|
“To dream, the impossible dream,
To fight the unbeatable foe,
To bear with unbearable sorrow,
To run, where the brave dare not go.”
Don Quixote, the Impossible Dream
The black and red sat around the empty cars as the
college students disappeared down into the depths of the university’s
world, leaving them alone. In a quiet moment, the group said nothing at
all, letting the sounds of the ambient day pass them by.
“So we’re leaving tomorrow night,” Edgar finally
offered out of the silence, expressly avoiding Morgan’s eyes as he looked
at the others. “I say we get together at Tony’s and have a big dinner.
We’re going to have a long flight ahead of us.”
“That doesn’t sound like a bad idea,” Sydney nodded. She
stood up from the car, looking at the others. “Tomorrow night then,” she
said with a slight bow of her head, holding her two fingers between her
eyes. She turned and headed off from the group, not even affording them a
second glance.
Armand watched her go and looked at Everett. “So what’re you going to do?”
“Go home, write some grants, do some homework, and
train,” Everett
summarized indifferently.
“Yeah,” Armand chuckled as the two turned from the
group. “Lots of training.”
“No, not too much,” Everett said, checking the street he crossed
to get to the subway station. “You want to be fully fresh for the fight.”
He smiled humorlessly. “Besides, it’s a little late in the game to be
training so hard. You either can do it, or you can’t. One day of training
isn’t going to change that.”
“The knights are backing out, the Brotherhood’s
getting handed over to the government, and we’re all alive and safe,”
Malcolm said as he walked Marilyn to her dorm room. “Considering
everything, I think we came out okay in the end.”
“Ruwani’s leaving,” Marilyn added darkly to the
summarization. “Brian and Alan won’t pick up the phone. I haven’t even
tried Kim or Oliver. And I just know Victor’s going to be mad at me.”
“There’s a loss,” Malcolm grumbled to himself.
Marilyn stopped and turned to Malcolm. “He’s my
boyfriend.”
“Yeah, and we all make mistakes,” Malcolm retorted
unapologetically. He turned and continued walking. “If you think you’re
such a bad person that you need to punish yourself by hanging out with that
loser, go right ahead.” He glanced back at the girl he left standing in the
middle of the hallway. “I’m not going to stick around and watch you do it.”
“So, what’s the plan?” Roland asked, as he and Ledger
drove off from the university in the beat-up truck. “We going to go hang
out or what?”
“No,” Ledger answered cryptically. “I need to go home
and take care of some stuff.”
“Okay,” Roland said, bobbing his head in acceptance.
He looked out as the city flashed him by. “You know everything’s going to
be okay.”
Ledger looked over at the white knight, but he was
focused out the window. He just smiled and looked out from the opposite
side. “Yeah. I know.”
“I’m curious,” Edgar said, looking across at Morgan
as the two filled the narrow university elevator. “You claim you’re not a
knight any longer, yet you still help us from time to time.”
“You’re my friends,” Morgan answered. “Just about the
only friends I’ve got.”
“Then why do you so vehemently oppose what we stand
for? Something that you once stood for,” the middle-aged knight asked. “Why
do you hate the Oath and the knights?”
“Maybe because I hate being reminded of what I lost.”
Morgan shifted, obviously uncomfortable with the conversation.
“But it’s easily regained.”
“No, it isn’t, Edgar,” the former knight answered.
“You can’t choose what you believe. You can’t decide to trust in something
or believe in something. You don’t choose your morals.” He looked down at
the floor, scraping the tile with the tip of his hiking boot. “And mine
were sacrificed long ago.”
Armand hovered in the air for an eternity. He could
feel the wind on his face as the cool air whipped across his brow. Shifting
the branches of the trees about him, he took a deep breath in his floating
serenity before opening his eyes.
With a fast swish, the knight brought his foot across
his vision, swatting the tree branch of green, late-spring leaves. Dropping
down, Armand landed nimbly on the ground, his white dobok stained with
sweat. But he smiled and stood in his stance, grinning up at the target
that hung mockingly in the air high above him.
Ledger sat at his desk, the assorted guns laid out in
a perimeter fashion around the book he poured over. On the pages before
him, human diagrams lay exposed with points demonstrated over the arms and
torso.
Ledger sat up from the book, holding his index and
middle finger together as he studied the diagram. Checking the exact
location, he touched his fingers to a point on his forearm, one eyebrow
going up. He pressed down just a bit harder, his eyes suddenly going wide
as his left hand shot open.
The knight shook his head, staring at the point on
his forearm, then the illustrated point on the book’s page. He smiled a bit
and reached out to turn the page, only to find his left hand hanging limply
from his wrist. He tried to move it, even slapping it, but it didn’t
respond. Defeated, the knight collapsed against the desk, leaning his head
patiently on right hand as he stared at the left hand that lay useless on
the desk before him.
Roland was
sprawled out over his couch, snoring louder than the lawn mower outside.
Sydney held the heavy
metal rods in her hands like short swords, swirling them over her wrists in
familiar fashions. Her forearms ached at her as sweat poured down her brow,
but she focused on the burning of the motion and kept moving.
She stopped the swirling and struck the air in her
largely empty training room. Slicing at an imaginary opponent’s head, she
cut deep, then yanked the blade out almost simultaneously striking the
other side of his head. She followed up with a stab from her first sword
before she spun around, swinging hard to take his head off with a powerful
slash.
She stopped and came to stand before her defeated
opponent as she stared into nothingness. Once again, with a deep breath,
she began to spin the metal rods in her hands.
Edgar sat in
the stream of hot water, letting the coursing purity race over him as he
breathed in the cleansing steam. He leaned against the hot tiles of the
glass shower, his eyes closed in joy. The burning water ran over his skin,
massaging away the memories of the old scars that stood out over his body.
Meanwhile, the steam filled his senses and his mind, driving out the
uncertainties and worries that haunted him.
Everett sat at his
computer, typing away. The long document stood ready as he filed through it
one last time, checking its contents. While he stared, the front door
opened and Armand came strolling in, panting hard. Dripping sweat from his
white Tae Kwon Do uniform, the younger knight passed by Everett and went straight to the bottled
water in the kitchen.
“Hey,” he
said, after a deep gulp. “What’re you up to?”
“Homework,” Everett
answered, paying close attention to the screen. “I’ve got to get this
turned in by tomorrow afternoon. Finals are next week.”
“Finals?” Armand asked, thinking hard. “Wow. You’re
right. Oh crap.”
“Yeah, I know,” Everett
nodded in fearful agreement.
“I guess it’s got to be hard to worry about finals
next week when in a few days you’re going to head off and save the world
tomorrow.”
“Yeah,” Everett
said a touch absently. “But life isn’t going to end with this week,
Armand,” he maintained stoically. “Even if my life does, life in general
will not.”
“That’s a bit depressing to think about,” Armand
said, leaning against the wall, taking another gulp of cold water.
“Why?” Everett
asked. “You’re a knight. You’re prepared for death. Or you should be.”
“I am,” Armand nodded. “Well, I think I am.”
“It is possible to provide security against other
ills, but as far as death is concerned, we men live in a city without
walls,” Everett
quoted, turning to look at Armand with a serious gaze in his eyes.
“Somebody said that once. Epicurus, I think. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, the
point is, you, Armand Gessetti, are going to die. Tomorrow perhaps. Wednesday.
Maybe next week, maybe next month, or next year, or in ten years. Or in
fifty years, a hundred years.”
Everett
smiled sympathetically at the younger knight. “But you need to accept it
right now, Armand, before this mission. You need to accept it. You are
going to die.”
|