The Eternal War is a deadly and destructive ideological conflict fought over the concept of whether or not the individual should or should not be forced to serve others.
The Eternal War | Doctrine | Power
“I would be correct, would I not, in believing Martel informed you we’ve passed seven so far? This one will be eight.”
Commander Bronson De La Bois speaking with obviously deliberate antagonism as he looks down an aristocratic French nose to the files open on the deep mahogany colored worn wooden desk before him. Files strewn about in a not quite casual manner. Records of the program mentees to date, with the current mentee’s file prominently on top. Desk and files all highlighted in the bright midday sun washing through the floor to ceiling glass windows letting on to a view of the Bay and its islands, over to Sausalito and Tiburon. The warmth of the sun flooding through the windows belying the cold of the wind currently blowing through the Golden Gate, across to the East Bay at this time of day.
Passed! Bobby Dlamini thinks. He allows himself a brief pause, thinking how much masked rebellion is reflected in the Commander’s manner and voice. These are each and every one a threat we should never have allowed; threats should be hunted down and removed, permanently!
The young lady, just visible in the room at the end of the hall, seated comfortably on the grey blue overstuffed sofa, intently focused on the video lesson playing on the tablet in her lap, appears to be in her early twenties. Though it seems to get harder to tell the actual age of the young the older Bobby gets. Sensing the gaze upon her, she lifts her eyes to peer down the hallway, to get her first look at this new one. A steady gaze, denoting an actively curious mind, intense, without being insane. The sun from the floor to ceiling windows line the entire side of the apartment from the main room to the living area she is seated in, falls brightly upon her, lighting up her pale skin, pale blue eyes and reddish blond beyond shoulder length hair.
“Not only are we diverting limited resources away from our primary mission, but these students are immensely dangerous to that mission.” His voice is flat and emotionless in that way only men highly seasoned in death, both on the giving and receiving end, express themselves with. This restraint, making the intent of his words all that much more powerful and unavoidable. It’s the voice of a highly seasoned warrior, a Knight Commander, elder and instructor speaking down to, not his subordinate exactly, but still a junior in The Order. It unmistakably emphasizes for Bobby that Commander De La Bois is one of those who openly disagree with the program.
Harrison had warned: “He’ll seek to recruit or sideline you.”
“Seven threats are quite enough.”
Bobby glances over to observe the body language, the Commander’s features, aged by years and decades of battle, in service to The Order and others before, thinking strongly: Won’t be very many years ahead before I’m old and set in my ways, too. Could be I’ll also be a power in The Order by then.
Commander De La Bois is a man with many marks of age earned in his more than forty years of service. There’s no doubt however, as Bobby knows from his own observations and mission planning, the Commander’s aged, tall slender frame is yet capable of sustained effort and battle if need be.
His aging face is angular, with a thin-lipped mouth above a strong chin, below deep-set sea blue-colored eyes, all framed by the square jaw and strong cheekbones so many members of The Order possess. Like so many aged warriors, his manner tends to blunt directness, a manner of presentation the uninitiated, the soft and weak, the resentful, misinterpret as arrogance, anger or disdain. An effect made all the stronger by this former French paratrooper, and intelligence community contractor, now senior instructor in the mentee program, keeping to himself even more than the other members of The Order, none of which are known for gregariousness.
Secretly, and careful to keep it to himself, Bobby wishes he knew the full scope of the mission he’d been tasked to participate in. Harrison had been quite clear, however, and that in no uncertain terms: “the Commander’s to be respected, not trusted, not where the fate of this girl is involved.”
“We’re not preparing them to live in our future and our world. We’re preparing them to live in their own.” Bobby states, looking down the hallway to the room at the other end, sunlight streaming in, falling across the young lady seated there.
“We believe at least one of our graduates has already been compromised by one or more intelligence service,” the Commander states. “That alone should be enough to shutter this entire program, and to eradicate every trace of it.” Most certainly meaning, killing the seven before and this one.
It’s important to remain detached, truly detached, Bobby recognizes. In an instant dropping into the flow, allowing for an emotionless inward flow of information, not giving the Commander any psychological surface to grasp onto. It’s a message: “I may be twenty years your junior, but I too am a battle-hardened member of our Order; I’ve passed through the ordeal.” He can feel the Commander’s penetrating gaze upon him, as he looks once more down the hallway to the current mentee who’s turned back to her studies.
The Commander had seen the file, and photos, of this Robert Dlamini, but in person he’s certainly something more than the others had been before him. He’s a natural leader, no doubt of that. Large dark brown eyes, almost pure black, lean but muscular build, and midnight black skin unblemished except for the roped scar above his left eyebrow and the ropey scar down the same side of his neck that disappears into the collar of his open jacket and button-down tan linen shirt. There’s something in the loose posture of this man twenty years his junior, something intended to give the impression of being both totally casual and relaxed while ready to move within a fraction of a second in any direction, under total and absolute control.
What few had seen, or knew of, if not having read his file, was how much effort and work had gone into just this posture, after an explosion in the Congo had put Bobby in the infirmary and recovery for more than a year. A year in which Bobby had been forced to relearn many things, recovering slowly from severe injuries to brain and body, almost starting all over to rebuild himself into fighting shape.
“You’re a rather reserved one.” The Commander says. “One might believe you’d been warned and prepared.”
“Is there any reason to believe this one might be another security threat, that she might lack the necessary self-restraint?” Bobby asks.
“Approaches and attempts have been made already. Before she was brought in-house.”
It’s an uncomfortable sensation the word “traitor” that comes to mind when thinking of this fellow knight, more so when this knight is a Commander. Was there such a thing as a “traitor” in The Order, given the amorphous nature of it? It’s not as if heresy would be a better word, The Order not being the martial arm of a religion. Neither traitor nor heretic are quite the right words, but they are what leap to mind as Bobby hears and senses the Commander. How could either of these things be true within an organization independent of and older than nation states, non-religious, an organization at its very core both traditional and profoundly neutral, not bound to time, place, nor to any institution nor state?
Bobby shifts his attention once more down the hallway, to the young lady, who takes this moment, using her peripheral vision, to glance sideways at this enigmatic figure looking at her from the other end of the hall. As she listens to the audio of the tailored and personalized fifth-generation warfare scenario playing out on the tablet in her lap.
“She’s a sharp one, this one!” The Commander, not quite hiding the sneer in his voice. There’s an implied violence in just such a sneer, in his corresponding body posture. From this man of more than six decades. Four decades of which had been spent in perpetual conflict and war, overtly and covertly.
Bobby turns back to the Commander. Traitor. Heretic. Revolt does not give it full voice. Resistance and disagreement do not express fully what is sensed in the older man. All of this demonstrates a rupture in The Order. Something well beyond a power struggle. Going against the will of the Lord Commander? Preposterous! The Lord Commander is for all intents and purposes the final arbiter, a king in the old, absolute monarch, sense. Lord Commanders do their studies, take council, seek out opposing views and solutions, only then making their decisions, which all within The Order obey.
“The threats are already multiplying at a rate near beyond our capacities to recognize. There’s no time to be opening up threat vectors from within!” The Commander lets out between clenched lips.
There can be no mistaking his meaning. Bureaucratic feudalists, petty elites, and their supporting and dependent oligarchs are making their move at every level, everywhere, and all at once, posing a very real threat to The Order and its mission. To say nothing of the threat posed to humanity itself. Seeking to completely enslave the current and all future generations through advances in technology enabled neurolinguistic and banking dominance. Hacking of the human mind and productivity, such it can never, no matter how hard it might seek to, actually break free of the all-encompassing artificial reality tunnel that is bureaucratic feudalist power. The great shared illusion!
Bureaucratic feudalists, so very much like the oligopolist feudalists of old – aristocrats – or so it would on the surface appear, bent on exploiting maximally before disposing of the people. Only differing in their methods and degree to which exploitation is possible. Nothing is quite that simple, however.
“You believe we should be focusing all our efforts on the Malthusians and Trans-humanists?” Bobby ventures to say.
“Focus? Don’t joke with me! They must not only be stopped but they must be destroyed. They show no humanity, no understanding nor forgiveness. They seek only to end the game with their eternal war. They lack the ability to understand the game. That’s what they seek to get from us, our knowledge of life.” Those who are not truly alive can never understand, appreciate and foster life.
“Possibly true. Though it does seem too simple. There’s more to their intentions than we yet see.” Bobby not disagreeing but not willing to give this wily elder a complete pass. Also, not willing to concede the point, given how little of the war any human or group of humans can actually see.
“We’re making a serious mistake, with this program, thinking we can train the young to wage the war while improving and expanding the game. They lack the experience and self-control to confront the complexity of the threat at this late a stage of the current flaring in the war.” The Commander says, as he looks out across the Bay. The sun dimming slightly, as an ephemeral cloud of white passes between sea and sun. “To say nothing of those who must resource, equip and support them in the battles ahead.”
Sixteen-year-olds have birthed dynasties and led empires, won great battles and wars. Made innovations which changed the world. Bobby cannot help but think.
There’s no doubting it now. Bobby can’t help but recognize this project has caused a split within The Order. The possibility that we might be providing our hardest earned knowledge on how to wage full-spectrum classical and modern warfare, to wealthy and powerful families whose actual commitment to humanity must always be in question. Families with relationships and resources could use such knowledge to bring about great usury and harm not only to their enemies but to their own people. As history, even a perfunctory search of, will provide far more than numerous examples of. It’s a dangerous path for the Lord Commander and The Order to walk.
“We should never provide this knowledge to any house, humanist, matrilineal dynasty, or any other.” the Commander grumbles. “The risks to keepers and heritage are far too great!”
Bobby looks once more down the hallway to the mentee. She’s risen from the sofa and moved to lean against the far wall, lined with old books, tablet in hand, looking back down the hall and straight into Bobby’s eyes. She’s not hiding she knows these two older men, these warriors, are talking about her, are in something of a disagreement. Over what, she cannot know. There’s no doubt of it though in Bobby’s mind, she’s awaiting the outcome of their meeting, this subtle little conflict. Sharp indeed!
“She’s not had enough time with the materials, nor been assessed and vetted sufficiently, to be given the ordeal,” Bobby agreed. There was something of a self-deprecating tone in his statement, something he knew would trigger the Commander in a way was not quite right. The development of a person’s mind along specific paths, unlocking ways of thinking atrophied for centuries, this was The Order’s unique capacity. Use radical truth in the application of manipulation, coercion and pain, but don’t enjoy it, don’t seek to break or own the other, the Commander would now be thinking. The Order knew the truth and power of these things. All the many orders before had hard earned this knowledge, each subsequent order relearning on the other side of long periods of immense human suffering.
Long ago it had all been recognized for what it is. A set of tools that are not to be removed. Organic hierarchies, and the deeply embedded control mechanisms they engender, cannot be removed without destroying the organism. It goes deep in the biological and bioelectrical makeup of all life, laid there piece by piece across billions of years, to ensure the continuation of life itself. Sparingly, and only where utmost necessary, you use these tools, to imprint, to shape and guide, knowing those who succeed at unlocking deeply embedded awareness and survival circuits within themselves, become powerfully bonded. Many have railed against just such ordeals, not seeing the threads that bind in them, not knowing the strength endowed to all bound by these resulting bonds, these chains. Or being threatened by just the same.
“I’m not stating we won’t take her through the ordeal,” the Commander says, right on que. Having misinterpreted the statement just as Bobby believed he would.
“It’s not given to us to see the whole. Only the few are granted such sight. The rest of us do our part, what we’re instructed to do.” Let the Commander do with this statement as he will.
“So, you’re here to prepare and take her through?” The Commander looks down the hall to see the young lady in question, her hands on the bookshelf behind her propping her up, staring openly at the two older men. “If only you knew what she is and what will be asked of her should she succeed in the ordeal.”
Is the old former French warfighter, international intelligence contractor become commander going to give it up, lay out what the plan is for this mentee, what the larger intent is for the program?
“Her father’s going to adopt her and bring her fully into the family affair. Despite she’s his illegitimate daughter and his legitimate children want none of it and are a very real threat to her.”
Bobby looked outside, let the surprise of it pass over him invisibly, before actually processing what it meant. Affair. Not, the family business. Not, the family. Affair! Another bastard child, raised on the outside as a pariah, being prepared by the Nobility, to secure the family from the soft chins and weak minds it had developed after a several centuries long, vacation.
“I’m not talking to hear myself speak.” The Commander states, as Bobby continues to look outside, in silence, giving himself the moments necessary to fully process the meaning of this revelation.
Of course, you aren’t! Bobby thinks. You’ve no idea what you give away of your own, patrician, biases. What she is. Affair. It’s not just that we’re teaching, vetting and bringing in outsiders, non-combat veterans at that, but we’re collecting and bringing in the bastards of the great houses. Not exactly picking winners, not exactly picking a side, and yet, certainly taking a stance.
The Commander nods towards the young lady, who’s turned to look out the windowed wall. “Do you believe for a moment these will be able to prevent the collapse?”
Now they’re getting to it. “It’s not for me to know such things. I do my part.”
“Well, you’re careful, aren’t you?” The Commander states plainly, looking Bobby in the eyes.
Bobby smiles inwardly. Perhaps he’d learned to be careful over the years. Maybe he was always a little careful, given when, where and how he’d grown up, the streets of Cape Town. But then again, Harrison had cautioned, “Let nothing out, give no surface for him to grab onto. The Commander’s a seasoned interrogator, but he needs time to really grab hold. Don’t give him that time. Everything is accelerating and our opponents need only delay a thing, not fight it, to bring about its failure.”
Failure of what exactly? That’s the question pulls lightly at the corners of Bobby’s awareness as he turns back to the Commander. “How could her predecessors have been turned? Has the war evolved that much so quickly as to make our preventative measures that ineffectual? Are we now this known?”
“The Earl’s here now. Perhaps he’ll be able to prevent further failure.” From the tone of his voice, Bobby can immediately tell the Commander doesn’t believe his own statement.
Bobby knows his role; he’s the only here as guide for the ordeal. For this he’d been prepped to seek more of the pattern upon his arrival, starting with this conversation and the first meeting with Commander De La Bois. He also knows seeing it all in its fullness is not something required of his task.
“The finality of it all!” The Commander states, as he looks down the hallway to the young lady staring back at them. A young lady with not the slightest idea what would be demanded of her.
The damage of the program being compromised was not the issue. Not the reason for the Commander’s disquiet and revulsion. The Order operated decentralized enough that no substantive nor permanent damage could be done. The reputation loss however, having failed to secure against just such a threat as an insider threat. Admitting this, allowing it to stand, was simply not something The Order could permit. The very fact Bobby had been called in early was a tell. A rather strong one invisible to anyone but those few close to this very project and this particular illegitimate young lady preparing to face an ordeal unlike anything imagined.
The Lord Commander knows his people, and their strengths. Bobby had always taken solace in this, making it possible to accept he’d only ever be given parts, not even all the parts he would need for his tasks. Only those few starting points necessary to his finding the delicate beginning of a pattern.
Bobby can see the young lady, still leaning, back to the bookcase, has returned to her studies on the tablet back in hand. This, as the Commander motions towards her.
“Imbalance.” The Commander says.
There can be no doubt this all is about power, power at the heart of the Commander’s treason and heresy. If it wasn’t about balance, the Commander wouldn’t be in command here. The leader of the opposition may not get to determine the objective, but they, as is the nature of structures and hierarchies, get to lead the program to it. The fact the Lord Commander had not appointed another meant the opposition to this program had real power behind it, within The Order at least. This is not the imbalance the Commander is referencing, however.
Commander De La Bois turns and looks squarely at Bobby. Enough words. Enough words for the minds of men highly skilled in the arts of The Order. The Lord Commander had sent Bobby to be the guide for the ordeal. That wasn’t done lightly or because this one was simply the man available.
Bobby can tell the Commander is probing, but it isn’t going to reach Bobby’s inner core, that rock solid center every member of The Order can rely upon in even the most difficult of times and situations. A rocky core found in the ordeal. Okay. Go ahead, sir. Look upon me. Bobby thinks, turning back to face the Commander. The slightest of smiles appears on Bobby’s face, just as a bearded man shows in the room where the young lady is, well-armed and prepared, obvious to anyone well trained in the signs.
“And that is?” Bobby asks.
“Carl, the Earl’s XO. Though that’s not what he calls himself. Anyone who isn’t a fool can see he’s the Earl’s right hand.”
Bobby examines the man down the hall, in that deeply assessing sort of way only men of certain backgrounds develop. So, it is the Earl, and that’s Carl. He’s from here originally, or so the records stated at the castle. Handpicked by the Earl for this very effort. Short and squat, built like a truck, though with an obvious hitch in his movements from a hip injury earned in combat in Iraq. Getting older. But so too was the Earl. Hell, they all were for that matter. This was no young man’s business.
The Commander notices the subtle fluctuation of energies, as Bobby shifts his attentions from Carl to his charge. Yes, the threat level is that high, even here! This one might be a bastard child, but she’s the daughter of someone, and is being prepared for highest level conflict in defense of her family. If the Earl, the Senior Continuity Commander had been called here, with his handpicked men. Then the threat and danger are very real, imminent and persistent.
“That would imply…she’s…” Bobby starts, having picked up a piece in the movement.
“Yes, she’s being prepared for full induction. Raedbora’s orders.” The Commander pauses, to let the weight of it settle in, recognizing Bobby is seeing more of the pattern now. “Her training is to include full-spectrum classical, irregular and fifth generation warfare, so she’s fully prepared upon adoption into her father’s house.”
“That’s quite the impossible challenge she’s been given.” Bobby responds. He could remember the difficulties and hardships of his own studies, before his ordeal, and that after a decade on the Teams and half a decade as a high-end merc across Africa.
“The only knowledge she’s to be denied is The Order’s continuity infrastructure.” The Commander clenches his jaw briefly upon stating this. “Most everything else we know, she’s to be given access to, should she ask for it.” From his posture and tone, Bobby can see this deeply angers the Commander.
“Surely she can’t command, with no combat experience?” Bobby ponders out loud. The implications!
The Commander merely turns to look out across the Bay, cloud free once more.
This is something, more of the pattern. There’s something about this one, unlike the previous seven. Something not only worthy of such high security as to bring in the Earl and his most trusted and capable people. But also, to be prepared for command, despite not having the requisite background and experience, being little more than a teen. Surely this bastard child carried the old genes? But which ones.
The Commander, growling: “This’s a dangerous plan…this one…if the design is wrong…by even the smallest margin. Neutrality will be lost, and everything will accelerate uncontrollably.”
This one. This bastard. Does he recognize the deep-rooted disdain he’s demonstrating? The disdain of the legitimate born, those raised inside the walls, against their siblings not so fortunate. The threat of the capable bastard faced by the far too often less than capable legitimate born.
“One must wonder what the position of the gatekeepers, family members and family office staff and advisors is in and around her father’s house.” Bobby articulates. There are millennia of history, of just such sorts being threatened by illegitimates. None of it’s a pleasant history. In truth it’s some of humanity’s darkest histories. Murders upon murders upon far worse fates born by bastard and parent.
“Gatekeepers! Bah!” De La Bois growls deeper while grinding the toe of his shoe into the throw rug beneath him. A visceral reaction to gatekeepers and so-called experts. “They believe only they know truth, only they know the mind of their master. They lack history! Damnable Emissaries, all.”
Bobby employs a breathing technic to relax his muscles, to back away from the fight. The Commander may not have stated it, but his posture and tone are borderline open declarations of war. No mistaking, however, he’s in command here. There’s an ancient dance to these things. Those with power who disagree most must be those who monitor from close proximity so they may abort the effort rapidly at the first signs of failure. Regardless, that’s a verified descendant to at least one great house in the other room. Obviously, or she wouldn’t be here. The geneticists and genealogists would have confirmed it beyond a doubt. So, she’s to be afforded by The Order, all courtesies, preparations, and protections.
Harrison had instructed him: “You’re to teach her loyalty in all its forms.” Which now makes sense. One cannot command loyalty if they themselves know not who and what to be loyal to, if they know not what loyalty is.
“She’s very much the outsider,” Bobby puts forward, thinking back through the limited file on Annabelle Morozov. Seeing her posture in the room at the other end of the hallway.
“Ignorant and naïve, yes,” the Commander responds. “I take it you’ll engender in her the young’s response to the confidante, to trust. To be followed…” Commander De La Bois shrugs.
Bobby will betray no sentiment. A knight obeyed. I am a mentor. And it is… Harrison’s orders and the mentor’s training required a specific sequence of events be carried out deliberately and carefully.
To the Commander, Bobby states, “I take it it’s the father whose neuropsychometric profile is very much like that of my own. This would make the most sense. Do we know if this is the case?” This is a pure phishing exercise. The man he’s encoding her for could be any sort of individual out there in the big world.
“No.”
Bobby holds his silence. He’d not expected revelation, but it’d been remarked by more than one that psychometrically he bore a resemblance to the older Senior Knight Commander Bertrand Von Mises. Both Bobby and Bertrand were foreign born and raised former Navy SEALs and mercs. The United States does not hold a monopoly on aristocratic warrior genes. Nor does Europe for that matter. The institutional memory of his family in the former British Dominion and those of his years of service, even with mission and unit related skewing and limiting, provided important clues as to the full shape of this mentee program. Despite all the missing pieces the Lord Commander’s instructions had intentionally left out.
Bobby, who’d learned to depend on his knowledge and understanding of the Marshall back at The Order’s beginning. Felt a deep sense of obligation to listen to that knowledge now. Cycles of rise, decay and fall. Over and over again across the centuries, in recognizable patterns. Relating to the current time and task, this knowledge gives off such an incredibly intense sense of foreboding Bobby has to resort automatically to the Vow to Life as he’d been taught when first introduced to The Order:
“I reject the artificial worlds of words to secure that which cannot be defined, life. Words are but a symbolic language devoid of reality. Words are lies that allow only illusion. There is no force more destructive to life than words. Beware most the lie of words that speak of secret knowing. For there is only life.”
Balance returns to Bobby’s inner core.
The slightly glassed look in Bobby’s eyes hints to the Commander he’s struck a chord, but that the younger knight’s training has kicked in. It’s enough however to recognize the capacities of this South African, of Zulu descent, he’s no slouch, no fool, no special assignment. He’s not one of those The Order sends out who is barely capable of the task, of conducting himself without embarrassing The Order. It does nothing to attempt to hide things from someone with this degree of inner development, not even when possessing the same training, work and skill yourself. Well, nothing for it then, he’s stepping into it fully now. Let him know the full extent of what he’s facing in this deadly game, this dangerous program!
“I don’t think this one will survive long enough to see herself join that family,” the Commander states leadingly.
Bobby doesn’t bite. “Tell me about her relationships,” he asks. Remaining on mission. The young lady’s safety may be the Earl’s primary mission. Bobby’s however is the order and preparations for.
“She doesn’t have relationships; only mentors and teachers.”
“Are they all the Earl’s people?”
“No, there are those remaining from before, some of my people,” not quite a smirk in the Commander’s voice. Not quite. I still have power here.
“I will need to meet them.” He keeps his gaze down the hall where Carl is leaning idly against the wall, just inside the doorway, G27 barely visible inside his beltline. The obvious bulges of low vis body armor and concealed radio, weapons and magazines. Bobby realizes with a sudden start, Carl’s watching him, casually intent. Carl’s a message from the Earl! But not for Bobby. A warning the Commander cannot help but see. She’s under our protection!
“I should think it’s the Earl you’re most interested to meet,” the Commander states.
“And others.”
“You don’t wish to be introduced to her first?”
“I’ve already made contact with her during this very conversation.” Bobby nods down the hallway where the young lady is once more looking at him. “She’s quite aware, isn’t she.”
“I’ve only read reports on the others. But she does seem to be something…different.” The Commander begrudgingly responds. “Those damnable old bloodlines and the memory within!”
Bobby suppresses an involuntary reaction at the readiness for violent action in the Commander’s words and attitude. There’s not a single hint the Commander holds even the remotest human connection with this young lady, this illegitimate. A sentiment most probably shared by her soon to be family members, if they even know of her pending arrival and role.
While Bobby is thinking, the clouds from the sea obscure the sun from the Bay once again. A cold wind must certainly be blowing down there across the Marina pouring in through the Golden Gate, across, over and under the bridge. Bobby having looked away; Annabelle lifts the tablet in hand and once again resumes her studies. Preparing herself for what exactly she can’t know. Nervous and excited!
“What does she do when she’s alone?” Bobby asks.
“Mostly spends time in her room, going through the online library. She’s tried, dangerously, to venture out alone, but we’ve firmly discouraged this.”
“Can’t imagine she hasn’t come to hate us, then.” Bobby states.
“I’m certain of it.”
“That’s created a difficulty will have to be addressed first. Hard to be loyal to those one hates.”
“Certainly, someone of your capacities, a mentor, can have no doubts about his ability to properly adapt hate.”
“A somewhat attractive young lady,” Bobby comments, again not biting.
As he watches the young lady in the room at the end of the hallway, Bobby begins to have a new appreciation of what the founder of The Order had achieved. Marshall had employed the dispossessed and bastards throughout his entire active adult lifetime – for roughly fifty years, one after the other. The Marshall had been no ordinary force of nature. He’d been an unmovable object in history, not forcing, not directing, but ensuring continuity in things: social systems, natural and unnatural conflicts, forms of government, rituals, religion, families, bloodlines. Were it not for his steadfastness and loyalty and his capacity to engender such in others, no matter their status and station, the modern world would never have come to be. The balancing weight of the Regent’s passage had left nothing in the West untouched, not least of all, knighthood and the lives of duty sustain it.
The Marshall had called it “The Way” and mentees like this before Bobby now had figured prominently in The Way, the journey of individuals from obscurity to highest level service, through breaking and redeveloping self, in finding who and what to be loyal to, and how. Bobby had studied The Order’s accounts, the family histories, the only complete record remaining in the world of the Marshall, the Regent, in his own time and place. Even now, centuries on, consciously and unconsciously reaffirming their commitment, members of The Order bow to the four corners of the earth, mouthing each in their own native language, “May we honor the way you set before, guiding those who walk the path after.”
Once, it had been the place of priests and their acolytes to push obeisance to God and religion, to Crowns, earthly and unearthly. But this thing, this reaffirmation, had developed its own momentum, becoming a pervasive compulsion in an order of men and women not bound to a church, a religion, nor to any kingdom. Even the most secular of knights said to themselves: “It is right we should say these things.” This mantra was an accomplishment not even the finest religious, political engineers nor military traditions of the world could master or match. The Regent had surpassed the world’s greatest religions, to pass down unbroken a way of total service to humanity’s extraordinary familial heritage. We endure that life may sustain. Even eight hundred years after his death, The Order remained powerless to replicate or change the central core of his extraordinary accomplishment.
“Who has charge of her spiritual training?” Bobby asks.
“No one,” the Commander replies. “Why bother? If she fails in the ordeal, her own concepts on such things will be her own and none of it will matter to us.”
The young lady at the end of the hall completed her lesson for the morning. Without looking down the hallway at the observers there, she leaves the room via a door to the left, away from the wall of windows. Carl, too, moves with her without giving a single glance down the hallway. Though his passing leaves a physical void in the space that could be felt at the other end of the hallway by those looking.
“Those are the Earl’s people,” Commander De La Bois states. “They’re capable, unobtrusive and quiet. Quite disconcerting in their readiness. Do you know about his birth mother? She was on the path to become one of us before she fled Europe in the late sixties. Her own father having prepared her for the ordeal, before his premature demise. Beyond even what the Earl’s own mother did with him in his early years, he’s teaching that girl things better never shared!”
From his study of the dossier Martel provided for his pre-mission preparation and planning, Bobby knows there had been three attempts on the life of the young lady already. Not to mention several kidnapping attempts over the years. One of those attempts, almost successful, had seen the program move the young lady to the US and the introduction of the Earl and his continuity team. There’s far more than enough threat in the world set against this young lady, quite aside from that Bobby senses in the form of Commander De La Bois and the faction he represents within The Order.
Interesting days ahead!
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