Guerrilla (The Invasion of Miraval Book 2) Read online

  Tears came unbidden to Dag’s eyes and he stabbed at them furiously with his hands. He was not one to cry, not on the playground nor when his mother- when Mrs. Dagenham went on one of her tirades against him, not ever. Crying was a sign of weakness, and Dag was not weak.

  “It’s all right, son,” Raslan said as he got up and repositioned himself so he was sitting next to Dag. He threw an arm around his son’s shoulders and said, “Your mother was a fine woman and your father was a good man. He was my best friend. I swore to your mother before she left this world that I would look after you like you were my own, and that I have tried to do. You’re my son.”

  Dag buried his face into his father’s red and black checkered flannel shirt and the tears continued. He could not stop them, and he did not want to any longer. For a minute, he let his father continue to hold him until he realized that this was not really his father. That realization put up a sudden wall of distance between the two of them, and he scooted a little further away on the bedroll.

  “But you’re not my father,” Dag said. “And your wife isn’t my mother. That makes sense, I suppose.”

  “It’s not easy for her,” Raslan said. “You’re a living memory of the man she loved and lost, a man who was not faithful to her. To make matters worse, I decided that I would honor the memory of my brother and that he would not have to bear the shame of his indiscretion. I gave you my name and let the rumor spread that I had been briefly married to a woman I met in Greybridge and that she had died bearing my child. I couldn’t keep the truth from Grace though- she had a right to know.”

  “Why are you telling me all this now?” Dag demanded. “So you and she can send me to an orphanage? Now that you have Aleksian and another child on the way, the house is too small and you need to make room for your real children?”

  Raslan looked hurt. “Of course not, Dag,” he said. He paused for a long moment as if trying to compose himself. “Whatsoever your blood may be, you’re my family, and more importantly my son.” Dag looked like he wanted to object but Raslan held up a hand and said, “You can argue with that to your hearts content, but it doesn’t make it any less so.” He sighed. “I told you this because you needed to know,” he said at last. “I told you this because I see the way Grace treats you compared to Aleksian, and I know you notice the difference. I want you to understand that it’s not you she has a problem with, but what you represent.”

  “Fine,” Dag said in a surly tone.

  Silence drew out between them for a long time. Desperate for something to do other than talk to his father, or his uncle rather, Dag shoved a hard biscuit into his mouth that his mother, or his aunt, had made. The bread tasted bitter and a feeling of resentment pooled deep within Dag.

  “Your father taught me to hunt,” Raslan said at last as he stared off into a setting sun. “That was the other reason I wanted to bring you up here. I know that he would’ve taught you if he had been here.”

  Feeling too resentful and cheated to offer a reply, Dag said nothing and just let the darkness creep up on them until only the fire remained. Raslan set up a small tent and suggested that they go to sleep, but Dag did not reply, and Raslan turned in. When Dag at last nodded off, it was on his bedroll staring into the fire.

  The next morning, as if by unspoken agreement, they did not discuss their conversation of the day before. Dag had made up his mind before he fell asleep that he would not let anyone else know what he had found out- not Aleksian or his mother or anyone at school. He resolved to continue to refer to Raslan as his father and Grace as his mother, despite how much he knew it would annoy the latter. Raslan had in fact been very good to him, and he did not want to dishonor the secret knowledge he had been given. His father had trusted him enough to confide this in him over his own wife’s objections. That was proof enough for Dag that Raslan had his best interests at heart, just as any father would.

  That morning, Dag felled his first deer and Raslan slapped him on the back, congratulated him and ruffled his hair affectionately as if nothing had changed. In a way, Dag supposed that nothing really had. All that Raslan had given him was the name of a woman he had never known and a little bit of information about his genetic parentage. Regardless of any of that, he knew who his real father was.

  Over the years following, Raslan and Dag came out into the woods together, sometimes bringing Aleksian. However, whenever Grace Dagenham would go off on a tear about how horrible Dag was, Raslan would bring Dag out into the woods alone, and they would stalk game together. Even after Raslan Senior had been killed in the Great Strife, the woods and the hunt were old familiar reminders that his father was not really gone. Whenever Grace became unbearable and whenever his family needed food, Dag could be found out in the woods bagging squirrels, rabbits, deer and the occasional bear (The latter only when Aleksian was around- he couldn’t carry a beast that size by himself).

  There was a certain irony that he enjoyed in the fact that Grace had never been able to stand him, but without a husband and with Aleksian in university, she had needed Dag and had even come to rely on him. His providing for his family was done without gratitude, of course. Grace had seemingly taken the attitude that providing her with food was the least he could do considering that she had sheltered him against her own wishes for years.

  Dag did not care that he received no thanks for his work. He wasn’t doing it for her, but for Raslan. He knew that Raslan, his father, had loved Grace, and he would have wanted Dag to look after her after his death. Raslan’s eyes had made that unspoken request when the Great Strife began as Raslan headed off to war, never to return. When his father’s body was brought back from the front, Dag had skipped the funeral to go hunting instead. No one else had understood, but Dag knew that action honored Raslan far more than lofty speeches in the pantheon and a widow’s tears.

  In Dag’s dreams, he frequently was out in the woods, hunting with Raslan, chasing down a stag or cornering a bear. Every so often though, they were not alone. There was another man with them, one who looked like an older version of Dag, a more severely featured version of Raslan, but who smiled a little easier and enjoyed a drink from a bottle of wine he had brought with him. Their other companion in these dreams was a lighthearted, blonde-haired woman, who walked barefoot through the woods and spun herself around in a circle in every clearing. She picked wildflowers and wove them into her long hair, and she cried a single tear whenever Dag shot a deer. He had only the vaguest descriptions of his parents from Raslan, and he did not know if these people were manifestations of his own mind or if Lea, the dream goddess, was allowing his parents to enter his mind at night on occasion. It did not really matter, he supposed. They were always his happiest dreams.

  2

  “Chasing rabbits?” Dag heard a voice call, seemingly from the far side of a great chasm, and he begrudgingly allowed his mind to head toward it.

  Dag’s eyelids fluttered open and managed to fix on the smiling mug of his brother Aleksian. “Rarer game,” he muttered in response.

  “I can see that,” Alex said as Aria Beaurigar lifted her head off of Dag’s pillow and took a few moments to allow the cobwebs to clear from her mind. “Sorry, had I known you weren’t alone, I would have knocked.” His expression suggested that he was not sorry at all as a stupid smile played its way across his face. Aleksian had immaculately straight black hair and bright blue eyes, compared to Dag’s tousled brown hair and green eyes.

  “What time is it?” Dag asked, looking out the window and seeing sunlight coming through.

  “Eight o’clock,” he replied.

  “Huh?” Dag demanded.

  “You slept through the rest of the day and the night,” he pointed out. “Must have been tired.”

  “He had energy enough,” Aria managed with a sly smile.

  Alex found his face glowing red at this statement and he looked to Dag who just shrugged in response. “Right, I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that,” he said at last.

  “Suit yo
urself,” Aria said. The wounds to her face that she had taken during the battle for Harren Falls looked like they had healed nicely, but there might still be some scarring. Her dark hair was shorter than was considered fashionable for a young woman, and she had a reputation as bit of a tomboy, but she was also the daughter of the National Guard’s commanding officer in the Southern Crest region and one hell of a soldier in Aleksian’s estimation. “But since you’re so bashful, lieutenant, perhaps you should step into the hallway while I get dressed,” Aria pointed out as she threw her covers off with Alex barely able to turn around in time before seeing her naked, athletic frame.

  “You’re acting strange, Alex,” Dag said, enjoying Alex’s discomfort as only a brother could.

  Choosing to ignore that statement as well as anything else that was not strictly military business, Alex said, “The captain has called for a council of war. He got a radio working yesterday and got an update from military command.”

  “Why are you just getting us now?” Dag demanded as he too jumped out of bed and started putting fresh clothes on.

  “Captain Beaurigar knows that an army can’t be asked to go without rest forever,” he said. “Harren Falls is in no immediate danger, so he allowed our little militia as much rest as he could.”

  Dag considered that and decided that the captain was probably right. All three of them had participated in the Battle of Harren Falls three nights before, spent the next day organizing militia volunteers and interrogating captured Dominion soldiers, and then had another night’s battle taking a strongly defended Dominion bridgehead. Instead of rest as a reward for their victory, they had been required to set a trap for an approaching Dominion column of infantry and tanks, blowing up the bridge over Ava’s Gorge and sending a lot of tanks and men plummeting to their deaths.

  “How bad is it? Did the captain say?” Dag asked.

  “Bad enough,” Alex replied, but did not give specifics. “Look, I’m supposed to be getting Tangrit and Torrace as well, so you guys make your way to the NG HQ when you’re ready, and I’ll meet you there.”

  Alex left, and Aria at last let out a giggle that she had apparently been holding in for a while. “I thought he’s at university,” she said. “Surely, he’s…”

  Dag looked at her, marveling at her complete lack of modesty and shrugged. “Not the sort of thing Dagenhams discuss, I suppose,” he said.

  “Well, it’s still probably good that he left,” she said as she slipped one of Dag’s T-shirts on over her lithe frame. She had already appropriated a pair of his shorts. “I don’t have any clean pants here and I don’t think I can steal a pair of yours.”

  3

  Twenty minutes later, Dag had fully dressed into another set of camouflage hunting gear he owned and had snuck across to the Beaurigar house to recover a black pair of pants for Aria and a few other amenities she had requested. When he returned, she was standing in the kitchen in front of a stove, frying up what looked like bacon, hashed potatoes, and eggs all in separate pans.

  When she saw him, she smiled and said, “Your mom didn’t leave much behind, did she? This is the last bit of food in the house.”

  “It’s always this way,” Dag replied, breathing deeply of the aroma of fresh breakfast. “Those are for Vara and Elissa usually and for my mother. Vara cooks them of course, but mother doesn’t allow me… I mean, there’s not enough for all of us and I can find my own food, of course.”

  “Interesting one, your mother,” Aria observed as she grabbed a spatula and started flipping the potatoes. “You know she tried to get my dad, I mean the captain, to force me into a marriage with you.”

  Dag was now seated at the dining room table and had been in the process of taking a drink of water. He immediately began coughing on it.

  Aria laughed. “My father told her that if he tried to get me to marry someone I didn’t want to… Well, he wasn’t prepared to deal with that situation,” she said.

  “She’s been trying to get rid of me since day one,” Dag spat. “Although I’m sure she still would have expected me to contribute to her well-being.” Immediately he tried to push down the bitterness he suddenly felt. “Sorry that she did that,” he managed after a few moments. “You’re right; you shouldn’t have to marry someone you don’t want.”

  “I told my dad yes,” she said calmly as she began to shovel eggs, potatoes, and bacon onto two plates. She carried them into the dining room and set one plate in front of Dag. “By the time he got back to your mother though, she said that you weren’t interested in marriage.”

  Dag did not know what to say to that, so he began eating. “This is good,” he said, looking up and noting that Aria was not eating but staring at him. He immediately looked back down.

  “Perhaps your interest was just in other things,” she said quietly.

  “That’s not fair,” Dag immediately objected. “I… Damn it, I already had one family that relies almost solely on me to support it. I couldn’t take on a second. I… I couldn’t start a new family, knowing that Vara and Elissa were going to be left to fend for themselves essentially. I told myself there would be time for that sort of thing later. Once they were grown and had husbands of their own or had gone on to university, I could have a family then.”

  “She really has you under her thumb, doesn’t she?” Aria asked a little unkindly as she angrily punched at her breakfast with a fork. “Makes me kind of glad I never knew my mother if they can wield that kind of power over you.”

  “I never knew my mother,” Dag said quietly as he looked down again and returned to eating.

  “Wait. What now?” Aria demanded.

  “Grace Dagenham is my aunt technically, not my mother,” he said, surprising himself with how easily the secret he had kept locked away for so long came spilling out of him. “Raslan Senior, you remember him, was not my father. His brother Duggan was.”

  “That still doesn’t quite explain...” Aria led, but Dag interrupted her.

  “My dad, my real dad, was originally engaged to Grace,” he said. “But he wasn’t faithful to her when he got sent to Greybridge during the Border Crisis. He died on the battlefield along with most of the Miravallians. My mother went to Raslan for help when she was set to deliver the baby, and then she died bringing me into this world. Raslan brought me back and raised me as his own.”

  Aria nodded. “That makes a little more sense now,” she said. “She hates you, doesn’t she? And hates you even more for having to rely on you now that her husband is dead?”

  Dag nodded. “I’ve never told anyone that before,” he said. “Not even Alex. Grace doesn’t even know that I know.” Very quickly, he added, “I would appreciate it if you didn’t repeat what I’ve told you.”

  “Of course not,” she said sincerely. “But why did you tell me now?”

  “Because,” Dag answered. “Because now I wish that I hadn’t been so foolish as to say no to you.”

  “If it’s just because of last night…” Aria began.

  Dag cut her off with a held up hand. “No, it’s not because of last night,” he said. “I told myself there would be time. Time for a family of my own once I was certain my sisters were okay. I could still help Grace as much as possible and raise a family if it was just her I needed to support.” He paused and searched for the right words to make her understand. “We’re at war, Aria,” he said at last. “Time’s not a luxury any longer. Any one of us could be dead in the next few days, the next few months, the next year. Everything that was going to be done in the future…” his voice trailed off as he shook his head. “That future is chaos now.”

  Aria reached a hand across the table, grabbed his hand firmly and squeezed. “We can still make our own future,” she said.

  Dag nodded and squeezed her hand in return. “I think of all the time I wasted,” he said. “There was this cute girl I knew who was the only girl who ever made any sense to me. She didn’t gossip, didn’t wear dresses, played games and fought with the boys on the
schoolyard. She wanted to go foraging with me, hunting with me, wanted me to go cave-diving with her. I never saw what she was really asking, and I should have said yes every single time. We might not have been able to get married, but I would’ve known you better.”

  “Well, then,” Aria said as she finished her breakfast in a few quick bites. “I suppose we better get to the council of war so we could hurry up and figure out how long it’s going to take to win this thing. We’ve got planning to do.”

  “Win?” Dag echoed.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I want to have a fall wedding and we’re already well into spring.”

  “Is that a proposal?” he demanded.

  “If you like,” she replied.

  “Well, I’d expected some more romance and for me to be doing the asking,” Dag pointed out.

  “You said it yourself, we’ve got no time to waste,” she said.

  “But…”

  Aria looked at him, a serious expression on her face. “I know,” she said softly. “I know that you still have to provide for Grace’s family, for your sisters, once the war is over. I accept that. Besides, you’re not the only one who’s capable of providing for a family. Two hunters are better than one and all that.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Dag agreed.

  “Just don’t expect me to make a vow of obeisance or obedience or whatever in the pantheon,” she said. “I don’t follow anyone’s orders.”

  “I’m your superior officer,” he argued, a grin spreading across his face.

  She mused upon that for a moment. “Not within these walls then,” she said.

  “Fair enough,” he agreed as she stood up from her chair, walked around the table and planted a kiss on his cheek. “Wow,” he added a moment later. “I just got engaged.”

  Aria rolled her eyes and said, “I’ll get you a ring later. Now, come on,” she said, indicating his half-eaten breakfast. “If we don’t hurry up, my dad will kill us, and it won’t have anything to do with what we did last night.”