A Knight Arising 1-4

"And so, this guy, the slave of the god of drama, who has all this shit on his back from plays and stuff, says to the guy, 'What about one of the old gags, sir? I can always get a laugh from them.' And Dionysus says, 'Well don't make it about how your back is always hurting, 'cause I've got enough to worry about without your whining!' Well, this guy, this slave, he says 'Something wittier then? How 'bout this?: If nobody will take away my pack, I'll let a fart and blow it off my back!'"

Michelle remembered that Bors had burst into song at the top of his voice:

"Brekeke-kex, ko-ax, ko-ax!/ Ko-ax, ko-ax, ko-ax!/ Oh we are the musical Frogs!/We live in the marshes and bogs!/ Sweet, sweet is the hymn,/That we sing as we swim,/And our voices are known/For their beautiful tone…" And he sung this last part in such a way that it emphasized his horrible singing voice, cracking up at the high notes of the impromptu tone and garbling the words so it actually did sound like frogs singing.

In retrospect, she thought, the situation was really kind of sad. "The Frogs" was really a dramatic piece about the role and duty of poets in society, and the dry, witty, often sarcastic humor was typically ill-suited for a comedic routine.

By now Bors had edged his way between the pillars, knocking things over and cursing the entire way. He pulled himself into view, and Michelle had to suppress a hearty guffaw at the sight. A thoroughly rumpled executive dressed in a conservative Armani suit was scratched, drenched in water and moist dirt from the potted plants he had stumbled into and he had a book open, pages down, on his shoulder, anchored by a tattered drapery pull cord wrapped around his arm and neck.

Lukas hefted himself up off the desk he was leaning on and went to soothe the ruffled feelings of the senior consultant.

"Let's get us a cup of coffee and get settled in." He pointed Bors off towards the washroom and a suit cleaner.

Michelle turned and looked at Lukas, grinning. He returned it tenfold. "I should have known that your boss would be that much bigger than you. Most people who come in here are . . . of substantially smaller stature than Mr. Bors. Big lug, isn't he?"

Michelle laughed musically.

CHAPTER THREE

Lukas pulled Andre Bors into the back room, with the sound of Michelle's laughter still tinkling in his ears, like crystal being cast about in a breeze. His hand tightened unconsciously. He knew who she was, who she had been, even if she did not. It brought a chill to his veins. A chill that, oddly, made him feel warm all over.

Bors turned around and slapped the tall black man on the shoulder. "Arthur! It's been a long time! How have you been?"

"Bors, you still refuse to change your name. Fourteen hundred years is a long time to go, hoping that no one will recognize you! Still, you never were overly cautious." He laughed.

"Bah! Every time we get together you say the same thing; and I always respond the same: How's the Old Man?"

Mer stepped out of the shadows in the corner of the room, his red valet's uniform replaced by a red velvet house coat. "And every time you say that, Sir Bors, I say: 'Careful Bors, or you might end up where I am.'" Mer's accent was slightly different from before. Rather than Oxbridge accent, he spoke with a hint of Welsh, Scottish and Irish in his words. His voice was older, and it rang slightly in the room.

Bors again whacked Lukas on the shoulder. "Every two hundred years you look different, Art. In the seventeen hundreds you were a Swedish noblewoman. Why a black antique dealer?"

"I was tired of you making passes at me, Bors. Well, you and Percival. He never quite could get over that French wench of his. He preferred the physical illusion to reality. The Nordic physique…was too appealing. Admittedly, the eighteen hundreds were tough, especially once I immigrated to Georgia. These Americans…weird ideas. Slavery, huh!" he grunted, disgust in his voice. "I still have the scars from the whips and the cat-o'-nine-tails. Every time I want to bed a woman, I have to get Mer to whip together a latex sheath to cover the ridges. It's one thing to use people captured in war to do manual labor, but an entirely different thing to force entire societies to give up their strongest men and women to make a profit for another race."

"We had negros, Nubians, in Court, Art."

"Yeah, but they were a peace offering from the Romans. We had nothing to do with their capture."

"Semantics, Art. Be careful where you go with that line of thinking. You're black yourself now." Bors shook his head over his knees. He had divested himself of the debris he had gathered on his way through Lukas' office, and was now seated on a pouff.

Lukas raised his hands and turned them over in front of his eyes. "I keep forgetting that."

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Michelle found herself with butterflies in her tummy. Goodriche, Jameson and Tyler all had strong presences, and when they all turned toward her, after watching Bors and Lukas walk into the other room, her stomach flipped. It was a singularly unpleasant sensation.

As if sensing her discomfort, Goodriche smiled and stepped carefully towards her, reaching out his hand to take hers. "It is good to see you, Miss Leodegrance. You came highly recommended."

"Thank you Mr. Goodriche. I got the packages you sent me, back when I was in D.C. I was sort of surprised that you would let me look at your files before we had even met. It isn't…standard procedure." The tall bald man laughed.

"We've, you could say, been following your career for a number of years. We know you are reliable. You wouldn't be here if we didn't think so." He clapped his hands in barely restrained glee. "We should get to work. How close did you pay attention to our overseas assets?"

"Which ones? The Medicore Inc., the Assyrian Trading Consortium, Valtrex Limited? I can go on."

"Well, our primary difficulty, as you may have guessed, is with CONGOAN, the genetics and heritage facility based out of Stornoway, Scotland."

"That's the orphanage, isn't it?" Michelle asked, flipping through her abbreviated portfolio.

"That is one of the subsidiary establishments, yes. But the CONGOAN orphanage is in Mississippi, not Scotland. Mr. Lukas is originally from the Congo, Kasai-Oriental province. Catholic nuns in the area take in children orphaned by the civil wars. They are processed, and those who are deemed fit are sent, at our expense, to Mississippi, where they are given an education in both Ngbaka Ma'bo and Assyrian, in addition to English and their native dialect.

"CONGOAN Medical Industries, out of Stornoway, researches genetic mutations and works on altering, through computer simulations, protein and sugar constructs in a given genetic structure."

"Right." Michelle flipped a couple of pages and pulled out a sheet covered in a series of letters. "You sent me, ah, what you called a 'simple sample' of what you're talking about. Uhm," she began reading from the sheet. "'There are twenty amino acids that potentially make up a protein sequence. For example, Chymotrypsin, a digestive protein, has a sequence:

ANTPORLQQASLPLLSNTNCKK—YWGTKIKDAMICAGAS-GVS

If it were to be changed, say, to:

GQLAQTLQQAYLPTVDYAICSSSSYWGSTVKNSMVCAGGDGVRS

You would end up with another, similar, digestive protein called Elastase. The two sequences are very similar, but there are enough differences that their functions, and their structures, are completely disparate. Similarly, if the protein chains that make up the genes that determine the number of rods and cones in the eyes, a person could potentially see levels of light beyond the normal visual spectrum; ultraviolet, infrared, and, perhaps, certain types of radiation. Of course, this last would require radical gene reconstruction and modification.'"

Michelle looked up at Percival Goodriche. He had a huge grin on his face.

"What? Do you understand this?"

"Not a goddamn word. I'm a businessman, not a geneticist. I don't even understand, fully, what that place does."

"So how am I supposed to help?"

Goodriche told her. Well, part of it, anyway.

*******************************

"I dunno, Arthur, that's a pretty risky proposition. I mean, she's been traveling from daughter to daughter for nearly a millennium and a half. After her first body died in that convent, she sort of went mad. You've got to remember the first couple of times we tried to get her back."

"Yes, Bors, I remember." Lukas sat back in his chair, listening to the mumble of voices from the other room. "The worst time was in Affligem Monastery, in Belgium. Anno the Second had just blessed the altar, in the spring of 1065…"

*****************************

"…By the Lord's Grace, we have, together, gathered here to make a quiet place for solitude and contemplation, for the reading of the Lord's Great Word. May we now Commune with our Lord God, and may our piousness and love for Him and His Works, and His eternal Love for us, His children, bless us. In God's name, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, walk in peace. Amen."

Archbishop Anno II of Cologne crossed himself and blessed the monks and the altar. He turned away, his red and white woolen robes - coarse in the manner of a monk's habit, but well made in a manner befitting the status of Archbishop - swirling about his feet. He passed beyond the other five churchmen, the other founders of this monastery, and walked toward his retainers, blessing each member of the monastery individually as he passed. It was never good to understate the blessings at times like this.

The monks and his retinue all bowed, the former flattening themselves to the cobblestones of the little chapel, the latter merely inclining their torsos. These were men who feared nothing, except perhaps God, and figured that a man, however powerful in the eyes of others, was merely a man in theirs. He would have to reprimand them for this behavior; particularly when it demeaned him in front of others. Being a generally pragmatic man, he did not particularly care if they were rude towards him in private, but he had a public appearance to keep up. A churchman was essentially a politician, and politicians had to maintain an aura, perhaps even an illusion, of respect and individual power – if even a few people damaged that aura, the lasting effectiveness of that politician would be hampered.

And who would believe in God if his messengers could not portray a convincing façade?

Anno shook off these depressing thoughts as he pulled back the flap of his tent. The thing was made of hide, and the wet spring air made it mould and grow musky. He wished for the invention of a cloth that would repel water, but he knew it would never come. There was no such thing.

The leader of his armed retainers, Gerald of Aussenburg, was an abnormally tall man, bordering on sixteen hands high, and was nearly as broad as and ax shaft at the shoulder, stood just inside. He had red hair that hung in a knotted braid down his back and a long, wispy beard, just a shade darker. He was borderline revolting, but he had a sort of bestial yet benign charm about him.

"She's behind the curtain, Your Holiness. We brought her in an hour ago from Inselheim. She's everything you asked for."

Anno licked his lips in contemplation. "Everything he asked for" was a fairly broad definition. Long, raven hair, glittering green eyes. A narrow waist, broad, child-bearing hips and strong muscles, the type one could only get from hard manual labor. And…a virgin. She had to be perfect. Contemplating this, Anno pushed aside the linen curtain and stepped into the candle light. There she was, sitting demurely on a milking stool in the center of the lit area. She wore a thick woolen dress and slippers. She must have been given these by his men. Peasants did not usually wear shoes. This was a nice touch on Gerald's part. Anno did not like mud on his carpets.

"Welcome, my child," he said, wincing at the clichéd phrase. The Roman Catholic church had only been around for a few centuries, and already it was becoming a thing of used words and meaningless dictums. Fortunately for Anno, he really did believe in God, in a holy afterlife in His home. It kept him from going crazy, from falling into hypocrisy and heresy. A higher purpose gave everyone refuge from damnation, and belief made it gilded in gold. "I am Archbishop Anno. Who are you?"

She mumbled something indistinct into her chest. Anno stepped toward her, quietly putting one foot in front of the other. He crouched down beside her and put his hand on her shoulder, brushing aside her long tresses. "Child?"

She flinched so violently away from him that she fell off the stool with a muffled thump. She let out only a peep. She was a brave woman. A brave…girl!?

"Gerald! You brought me a child? This will not do!" he cried. Gerald ran into the tent, his hand on his sword.

"Holiness?"

"Look at her, you oaf! She's a mute, and she's a child! Not even metaphorically!! Dunce! Imbecile!!"

"Holiness," Gerald drew himself up in barely restrained anger, "She was screaming up a storm on the trip here, I swear by the Cross!" The Archbishop whipped his head around, glaring at his henchman. He knew Gerald well enough to know that he would not be so sacrilegious without truthfulness. "She certainly is not mute. She is not a child, either. She numbers her years in the decades. We ensured this before we took her."

"She is not with child? She is uncorrupted?"

"No. She fought mightily when we checked, but, no, she is as God meant her to be."

Anno turned back to the woman, throwing a suspicious glance Gerald's way. By this time, Bors had walked in through the door, as had Mer. The old man was a cleric too, but more a student of the occult. This in and of itself may have been heretical, but Mer applied his knowledge in order to subvert the primitive beliefs of these heathens in the northern wastes. Mer was good at it. He was good at most things. Anno turned his attention back to the girl-woman. She had pulled herself into a corner during the shouting, and was quivering in the shadows. Her dress had fallen between her thighs and her chest, revealing long, comely legs, shorn of hair, as he had requested. Against his will, he grew hard, thinking about how carefully Gerald must have used his knife to first trim then scrape away the fine hairs of the woman's legs, under arms and private areas.

Quickly beginning to recite bible verses, Anno was able to bring himself under control. Every time a woman was brought to him for this purpose, it got more difficult. Of course, fortunately, the older he got, the more difficult it was for him to lose control. Anno fervently believed that the messengers of God, the priests, clerics, monks and so forth, should observe complete and utter abstinence, and that the common children of God should be the ones to propagate and spread God's people across the lands.

Anno realized long ago that people would question his involvement with so many women. He himself, and his closest retainers, knew that he did nothing with them – did not bed them, did not undress them. He merely observed them. Anno turned back and began attempting to draw the woman out of her self protective cocoon.

Mer turned to Bors and Gerald. He gestured them out of the tent and led them into a small copse a few hundred lengths away. "Arthur, it is her this time."

"Are you sure, teacher? It has been so long, and we have searched through so many women."

"It is her, Wart."

Gerald leaned back against a nearby oak. The man drew a hand down and across his face, tangling his fingers in his beard. In a moment of completely irrelevant thought, he mused that his beard had been a lot fuller in his past two lives. His first body, dead now some three hundred years, had a head full of pure white hair, and beard to match. The body had not changed much over the intervening centuries, though many had died in battle and he had had to be reborn, and mature, only to die again. It never was fun, almost always a painful experience; there was that one time, forty years ago, when a spear, wielded by a Roman soldier, had slipped its head between the bones in his neck and severed his spine. He remembered slipping slowly away, it becoming ever more difficult to breathe, watching his scarlet blood dripping slowly from the tip of the leaf-shaped blade. He remembered feeling both relieved and angry, as he did every time he died. Relieved, because he did not have to go through that life any more, angered, because he knew that in less than a decade, the memories of his past lives would establish themselves in his new body, and override the personality of the young man he had inhabited.

With a jolt, his mind galloped back into the present. "It is her, then? How do you know?"

"Remember, I am a great deal older, and fancy myself a great deal wiser, than any Church man. I foresee things in my dreams that guide my actions, and guide my advice of those who, under specific influence, will do what I wish." Mer adopted a little grin, partially covered by his sweeping beard and moustache. "It helps to be a little Machiavellian, at times."

"Machia-who?" asked Bors. He was a man of few words, and Mer always had intimidated him. It irked the bear of a man to be so intimidated by such a little old man. But after that time when Mer had changed him into "something little and unnatural," Bors had tried not to irritate him.

"Machiavelli. He will be a famous statesman and author in, oh, about four hundred years. If we are careful, we might even be able to meet him!" Mer chuckled. "Hell, even if we are not careful, we still may be able to meet him! But at any rate, it is her, Arthur. What do we do?"

Gerald sank to the ground, hands on his knees and head back against the tree. "If it is her, Mer, we don't, I don't, have a choice. Anno has outlived his usefulness." He stood up with a huff. "Don't kill him, Bors. Send Percival for the rest of the others. In one week, we will take her from Anno."

It was, in fact, two weeks before the rest of Gerald's group arrived. The twenty warriors, their spouses, children and, sometimes, grand children, arrived on fine horses, gleaming in metal hauberks and carrying weapons, often of ancient manufacture, surrounding the monastery and Anno's encampment. In total, some three hundred odd people showed up, and sixty of them were fully armed and armored. Not all of them were fully trained, or even experienced, but all were enthusiastic. Their search was almost at its end.

As one, the travel weary, yet light hearted group formed a circle around the dale, quietly observing the advance of the red and gold banner of a lion rampant as it snaked through the small tents toward a larger tent, a pure white hide structure with a black crucifix emblazoned on its top. For a moment, it hesitated, wavering back and forth, as though it were being passed hand to hand. A shout, a woman's scream, and soon the flag was racing away from the large tent. More shouts came as the Archbishop's newly arrived soldiers poured from their pavilions with a great clatter of metal as they attempted to equip themselves on the run. One man, on the edge of the dale, could barely make out a pair of large men, a bent man and a figure in a dress hurrying towards him there on the ridge.

Within minutes, armed conflict broke out in the encampment as the banner dipped once, twice, three times and the people on the ridge raced down into the tent perimeter. People were left dead and dying in the melee, and slowly, ever so slowly, the banner and its bearer worked its way through the morass. Eventually, the group of four reached the man on the ridge, and all around, people cheered. As one, the hauberk wearing troops pulled back from the tent city and converged on the flag.