Blood Lily Company - Afghanistan - Year 2

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Once out of sight of the village, Erk stopped and turned back towards the houses.

- I don't like it that we left like that, he said, without doing anything for this woman. But without knowing what it is... Kitty, can you give us your report?

- Yes of course. The woman was worried about her two boys. The leader wanted to silence her by saying that they were men now, or that in any case they had better have taken advantage of the opportunity to become men. She insisted that they had been gone for five days and it was too long to go to the village to the south.

She shrugged.

- Impossible to understand the name of the village, sorry.

She rubbed her face.

- However, there is one thing that bothers me. The word "men", he used a different word. It's subtle, but one of the words designates the male human being, and the other the male and... virile human being?

- And how old are his boys? Kris asked, one eye on Erk.

- 16 and 17 years old, if I understood correctly.

Erk paled.

- This kind of rite of passage, in these cultures...

- Listen, brother, let's start by doing an investigation. Quenotte, contact the base, ask if there have been any complaints from our village.

- Yes sir.

He walked away. Not understanding the local language, be it Dari, Pashto or Turkmen, was just an excuse for not immediately intervening. These people had suffered from the domination of the SRH. We did not know if they would accept our presence, our interventions. If our presence was tolerated (and at best accepted) then our lives would be easy. If this wasn't the case, patrolling this sector would be dangerous and the sector in question might even fall to the Dotard. No thank you.

In an ideal world, we would have started wooing them as soon as the SRH had disappeared. But we didn't have enough men, and the priority was to bring down the barons.

After our fright at Durrani's, Lin had repatriated us to our territory, for as long as it took for us to see how the Pashtun reacted to the massacre perpetrated by our small troop, helped by an E-Assault helicopter and its heavy machine gun, masterfully handled by Vlad the Polack. And that is why our patrols would be police patrols, services rendered to the villages, inspection of our territory.

And so, impossible to know how this village, V2, would react to our presence, or even to our interference. Lin had decided that we would leave them alone, that our role would be that of referee, doctor, road worker... In short, anything that could help them. A bit like we did last year, while Erk was recovering in the infirmary and the Icelanders were testing synergies.

- Kris, said Quenotte, no alert from our village.

- Thank you Quenotte. Fine...

He looked at the ground for a moment.

- Your impressions of the village, guys?

- They are definitely more tense than V1, that's for sure.

- More macho, too.

- V2's malik has more power than V1's. Or else he uses it more.

- The children were a good angle of attack, but I think the malik and some men found you... weak, Erk.

- I don't give a flying fuck what these guys think. If for them being gentle and kind is to be weak, then I prefer to be weak. So, do we have a way to give this woman a glimmer of hope for her sons?