Redemption
copyright 2012 Faeriemage
Redemption is just another word for nothing left to lose.

        It’s a funny thing about memory, the strangest things trigger it.

        After leaving the Rector’s office, I went to my room to grab a long coat and a change of clothing. I didn’t like the idea of wearing the same clothes for weeks on end, and it would give me the opportunity to clean one while I wore the other.

        I grabbed a torch from the sconce in the hallway and tossed in on my bed. Then I began to yell, “Fire!”

        The boys woke and added to the confusion. Like good little soldiers, they went about their assigned duties, rushing to the other rooms to wake the younger students. I just walked to the entrance. The same Hand still stood there and turned to look at me.

        “You were supposed to go to the Rector…”

        He never finished his statement. There is a saying about surprise, “It is the thoughts that go through your enemies mind when you execute your plan flawlessly.”

        His eyes had barely begun to widen when I thrust my sword through his heart. The thing about silver is that it is corruptible. I immediately cleaned it before putting it back in its sheath. I didn’t want to have to deal with corrosion on my blade. I really didn’t know how long I would need to use it.

        There were worse things in this world than the Order of the Sacred Heart.

        The first wisps of smoke fluttered past me as I opened the door and looked out. The smell of it, so much different that the fires that I’d run into so many times in the intervening years, brought a memory flooding back to me:
        I look around me, seeing the fire on everything in my view. My bed is an island in this sea of fire. I cry for my parents, but there is no sound but the roar of the fire lions on the walls. They taunt me and tell me I am about to die.

        I don’t want to die. I want to live with my Mommy and Daddy and Hannah, my sister.

        A man comes through the door. His face is covered in cloth, and his body is dripping wet. His coat steams a little. He picks me up and kicks out my window. With me still in his arms he jumps through it and then sets me on the ground.

        I cry for my parents, but he is already gone back into the house. Soon after the fire truck comes.

o-|===>
        I shook off the memory and ran into the night. I hoped that it would be hours before they realized I was gone. I also hoped that none of the children were killed. They didn’t deserve this.

        “He’s over here!” I heard a call from my right.

        They were faster than I thought. I leaned forward and pushed myself. Sprinting wasn’t something that they really worked on with us. Sometimes we ran for a few miles, but that was to build endurance. They wanted us to be unflagging, not fast.

        Right now, I was trying to be fast.

        I knew the abilities of the Hands, or at least I thought I did, especially after they’d injected a dose into their systems. If there was ever a time that the Rector would let them juice up, now was the time.

        He guarded the doses well. It was a necessary part of our training to watch one of the older Hands take his last dose. I never knew how the Rector knew when a Hands last dose would be, but I’d seen it happen three times.

        We were required to clean up the resulting ash.

        Other than the Rector, there were no members of the Order who were older than twenty eight.

        If he allowed a dose to the people who would be chasing me I was in real trouble. It was the reason that the people who went through their coming-of-age were so much better than the rest of us. Their speed and the quickness of their reflexes were all enhanced by that straw colored liquid.

        You could still surprise them, though.

        I’d killed the Hand at the door. I could do it again. Just because you were faster than me didn’t mean you were better than me.

        I ducked behind a tree and strove to quiet my breathing and the pounding of my heart. Not because I wished to hide, but because I wanted to hear.

        It was only a moment or two, or so it seemed, and there was a pounding on the ground from behind. I closed my eyes, imagining where the sound would place my adversary. At the perfect moment I lashed out with my sword from my cover.

        The next sound I heard was my sword striking his. Somehow his sword had been there to block mine. I opened my eyes quickly, even as I fell into a guard stance.

        The white of his tabard was the first thing to alert me to the fact that this wasn’t a Hand. He was in a guard stance himself. We stood there looking at each other across the intervening space.

        He was old. Not as old as the Rector, maybe, but he was definitely older than thirty. I could see wrinkles around his eyes, and a few wisps of grey in his hair even in the gathering twilight.

        The next thing I noticed was the device on his left breast. The simple sword there was confusing enough to me that I let the point of my physical sword drop.

        “I suggest you put away your sword so we can get out of here.”

        I nodded mutely and sheathed my sword. I ran beside the other man, for that is what I felt myself to be, a man. The Order would have treated me as one after my ceremony. I took this as my ceremony now. This first act of rebellion against that corrupted Order was my declaration of manhood.

        We ran until my lungs burned. We ran until I was sure that if I took another step further I would collapse. We ran until running was the only thing that existed in the world, and the thought of sleep seemed a distant memory. When I decided I was done for, we picked up the pace and ran some more.

        A part of my mind continued to work beyond just keeping one foot moving in front of another, and I realized something. The greatest difficulty in long distance running isn’t physical. Your body has a finite amount of energy to use, sure, but it has so much more energy than we normally use.

        The greatest difficulty in running for a long distance is mental. You mind tells you ‘that’s enough, no more’ even as your body is only beginning to get going.

        I found this out through experience that night. My entire body ached, my throat was raw, my vision began to swim, and then, only then, did my tormentor come to a halt. He didn’t say a word to me. His hand was stretched out to me holding a bottle, which I drank from greedily.

        “Keep moving, boy. We need you still capable of movement.”

        He put a hand behind my back and gave me a gently shove. I stumbled forward and began to walk. Everything seemed to go by at a crawl after so long running. Looking around us for the first time, I realized just how long we must have been running for. The moon was well past the horizon, and all traces of the sun had long since left the western sky.

        It was tranquil, almost, walking through that forest. The heat of the day was just beginning to leave, and I shivered in my sweat soaked shirt. The coat I would helped ward off the chill a little, but I think it was more shock than anything else.

        I had killed a man in cold blood this evening.

        For the first time I actually considered what was being expected of us. They had their games that they made us play, but every time that I’d acted to take a life, the life of a friend had been taken already. I acted as the hand of retribution, not with murderous intent. I had approached the Hand this evening fully intending to kill that man.

        I dropped to my knees and retched.

        The only thing that came up was water and bile. I continued to heave long after my stomach was empty.

        I had killed a man.

        “Get up, boy.”

        “No. I won’t.”

        “Get up!” he said, pulling me to my feet.

        “Leave me alone.”

        “We don’t have time for this. We have three more miles to the rendezvous point.”

        Three miles. I could do three more miles. I got to my feet and shuffled forward. I almost hoped that they would catch us now. It would take away the ache that I felt. It would remove the hole I felt growing in my chest.

        Sure, I didn’t particularly like the man I had killed, I’d known him though. I’d killed someone who had been a part of my life almost continually for the last ten years.

        The Order had never had more than a hundred people. With that few people living all in the same place, I’d come to know each and every one of them. I was leaving behind my family, a messed up family to be sure, but my family all the same.

        I shuffled along behind him as I remembered all of the people that I’d spent so much time with. I didn’t miss the beatings or other abuse they had put me through, but I did miss them.

        As I walked I pushed those feelings away. The Rector had been perfectly willing to feed me to that Demon. The Hands followed the Rector’s orders.

        I would not mourn a pawn of Demons.

o-|===>
        It was with relief that I finally collapsed into the seat of the van that awaited us at the meeting place. More men piled into the van as I waited. All of them wore the white tabard that my captor had. They laughed and joked with each other in a camaraderie that I’d never known in my life with the Order. They truly seemed to enjoy each-others company.

        They relieved me of my sword, which I would have felt really uncomfortable with if each of them hadn’t removed their own swords. A couple of them even had pistols that they stowed with their swords. They were removing their weapons. This was so strange to me. I’d worn that sword continually for the last four years. It made me feel apart from them, as they were obviously comfortable with the lack.

        I felt even more the outsider as I sat there listening. They tried to get me to join in the frivolity, but I didn’t feel like it.

        “It seems we’ve got a little Captain on our hands here, boys,” the man who slipped into the driver’s seat said. As soon as he began moving, the rest of them took off their tabards revealing normal everyday clothing underneath.

        The tabards were each carefully folded, as if they were the most precious thing to each of the men, and stowed.

        These men were deadly. It was obvious from the way they carried themselves. Even without their swords, I could tell that they would be difficult opponents in a fight.

        I must have dozed off because the next thing that I remembered was waking up outside a motel. Everyone piled out and for a moment I actually thought that they’d forgotten me.

        “Hey, kid. You’re in room 11 with me.”

        I looked up. The driver was talking to me. Everyone else had moved off, so we were left alone. I followed him into the room, not really paying attention to what he said. I was tired, in pain, and not a little bit sick at heart over my actions of the past day.

        Maybe if I went back to them now, begged them, maybe they would take me back. I would accept their punishments if only to know where my life was going from here.

       ”Where are you going, kid?”

        “Home…” I said, or something like it. My mind wasn’t fully functioning.

        “That’s where we’re taking you, kid. Your new home.”

        “I’m no kid.” I said bristling.

        “Then act like it. There are no free passes in the Knights, and if you want to be a part of us, then you need to prove your worth.”

        “Prove my worth? I have been trained since I was six years old nothing more than how to kill. I am expert with the knife and sword. I am the best fighter in my class.”

        “Which doesn’t prove anything of your worth. If you don’t want me calling you kid, then what’s your name?”

        “My name is Seth.”

        “Well, Seth, a Knight’s honor is his name, and his name is honor. If you vow to do something, then you’d better do it.”

        “We are in a war, and there is no honor in war,” I repeated by rote.

        The man laughed. “So, you believe that all Unseen are evil? You know that your Order is currently in league with an Unseen?”

        “I know,” I said quietly. The real reason I’d killed the Hand was I knew that I had neither the weapons to kill the demon witch, nor the courage to face down the Rector. I had taken on a weaker foe to assuage my own guilt at following a corrupt man.

        “And you would willingly go back?”

        “I am a broken tool. I no longer have purpose.”

        “Kid, you have more purpose than many. You still know of the war, even if your views of it are a little skewed.”

        “What do you mean?”

        “There are two types of people in the world: The unseen and everyone else. You, me, the Rector, the Captain, and most of the rest of the Knights are all part of everyone else. We were formed into a group by Gideon to fight the vampires.”

        “But that’s the story of the Order.”

        “Of course it is. Who did you think we were? We are the Knightly body of the Order without a true Order to serve.”

        “I thought…”

        “You’ve been lied to your entire life, Seth. It is partially my job to teach you about your birthright.”

        “You didn’t know my name, how could you know my birthright.”

        “We were sent to get you, Seth. We may not have known of your name, but we knew your birthday, and with that a lot more about you than you know yourself.”

        “Bull shit.”

        The driver snorted at me.

        “The Order as a whole was tasked with hunting Vampires, as that was who our founder most feared. A select group of the Order was tasked with a more difficult job; we were tasked with rooting out all evil Unseen wherever they might be.”

        “I thought…”

        “That all unseen were evil? Not hardly. They’re people, like you or me. Unli8ke our brethren, we were expected to use our judgment in meting out death. Not every vampire is evil, and not every Were is good.”

        “How can you tell?”

        “By their actions, mostly. Although sometimes it is hard to tell. Evil masquerades as good, and good can occasionally do evil with the best of intentions.”

        “But an evil act is an evil act.”

        “So, you should be put to death because you killed a man?”

        I had nothing to say to that statement. I would have loved to have the turmoil end. I kept trying to decide once and for all that I would not mourn the man I killed, but when I wasn’t focusing on that, I did mourn him.

        “Why do I feel so horrible about killing that man?”

        “Because you are good. You realize that every being has a right to life. Even Vampires.”

        “But I thought…”

        “We are Knights, Seth. It is ours to decide. Vampires have a greater potential for evil than other unseen. It is in their nature. They are predators. What they do is only evil as they are thinking beings. While you would not punish a wolf for eating sheep, a vampire knows the difference between allowable and prohibited acts.”

        “Ok, that is confusing. First you say they are good, and then you say…”

        “I never said that Vampires are good, Seth. Some are just not evil.”

        “Isn’t that the same thing?”

        “Nope. It’s not. Good and evil are merely the end points on a spectrum. You have Demons on the one end, thankfully few and far between. Everyone else is somewhere above them.”

        “If Vampires can be not evil, then why not Demons?”

        “Because they corrupted themselves in the search for power. I personally don’t know the particulars, but suffice it to say that demons are beyond redemption.”

        “So, I am honor?”

        The guy smiled at me.

        “There are four tenets of the Order. Over the years we have dropped most of the rest of the chivalric code, especially when we started letting female knights into the Order in the forties.”

        “So, the first is about honor, what is the second?”

        “A Knight is merciful. While evil cannot be spared, neither is torture condoned. A swift death is a kindness that all beings in creation deserve.”

        “But what if…”

        “No ‘but’s or ‘what if’s. You do not torture or draw out an execution. The more that we choose to inflict pain on our enemies, the more we bring evil into our hearts. The use of torture by our brethren in the Order was what lead them to their demise. They decided that Vampires were not human, and therefore not deserving of mercy.

        “They began to revel in the tortures they inflicted. It was a short step from there to taking this pain to others of the Unseen.”

        “Honor, Mercy, and then what?”

        “A Knight is kind. It is not our calling to feed the poor, but neither is it our calling to debase them further. All beings in creation are our brothers and sisters and deserving of our respect.”

        I looked thoughtfully at him. I could point out how there was a disconnect in his definition of mercy and the fact we were supposed to be kind, but I chose not to say anything about it.

        He answered my unasked question.

        “Is it a greater kindness to allow a killer to run free, murdering the innocent as he sees fit? Or is the greater kindness to kill the murderer and thereby not inflict his sickness on himself or others?”

        “I don’t know.”

        “A good place to begin. Many have spouted in the past that it is best to lock them up. What good does that do to the man or to society? If locking him up is bad, what about leaving him loose? As I see it, there are only two choices that are at all merciful: Leave the man alone to torture and debase the other members of society or provide a swift death for him.”

        “But most murderers are just normal people.”

        “And there are police to handle them. We are here for one purpose, to take care of those that the police can’t.”

        “What is the last one?” I asked, still unsure as to whether there was a disconnect between the two concepts he’d shared.

        “A Knight is flexible. Just as his sword is not a rigid piece of metal, the Knight is not unbending. Any Knight who puts his principles above his heart or his mind is a fool, and not to be trusted.”

        We talked for a few more hours before tiredness took me and I lay down to go to sleep.

o-|===>
        The next morning dawned bright and clear. It was two days before my Sixteenth birthday, and I wondered, again, if I was doing the right thing.

        If I were still at the Order, they would be giving me all the food I could eat, as the ritual required a lot of sustenance. No one outside the Order really knew what the ritual was, but it had something to do with preparing our bodies to take the Dose. I had some idea now that it included giving myself over to the demon.

        Parts of me thought that wouldn’t have been such a bad idea. She was beautiful in a cold, alien sort of way.

        The rest of me realized that it would have cost me my soul to do so.

        After breakfast, which was decidedly meager, we again piled into the van and continued our journey. I didn’t know where we were going, exactly, but I could tell we were heading north.

        I watched the other Knights, for that is what I now assumed they were, as we drove. They were friendly with one another. They laughed and smiled. They were so different from the Hands of the Order. They were…human. That was the only word I could think about for them. They were so very human.

        I even tried a few jokes of my own as we traveled, but they really didn’t go over too well. Apparently being locked away from the world for ten years will do that to a person.

        About noon we arrived at a small airport outside of Livingston.

        A private jet waited for us there. I don’t know how the Knights made their money, but they were obviously well off. The eight of us piled into the Jet and were soon moving down the runway.

        “So, where are we going?”

        “Kevin, you never told him?”

        “He never asked,” said Kevin, the driver.

        “We’re on our way to England, Seth.” The first to respond told me.

        “Wait, what? I’m pretty sure I need a passport…”

        “The Knights still have some influence in certain parts of the world. People still remember the good we’ve done.”

        “What does that have to do with…”

        “What he means, Seth, is that as long as you wear a tabard of the Order, then it is your passport into a number of places.”

        The other seven knights dropped to a knee at the appearance of the individual from the cockpit.

        “My liege, we did not expect you until we landed.”

        “I needed to see the young one for myself. So, he really almost took your head off, David?”

        “Yes, captain. He did. If I hadn’t already had my sword up…”

        “I’ll have to keep my eye on him then. Kevin, my sword.”

        Kevin arose and walked to the back of the plane where a gold embossed sword hung. I would have assumed it to be ceremonial if not for the sheen off the razors edge.

        “Do you wish to join us in our fight, Seth? Normally there would be a rather lengthy trial period, but it seems that events get away from us. Midsummer is only two days away, and I don’t personally relish waiting for a full year to retrieve your birthright. We were late picking you up, for which I apologize.”

        “Do I have a choice?”

        The man smiled. There wasn’t a trace of grey in his hair or well-groomed beard, but he seemed to be much older than the other men.

        “If I am pledging myself to you, then I would like to know your name.”

        He smiled at me, with that soft smile of his, “Call me Peter.”

        “Ok, Peter, I will join your fight.”

        I took a knee before him, and he lay the flat of his blade on my left shoulder.

        “Seth, I pledge you my support as you pledge me your life.” He moved the blade to my right shoulder. “Arise, Sir Seth, Knight of the Order of the Sacred Sword, bound as our brother. Your fights are our fights. Your pain is our pain. May your life come dear to our enemies and last long upon the land.”