next to the gaps in the wire. The garrison commander ordered a second layer of wire, and constant patrols. A week later, an entire guardhouse was bound butchered by its relief.

And all the while, the screams continued, until the hills themselves seem to echo with the wailing of the damned.

There was no question of routing convoys bound for Ploiești through town any more. They were forced to take a longer, more circuitous route. Vălenii de Munte was under siege.

The garrison commander knew it too. He began to see enemies in every crevice and every shadow. Every troublemaker and every petty thief was accused of working for the enemy. To crack the wrong joke was to accuse oneself of being a Partisan. Trials were summary, executions became frequent. Any one who denounced their neighbour for being a Partisan spy held a good chance of getting him and his entire family shot. The garrison itself fell into a frenzy of purges.

But the attacks kept coming. No matter what measure the authorities took, the next partisan raid would make a cruel mockery of them, underlining the punchline in blood and broken bodies. The police chief was found murdered in his own bedroom. A local businessman simply disappeared. The garrison commander's own deputy was found dead one morning inside the garrison cantonment, a ragged red bullet hole where his eye had been. Nobody in the building had heard a gunshot.

The garrison commander grew furious, then he grew desperate. He called to his superiors for advice, and then for reinforcements, then for a simple transfer out of this valley of the damned.

It was only the last of those requests which was answered. His replacement would be a specialist, well-versed in crushing partisans, chosen by the Conducător himself. The instant he heard the news, he got into his car, and ordered his driver to drive north as fast as he could.

Zhang Ying was in a charitable mood that day. She even let him go.

[Cataphrak]

Somewhere Near Vălenii de Munte, 30 km North of Ploiești, Fascist-Occupied Romania
August 12th, 1958

Technical Sergeant Petala's thoughts were troubled as he wandered through the cave network which had become their home these past few months. His thoughts were so troubled that he did not even notice that he was not alone until a stuffy, plummy voice called out to him in perfect Eton English.

"Ho there!"

Petala looked up see that he had inadvertently wandered into a chamber already filled with five other men. Four of them where the little brown-skinned soldiers who Major Zhang normally took with her on her raids. "Gurkhas", she had said they were called. Three of them were in the process of moving rifles from the bags they had been carried to this place into a set of crates, the green ones they'd come back with on a raid into town two weeks ago. The fourth was standing guard, his wicked, chopping knife having already come halfway out its scabbard in the split second it had taken him to recognise the Romanian as friend. It was going back in now. There was a rumour that the Gurkhas couldn't sheathe their knives once fully drawn without drawing blood with it first. Given the possible donor candidates, it was probably a good thing it hadn't come out all the way.

The fifth man was perhaps the biggest mystery.

He looked like something out of an old cigarette pack playing card: pink skinned, clear-eyed, perfectly waxed mustache and an expression that would not have looked out of place a hundred years ago in a pith helmet and red coat, a missionary of the empire of God-the-Englishman. Major Zhang simply referred to him simply as "The Englishman", or perhaps more slightingly, "the Gurkhas' pet Englishman". The Gurkhas himself called him "Evans-sahib". Captain Jin, the other regular officer in their little group, called him "Jock", and when Petala had asked the man himself what that had stood for, he'd gone away with the the grandiose name of "Captain Jocelyn Quintus Fabius Rupert Holybroke Evans, Captain, 9th Gurkha Rifles," an answer which he had not been entirely sure was serious. Nonetheless-

"Lost, old boy?"

That was the Englishman himself. "The Elsan's on your left, if that's what you're looking for," he continued.

"It's... not, I don't think." Petala took a breath. If he was going to ask someone, the best candidate was probably sitting in front of him. "I have a question, sir."

Evans nodded, in a manner which said 'go on,' without actually saying it.

"You're an Englishman. You believe in fair play and all that, right?"

Again, he nodded.

"How is any of this fair?" Petala asked, the tension spilling out his mouth like water through a ruptured pipe. "We've been here months now, and all we've done is murder civilians and policemen. Maybe three times we've gone out to attack actual soldiers! We attack in the dark, with weapons the enemy can't see, let alone stop. And the way the Major's going, you almost think she's doing this for fun!"

Evans considered that for a moment, then shook his head. "Well she ain't doing it for fun, one may be assured of that. This is all for a purpose, likely one she thought up the moment she stepped off the aeroplane."

"Even then, what about-"

"About fair play?" The Englishman replied. "Let me tell you a story about fair play. My old battalion CO, in Burma, I'd gone to Oxford with him, lovely chap, but he treated war like a game, as if at the end of it, some coach was going to raise his hand, and we'd all be chums again. Still, I didn't hold it against him, he was one of the bravest men you'd ever met, and one of the most humane," Evans shook his head sadly.

"What happened to him."

"We were advancing against the Japs after Imphal. It'd have to be... the summer of '44, I'd think. We were rolling up all the gains they'd made after they'd taken Rangoon. We'd cornered a gang of'em against a ravine. Our mortars had them pinned, and one of our companies was already behind'em. So they threw up their hands, came right at our battalion CP, and shouted that they'd surrendered."

Petala was afraid he knew where this story was going. He was afraid to ask what happened next, yet somehow, he was even more frightened of simply leaving it there, as if the threat of something was worse than a reality of nothing. "What happened?"

"My friend got within ten yards before they threw themselves flat, and their hidden machine gunners cut him, and two of his staff officers to pieces." Evans replied, his voice raw with a long-cherished anger. "I threw everything I had at them after that."

The Romanian sergeant shook his head. That went against every law of warfare. "Why would they do such a thing?"

"I asked one of them that. Yes, one managed to survive, and when he came out to surrender, for real this time, I accepted it, the fool that I was," Evans answered. "I told him much of what you were thinking now, most likely. How he could do such a treacherous, underhanded thing, to shoot a man who was coming to accept what he believed to be a surrender in good faith? How any of what he and his comrades had been done was fair? Do you know what his reply was?"

Petala shook his head.

Evans fixed him with a look of such force that the Sergeant was not sure if it was his eyes, or the eyes of that long-ago Japanese officer who were staring at him. "'You have mortars, trucks, machine guns,' he told us. 'We have only our rifles, our bayonets, and our faith in the Emperor. You have all the food you could eat. We have a handful of rice a day. You have airplanes which we cannot shoot down, tanks our guns cannot hurt, men who can run ten miles for every five we march. Your rules were written to make sure that you win. We refuse to fight by them because cannot accept losing.' That's what he told me."

The Englishman let out a breath. "The truth I learned that day is that the rules of war are just another weapon. We write rules that favour us, and they write rules that favour them. To fight the way your enemy wants you to is to admit defeat, so you must make your own. I owe that Jap officer a debt for that, I suppose."

"What happened to him?" Petala asked. "Did you let him go?"

The Englishman looked at him as if he were speaking in tongues. "Of course not. I had Gurung cut his bloody head off. Least the murdering bastard deserved."

"Evans-sahib! We're done here."

That had been one of the Gurkhas - Even after all these months, Petala still couldn't tell which one - the crates were filled with weapons now. The carrying bags sat empty next to them.

"Good show, damn good show. Now seal those up, and put them where we discussed, eh? And not a word to Captain Jin, the Major's orders!"

"No sahib, not a word," all four of them chorused quietly.

Quickly and quietly, they took up the lids of each crate and put them back into place, until the weapons were entirely covered beneath the slats of wood, each emblazoned with the symbol of the Victorian Red Cross.

[Cataphrak]

Somewhere Near Vălenii de Munte, 30 km North of Ploiești, Fascist-Occupied Romania
August 17th, 1958

To say that Gheorghe was furious when he came in to see Major Zhang would have been a vast understatement.

"Now you've fucking done it, you stupid bitch!" He shouted, as he threw a sheaf of papers in front of her.

Jin Kaoyun turned to his commanding officer. "He says you've done it now. He also calls you a stupid bitch."

To her credit, Zhang Ying did not immediately draw her dadao and cut the offending partisan leader's hand off - not that every single one of her small command hadn't wanted to for months now. It wasn't as if he or his ineffectual band of agitators were using them, after all - Instead, the Major looked at the documents fluttering to the ground in front of her. With a flick of her wrist, she snatched one of out of the air: a black and white photograph of a thin-faced, sharp-eyed man nearing middle age, in the uniform of the old Romanian Iron Guard.

"Who is this?" She asked.

"The Major asks who this man is."

"Who this man is? Who this man is?" The partisan was almost on the verge of hysterics now. "That is Florian Marinescu, and when he gets here tomorrow, he will kill us all thanks to your endless thirst for blood!"

Yes, Jin could see the information on another one of the sheets on the ground. Florian Marinescu, one of the early members of the Iron Guard, a member of Sima's inner circle and - Jin noted with no small disgust - an enthusiastic participant in the Bucharest Pogrom. Evidently, he was now some kind of senior figure in the Câini de Fier, one of the Conducător's personal attack dogs.

When Jin translated this all for the Major, she seemed less than impressed. "We sent the last man who tried to find us running. Maybe we'll do the same to this one."

"Don't you understand?" Gheorghe all-but screamed when Jin replied with the Major's words. "This man Marinescu, he is a savage beast, one which makes even your atrocities look like a pricked finger! He has burned entire villages in reprisal for partisan attacks! Why do you think we've been so careful? Why do you think we've avoided attacking the Grey Dog garrison? It's so they don't send someone like him!"

The Japanese had men like that too in China and Burma too. When word came of a partisan attack, they would find the nearest village, kill all the men, and then rape all the women until they were dead too. Then they would burn what was left as an example. It never worked. When the 38th Division had advanced into the parts of Burma who had suffered under such depredations, the locals, who had been so unfriendly just two years before, had been jumping out of their beds to join up and help destroy the hated enemy. "The British sucked our blood, but the Japanese crush our bones," they had said.

If the these Romanians had any fight left in them, they would have thought the same, instead of being cowed into inaction.

Judging by the look of contempt the Major shot at Gheorghe when Jin translated his words, she evidently agreed.

"If you are so frightened of him, then hide," she replied dismissively. "It's what you've been doing so far."

This time, Gheorghe did scream. "There will be nowhere left to hide, you stupid bitch! Marinescu knows these hills! He was born here! He knows every rock and trail! And even if he doesn't, his clan and his wife's clan do! They'll hunt us down and kill us all!"

"He says that this Marinescu fellow is from this area, and that his family lives here, so he knows the terrain," Jin translated. "He also calls you a stupid bitch... again."

"Tell him to find a new insult. I've heard that one in six languages now, and it's getting tiresome."

That, evidently had been the last straw.

"Get out! You have brought death to us all! Get out!"

The Major took the demand with an almost suspicious amount of good grace.

"I suppose we're not wanted here," she said, with a thin slash of a grin. "We'd better go."

The Major's command sprang into action immediately. They packed only what they could carry, and within fifteen minutes, twelve men and one woman left the caves, most of their food, and the weapons they'd stashed away in crates behind.

In the rush, almost nobody had noticed that they'd taken the intelligence on Florian Marinescu with them.

----

They'd barely gone two kilometres before the Major turned around and ordered a halt. Jock Evans was considering a smoke when she put Li and his fellow Commandos on watch and called the rest of them in.

"Here's what we do," she said. "Captain Jin. You will take Sergeant Petala and head for the Bluehat lines. As soon as you are safe, use your radio to call for pickup."

If Jin had been expecting that, he didn't let it show on his face. "Ma'am?"

"That idiot Partisan was right about one thing. This area is about to get dangerous. I made a promise to keep the Bluehat safe, I mean to keep it."

It was jolly good reasoning, Jock thought to himself, but it probably wasn't the only one. Given what he's overheard, the Major had come to the conclusion that Jin was some sort of operative sent to spy on her, though Jock could not for the life of him guess how she'd figured that. Nonetheless, if sending him and the Romanian liaison away made her sleep better at night, then that was her decision to make.

The interesting thing was that she'd waited for them to go before continuing. That meant that whatever she was about to do next, she did not want either the Romanians, or Captain Jin's employers to know about it.

She stood up to her full (and less than impressive) height. First one way to ensure that Jin and the Romanian were gone, then the other. "Corporal Li?"

"Ma'am?"

"Retrace our steps. Have two of your men keep an eye on our partisan friends. Make sure they don't pack up and leave."

"Yes ma'am. And the rest?"

The Major smiled, that same vicious smile she'd put on when they'd been kicked out. "I have it on good authority that when this Marinescu fellow arrives in town, he will start looking for partisan hideouts immediately. Make sure he finds one."

Corporal Li opened his mouth halfway, then he closed it. "Yes Ma'am!"

And then he and his men were gone too, which only left...

"Now then, Englishman. you have the most important job of all."

Jock managed a sardonic little grin. "Me, ma'am? Or my Gurkhas?"

Major Zhang smiled back. "I'm sure they'll let you tag along if you stay quiet and eat your vegetables."

"So, what's this job of yours?"

The Major pulled out one of the papers she'd taken from the Partisan caves. Her own notes were written in rough Chinese next to them, though God only knew when she'd had the time to do that. "This paper says that Marinescu has a family in the town. A wife and two daughters."

Major Zhang's grin returned, only somehow, it was even colder this time.

"Kill them."

[Cataphrak]

Somewhere Near Vălenii de Munte, 30 km North of Ploiești, Fascist-Occupied Romania
August 18th, 1958

Under normal circumstances, Corporal Li Wuming might have never seen the fascists coming.

With still a half an hour before sunrise, the naked eye was almost useless. All it could pick out was the black-blue expanse of the hills and valleys below, and the slightly lighter black-blue expanse of the sky above.

The infrared lamp was nothing less than a pain in the ass to move. It was heavy, it was bulky, and the exigencies of the mission meant that it had to be concealed, making it even heavier and bulkier. But the thing had proven its worth over the past few months, allowing Corporal Li and his team to operate in conditions dark enough to make an enemy force invisible from detection.

At least, detection by conventional means.

There were a hundred and fifty fascist troops in the gully below. Special forces, or the nearest thing to them. A double-company, by Li's guess - war had a way of paring away the strength of a force like this one, no matter how competent they were.

And they were competent. They made little noise, barely as much as a Commando detachment would have made in the same circumstances. They moved in careful, well-judged bursts, keeping themselves low to avoid being silhouetted against the slowly lightening sky. To the naked eye, they would have been invisible.

Through the infrared scope of Corporal Li's De Lisle, they might as well have been wearing parade uniforms in broad daylight.

That wasn't to say he was entirely safe. The lamp was only good for about a hundred and fifty yards, which meant Li and his team were perilously close to what was about to happen. They had faith in how well they'd camouflaged their position, but if there was one thing that Li had learned in the jungle, it was that strokes of bad luck made a mockery out of skill, out of experience, even out of faith.

But they were lucky this time, or perhaps they were simply not being looked for.

Li drew a bead on the man at the head of the first squad. He looked like an officer, he stood like one at least, an impatient one. Florian Marinescu, it seemed, was just as active and tireless a foe as the partisans had claimed, and after he had found what the Gurkhas had left of his wife and children in their home, he had wasted no time at all looking for answers.

Answers which one Corporal Li Wuming, 3rd Commando Brigade was happy to provide.

They had been subtle clues: a spent cartridge here, a scuff mark there, but they had to be. A partisan-hunter as skilled as Marinescu would have suspected something too obvious, even in his current emotional state. The trail Li had left was just carefully obscured enough to seem genuine, and it had led him here, to where-

There was a shout from the valley below, something in Romanian. Li's scope lit up as a man in the lead squad fired a flare gun into the cave entrance in front of him. Two more went in afterwards. With well-practised movements, they shot two rifle-grenades deep into the opening: white phosphorus, the Romanian fascists didn't mess around with less destructive smoke agents.

Sure enough, thick smoke began to billow from the mouth of the cave. A few moments later, a man stumbled out. Li didn't know his name. He'd chosen consciously not to learn it. He'd suspected that he'd be required to do what he had to do now.

Another shout, again in Romanian, almost a scream. Half a dozen rifles barked, the partisan at the mouth of the cave fell over.

A handful more came out now. Some coughing, some screaming in pain, but these had rifles in their hands. They returned fire, and the valley echoed with the sharp cracks of small arms and the concussive rattle of machine guns.

Major Zhang had perhaps done the partisans a disservice. She thought they did not fight because they were too cowardly to fight, but now, their backs against the wall, they fought as hard as they could.

But it did not matter. There was no question of who was bound to win. The partisans were a dozen at most, armed with scrounged weapons. Against a hundred and fifty fascists with machine guns and grenades, they stood no chance. They would not have even stood a chance if they had known where Evans and his Gurkhas had stashed the weapons which Major Zhang had "given" them. Within a few minutes, it was over. The partisans who fought were tumbled splotches on Corporal Li's scope, fading and still. The next partisans who came out of the cave came with their hands up.

Li steeled himself. For a moment, he rested his crosshairs on the fascist Marinescu's head. He and his team were still undetected. It would be so easy just to squeeze the trigger, to wipe this creature from the world of the living.

He didn't. That would have been sacrificing a great victory for a small one.

Corporal Li shifted the crosshairs up, past where the lead fascist squad was advancing to take the remaining partisans prisoner. He drew a bead on the partisan who'd come forward the furthest. He let out the breath that he had held in almost by instinct.

And he fired.

For the fascists, there was a moment of confusion.

For the partisans, the situation was clear. Marinescu wasn't taking prisoners. If they were dead either way, it was better to die fighting. They reached for their weapons and fired until every last one of them was cut down by a storm of Grey Dog fire.

For Corporal Li, who shook his head slowly as he chambered another round, it was the completion of his mission. His job was to make sure that there were no loose ends, nobody for Marinescu to interrogate. Nobody to give him an answer to the question of who had killed his family.

Or at least, any answer except the one that Major Zhang Ying wanted him to find.

It didn't take long for him to find it. As far as Corporal Li had seen, Florian Marinescu and the men under his command had lived up to their reputation. They had been quick, efficient, and effective in combat. They reacted to shock well, worked in highly cohesive teams, and displayed a level of initiative and intelligence which would have impressed even a salty old Burma vet like him.

-Which was why it took Marinescu's men only five minutes to find what the Major had left behind for them.

Li was familiar with the logic: Florian Marinescu had wanted more than just revenge on the men whom he thought had killed his family. He wanted answers. Li did not imagine that it had taken the man long to intuit that the partisans possessed a foreign backer, especially given how quickly those same partisans seemed to have gone from impotent to terrifying overnight. Beyond that, Li doubted Marinescu was one to think small either. One did not become a feared partisan-hunter for taking a few heads and calling it a day. No, Marinescu was after the whole organisation. He was not only out to destroy the men who had wronged him, but the people who had evidently supplied them with weapons and training too. He would destroy them all for what they had done to him. That was how men like Marinescu worked.

There had been Japanese officers like him in Burma, and when they burned the villages which had housed the Burmese freedom fighters whom Li and his brother commandos had trained, they had come after the commandos themselves. As soon as they had the answer they thought they needed, they would pursue it unto death.

And Florian Marinescu soon had his answer. His men brought it out before him and piled it at his feet: an answer in the shape of a half dozen heavy crates, each one filled with weapons and ammunition.

Each one emblazoned with the symbol of the Victorian Red Cross.

A Florian Marinescu who'd been in his right state of mind would have probably hesitated. He would have thought it over. He might have, perhaps, noticed a few inconsistencies. Why would a foreign power currently supplying his own side with fighter jets suddenly begin supplying their enemies? Why would they choose to supply partisans, instead of using the massive expeditionary force they had landed to the east? Why did he only find Victorian weapons, instead of Victorian advisors, Victorian ration packs, or other Victorian equipment?

A Florian Marinescu who had just returned from an absence of six months to find his wife and two little girls dismembered in their own beds was less willing to ask such inconvenient questions.

There was light on the horizon now. Corporal Li did not need his infrared scope to watch Marinescu as he formed his men up. He didn't need his scope to see the Romanian partisan-hunter empty a round into each of the fallen partisans for good measure. He did not need to see his taut-limbed fury as he led his men out of the valley, leaving the corpses of the partisans behind them.

Corporal Li and his team waited for half an hour, until the fascists had marched out of sight, until the sound of their trucks started up down the hillside, and receded again into the distance. Only then did Corporal Li pack his infrared lamp and its heavy battery into the disguised camera case he had carried it in, and only then did his team break cover, and begin the long walk to the rendezvous point.

They were not yet halfway there when the first sounds of gunfire echoed from the direction of the Victorian aid station.

[Cataphrak]

Epilogue

Guangzhou, Palace of the Legislative Yuan
September 2nd, 1958

"You know, General," the Premier noted as he observed the ripples in his teacup, "you are a great deal more like the Generalissimo than you think."

Given the Premier's long and fraught relationship with his predecessor, General Sun Liren was not sure if that was a compliment or not. "The Legislative Yuan couldn't decide on a course of action due to lack of information, so I chose to fix that. All I did was send a fact-finding mission."

"All you did was send Zhang Ying on a fact-finding mission," Long Yun answered with the slightest hint of sarcasm. "A woman known for her hatred of fascists and subtlety. I remember what she was like during the war with Japan, and I doubt age as mellowed her, especially given how things have progressed in Romania."

"Oh?" The Head of the Military Affairs Commission knew what the Premier meant by that, of course. But it would have been bad form to show it. "You believe that the recent developments in-"

Long Yun chuckled. "You don't need to play coy with me, General. I know the recent developments in Romania were your fact-finding officer's doing. Instead of seeking truth from facts, the good Major has evidently decided to make her own." He shot the General a canny grin. "I know you know. I get reports too."

He knew. Of course he did. Sun Liren nodded, and sighed. "The Juntong-"

"-were disbanded after the war with Japan," the Premier answered drily. "They also report to me - and have, ever since we finally got rid of that psychopath Dai Li." He smiled, again, a careful mask purged of even the suggestion of malice. "I am not an American, or an Englishman, I will not keep secrets from you while we are on the same side. I only ask that you extend me the same courtesy."

The General nodded. There was no point in playing shadow-puppets with the Premier. He had the advantage of thirty years of experience. "So what now?"

"Major Zhang's actions - your actions - have given us an opening, one so obvious even the Legislative Yuan will vote to take advantage of it. Beyond that, Zhang's actions have forced our hand as well. Should the truth of her actions ever come to light, they will prove exceptionally embarrassing for this government - unless they can be justified after the fact. As a result, intervention has turned from a military option into an political imperative."

The Premier looked away for a moment, letting out a long sigh. His expression turned grim. "So now?"

The General nodded. "Now we discuss the business of sending young men to die."