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Milosz’s hands shook involuntarily as he wrapped a bandage around his hands, the skin on his knuckles cracked, bleeding, and bruised from a fight he knew better than to pick.
Mercenaries did not operate under a very strict moral code. There were rules, yes, some that the regular militaries followed as well, some set in place by any group you were contracted under, and some that employers chose themselves. In the case of the lattermost it was usually regular militaries and governments employing them, and often they expected them to all play by their rules. There was also a sort of honor code and teamwork among most mercenaries within the same company, as cutthroat of a business as it was. Then there were the strays. Stragglers that didn’t fight under any particular banner and took whatever contract came their way. Most of them could use a muzzle to keep them in line, usually too quick to bite anything that moved and not question the category. He couldn’t exactly talk. He was one of those people, after all. Self-righteous nonsense meant very little to him. All he cared about was getting paid and anything that interfered with that.
He suspected he probably more accurately fell in the middle ground. He killed targets, they paid him, that was that. He wasn’t paid for collateral damage, he was paid by the target, and he didn’t see the point in wasting the ammunition. No weapon, no target, no money. Because of this and his extensive service background he was more precise than most and they knew it. They paid him well and in exchange he followed whatever orders he was given, tolerating any leash they deemed fit to put him on. And rarely did they ever have to choke up on it.
That being said, not everyone shared his practicality.
By now the fighting had died down to nightly border skirmishes while they all waited for the official ceasefire order, but the ISAF and Erusea were locked in a very lengthy back and forth even amongst the officials brokering peace and each side was making pushes to gain as much territory as possible in hopes of winning some extra land before all was said and done. A few countries were lost causes now, including the likes of Shilage and Voslage, if the reports they were getting out here were to be believed but some smaller countries that had long since broken free from Erusea were keen on keeping the land that had been taken from them centuries ago while their histories were twisted or forgotten by the monarchy. For Milosz it was all ridiculous. Countries were meaningless, as were most wars. Who was he to complain, though? As miserable work as this was it meant more money in the end.
Other people were more trigger happy and uneasy than he was. Many shot first and asked questions later, and anything that moved was free game. With his reliability as a sniper he often saw himself on rooftops or in towers, watching the fight through a scope and picking off anyone on the wrong side of their perimeters. And from this vantage point he had seen a lot of soldiers spook and fire off without thinking…sometimes it was an actual enemy, other times it was horses or dogs and one cat that managed to skitter off before they even pulled the trigger. But it wasn’t only in No Man’s Land where they tended to react to things without thinking. It was in the streets, behind the barricades, among civilians where suddenly everyone was a threat.
The town they were presently holed up in wasn’t deserted like most of the others. Either some of the residents couldn’t or they wouldn’t, and after fights it was common to see the elderly and the children sifting through the rubble or teenagers stealing guns off of dead soldiers. They would either sell what they found as trophies or take up arms and shoot whenever they had a chance to slip into combat alongside the mercenary and regular forces. They weren’t an organized resistance. They weren’t anything, really. Milosz ignored them. They stayed out of his way and he stayed out of theirs, but he was probably one of very few that offered them that level of detachment because most of his fellow mercenaries had started to view them as competition. Like animals.
He wasn’t sure what possessed him to put himself between an armed and half-drunken mercenary and a child he’d never met before but he’d spotted one of the men snatching an MRE from some child’s hands, then slammed the butt of his rifle into the child’s chest for after he’d yanked the backpack full of of various supplies off her shoulder, muttering something along the lines of, “Filthy street rats.”
He’d been about to kick the child once he’d knocked her onto the ground but Milosz had stepped in. And like any rabid dog the other mercenary had turned on him. In the end the other man was on the ground with a broken nose and a dislocated wrist and Milosz was standing over him with a busted lip, bleeding nose, and bruised knuckles. He’d spat out blood on the busted up cobblestone streets and stalked away without another word, and the kid he’d been trying to protect had disappeared along with her bag. Whatever. At least she’d be smarter about stealing next time. She was lucky it was a person that caught her and not a booby trap. As for the man, well, he’d learn not to be an asshole. Valuable lessons all around, Milosz supposed.
No one stopped him and no one would punish him. There was no rank among them and there were little consequences for infighting, save for the victor being treated with a little more respect or fear by his peers. The man should’ve considered himself lucky that Milosz didn’t see fit to use his knife instead of his fists, but he’d been taught restraint young and he wasn’t interested in killing someone unless he was going to be paid good money for it. Anything else was a complete waste of time. It was enough brutality to promote caution in the future and that was all he’d wanted to accomplish from the interaction.
With his hands wrapped, burning from the alcohol he’d doused over them and scrubbed into the wounds to clean it, he tossed his first aid kit back in his pack and threw it over his shoulder before he pulled his rifle back in his lap. He sat hunched over, arms over his knees, listening to the distant pop of gunfire. The lull in the fighting was over. With late evening settling in they’d probably spend most of the night shooting back and forth until they got tired, and then they’d give it a rest until dawn and try again. The same back and forth he’d grown accustomed to. The same as every other battlefield. Unending monotony.
“Mind if I sit here a minute?” Someone broke the monotony. Milosz looked up to find another one of his fellow mercenaries. There wasn’t any need for introductions. This one he recognized. A man in a beat up, old leather jacket and a dull, Army green scarf, with a resting expression that looked less like a hardened mercenary and more like a tired dog. Everyone knew who he was, mostly through rumors. A disgraced Belkan pilot. A man against boundaries. A living legend, for better or worse. Larry Foulke kept to himself, probably because most people gave him a wide berth, and it was rare that anyone sought him out or that he sought anyone in return, save for a wartime journalist that had come poking around for an interview with him. So why he was standing over Milosz was a mystery.
Whatever his reasoning was, Milosz turned his attention in the opposite direction. “No. Go ahead.”
Foulke grunted when he sat down on the steps, keeping a few feet between them. Caution. That was probably what kept him alive all this time, but Milosz didn’t know. All he knew was that for a mercenary he was old. Most people died young in this line of work, especially the pilots. Too much wear and tear on your body in a high risk career. Most people had degenerative arthritis as early their forties or fifties (hips, knees, and hands mostly) and that was assuming they made it that far in one piece. He always seemed as spry as anyone else, though. He kept active. But with the poor weather maybe old injuries were acting up. Aside from the sounds he made when he sat down they spent several minutes in complete silence.
There was a dip in the gunfire. A minute later a few scattered shots rang off again. Foulke shifted, letting out a disappointed sigh. “They don’t know when to quit, do they?”
Milosz debated answering at all. He didn’t like small talk. He didn’t like talk of any kind. He wasn’t here to make connections he was here to work, and the only connections that mattered were between him and whoever was cutting his checks. But if he humored the man then maybe he’d go away. After a few seconds, though, he answered him. “Most don’t,” he said, turning his attention on his boots instead. “It’s a pointless pissing match.”
“Yeah. Sounds about right.” Foulke let out something that sounded like a scoff. “One step forward, two steps back. The lines are gonna be right where they left them at the start.”
Milosz only let out a hum in acknowledgment. There wasn’t anything to add to that. He was right. It was all an endless back and forth, but as exhausting as it was he had no right to complain about it so long as he was being paid. None of them did, really. Part of him wondered—with how often he heard talk of Foulke’s ideals in passing—what he was doing here: fighting for systems he didn’t believe in, talking of moral high ground according to some of the others…it was a far cry from your usual mercenary. He was a curious person and that made Milosz curious to learn more, but he didn’t care enough to ask.
Mostly he wanted to be left alone.
Not because he was uncomfortable with Foulke’s presence like most were, but because he didn’t like company and he didn’t like conversations. He was fine sitting here, out of everyone’s way, waiting until the unit command gave the order to roll out and he could do what they paid him to do. Foulke, however, was either wholly oblivious to this fact or he didn’t care.
Milosz heard him rustling for something in one of his pockets, but his eyes were fixed towards the battlefield, rifle still in his lap. Then he caught movement out of his periphery and the next thing he felt was a light tapping on his forearm, prompting him to look down and then back at Foulke. He held out a pack of cigarettes in a silent offer, one already between his lips, and Milosz gave him a skeptical look before he reached out to grab one for the pack, half-expecting some catch or trick. There wasn’t one. He took the cigarette and Foulke withdrew the pack. No tricks. The lighter came next. He lit his own cigarette and then tossed it to Milosz, who did the same and returned it. Milosz let it burn, watching Foulke from the corner of his eye, only taking a drag when Foulke did the same.
He glanced back at him when Foulke let out a wheezing cough, admittedly startled by the sound. Foulke coughed, then pulled himself together. “Sorry. Been a while since I smoked.”
“You have cigarettes but you don’t smoke?” Milosz asked him flatly, furrowing his brow.
“Won ‘em off a guy in a poker game. Wasn’t gonna say no,” Foulke said with a shrug, stifling the rest of his coughs. He let out one wheeze that he cut short, taking another drag before he looked at the cigarette between his fingers. He huffed out a dry, short laugh. “Cheap brand, though.”
“Cheap, yes.” Milosz exhaled the smoke through his nose. “Probably worth more than your life to most people here, I’d imagine.”
“They used to hand these out with everyone’s rations, now only the regular military gets that privilege,” Foulke said, talking just to fill space it seemed. “I hear they’re cutting back on that, though. At least over in Osea, dunno about the state of things here.”
“I wouldn’t either,” Milosz admitted through a sigh. Maybe if he humored him then he’d go away, but it was unlikely. He just had to let the conversation run its course. He shifted. “I’m not from here.”
By ‘here’ he meant any Usean country. Not Erusea, not any of the states rallying under the ISAF banner, and none of the countries simply caught in the crossfire. He had no dog in this fight. He was hired help, dragged from halfway across the world because there wasn’t a war on the other side of said world, there was a war here and he followed around different mercenary groups and companies until his contract ran its course. Sometimes he’d sign on again, sometimes a headhunter would offer him a better deal, and sometimes he’d find one on his own. He didn’t care about the cause. He assumed this was not a trait that he and Foulke had in common.
Foulke let out a thoughtful hum. “Verusean, right?” Milosz gave him a look, and he added, “Your name. Sulejmani, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” Milosz shifted where he sat, not taking his eyes off his unwelcome companion. He didn’t like when people pushed him too much, and anything beyond his name and ID number were—to him—pushing too much. His nerves told him to be wary and he had to coax himself back down to reason, knowing better than to let people get to him. He’d already done that enough with today’s incident. “I don’t remember telling you that.”
“People talk, and I’ve seen you around,” he explained, leaning forward and resting his forearm against his rifle as he fidgeted in place. He rested the cigarette between his teeth, words affected by this as he went on. “Rumors abound in this line of work. Everyone knows everyone. No avoiding it when your reputation is all you really have going for you.”
Milosz scoffed. That was an understatement, especially in his case. “I’m sure you would know.”
“Yeah. I would.” To his surprise, Foulke just chuckled. Most mercenaries were quick to anger, but he was calm and somehow that was just as off-putting. He changed the subject back around to Milosz without missing a beat. “So, Verusea?”
“The continent, yes,” Milosz replied, straightening slightly. The air smelled less like smoke from fires burning around the city and instead, at least in their little corner, had the acrid scent of cigarette smoke. A welcome change. It beat smelling whatever trash the mercenaries and soldiers were burning. He was reluctant to keep the conversation going, but he had nowhere to go if he wanted to leave, so he gave an inch. “Not the country.”
“Hmm. Southern, though?” Foulke asked with a nod, eyes fixed ahead.
“Kaluga,” he confirmed with a sigh, leaning over again. He couldn’t help but stare at him again, still not sure what to make of him. “How would you know?”
“Lots of Veruseans dragged into the Belkan War with Yuktobania,” Foulke replied, not at all fazed by any amount of suspicion or caution directed his way. He took one last drag on his cigarette before he stamped it out on the steps, then tossed it down with the rest of the rubble. “I met a lot of people, even in passing. Lots of people drawn to the same ideals, you know how it is.”
Milosz had a feeling he wasn’t just talking about mercenary work, but he knew better than to ask questions or pry. “I do,” he said, opting to keep things vague. “I was there, on the ground.”
Foulke nodded. “Yeah. You saw the worst of it, then.”
“Maybe.” By now he finished his own cigarette, so he did the same as Foulke had done and pressed the stub into the stone before tossing it wherever it landed. He blew the smoke out, watching it swirl and dissipate for a second. He actually didn’t think about the war that much. Not any more than he thought about any other war or conflict he’d been a part of, official or not. But it did stand out in ways the other wars didn’t quite. Every war had one thing that set it apart, and an ace pilot that turned the tides. This was the closest he’d ever come to one of those pilots. He glanced at Foulke again, then at the ground. “Things are better in the sky?”
He could tell Foulke looked at him for a second, he could feel him watching. He didn’t respond right away, for a moment Milosz didn’t think he would and honestly he didn’t expect an answer. But Foulke did answer him. “Sometimes. Collateral matters less. You don’t see the damage being done, not directly at least,” he said, tone shifting. He lowered his voice some. “But I knew what was happening. Knew what I was doing, and so did everyone else. I’d already seen it before, off the battlefield and they all read the reports that came in. It’s hard to get up every day for that.” Milos went quiet for a second, and Foulke quickly went back to the lighter tone, adding, “But that’s just me.”
“No, I understand.” Milosz didn’t care much for morals, he didn’t know if he actually had any, but he knew that he hated being on the ground. He wanted to work, he needed the money, but he wasn’t good for anything off the battlefield. He’d been here his entire life. A child sold to a Kalugan militia, his brush with death during that border skirmish, the Yuktobanian mercenaries, the Belkan War, the Usean coup, now the war here...on the ground, waiting to die but never quite making it that far. He had the money and scars but he was bored with playing foot soldier. Above all else he was tired. “I would rather only read about these things. Seeing it is…annoying.”
“Is that why you got in a fist fight for that kid?” Foulke asked him, and Milosz said nothing. He seemed to take his silence as an answer, and maybe it was. “If you care about people like that then you won’t escape it just because you’re in the air. It follows you everywhere.”
“I don’t care about anything. I had nothing to prove, no statement to make,” he replied, not sure why he took offense to the implication. He hunched over again, like he could make himself small enough to disappear as he wrung his hands together. The bandages were spotted with red and still burned, his lip still stung, and he knew that nothing was going to dull any of the pain. He just hoped the poor quality, over-the-counter medications in his kit would take some of it away. “He was making a fool out of the rest of us.”
Or maybe it was because he was once a child forced to steal supplies to survive a war zone, because their own government and military deprived them of it. Maybe because he’d seen worse fates befall children like that. Maybe because he didn’t understand why you’d kill someone that couldn’t defend themselves. He didn’t think much about morals (his or anyone else’s.) If he did then he would have found an upstanding line of work and he definitely had not, but there were still things that got under his skin and picked away at his nerves. He didn’t understand any of it, but it happened all the same.
Foulke must have already honed in on this. “A lesser man would’ve looked the other way.”
Milosz didn’t think that highly of himself, nor had anyone else. He blinked, instincts telling him to go on the defense. He said nothing, mostly because he wasn’t sure he could convince either one of them of anything that came out of his mouth. They were at an impasse, and they both knew it. So silence settled in once again. Even the gunfire was dying down, the pointless skirmish coming to an end.
Somewhere overhead there was the sharp roar of a jet engine and Foulke immediately looked to the sky, scanning from down below like most soldiers often did. At first Milosz thought it was to assess whether or not it was a threat, but there was a look on his face that was…different. Wonder. Maybe longing. The bright, hopeful look of someone trying to catch a glimpse of the Ribbon Fighter. ISAF’s own Grim Reaper. If it was him then he stayed hidden in the clouds, and Foulke didn’t take his eyes off the sky. Even after the roar shifted to a loud wail before the rumbling faded into the distance. He was fixated on it, until they were both sure that the pilot wouldn’t be making another pass. He looked down in defeat, a complicated look on his face before he sighed and got to his feet.
He adjusted the rifle on his shoulder, glancing up at the sky one last time. “Take it from me, kid,” he said before he looked back down at Milosz. He tried for a lopsided smile but it didn’t reach his eyes. “There’s no getting away from this. The best thing you can do is know when to fold.” He reached into the pocket of his jacket, tossing the pack of cigarettes at him. Milosz caught them on instinct, and Foulke immediately took his leave. “See you around.”
With that he marched back down the steps, and Milosz was left to watch and ruminate on what he said. He turned the packet of cigarettes over in his hands before he slipped it into his pocket and pushed himself to his feet, throwing his own rifle over his shoulder.
A short and bizarre conversation, and somehow it managed to wedge itself into his brain. He didn’t know why Foulke had approached him, didn’t know why he had bothered talking to him, and Milosz didn’t know why he’d bothered responding at all. Regardless, he saw a side to the man that no rumor had ever mentioned. A man with morals that did him no good out here. Maybe they were on the same journey, just in reverse. It didn’t matter to Milosz that much. He was likely to die on the battlefield before he completed that journey.
Though, as they say, only the good die young. No matter what Foulke thought of him.
Milosz pulled the pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, reaching for another. As he stood there, flicking his own lighter open, the roar of an aircraft overhead broke the silence and drowned the rest of the world out.