Love under Fire

By Cèdric Daurio

This work includes three stories.
Mirage tells a love story in a violent environment. A French officer who obeys an uncertain chain of command in North Africa is ordered to report on the fate of a group of refugees fleeing ethnic cleansing carried out by the Tuaregs in Mali.
The expected relief from world powers gets diluted in a web of strategic interests, leaving the refugees homeless.
In this environment love, disappointment and rebellion are born.

The Girl and the Knight takes place in 1242 in the steppes of Russia. A Teutonic Knight flees from his Slavs pursuers and finds shelter in a Mongolian nomad camp. There he joins a Tartar girl, but the Russians determined to expel all invaders from their land will not give them respite.

Oasis of Light tells the story of a young man sent to a Nazi expedition to Tibet in search of the origin of the Aryan race under the sands of the Gobi desert and what he actually finds in these remote places.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cedric Daurio
• Release date: Sep 20, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386596240

Cèdric Daurio

Cedric Daurio es el seudónimo adoptado por un novelista argentino para cierto tipo de narrativa, en general thrillers paranormales y cuentos con contenidos esotéricos. El autor ha vivido en Nueva York durante años y ahora reside en Buenos Aires, su ciudad natal. Su estilo es despojado, claro y directo, y no vacila en abordar temas espinosos. Cedric Daurio is the pseudonym adopted by an Argentine novelist for a certain type of narrative, in general paranormal thrillers and stories with esoteric content. The author has lived in New York for years and now resides in Buenos Aires, his hometown. His style is stripped, clear and direct, and does not hesitate to address thorny issues.  

Book preview

MIRAGE

Images and Delusion

CHAPTER 1

ETIENNE LEFEBVRE REINED his camel to slowly climb the high dune that stood before him. Every precaution was important in those times of danger, where irreconcilable opponents were mutually ambushed looking for the physical elimination of the tribesmen perceived as enemies.

Since the proclamation of the Islamic State of Azawad in 2012 the situation had evolved into an uncontrolled manner, and low intensity warfare at the beginning was escalating into daily massacres between the warring factions. The State of Azawad -not recognized by the international community- was born in northern Mali including the historical and legendary cities of Timbuktu and Gao. It was proclaimed by the alliance of two Tuareg guerrillas were previously active as separate forces until then, the Islamic extremist Ansar Dine and secular MNLA (National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad) acting in a vast territory that occupies the north of the Republic of Mali, the fifth largest country in Africa. The regions of Timbuktu, Gao and Kidal, located primarily in the Sahara desert include two-thirds of the surface of Mali, but only ten percent of its population. Mali, landlocked country in central Africa, has two geographically, culturally and ethnically diverse areas with the great desert to the north Sudan savanna at the south, a relatively fertile area crossed by the Niger River.

The two Tuareg factions, both with totalitarian conceptions but very different between them, soon fighting over the power structure, taken at the beginning by Islamists of Ansar Dine, which introduced the sharia and the law based on the Koran, a fact soon resisted by the MNLA. Complementing this ethnic, religious and political mix, the branch of Al Qaeda called AQIM, formed by ethnic Arabs and supported from the mountains of Kabila in southern Algeria were patiently waiting for their chance and finally arrived at Timbuktu to contest the dominance the new state, forming an increasingly explosive cocktail.

This context explains the precautions that Etienne took to approach the top of the dune in front of him. He dismounted from the camel and left it behind and continued on foot, and then crawling on the sand, hot at that time of the day.

When he reached the highest point he could not help a smile of self-satisfaction; all his previous cautious approach was justified by what he saw about fifteen hundred feet to his forehead in a wide ravine before the next row of dunes. Two rows each formed by eight Bedouin tents lined a site crowded with artillery pieces and vehicles around which swarmed Arab busy loading trucks, which had their engines running, clearly noting that their departure was imminent. The sun reflected in a thousand metallic sheens, produced mostly by arms.

Etienne sighed as his tension eased. If he had looked out the top of the dune mounting on his camel, he would have been immediately detected by the sentries that he presumed at the camp. He took his binoculars and carefully studied the situation. Ten trucks, four pieces of artillery and a hundred men completed the war picture. He took his camera with a powerful telephoto lens, and carefully recorded his finding. He still waited an hour and a half to follow the evolution of events, and when he saw the row of vehicles moving he returned to his camel, that was patiently waiting him as the shadows lengthened in the desert.

When Etienne returned to his tent beneath the shade of some acacias near a source of water that in that season was actually little more than a muddy pit, found Ousmane taking care of dinner. The youth was with him since Etienne had come to Mali from his native Algeria,