Unraveling Yarns, Part 2 of 5: The Last Night in Peshkopi

Lieutenant Paul Benjamin has trained hundreds of officials in the art of commando warfare. Now, with fascism spread across Europe, partisans and militias everywhere need his help. In Albania, a struggling band of communist guerrillas find themselves outgunned and outmaneuvered by their Italian oppressors. With the help of Lieutenant Benjamin, they have become an elite fighting force, taking on bigger and more dangerous targets with each mission. They thought the deep winter would keep them safe in their valley, but the people they’ve targeted are ruthless, and their means for retribution are inhuman.

The five parts of Unraveled Yarns have been collected in The Secret Files of Lucky Ford: Operation Arm Breaker, which is now available as a Kindle ebook, in paperback, and as a DRM-free ebook.

The Last Night in Peshkopi is a standalone short story, but features characters from Operation Arm Breaker. To see another take on these events, read Operation Arm Breaker Part 5 first.

Content warnings: Sexuality, minor swearing, death, violence, gun violence, gore.

FRIDAY MORNING, JANUARY 8, 1943
MOUNT KORAB
PESHKOPI, ITALIAN PROTECTORATE OF ALBANIA

//Translated from Eastern Gheg.//

The blizzard was roaring in full force when Dren woke up. Heavy flakes pelted the tent's canvas wall. She rolled over and put her arm out to hold Paul Benjamin closer, only to find an empty spot in the fur blankets, rapidly cooling. She could see his silhouette in the darkness. He was already half-dressed, with his weapons strapped around his waist. She threw the furs off herself. Thunder crackled outside, spinning Benjamin on his heel. The American commando moved in a way that she had never seen before, stiff and bird-like. He was afraid.

She shoved her thick red hair out of her face and popped to her feet, ducking low, nude, in their tent.

“What is it?” she whispered.

“Down,” he snapped. His grasp of her language was rough, but he knew enough to fight fascists. Dren hated when he gave her orders. She snatched the down-stuffed jacket out of his hands and slipped it over her shoulders before pulling on her trousers. He tossed her boots across the tent, then pulled on his own.

A human scream tore through the frigid air, somewhere close by. Dren dropped to the ground. She reached under the bundle of rolled raincoats she'd been using as a pillow and pulled out her old Soviet revolver. It was never unloaded.

“They found us,” she hissed.

The Italians had been hunting them for months, but this secluded valley had been a windfall. It was small, remote, and so heavily forested that it was barely navigable on horseback. The snow had blocked off the passes two months past, and she'd wired the trees with landmines herself.

Another cry cut off her thoughts. Someone else had died, she knew the sound all too well. There was only a thin wall of sealed canvas between her and whatever death had come.

Harsh light flared the outside of the tent, so bright that it penetrated the thick fabric. As fast as it appeared, it moved on, punctuated by another scream. More liquid pelted the canvas.

“Prepared?” Benjamin demanded. Shit, his Gheg was awful. The American only knew enough words to train her people and he never cared to learn more. He looked to make sure that she was dressed, even though he hadn't so much as covered his tattooed body with a shirt. It was below zero Celsius outside the tent.

The American untied the tent's flaps and stuck his head out. Freezing air blasted past him, along with the smells of blood, smoke, and snow. Steaming red light oozed through the opening. Benjamin's body tightened and went pale. He set his jaw as icy water dripped onto his bare shoulders, then he slipped out into the storm.

Dren followed close. The cold cut her to the bone and locked her joints up, but she forced them into clumsy motion. She nearly tripped over the bottom half of a man splayed across the ground. She couldn't recognize him by his legs. The torso had landed a dozen meters away, already dusted with snow. Gore formed a splattered trail between the two pieces.

“What is this?” Dren gasped.

“Run!” was all Benjamin could say. He took off, and she bolted after him. Tents were slashed open, bloodied bodies littered the ground. Half the tents that were still standing were burning. Light flared, brighter than a spotlight, from the south end of the encampment. Her vision washed out, so she followed the sound of Benjamin's footsteps.

They ran for ten minutes, but the glow stayed close and the screams got louder. Harsh white light strobed behind old pines, its glare muffled and refracted by the howling blizzard. Dren could hear more people dying over the gale winds. Snow tugged at her boots as Benjamin tugged at her wrist.

“Kukudhët!” Dren gasped, the frigid air rasping the breath from her throat.

“No, no ghost,” Benjamin snapped. He clenched his teeth to stop their chattering and forced the next word through: “Italians.”

Dren planted her heels at the word, and he nearly jerked her off her feet. She ripped her arm from his grasp and unholstered her pistol.

“We do not run from Italians,” she hissed. Her exhalations rose around her head like dragon's breath. The snow was up to her calves, but she did not shiver. She might have said that her hatred for her enemy kept her warm, but she knew what it really was: her hatred kept her numb. She could feel the cold leeching every bit of heat from her feet. Her ankles were already cramping up. She would need everything she had to run, and the blizzard was steadily sapping it away.

A man shouted from somewhere she couldn't see. He was brash, confident at first, bellowing a war cry that would shake any enemy he challenged. Light flashed, crackling like summer lightning. He fired his rifle a half-dozen times, echoing shots off the trees. They were loud in the cold air, even as the snowfall muffled them. His cry changed, suddenly strangled by desperation. It was the sound of a man learning fear. His voice went to a higher pitch, then cut off with a white flare as if it had had never been. Electricity snapped and popped again.

“For these Italians, we run,” Benjamin grunted. He reached and grabbed her hand again, and this time she did not pull away.

The moving lights were coming closer. Gunfire echoed through the forest, only to be cut off by another scream. The white glares were joined by orange as a fireball bloomed over the shivering oaks. The Italians had ignited the camp's fuel reserves, meager as they were. The orange glow spread as more tents took flame.

Dren studied Benjamin in the flickering light. Moments ago she had been safe, warm and naked in his arms beneath a pile of blankets. Now she was freezing, listening to her comrades being slaughtered. Benjamin stood only a meter away but seemed a thousand kilometers distant. The soldier she had known, the cocky, arrogant instructor, unhesitating killer, and gruff lover, he was gone. Instead she had this man, a gaunt coward wearing bed furs instead of a shirt. Sweat steamed off his tattooed skin. Scars and burns marred the ink. She suddenly realized that these old wounds were not badges of courage, but a record of failure.

“We must save them,” she declared, taking another step back toward the burning camp. Her teeth were chattering together. She hinged her pistol's cylinder open, made certain it was loaded, then smacked it back shut. “What are they?”

Dren had forgotten how fast the American was. He was past her in an instant, one unyielding hand twisting her wrist and pistol away, the other with a finger pressed to his lips. The lights were moving again, sweeping through the pines several hundred meters away, brighter than the flames. The gunfire had stopped. As had the screams.

“Your friends are dead,” Benjamin hissed. “All of them.”

“How?” Dren demanded, her voice barely louder than a whisper. She was going over their camp's defenses in her head. She had laid many of the mines herself, drawing tripwires across every angle of attack. She had learned much from the American. He had been there two months, shivering alongside them in the drifts, eating smoked beef strips hard as cord wood, and melting snow for water. All the while, Benjamin had been teaching them to fight. Dren's comrades had not been born fighters: it was the American who had forged them into warriors, and the fascists who had forced them to become killers.

“Hear, see,” Benjamin whispered. Dren had found the cocky American's trouble with her language endearing at first, but now she felt as if she was taking orders from a child.

Sharp electricity crackled from the distant woods. The lights were brighter, coalescing into a half-dozen orbs that zipped through the falling snow a meter off the ground. They hummed and spat sparks each time they changed direction. Benjamin yanked her wrist, hard, and dragged her to her knee behind a tree. The snow helped cover them, letting her watch the lights perform their strange dance. Ghosts, demons, kukudhët. She spat, then crossed herself despite her comrades' teachings. She was so cold, so out of sorts, the masses' opiate was necessary to ease her quivering.

“Stay,” Benjamin grunted as he patted down his pockets and his sheathes. Though he hadn't had time to put on a shirt during their escape, he'd remembered both of his knives, the large and the small. She punched him in the arm.

“I am not a dog,” she snapped. She pulled her own blade, a skinning knife honed on a whetstone until she could shave his face with it. “You will not be killing Italians without me.”

“Italians will not die,” Benjamin grunted. He rubbed his arm where she had hit him. His breath came in thick clouds and the glistening sweat from their retreat was starting to freeze into crystal beads on his skin. He was as pale as a drowned man.

He looked a stranger, more so than when he had appeared out of the snow last November. It was hard to recall what this hard-eyed American had awoken in her that day. It was something ethereal, something beyond measurement. He had arrived a demigod, a being who had been beyond the blizzard-choked valleys ringing Mount Korab, a seraph who had flown the skies and swum the seas. He could breathe water and take life. When she made love to him for the first time, it had been animalistic, a passion that couldn't translate into either of their languages. It wasn't so much lust as it was carnal ritual, an affirmation and a cleansing of the body and mind. A reminder that they were both still alive.

He was strong, his body sculpted into granite edges and illustrated like a book, each inking in his knotted flesh a tale she could have never imagined before. He was dangerous, and inspiring. He had put rifles in the hands of men and women and taught them to restore their dignity. He had trained children to scavenge food and spy on enemy movement. He had taken to the front lines himself, killing enemies with his rifle and his knife. Dren did not love Lieutenant Paul Benjamin, but she revered him. She knew he did not love her either; she did not know why he was with her.

In all of their time together, Benjamin had never been soft. He'd never shown her favoritism or affection in front of her comrades. In private, he maintained that distance. In their tent, as it was in training and in battle, his body spoke for him.

Here, in the darkness, in the snow, with the cold light and snapping arcs, his body was speaking volumes. He moved slowly, every step second-guessed and terrified. The realization sent a chill down her spine.

Benjamin watched the orbs weave between the trees. They were searching everywhere, still thirsty for blood. He cursed in English. Dren did not know the words, but she knew the tone. Her mouth slipped open a bit, and the first tremors of cold rattled her body.

“Horses, two kilometers,” he said, pointing to the south. Hopefully their stable had stayed hidden thus far, tucked into a shallow cave mouth. It was their only hope. He gave Dren a bit of a shove to get her on her way.

“I do not run from Italians,” she snapped again. Benjamin looked mad for a second, but went stoic before she could return the aggression. “I kill Italians.”

Another shout sounded, and the orbs converged less than two hundred meters away. They slammed through branches and underbrush to reach their target, leaving white sheets cascading from the disturbed canopies, an upside-down spectral wake trailing after them. This victim did not allow them to tear him apart. One last curse was punctuated by an exploding hand grenade, no doubt clutched to the hunted man's chest. Even more trees loosed their burdens, blanching the area more than the blizzard already had. When the air cleared, Dren could still see the orbs whirling around the site, unaffected by the blast.

Benjamin's hand snapped out, palm down, fingers straight and flat. She dropped to the ground, recognizing the hand signal he'd taught her. He went prone as well, taking cover behind a tree. He ignored the icy rime that crusted the drift's surface as he pushed his bare torso into it. Dren went still, studying the woods around them, revolver in hand. She scooped a handful of snow and packed it into her mouth; it would conceal her breath from whatever he had seen.

She stayed silent and still for a long moment before she knew what had set him off. Footsteps were coming, erratic, dragging steps that paused every few seconds. A figure appeared, silhouetted by the flame and bobbing, crackling orbs behind him. She knew the man by his shadow: it was Gjon, her commander. He struggled through the snow, spilling red with each lurching step. Benjamin hissed at her, as if he hadn't taught her better than revealing her position.

The orbs whipped around the trees far behind Gjon. He heard the crackles and gasped in fear. Dren could see the side of his face illuminated orange now. Red was running down his cheek in torrents from a deep gash in his scalp. His right arm was soaked crimson as well. He increased his pace, only to catch his boot on a blanketed root. He yelled as he fell.

Electricity popped, and the orbs were upon him, zipping over the ground faster than Gjon could have run were he in one piece. Six of the bright spheres zeroed in on the struggling partisan. Dren shielded her eyes. The orbs were almost two meters in diameter, and the light they exuded pulsed like a film reel left to burn. A hum rose in her ears, something in a sound spectrum unintended for human ears. Bile rose in her throat. Gjon hauled himself to his feet, but hadn't even the time to turn away before the orbs were upon him.

A black spar emerged from the lead orb like an icicle forming from its surface and slashed into the old man. The dark blade bit into his flesh, opening a wound from his left shoulder to his ribcage. He staggered; blood stained white snow pink. The orb passed him like a jousting knight and wheeled around to watch its followers lay into Gjon in a murderous rally.

Black lances slashed Gjon to pieces. His body fell apart under the attack. Red covered everything nearby, steaming. The orbs circled his corpse, sending crackling electrical arms from their luminescent surfaces to the trees around them, to the snow, to each other.

One single orb broke the perimeter and floated forward to the dead patriot's feet. The sphere whooshed like a flame being extinguished. The light died and a short man in a blue body suit dropped into the snow from where it had been hovering. He fell a full meter and landed in a crouch, sinking into the powder. He stood, squeaking as his arms and legs rubbed against his body. He was fully-coated in rubber, fingertips to scalp, with wide goggles over his eyes. The thrumming machine on his back looked half an oxygen tank, with tubes running into the man's face mask, and half a mobile radio set packed with coiled antennas and more vacuum tubes Dren had ever imagined. The matte black lance in his hands stood just a bit shorter than he, stout with a triangular blade.

The strange man shuffled over to Gjon's body and knelt, leaning on his lance for support. He reached a hand out and began rooting through the remains. Dren felt Benjamin's hand on her shoulder, squeezing.

A glittering necklace came free from Gjon's body. A gold cross reflected the hovering orbs' glare. Dren did not care that Gjon was the one who'd demanded she swear off such archaic trinkets and allegiances when she'd joined the National Liberation Movement. He was a friend and a mentor, and she was scant meters from his killers.

Dren shrugged out of Benjamin's grip and stood, holding her pistol with both hands. The revolver roared loud enough to shake snow from the boughs above her. Her fingers were numb, her arms shook. The first shot went wide. By the time she had realigned her sights and fired again, the Italian was in the air, enveloped in a bubble of crackling ball lightning. She emptied her cylinder; the bullets careened off the glowing shell. Electricity arced from his orb to the rest, and they zipped forward, lances leveled at her chest.

“Run!” Benjamin shouted. He held up a small device, no larger than a shaving kit. A green light glowed on its face. Two antennas extended out of it, both pointing away from him. He hauled back on Dren's collar, putting himself and his gadget between her and the orbs.

A high-pitched squeal almost doubled her over. She could see the muscles in Benjamin's back tense up like cornered vipers at the sound. The orbs were ten meters away when they flickered and died, popping like bubbles. The men inside tumbled to the ground. Some crashed into trees, some landed in graceful rolls that brought them to their feet, lances in hand and within slashing distance of Benjamin.

“Run! It is short!” he shouted again, shoving her northward. The device in his hand was smoking already. He dodged a terrible slash and responded in kind: his wide-bladed knife opened the Italian's throat. Another black spear whipped around, cutting a furrow into Benjamin's right arm. He dropped the device as sparks shot out of it. It hissed as it sunk into the snow.

Dren raised her pistol, but Benjamin was in the way. She pulled the trigger anyway, but it clicked empty.

The American clutched his bloodied arm to his chest and kept fighting, repaying his injury to his attacker by plunging his knife through the man's gut and wrenching it out.

“Horse, now!” he shouted again. Another spear plunged into the fray, driving its black fang into Benjamin's thigh. The American did not falter. Instead, he leaned into the injury, twisting the lance out of the Italian's grip. He ripped the spearhead from his leg, flipped it around, and threw it hard enough to pin its owner to a tree trunk.

“Horse!” he roared again.

Dren ran. Branches whipped her face, raising welts and opening cuts. She couldn't feel a thing. Her ears no longer felt cold. That was a sign of frostbite. She ignored that.

The stable was a small cave, no more than a bricked-in overhang. Their keeper was missing, and the last horse left was anxious. There was smoke in the air. Dren threw a saddle over Pendë's back. She founder the keeper’s PPSh-41 machine pistol dropped in a snow drift. She snatched it up, losing her fingerprints on its icy barrel, and dropped it into the side-saddle holster. The sturdy mare snorted, but stood still as Dren cinched the belt across her belly. Pendë had braved these woods a thousand times, even in the deep winter. She seemed to float across the snow, which earned her name, and she liked Dren.

“No carrot today,” Dren whispered. She climbed atop the mare, then ducked low as Pendë carried her out of the cave mouth. She dug her heels in the mare's ribs, urging her into the blizzard. She took off at a gallop, heedless of the foul weather.

The lights flared back to life in the woods. Pendë whinnied at the alien sight but thundered forward with Dren's whip of the reins. The orbs bobbed behind the trees. Dren could see four of them. They grew brighter as she raced towards them.

A black shape lurched out of the shadows, a limping man half-naked and painted red with blood. Benjamin. The orbs were closing in. Their crackles echoed off frozen trees. Dren pulled back on the reins and Pendë slowed to a halt next to the staggering commando.

“Up, up,” Dren said. The American's eyes were blank. Crimson pulsed out of open wounds in his chest, thigh, and shoulder, flowing slower than it should have been. She didn't give him time to argue. He was too weak to mount the horse himself, so she hopped off and shoved him upward. He pulled on the saddle horn with his one good hand, keeping the other tight to his body, its fingers limp and still.

A loud snap sounded behind them, followed by the rustling of a tree falling. Dren risked a look back. The orbs were no longer searching between the trees, they were blasting straight through like cannonballs. The ancient trunks did little to slow them down. Two more pines shattered before she was able to heave Benjamin into Pendë's saddle.

The orbs were a hundred meters away, gliding over the snow and through the gale. Electrical arcs splayed between them, forming a blinding, undulating net.

Dren hooked her boot through a stirrup then slapped Pendë on the rump as she hauled herself up. She had to hold onto the lolling American to maintain her balance. The spheres were close now. Their lances emerged. Dren clenched her jaw and withdrew the PPSh-41 from its holster. The metal peeled and split her skin where she touched it. She felt no pain, only the slickness of her own blood flowing over stamped steel.

“Leave us alone!” she shouted over the wind. She lifted the machine pistol with one hand and fired a burst at the orbs. The bullets struck their bright faces and ricocheted away.

Pendë thundered forward, struggling under the weight of two riders but so terrified of their pursuers that she kept running, ducking around trees without direction. Dren twisted around in time to see a low branch appear out of the blizzard. She ducked low, but was too slow. It caught her on top of her skull.

Lighting bolts crashed inside her head. She lost her grip on Benjamin. Her foot slipped out of the stirrup and she fell, her gun disappearing into the snow as it slipped from her grasp.

Her body jerked to a halt before she could hit the ground.

She forced her eyes open and found Benjamin's hand locked around her wrist. The American had fought his way back to consciousness and caught her. Her boots skipped off of roots and bushes, dragging as Pendë ran. Benjamin groaned and tried to lift her, but his arm was weak. The gash on his shoulder was pouring blood now. Dren didn't know how much more he could have in him.

The orbs were closing. One zipped ahead of the rest. Its lance whipped at her feet. She twisted around the slash, then dropped another few centimeters. The blood flowing down Benjamin's arm made his hand slick as oil, and his fingers were losing their strength.

“Paul,” Dren gasped. Her knee hit a rock, drawing a sharp cry from her cracking lips. Benjamin looked down at her, panic in his eyes. She looked away to see the orbs catching up to the faltering horse. Their lances were close, black butcher knives ready to carve Pendë to pieces. The mare was huffing, her skin steaming with foamy sweat.

“Paul,” she said again. She could feel tears in her eyes. The orbs were so white and close they left afterimages under her eyelids. The harder she squeezed her eyes shut, the brighter they got.

Benjamin grunted, and her hand slipped another centimeter. He whimpered something in English; he was scared. She knew why, now. It wasn't his death he feared.

Dren smiled. Benjamin was a man who could inspire bravery, who could create warriors and save nations. And he would die for her.

She twisted slick in his grasp, and suddenly his hand was empty, and she was falling. Pendë thundered onward, suddenly lighter. Benjamin yelled something wordless as she bounced across the ground. He'd forgotten his Gheg.

Dren watched him ride away. His blood steamed off Pendë’s flank and the mare continued on, ignoring his feeble attempts to turn her around. They disappeared into the falling snow.

Dren shivered, suddenly alone. She pushed herself to her knees. He was gone. Numbness spread through her body, oblivious to the radiant glow growing around her.

The orbs descended upon her. She closed her eyes. The light coursed through her eyelids, her skin, her bones. She smiled as they circled her.

Their blades were surprisingly warm, so she did not die cold.

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Copyright © 2023 Daniel Baldwin. All rights reserved.

Written and edited by Daniel Baldwin. Art by Dudu Torres.