Red Legend
The Winter War
The Winter War
A Roleplay by the Ordis Community
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ORDERS DIRECTLY FROM GAIA. PULL THE TRIGGER.
Tyskyli
The Kingdom of Norasia
Northern Orda
10th October 2015
The Kingdom of Norasia
Northern Orda
10th October 2015
The room stank of cigarette smoke and perfume. Choking, cloying perfume - the man’s wife drifted around his desk like a wraith, wrapped in white, her hair artfully windswept. She whispered something in his ear. He nodded and waved her away. She glared at Yuliya as she left.
Oskari Nikula was the most powerful man in the Norasian underground. Businesses either paid him, or paid one of his competitors for protection from him. Not a single drop of beer passed through Norasian lips without having passed through his empire. But the Norasian monarchy was starting to take its laws on prohibition seriously.
Nikula sat ensconced in three layers of family. Three brothers, each with different-colored ties, arms crossed. Four sons, each old enough to bear children, hands folded. Five miscellaneous relatives, leaning against the wall. The bookshelves were like the bars of a prison cell.
“You were saying?” he said. Yuliya licked her lips.
“Pull the trigger. Tomorrow. We’ll be ready.” He leaned back, gazing at the dust on his desklamp.
“You niemis think you rule the whole world, don’t you?” Yuliya did not have time for nationalist quiverings.
“Pull the trigger.”
“What if we’re not ready?”
“We told you to be ready.”
“Oh, you told us,” he chuckled. The chuckle echoed twelve times. “She told us. Well, I suppose we must’ve simply forgotten, then. Silly us.”
“We had an agreement - ”
“And twenty of my men have died in the past week,” he spat, leaning across the table. His anger expanded like a singularity, heating the room in seconds. The books shook. “More each day. Marko was killed last week. Paavo the week before. And that’s not to mention the rats.” He leaned back and pulled out his gun, an old-fashioned revolver with a brazen gold handle. “Lukaas. Reijo. The Makinen family. Reeta and - ”
“We had an agreement.”
He shot one of his bodyguards. His movement was fluid, quick. The bullet cracked past her ear, and she winced. Like clockwork the remaining eleven men removed the body.
“Another rat. My own cousin.” Yuliya growled through her nose.
“I’m not interested in your bullshit, Oskari. I’m interested in our agreement. So fucking uphold it, or the deal’s off.” There was a distinct shock that echoed silently in the room. No one dared to call Nikula by his given name, not even his family. However, he only seemed bemused.
“The deal? Is looking rather unattractive to me right now.” He rested the gun on the desk, his fingers still clutching the handle. “What if we bail? We could deal with our government, instead, not some pimppi foreigner with a big wallet and a bigger cock in her mouth. Maybe we’re tired of taking your government’s loads.”
“Then we will crush you. And your family. And your friends. And anyone who ever talked to you. Anyone who ever laid eyes on you.” She flashed a viper’s grin. “Aren’t communists famed for their brutality?”
“Your southern brethren, perhaps. You northerners are soft.”
“I’m sure you’ve heard of Lively Plant?” His silence was answer enough. “Mass graves are not the only way to destroy your enemies.”
He spun the gun. The barrel reached for her chest. His finger tightened around the trigger.
“What if I killed you? Right now?” Yuliya's heart raced, but her face remained stony and bored. Years of practice had calmed her muscles, pressed them into subservience. The room was sticky with tension. She was quiet, except for a small sigh that she let slip past her teeth.
“Another will rise to take my place. And he will not be a negotiator.”
For some time he was still. He sat back, his fingernails tapping his moustache. His elder brother and most trusted advisor leaned to whisper in his ear. His eyes, green as cartoon poison, flicked back in her direction.
“Two more families get amnesty.” She sighed.
“Really? You’re going to do this?”
“Two more families, or nothing.” He crossed his arms. “We will be ready tomorrow.”
Yuliya did not, technically, have the authority to alter the deal.
“Fine.”
Topias Eskola’s ears were perpetually red. His eyes were perpetually wide, and his lips were perpetually agitated. Rather, his entire being was perpetually agitated.
The darkened basement of the house at 858 Kuningas Boulevard festered with spiders and shadow. Nearly two dozen figures crouched on the dirt-dusted concrete, the muted gleams of rifles jumping from their arms. A few smoked cigarettes, flame leaping like firecrackers from their tails. They were R-13, the militant communist group that had been hiding from and fighting against the Norasian government for nearly a decade. Their methods were flamboyant, and brutal.
Two of the stairs had been broken, split in half - Yuliya picked her way carefully over the rubble, but nearly fell through the final step when Topias shoved himself in her face.
“What did he say? Are they ready?” he breathed. Even his whispers sounded like growls.
Yuliya pushed him aside and slid into the room. “I would appreciate it if you didn’t attack me on the stairs.”
“What did he say?”
Yuliya glared at him. “He will be ready. We begin tomorrow, as planned.”
“What about the Spodes? They doing their part?”
“Yes.” She had gotten the message this morning, from a comrade of hers. The LVK disliked having two of its agents working directly with the same group, at the same time. Yuliya had been assigned to both the Norasian mafiya and these violent revolutionaries. Her comrade, meanwhile, was the liaison between herself and the Spodystani agents working in Norasia.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. SIOS has assured my comrade that the officer is theirs. Border skirmishes should be flaring as we speak.”
“Good.” Topias sat in a corner near the stairs, pulling his own cigarette from his pocket. “I still don’t like us going in there alone. With all of your country’s resources, one would think you could spare a few men - ”
“Stop whining. You know perfectly well why we can’t help you directly.” She winced at the teeth in her words. She could not lose her temper.
“So what if they capture you, or find a peninsular body? What are they going to do?” Murmurs of agreement rustled around the charged bodies of the basement.
“I’ve explained this to you several times. I would assume you have the mental capabilities to remember.”
“I remember. It’s just so your government can keep its hands clean, Norasians be damned.”
“I’m not having this conversation again. You’ll need to focus on growing some balls before tomorrow anyway.” In moments his face was again in hers, fists clenched, nostrils flared. His men fingered their weapons.
“Do not lecture me about courage, niemimaalla koira. For ten years I have fought in this godforsaken country, for ten years I have lost brothers and sisters and friends to the royalist scum.” His hands dug into his pocket. “Do you know I keep a list? Of all those who have been killed.” He slammed the little brown book into her chest. “Read it. Maybe you could grow some balls yourself.”
She flicked through the pages. Dozens, hundreds of names, all recorded in diligent calligraphy. A few names were distorted by dried splotches of liquid - other names had been viciously crossed out. She looked back to him, still only a hair-length from her face.
“Rats,” he said. His grin was wide and joyless. “We shot them. All of them. None escaped. And, of course, I couldn’t forget to record them.”
She pressed the book back into his hands. “Now is not the time to lose resolve. You stand on the edge of history.”
“We know this. We have always known this. We don’t need a condescending foreigner to tell us this. You understand?”
Yuliya reached for a cigarette. It was only after she could breathe again that she realized she had been sweating.