Blood Lily Company - Afghanistan, year 1

IV

I am not sure where to start. The Viking showed us a side of him we knew nothing about.

I mean, we saw him murder one of the Company's two lieutenants before it became the Blood Lily's. We saw him take his shirt off, literally, to dig holes and ditches with us. We saw him teach us to defend ourselves, patient and ruthless, we saw him saucy and joking, but that... I didn't know that this still existed. But I will have to come back to it.

We had no mission yet, were still re-learning how to be soldiers, in a certain way. The Cap... Lin – I need some time to wrap my mind around it, I told her the first, third and tenth time she corrected me – Lin, then, was working with us. We had marches by day, marches by night, marches with our equipment and marches without. We ended up knowing the place quite well. We almost could have moved around blindfolded and say where we were. We also had capture-the-flag and stealth infiltration types of action.

All of this training was done in some sort of war games, with real weapons, but firearms were absolutely forbidden. We could only use blades, garrote and martial arts. Once again, you learn quite fast how to avoid getting hit. Especially after having been knocked out from the back at 3m from the objective and waking up trussed up, facing an angry Viking.

And I can assure you the furies of the Viking are an event you'd better be only a spectator to.

When they seize him and he cannot get rid of them easily, he goes digging. That's how we had a third ditch, visible, obvious line of defense. It is U-shaped, 4m large, 3m deep. For now. And at the deepest point.

That's also how, behind the caravanserai, we got the pit. A hole dug into the ground, where they dump you when you've gone and done something stupid. A 4m deep, 2m wide well. You go down at the end of a rope, you come back out by pulling yourself up a rope. Don't expect help with coming out! Plus it's good exercise.

Apart from the Icelanders, all the Company's fighters have been in there at least 48 hours. And Nanny. Because he pursued one of the girls with unwanted assiduities, Lin punished him. We got the lesson right. Sex is OK within the Company, but only consenting. No is no, damn it all!

The Icelanders... That's how, among ourselves, we call our senior officers. French, laced with argot – French slang– became the official language of the Company, because it had not been heard in this part of the world for almost a century. Fine. But, if they wanted a secret language, why not use Icelandic? I mean, the three of them must be the first to show their faces around here...

Then I got it, after hearing them exchange at full tilt in Icelandic. They needed their own secret language. They didn't trust us. It's fair game. I didn't trust us either, actually. I was a bit ashamed of us.

When Lin discovered my writing, she asked me to keep it away from the Web. And she gave me a box of A5 notebooks and Bic pens. She encouraged me to write, asking me to stay honest. I had starting writing, not to make sure we are not forgotten, but because their arrival and the changes were so... striking, disturbing, I had to get it out of my system.

Please do not believe the Viking is always angry. He is actually a charming character. He is polite, considerate, it would seem, generous, too. But we all remember his hair stick in the eye of the Lieutenant. So we are a little wary.

Kris is more open, more laughing. A joker, too. He has a wonderful sense of humor, accepting to be made fun of, no problem. His issue is that he's prescient. He has a Gift of precognition. We don't really know the extent of it, he hides it from us. But we never managed to surprise him. Never. That's how we discovered his Gift. He has another nasty habit. He answers tit for tat and it's often more acidic than battery acid. No one is safe from it, not even Lin. But between them, when he dares reply, they settle it on the sand and he loses, always.