The Templar Chronicles: Freedom's Price

Gawain woke early the next morning feeling completely refreshed. He sat up to see that there was no one in the room with him. It was bright and it had to be close to midday, his body was a mix of sensations, he had to pee something fierce, and he was incredibly hungry. First things first, he thought moving to the nearby bathroom. He noticed that his hunger was now accentuated by the relieving of the pressure. He washed his hands and prepared to seek out something to eat, preferably meat. He noticed that there were clothes left on the chair where Jericho had sat before and on them rested a note in a neat and orderly handwriting. The note read:

Gawain,

These are for you; if you feel up to it, you can help around the base. If not I will see you at lunch as I will be bringing it to you today. Sorry we did not know your exact sizes, but these should be close. The boots should be the proper size though. Enjoy!

Jericho

He looked down dubiously at the outfit set before him; they were army fatigues and combat boots. Typical after hours clothes of the soldiers who lived and worked on the frontiers. He tried on the pants to see if Jericho was right, it was always difficult to find clothing for Gawain, they were few men in the Kingdom who were two and a quarter meters tall, and one hundred and ten kilos. He grinned as the pants managed to fit without being several centimeters short. Surprise, surprise, they cover my ankles, now for the shirt. It was too small though it covered him. Thankfully, it was a t-shirt so he did not have to worry about the sleeves being too ridiculous, but the shirt clung to his body tightly, though not uncomfortably. He actually enjoyed the way it accentuated his muscles, but he was glad it was typical southern day outside and he would not be cold in this skintight affair. The boots were an exact match which surprised him, his feet were not that big compared to the rest of him, but he wanted to know where someone got size 18 combat boots, Is there another giant running around here or did they just have them lying around? He smiled as he walked out in the hall, he would stand out, but not as much as he would have being half naked.

His stomach grumbled angrily, he quickly did the math, he had not eaten in almost four days and he had run many kilometers and then had to recover, that can’t be good for you. He left the medical center through the only door. He looked around, there was no one standing guard over him, but he was sure that the soldiers were nearby. When in doubt Gawain, he thought rhetorically, always follow your nose. He set out following the smell of food wafting through the halls.

He opened a set of double doors and found himself in what was almost certainly the mess hall. It was clean and sterile with several tables and chairs scattered about the room. It looked like it could only hold about thirty people at once, but that was not what Gawain noticed, the warm smell of fresh cooked food was hanging heavily in the air. I must be early or late, he thought as the room was almost deserted, and the only people in the room were a few cooks behind the counter, and Templar Knight Jericho.

Jericho seemed to be holding a discussion with the cooks, their tones were normal but based on their stances and expressions neither side seemed pleased. Gawain began to move towards them, as he drew near he overheard, “I am just saying that this is not enough food for me and the boy, I know it is against your regulations to give two helpings to one person. But if you cannot trust me then you cannot trust anybody. I am a Knight after all.” Gawain did not get to hear the cook’s response to this logic, because at this point they all noticed that Gawain was in the room. “Ah, you are awake,” Jericho seemed genuinely pleased to see him up and about. The pleasure was quickly replaced with frustration as he turned back to the cooks, “Now will you serve me enough food for two?”

“No sir, we will serve each of you enough food for one.” The cook clearly wanted to annoy Jericho for wasting his time.

“Very well, please do so.” Jericho’s his voice even and cool. I guess it is hard to get much of a rise out of a Templar, Gawain thought silently amused at the exchange that he had just witnessed. He moved forward and was handed a large plate, silverware, and a cup, on the plate was a pile of mashed potatoes, a large piece of chicken, and a side of peas. The cup was empty however, but he saw there were drink dispensers nearby them. His eyes quickly took in this meal, and he knew that it was not going to be enough to sate the beast currently raging in his stomach. “Come sit with me, I was going to bring you food so that you could continue to rest, but my efforts were hindered.” Jericho’s bass rumble rolled out, his eyes flicking toward the cooks with a knowing look.

“Sure.” Gawain was not sure who else he would have sat with in the deserted mess hall, but glad that he did not have to ask Jericho’s permission either.

“How are you feeling?” Jericho’s concern laced his voice. They sat at a table as far from the cooks as they could get in the relatively small room. Perhaps it was not that difficult to annoy a Templar after all, Gawain thought to himself.

“I feel fine, just incredibly hungry.” Gawain was in no mood to talk. The food tantalized him, and he was ready to tear into it.

“Before you begin, I wondered if you might answer a question so that I can settle this issue.”

“What is the question?”

“When did you want to return to Kent?”

Gawain sighed heavily at this, all thoughts drifting immediately away from the food set in front of him; truth be told he had no desire at all to return to Kent. There was nothing and no one there that he really cared about, and for once in his life, he had a strong interest in something and he did not want to abandon it now.

Jericho waited for him to talk out of courtesy, some things just have to be given time. It took some time for him to respond, and when he did his voice was halting and unsure, “I don’t want to go home Jericho.” Not sure what Jericho might be thinking he pressed on, “There is no reason for me to go home and I don’t want to.”

“We only managed to get a hold of your uncle, Simon. Though, we attempted to call your mother. He seemed pleased enough that you were alive and well, it was he who asked me when you were coming home, as I did not know I decided to ask you now. Would you mind terribly telling me why you are averse to returning?” Jericho asked his voice smooth and emotionless, Gawain hoped because he did not want to be judgmental, though the curiosity was evident in the question he had asked.

“Yes actually I would, that is a long story, and not one I have ever told. I don’t really want to start now.” Gawain suddenly felt defensive and reproachful. Why should I have to tell my life story to this man? He had only known him for twenty-four hours or so and he was generally against speaking about his past if he had the choice.

“Very well,” Jericho’s eyes scrunched in concern, “then I must ask what you do intend to do. Are you going to make yourself useful around here, or are you planning on going somewhere else entirely?”

“If it is all the same to you, I would much rather stay here and do whatever I can to help track down those men who captured me.” Gawain felt a slight tinge of fear that Jericho might say no, that he was not welcome to stay here with the soldiers: a “lamb” amongst the wolves.

“Excellent, now that we have that settled it will make assignments for the next few days much easier.” Jericho exclaimed with obvious relief and a little excitement, he was under a lot of stress and simplification made other tasks seem a little easier as well. “Please eat, I have asked all I have for you this day.”

This caught Gawain off his guard, no one had ever willingly accepted him, let alone with excitement. Why did this man care? He began to pick at his food eating slowly and deliberately so that he would not get sick. A thought occurred to him as he sat there; perhaps the Knight would be open to answering a few of the questions that buzzed through Gawain’s mind. I mean why not, he seems easy going enough, and you never gain anything by being timid. “Um, Jericho?”

“Yes?”

“If you don’t mind I have a few questions about the Templar.”

“No by all means, that is something that I know a great deal about and would happily answer whatever question that I can.” Jericho had a smile in his voice, though not quite on his face.

Gawain began slowly, and as he grew more confident, speaking more and more quickly his interest flowing out of him almost to the point where he was babbling, “Well, I really don’t know that much about the Templar. When did they come to power? How did they come to power? What was the world like before them? Why do they govern? How do they govern? How did they become different from regular men? Why do they allow as many freedoms as they do if they are so religious, and a hundred other questions.”

Jericho laughed heartily and with warmth. However, his face darkened with thought for a moment and then he inquired, “Did you not learn these things during you schooling Gawain?”

Gawain was caught off guard again; he had not expected to have to answer a question after his onslaught. “Well…no I wasn’t much into school growing up.” The truth underlying the statement caused Gawain to blush slightly.

The fact was that he barely even graduated from school, doing the bare minimum for every assignment, copying notes and answers wherever and whenever possible, and generally skipping class whenever possible. He knew that compared to this man he was as ignorant as a stump. He had never been ashamed of his education before, not even in front of the students who did take it seriously and were good at it to boot. He was prideful and he knew it, he never wanted to go to the academy and he had not hesitated to tell anyone who asked. Now his emotions were all mixed up. He wanted to impress Jericho and knew that the whole truth would most likely have the opposite effect, and so he was hoping that Jericho would let this one slide.

Jericho looked pensive but did not push. Gawain was thankful and hoped that the subject would not come up again anytime soon. “Which question do you want answered first? I will try to get through as many of them as I can in the time I have.”

“I guess at the beginning, where else do you start a story? Tell me what things were like before the Templar, what made them take over.” Gawain was happy to move on to another subject.

“Please eat, and I will talk. You have come to the right place for this information. You should know that I am a historian of the Templar, in addition to other things, when I am not on assignment. I have worked many a long year with the documents that have survived from the Old World and the ones that we have written ourselves. Near as we can figure it is 1,236 years after the fall of the Old World in 2068. As you well know that makes this the year 3304 AD, and the world has changed quite a bit since then.

The Old World was much the same as the one you and I live in now, though ours moves more slowly. At least I think that is the case. Certainly, we move faster physically from place to place, but I think our mental pacing is quite different. We take more time to think and to plan than our ancestors did. Anyway, there were many, many, many more people living in the Old World than are alive today. Based on the old documents that we were able to salvage from the ruins of the major cities there were close to ten and a half billion people living on the planet before the year 2060.”

Gawain’s mouth fell open. That was so many people. His mind could not comprehend a number that large, “You must be joking.” Gawain’ sat back but continued eating, listening intently to Jericho’s words.

Jericho chuckled as if it were a joke, though he may have been laughing at Gawain’s reaction more than anything else, “No I am very serious about that figure; there were many more nations in the Old World than there are today, somewhere around two hundred and something we have no way of knowing for sure. The maps are too different even with the dates on them; we cannot be sure that there was really the same number of nations in 2067 as there were in 2001 for example. And today we only know of our own country, as we have lost contact with all the other continents of the globe. We know that to the Old World, are kingdom is situated in what was once the eastern half of the United States of America and the Southern half of what was once Canada. Furthermore, we also know that these were once great and perhaps the most important nations in the North American continent. But back to the sheer difference in population, the current population of the Kingdom of Avalon is,” Jericho paused trying to remember the last figure that he had seen in the Templar Census records, “somewhere around one-hundred-and-fifty-million men, women, and children.

The world was a more dangerous place politically in those years. The world’s economies were largely based on non-renewable resources and fluctuating, unreliable currencies. These dependencies lead to constant strife over the availability of those resources. Furthermore, the world was widely divided in their beliefs in the manner of governance and the way an economy should be run. There were systems called capitalism, socialism, fascism, and communism, which all abhorred and detested one another, and to top it all off were completely different from one another. Yet, these economies were so heavily intertwined that their diversification became a serious issue, and perhaps their undoing. How could a communist economy successfully trade with a nation that supported capitalism? They could never truly resolve the issue because their political ideologies were as greatly divided as their economies.

Democracies, republics, monarchies, oligarchies, communist governments, dictatorships, military juntas, they were all so different and rabid in the belief that their system was the best and most powerful that the nations of the world had a difficult time working together.” Jericho paused to see if Gawain had any questions.

Gawain was not sure what these “ies” and “isms” were, but he was not going to interrupt. His attention was held intimately as this knight of God explained a world that was so alien to him; he had trouble believing that it truly once existed.

“But perhaps the more divisive concept outside of their economies and systems of government, were their beliefs in what was right and what was wrong; more powerful still whether they supported one religion over another. One culture might believe that women should be suppressed and subservient to men, and another that they should be allowed to do pretty much whatever they wanted to do. One nation might support a citizen’s right to own a firearm, and another might have outlawed them completely.

But truly, the most devastating differences were their religious ones. These are what engendered the downfall of the Old World. It was not as it is today where all citizens have freedom of religion even though the majority of the citizens in Avalon adhere to the teachings laid out in the Gift of Truth and Honor. No, in many countries of the Old World, the people were more likely to kill one another than to agree to live and let live.

No one knows who did it or why, but one extremist faction from one of the major religions, we are still not sure which, burned Jerusalem to the ground in the fall of 2067.” Jericho paused once more as Gawain struggled to recognize the name.

He did not, but despite his frustration, he still wanted to hear more. If he had teachers like this when he was in school he would have paid a lot more attention, “Jericho what was Jerusalem, and why would anyone burn it to the ground?” Gawain’s eyebrows scrunched together trying to understand the importance of this unfamiliar word, was it a building, a place, or even a person?

Jericho smiled, the importance of the ancient city never registered with the young students he taught. Just as he was about to answer the question his eyes flipped to the clock set above the wall, it was nearly one thirty. Jericho stood, “Alas, I am sorry Gawain, but we will have to end this conversation here. I am already late for a meeting with the Captain and his men and I need to attend to them immediately.”

Gawain stood up to, a bit of a whine in his voice like a child being denied candy, “Hold on wait, you can’t just leave me hanging like that I want to know what Jerusalem was.”

“Well it seems that I am going to be here a while until we resolve this situation with the attacks on our borders. If you would like I can have lunch with you again to continue the discussion.” Jericho became visibly agitated as his eyes flicking between the clock, Gawain, and the doors.

“Yes I would like that very much. But what should I do in the meantime?”

Jericho looked thoughtful for a moment, his eyes refocusing on Gawain as he came up with an answer, “Well I know that the soldiers need help in the stables if you are willing to do a little dirty work. If not I am sure that the captain can find something useful for you to do to earn your food around here.”

“No, no the stables will be fine I will head there immediately to see what I can do for them.” It would not be the first time that he had to do something that others were against doing, and it would not be the last.

“Make sure you take good care in there, my horse Charlemagne is one of the occupants. I would be displeased to learn that he is being mistreated.” Jericho smiled. He headed to the door of the mess hall and turned as he was about to exit, “Feel free to eat my portion of the food that is left. I will see you tomorrow, Gawain. Farewell.”

“Goodbye, Jericho.” Gawain frowned as the massive man turned and headed out the door towards whatever meeting he had that afternoon. His head swam with the information that he had absorbed, and he was just getting to why the Templar were formed. This was probably going to take a few lunches before he got the whole story. He was not discouraged. In fact, he looked forward to spending more time with Jericho. He found the man… amazing, to say the least. Odd that he had never met anyone else like him in the world. Maybe, he pondered, people are more worth it than I thought.

He set out towards the stables after finishing both his helping and Jericho’s and returning the plates to the cooks behind the counter. He was glad to be doing something productive again; he found that it helped him to sort his thoughts if his hands had something to distract them. He had a lot to think about just then.

Jericho set out at a brisk pace towards the Captain’s quarters. He really was not that late, only by about three minutes but it irked him nonetheless. He detested being late to anything. He arrived, Grom had his lieutenants there already, and they were discussing the status of the supplies in camp, arguing over what should go out on the next requisition form. They stopped suddenly, leaping to attention as Jericho entered the room.

“Sorry I am late Gentlemen, but I was detained at lunch.” Jericho chuckled at himself again despite his irritation. He rarely cared that no one else understood why he was laughing. “What is the situation on the additional APC that we ordered for our counter offensive?”

“Sir it will be here in three days until that time I would like your permission to spread out the men amongst the lumber camp’s work crews to guard them against further attacks.” Grom’s no-nonsense attitude that came off a bit snippy, but Jericho understood. The captain was concerned about the wellbeing of the citizens under his protection. And so, he let it slide.

“Very good, I think that is an excellent idea, though I want you to make it appear that we are as disorganized as possible. The more foolish we appear the better, I do not want the demon knowing that I am here, and so I will stay in camp until we are ready.”

“Thank you sir. We will see to it at once. I have the latest report if you would like to hear it.”

“By all means Captain.”

“The two scouts you sent out to keep tabs on the enemy’s movements called in this morning. Private Ryan in the east reports the enemy is still moving hard south, south- east and another of their prisoners has collapsed and died on the march. They are pushing them hard in fear of pursuit and Ryan is having a difficult time keeping them in sight even with the high long-range equipment we supplied him. Private Caroline in the west reported that she is following a new band of the hunter seekers approaching from a southwesterly direction making their way at a relatively slow pace towards the forest. She also reported that their numbers are somewhere between twenty five and thirty, she cannot get a specific fix on their numbers as they only move during the night, and during the day she has to hide to avoid being spotted herself.”

“Interesting news Captain and I am sure that we will learn more soon. I am going to focus our efforts on the squad approaching from the west. Recall Private Ryan I do not want him running afoul of those drones and ending up a prisoner himself. Please also inform Private Caroline that she is to maintain at least a three-kilometer distance from the enemy, she will also have to move at night. Please also send another of our mounted troops out to her, either Connell or Jenkins. She will need to sleep eventually and with two, they will be much more unlikely to slip up. I want the rest of us to prepare ourselves for a hard fight we will be having in about five days’ time.”

“Yes sir, anything else?”

“That will be all for now, Captain”

Grom nodded and began snapping orders, “Mister Daniel, get on the con and recall Ryan immediately. Miss Smith, go find Connell he’s been on this sort of mission before, I want him to go out and assist Caroline.”

“Yes Captain.” They both replied in curt military fashion and left to carry out their orders.

After they had left Jericho held up his hand to Grom to show that he had more to say. “A moment Captain.”

“Yes sir?”

“Grom,” Jericho felt comfortable using the man’s name now that his men were out of earshot. Jericho spoke deliberately, hoping to impress upon the Captain the level of seriousness that the situation merited. “I want you to know that with the additional APC arriving, I also have several energy weapons coming with it. I hope your men will be able to master their use within a few days, as their use will be essential in my plan. Furthermore, if the number of enemies is truly around thirty drones, I will need you to find eight volunteers willing to walk into an ambush and a hard fight. If it helps you to persuade them, you may tell them that I will be amongst them the whole time.”

“I will most certainly be able to find eight soldiers as crazy as you sir,” he smiled, emphasizing the joke and Jericho laughed humoring him, eventually Grom continued, “and I am glad to hear about the weapons. May I inquire as to what type they are, force?”

Jericho shook his head, “No, they will be directed light energy with the cutting heat side effect inherent with that form of gun.”

Grom nodded, “Laser, or solar energy?”

Jericho smiled, “Laser, solar simply would not do this time around.”

Grom nodded more to himself now, “Night op then. It will not have been the first time that we have had to use them out here on the frontier. Half of my troops are already savvy with them. Are you going to tell me your full plan yet?” His voice was strained as he spoke this last sentence, clearly not ready to give over the full trust of his command to Jericho. After all, they had only just met.

Jericho’s voice turned hard, not wanting to be asked again, “I will tell you when all is set and not before.” However, he also did not want Grom to oppose him clandestinely. He sighed, “Do not worry Grom you will be leading the majority of your men into battle, and if all goes well you will be the hero in the fight, not me.” Jericho’s plan relied heavily on the battle prowess of the Captain. Jericho was staking his life on it.

Grom sat back from his tense posture, “Very good sir, I do trust you in this. You have been fighting these demons longer than I have been alive.” The Captain seemed to have accepted the fact that Jericho was not going to be swayed from his position.

“Excellent Captain, I will see you later today. I must contact the Templar Command in Granada and inform them of the situation. Carry on.” Jericho got up and left before Grom could salute. Jericho got tired of military politeness quickly, he headed towards the tent that he had set up for himself in the clearing where all of his communication equipment was. He hoped that Command would appreciate the plan that he was hatching, even though it endangered his life to a degree they probably would not have allowed if his superiors were here themselves. His thoughts rebelled against the notion, what is one more Knight to them? I will do the best I can by these people and nothing less. He switched on the monitor and let the machine boot up. He waited until the call was being patched through and then stood up straight his face a mask of sincerity and courtesy.

To all those outside of the tent all that could be heard was the sound of voices. The fabric of the tent prevented any clear words from reaching them. But that did not stop anyone from being curious. Who exactly out-ranked this Templar who was giving them laser rifles worth more than three years’ salary apiece? How could Jericho expect to get these without the slightest hesitation? Who was this man? Most of them would never find out.