We had a dilemma.
No, I had a dilemma. And I had to fix it. But it wasn't a Horse with a bum leg. Or a Husk with my name on it type of issue. It was complex. Social. Interconnected with consequences that could ripple across my froze over world with deadly results. And not the good kind.
These were the type of decisions that everything rode on.
The type of decisions that make or break a King. A Leader.
I went to bed thinking that. I thought it passively as I watched the green scar rip into earth for the millionth time.
I continued to do so as I "woke up" the following morning to Marlon at my door.
The smell of his herbal tea filled my room like ghosts. Unseen and active in all the shadowy corners. And like Husks, they stunk. His tea always stunk. Never told anyone what it was made of though….
The rising sun outside peered in through the window to my left and highlighted the dust in the air as it was swept up by pungent tea vapor. I needed to sweep.
"You do that when things aren't going well, you know?" Marlon commented as I paced and he sat on my bed.
His dark skin was as smooth as his voice— equally as experienced too with the wrinkles that formed around his mouth and eyes when he spoke.
"Do what?" I approached my desk.
"Start looking for little things to tidy up when we're in tense times….. it's a—"
"Coping mechanism." I remember this lesson. I grabbed my eye moisturizing solution and popped the cork, raising the bottle over my head with the sun…..
Nothing.
"Fuck."
"All out?" Marlon questioned, "I'll return with some more by tonight. We'll eventually have to send our Scouts further for more medical solutions though…."
"I'll tape my eyes closed before that." I replied.
Marlon itched his bald head, "Wait…. That may actually work."
I placed the empty bottle of eye moisturizing fluid back on my desk, finding my eyes attracted to the new newspaper written and made by Marlon himself.
Wednesday December 15th, 2047. Along with analytics on our conquest to spread our reach across all of Tundra Five and individual achievements. Again, it helped the older people.
Not me. I needed a different kind of help. Maybe that's why Marlon came to me this morning.
"I feel you need a talk." He suddenly said, prophetically.
I kept pacing. He'd been the person I spoke to since I was…. Well ever since I made it here to Camelots Keep at ten years old. He and I both knew pacing meant yes. Yes I need to talk.
"Why don't you give me the rundown of all the recent events." Marlon questioned as he adjusted himself on my bed and stirred his tea.
"Lance hasn't told you?"
"Of course he has, but Lance isn't you. Perspective is….. a shape-shifter."
I wish I could say cool shit like that.
I cleared my throat and tugged at the neckline of my thermal shirt, "The week went off course after we received reports from our Scouts of Human/Husk cooperation. That was… Monday? Yea Monday. They were heading directly for us. Smaller Horde. But a Horde all the same— and they let Wayne be a first responder…. I don't play that. We cleaned it up. Two human deaths. No human/Husk cooperatives. Just Husks in human clothing….."
Marlon nodded and sipped his tea, "Hmm…. Sounds almost like a message doesn't it?"
"What?" My head turned with my body as I reached the left side of the room and headed back over to the right.
"Husk in Human clothing. It's like a remix of Wolf in Sheep's clothing."
"Who's the sheep?" It wasn't us, I knew that much for damn sure.
Marlon smiled, crows feet opened up at the corners of his eyes, "That is the question."
"Anyway." Sometimes he was too abstract for me, "We did an autopsy on the clothed Husks. More than likely their clothing and conditioning leaves the GroveMongers of Tundra Four to blame. They're within the closest proximity of us. I'm having some Scouts run trials on captured Husks to see how long it takes them to reach the same level of True Decay over a similar distance— if the distance matches that's hard evidence."
"Seems like a lot of work when you are already beyond reasonable doubt." Marlon looked down at his cup.
I kept pacing. I was getting my steps in this morning.
"Cmon, Trish. The GroveMongers have a monopoly on infinitely renewable food supplies AND sunlight. On an Island going through a second Ice Age do you know how incredible that is? They do. That's why they take these risks— they know there's little to no drawback. They're needed."
"Yes. They are needed. The four other Tundra's benefit from them working. Last time I checked we ain't have anyone that knows how to operate their tech."
Marlon nodded, "But we have people who can learn— they can teach us….."
"Yea from the Dungeon right? You know who I am? Definitely not the previous Knight-King."
Marlon sighed, "Trish….. we can't afford to be under their foot forever. Actions like this need to be punished or they'll continue to push the line, don't you agree?"
"Then I'll put my foot down when it comes to that. Marlon we got babies here—"
"Yes! The most young people in all the Tundra's. We're strong and healthy—"
"No. We're vulnerable to loss. We have kids here— can we not be so hungry to put them in another turf war? Like cmon, Mar."
Silence…..
Marlon sighed, "You know….. I vividly remember when you were a kid. When you first came stumbling up to our doors. Barely a teen. Alone."
"Y'all greeted me with enough weapons to take down two Hordes."
"Mr. Penrose was a paranoid and violent Knight-King— that much is known. You understand how weird it was to hear of a young girl wandering Tundra Fives Zone Twelve naked and delirious from our Scouts?"
I didn't say anything. Too busy wiping sweat off my palms. I don't like this memory.
"And then…. To find you had amnesia. You were an anomaly to say the least. And in a time when there weren't too many kids running around, even more so. Still no memories…?"
"No." He always asked that.
He was going somewhere with this.
"Do you remember how much you bumped heads with the Knight-Hunters? Everyone would've said you were being bullied…. Did you see it that way?"
"I don't get bullied, Marlon."
He chuckled, "You said that same thing when Lance broke your nose in training…. With dummy swords."
"Don't trip, I got him back."
"Oh we know. You always do, don't you?"
I looked at Marlon as he set his empty cup on the floor.
"You got the him back best of all, huh?"
I stopped pacing. He didn't have to say his name. Anyone who knew me, knew Marlon was referring to Arthur Penrose. Previous Knight-King. The man I killed less than a year ago to take his spot.
Speaking about him with Marlon was always….. tense. Weird. Hard to understand the dynamics of for a thousand reasons.
"You weren't well received initially were you?"
"Get on with it, Marlon."
"Enjoy the journey. It's as important as the destination you reach."
Fuck, he did it again.
"No. I was not." I conceded. "But that's because humans don't like the truth. It's dark and ugly as hell. But that ain't my fault."
"No?"
I felt my knuckles itch in that way they only ever do when I want to run them into somebodies jaw. I stuffed it down quick but a bit of my innermost emotion slipped from my mouth like a hole in a water skin.
"The hell you want me to say?! I worked for this spot! I changed how we do things for the better. No more child soldiers. No more grisly raids of conquest— POINTLESS, conquest. No more enemies! You even said in your little analytics I lowered the collective stress levels of our people which allowed our birth rates to rise. I did that! Me. Not Arthur. He…. He was a nasty… gluttonous, violent tyrant. You're a man. You wouldn't see that unless you looked. And you didn't look…. Because he was your father."
Marlon kept his calm advisory aura about himself like a cloak, "You are entitled to your frustrations…. And more than welcome to go further in depth about them with me whenever you please. I understand you don't for my sake, though. Noble… but possibly disastrous to your mental."
"Excuse me?"
She could've sworn she saw Marlon smile for a fraction of a second. Her skin went icy…
Then, nothing.
"Lance tells me you're seeing things out there?" He looked out the window at the frozen over city laid out before them.
"Mother fuc—" I needed to get it together before I skinned this smooth talking bookworm with a butterknife. "Marlon. I've decided to forcibly end our journey and place us right in the middle of our desired location. You didn't want me to talk— you didn't want to talk anything out with me. You come with something. An opinion. What's good?"
Marlon stood up and picked up his cup, I could hear his fingerless gloves brush against the clay surface like dull static. His purple sweater stood out under the rising sun, hugging his frail body tightly.
"I only came to draw parallels. Trish, you're a very headstrong woman. You're dominant and imposing. You have a clear plan and goals. Good leading qualities as long as everyone agrees with what you have in mind. Many could argue that very few do in fact, agree…."
"You've been speaking to Lance quite a bit."
"I've been speaking to all of our Knight-Hunters, yes. We have some of the greatest defensive and offensive human countermeasures in all the Tundra's. They wish to be utilized. Do you understand how impressive they are? Did you know ninety eight point five percent of our DNA is junk dna?"
I don't know what that means. He must've seen it in my face.
"It goes relatively unused— unspecified to the rest of the human bodies laborious tasks. Growth and development. Hormone production. White Blood Cell count. Sensory acuteness. Bone density. Skin color. You ever think about why Knight-Hunters exist across the globe with different names and uses— why they're so different from us? Even before the chemical enhancements and specialized training? I bet everything on my life that they don't have nearly as much junk DNA as the rest of us. They are humans being evolved by circumstance at breakneck speeds. And you aren't exploring it— truly using this gift we have."
"How many kids died because Arthur put them into Knight-Hunter training before they could comfortably let go of their stuffed animals and bed time stories?"
Marlon looked away. Fuck that.
"Look at me."
He did.
"How many kids got themselves killed trying to be like the big scary Knight-Hunter heroes? We don't aspire to be empty— we don't aspire to be devoid of emotion and fear because we need those things as humans. The Knight-Hunters are only as good as we are— and we weren't good for a long ass time."
Marlon ran a finger around his cup.
"In conclusion. I'll always hear out my men. But the decision falls to me. I earned that. So I'll have my scouts do the tests, to be sure GroveMongers are responsible for this. Then, we'll talk. Trades are due Friday. We're low on a number of fruits and vegetables. That's more important than murder. Get out."