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Enemy Combatant
The war had lasted nearly five years now. The countryside was devastated - once fruitful vinyards had been stripped to bare dirt, fields had lain fallow for the last two years. A few farmers still struggled to eke out a living from the earth, but most had been conscripted by one side or the other to replace their dead soldiers. Many of those left behind had fled, seeking a better life beyond the sea. For those that remained, there was left only a life of terror and deprivation, of watching children starve while their mothers rented out their hands for labor and their bodies for pleasure to try to earn enough coin to save their families. The threat of death hung over the country like a shroud, emphasized by rifle-wielding foreigners and craters where crude bombs had fallen, and strings of barbed wire surrounding internment camps for their enemies.
But a few fought back. Bands of resistance fighters hid in the woods, striking against the invaders and then melting back into the woods like smoke, harrying and harrassing them every chance they got, performing acts of sabotage, 'requisitioning' food and supplies, rescuing captured comrades, and anything else they could think of to force the foreign army to leave their country, their people, their valley, alone.
Marie was one such member of the Resistance. Though she was not a fighter by choice, her medical skills were considered invaluable by her group. She was their healer. As such, she wasn't included on the more dangerous missions. She understood that she was too valuable to risk, but she groused just the same. She hated being left out.
Even if it was for a good reason, especially this time. She glared at the prisoner, who was shackled to a pole set deep in the bedrock of their cave headquarters. They'd picked him up the day before; a lone soldier crashing through the woods as though he owned the place. During the capture, he'd collected a bullet through his bicep and had a long, fairly-deep gash down his leg, along with assorted other scratches and contusions. Marie didn't want to get close to him. He was her enemy, bad news, one of those that had made her life a living hell these last years. Still... she was a healer. Even though he richly deserved those wounds, she hated to see anyone, even her enemy, in pain.
CharmQuark · Tue Nov 09, 2010 @ 04:18pm · 0 Comments |
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