Set #52 troubled
Even though he was young Vladimir Bohdan Florescu Hoffman II had been through enough in his short life to know when to keep his head down and his mouth shut. Growing up in an orphanage in a country where you could be arrested for just looking wrong at a person of higher rank then you will do that to you. At sixteen Vladimir was in the army mostly because he had a seriously ill older brother and a new wife to support but also because the army was helping him become something he had always dreamed of being since he was a little boy. A doctor…
Naturally he didn't want to do anything that would potentially prevent him from achieving his goal but when Cãtãlin Ardelean his commanding officer asked to lead him into the Carpathian Mountains something deep in his soul troubled him. Ardelean wanted Hoffman to show him the way to an isolated town/community of pagans that refused to aknowlage Nicolae Ceauşescu as their president and openly spoke against him.
Even though Vladimir and his brother had been placed in an Romanian Orthodox orphanage as children their pagan uncles had permission to take them for the summers so that they would know the town/community that they had been born into. The town/community was isolated and accessible only by plane or mountain passes and even then the correct mountain passes to take were only known to members of that community of pagans.
"How much farther Hoffman?" Cãtãlin Ardelean asked the boy as he stopped his horse next to him.
"Another hour sir." Vladimir answered. "President Ceauşescu's orders are to talk to my people right? Not hurt them…"
"Right." Ardelean said with a look in his eyes that troubled the sixteen-year-old even more.
What he didn't know was that he was right to be troubled and for the first time in his life he was going to refuse a direct order.
Naturally he didn't want to do anything that would potentially prevent him from achieving his goal but when Cãtãlin Ardelean his commanding officer asked to lead him into the Carpathian Mountains something deep in his soul troubled him. Ardelean wanted Hoffman to show him the way to an isolated town/community of pagans that refused to aknowlage Nicolae Ceauşescu as their president and openly spoke against him.
Even though Vladimir and his brother had been placed in an Romanian Orthodox orphanage as children their pagan uncles had permission to take them for the summers so that they would know the town/community that they had been born into. The town/community was isolated and accessible only by plane or mountain passes and even then the correct mountain passes to take were only known to members of that community of pagans.
"How much farther Hoffman?" Cãtãlin Ardelean asked the boy as he stopped his horse next to him.
"Another hour sir." Vladimir answered. "President Ceauşescu's orders are to talk to my people right? Not hurt them…"
"Right." Ardelean said with a look in his eyes that troubled the sixteen-year-old even more.
What he didn't know was that he was right to be troubled and for the first time in his life he was going to refuse a direct order.