Knight Parade Sixth Chapter it Begins

Chapter Six:

It Begins

The next couple of days go by as usual for Mike. He continues to work on the farm and on improving his self-defense with Grandpa Tony. But Mike and Tony are very careful to hide what they are working on from Mike's folks, they would not agree with the violence, not agree at all.

On the third day after Mike's excursion to town Mike has some surprise visitors. The family is setting down for its noon meal and Tony comes into the house in quite a rush.

Tony says slightly winded and flustered, "Four riders from town on their way here, they're almost at the north eighty. Mike, Larry saddle up we're going to meet them."

Mike brings his plate to the kitchen and asks with concern in his voice, "Are they Homage guards from town?"

Grandpa answers impatiently waiting at the door, "Not sure son, don't think so, they don't ride in a particular military fashion to suggest that. But we need to be careful and meet them none the less."

The three quickly grab their weapons. Mike never lets the blade that his grandfather gave him far from his side. Since he killed those two guards in town he even sleeps with it beside him.

Mike, with Grandpa's help, is becoming quite the horseman, the three quickly mount up and are off toward the north eighty. Once they clear the grove Mike sees the riders and at once he knows they mean no harm. He would know his boys from anywhere, and the female with them, is Claire. Grandpa can tell from the look on Mike's face the relief he feels from seeing the riders and Grandpa knows they are no threat. Mike pushes the horse on and pulls away from his father and Tony. As he closes in, his friends start to slow up and Claire dismounts. Mike pulls in front of Claire's horse and slowly descends from his horse keeping his eyes on her. To Mike she looks more beautiful than ever with the noon sun in her dark brown hair. Now don't get me wrong this is cheesy but a seventeen-year old boy's mind is as cheesy as a goldfish cracker when it comes to his heart's desires. He would never share this knowledge with his friends, or anyone else for that matter. But it's how he feels and you cannot help how you feel, no matter how dumb, or crazy, or cheesy it may be.

As soon as Mike is on the ground without a word Claire runs and braces him with such force he almost falls over, and she kisses him long and deep. Now Mike has French kissed a girl before but never anything like this. The kiss is thankful and strongly passionate. Not gross and slobbery, like kissing a dog, such as Mike has experienced before. But this means something, it is special, and Mike doesn't care if it is only because he had possibly saved her life. He loves this girl and at least part of him always will. Such is the way of your first real love, you never forget it. Not that you have regrets or even comparisons but it always has a special place in your heart. A place you can remember and that will always make you smile.

The kiss lasts for what seems like forever but in reality lasts maybe a minute, just a little longer, after about that long it can get hard to breath anyway. Mike has completely forgotten that there other people standing around watching them. But after the kiss it becomes very apparent that he and Claire have become quite the spectacle. Mike's Grandpa and Dad smile almost proudly at their boy. Justin, Pete and Paul just think, what a lucky idiot, it's about darn time.

After the kiss breaks off Claire puts her lips close to Mike's ear and whispers, "Thank you Mike, you can't know what you did for me and what it means to me. I will always be in your debt, thank you." She gives him another quick kiss on the lips. But she does not let go of him, she holds tight, clinging to him as if clinging to life.

Mike says very flushed and quite embarrassed, "Well boys, to what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?"

Justin smiles, looks at the embraced, happy couple and says, "Well someone wanted to thank you in person for your heroics and we had some things we needed to discuss."

Grandpa says, trying to bring some order to this gathering, "Well let's head back to the farm, no need to stand around in the middle of a field."

The group heads back to the farm with Mike at the lead and Claire on the horse with him. Like I said, she did not let go of him. Claire sees Mike as her hero, her knight, and from here on, in her eyes, he can do and will do no wrong. It is dangerous to deify anyone but love is blind and sometimes it's best that way.

As they arrive back at the main house Grandpa has one of Mike's cousins take the horses and water them as the group makes their way into the main house. Grandma quickly throws together a small snack. Small for Grandma being buttered bread with cinnamon sugar and the three pies. You may ask, she just has this food lying around? Well yes, you see people actually used to visit their neighbors quiet regularly. Many of your seniors will tell you this. Families always had some sort of food lying around just in case they happened to have visitors.

Any who, having visitors causes a small commotion on the farm, as they have not had visitors, since, well since everything had kind of fallen apart. After the ceremonial greetings, Justin takes lead of the conversation, as is his role typically. Things quickly turn to a more serious topic, the deteriorating conditions in town.

Justin folds his hands while reclining at the table and says, with a very serious look in his eyes, "I don't mean to be a downer but two Homage guards were killed last week and it has caused a lot of problems." Justin looks over at Mike, "The black cloaks are going from house to house beating up random people and yesterday they hung a man in the main square."

Mike sits up startled and asks, "What the heck?"

Justin sighs and answers, "Yeah, not pretty, the guy was actually a traveler that came through town two days before. He was saying that the capital had been destroyed by a nuclear attack and that our black cloaks are not just a local phenomenon. It seems small communities all over the state have felt the influence of the Homage. They seem to be fairly organized, militarily speaking. Now either this guy was telling the truth or he just pissed off the right people with what he was saying, either way they decided to make a spectacle of him. He was still hanging there this morning."

Mike leans back in his chair, rolls his eyes and says, "Oh frig dude."

"Michael," Deborah says sharply, she is not happy with this use of foul language in the house. She may put up with visitors using it but not her own child. Mike's parents, grandparents, two uncles and some of the older grandchildren are in the room and everyone has a look of disbelief on their faces. They knew things were bad but not bordering on chaos, they are all very glad to be "safe" on the farm.

Justin takes a deep breath and says, "Yeah I know, crap happens."

Mike shakes his head, thinking about the men he killed and how it was causing all these problems and says, "Easy for you to say man."

Justin nods and continues, "Well, the Homage are calling for a meeting for night after next, rumor has it, to institute their own form of local government. The Homage patrols have become more frequent, in fact we were stopped twice on the way here. Sorry to say it but I am sure we were followed and they know we are here. Sorry to put you guys in any danger."

Tony smiles and says sarcastically, "Any more danger you mean, and no worries young man. You were followed and they circled around the farm and are waiting for you to return back to town. But you will have to deal with that later. Well everyone, for now why don't we let the young people catch up and the rest of us can get back to work."

The family begins to file out of the room, all a little more aware than they really wanted to be at this particular time. As Mike's Dad and Grandpa get out of the front door, Larry turns to Tony and asks, "Tony, what did Justin mean when he said Claire wanted to thank Mike for his heroics."

"Oh," Tony says looking for the right excuse, "Didn't Mike tell you? When he was in town Claire was getting hassled by some hooligans and Mike scared them off, no big deal." Tony is certainly not one to advocate lying but in this case he thinks it best to try and protect his son-in-law, not to mention his Grandson. After the whole family has vacated the room Justin turns to Mike and says very seriously, "Mike we need to talk in private, where can we go?"

Mike looks around the room and then back at Justin answering, "Let's go out to the south barn, it should be empty for the afternoon."

Justin nods and Mike leads him Claire, Pete and Paul out of the main house and to the south barn. The afternoon summer sun burns down on them and the lack of a breeze makes the temperature rather uncomfortable. The grass is lush because of the recent rains and the grove surrounding the farm place is thick and full of noise and life. After a short walk the gang makes it to the southern most barns on the home place. These barns have not been used in years and it has been Mike's young brothers and cousins job to get them cleaned out and ready for restoration. But for the afternoon they are empty as the family is concentrating their efforts on repairing the main grain bin to get it ready for winter.

Mike leads the group into the barn, sits down on a bail of hay with Claire next to him and asks, "So what the heck's up el capitian?"

Justin also finds a seat on a bail of hay. He ooks around at the rest of the group and says, "Dude, we needed to let you know that we've made a decision. We are not going to sit around and watch this crap anymore, we are taking matters into our own hands."

Mike, although not completely surprised, looks at Justin and asks, "So you're going vigilante style hey man."

Justin nods and answers, "Something like that."

Mike nods to himself, understanding the situation and asks, "So are you going to steal, or burn crap, or just kill people?"

Justin cracks a smirk and nods saying, "Maybe a combination thereof man."

Mike is intrigued yet weary of going to far with this thing and continues his questioning, "So what's the plan?"

Justin smiles in relief of his friend's interest and continues, "Well, we plan to continue training as much as possible and we want to burn one of their equipment sheds. The plan was to do it next week sometime but we want to bump things up and..."

Knowing exactly where his friend is going with this Mike interjects, "Do it the night of the big meeting, to make a friging point, right."

Justin always loved the way he and Mike were on the same page, answers, "Yeah right..."

Mike looks from Pete to Paul and then to Claire and asks, "Are all the guys in
?"

Justin nods slowly and answers, "Yeah, we're all in."

Claire interjects in a loud voice, "I'm in too."

Mike turns to her, shakes his head and says sternly, "Now wait a minute kid."

Claire stands up, her eyes burning with anger, and points a finger at Mike. Now Mike has seen Claire pissed before but he has never been on the bad end of her temper and he sure as heck never wants to be here again. Claire says very boldly, "Wait my ass, just because I'm a girl I can't do this, bullcrap, I have more reason than any of you to get involved."

Mike puts up his hands to defend himself against some invisible attack and says apologetically, "Alright, alright, sorry."

Justin smiles at the precarious position of his friend and asks, "So what do ya say Mikey, in or out."

Trying to hide his excitement of the possibilities of really sticking it to those Homage frigers, he smiles, nods slowly and says, "Well someone needs to keep you frigers from getting yourselves killed, so how's this gonna work?"

Paul finally emerges from his silence and answers Mike's question," Well we all decided it would be best to try and keep a low profile and keep training and improving our skills. Then we just look for opportunities, like the meeting, to try and hurt their cause."

Mike nods again and puts his hand to his mouth thinking things over and finally says, "I don't know how much I can do from out here. I can get into town when I can but sometimes it's hard."

Trying to reassure his friend Paul says, "Don't worry man we know, but the more the merrier right."

Mike chuckles and says, "Yeah I guess, so how is the attack going to work?"

Pete stands up as it seems it has come to his part of the meeting, clears his through and says, almost in a rehearsed tone, "Well, the meeting starts at six, we wait until six-twenty to give them time to start and then we will burn a small storage shed on the north side of town. Timmy, Justin, Alex, and we were hoping you, will make the move on the shed. Nick and Claire will be keeping a close eye on the meeting. Pete and I will stay back at the base just in case someone gets injured or needs to hide quick or what not."

Mike can see that they guys have put some serious thought into this, this is no joke to them, this was serious. He looks around, he is very proud of his friends and will stand with them no matter what. Mike agrees, "I will do what I can to make it boys, all for one, right?"

Justin smiles, stands up and walks over to shake Mike's hands saying, "Heck yeah, the next step will be to break into patrol groups. We need teams of two to monitor what's going on at all times if possible. We need to watch their movements and study their actions and communications to watch for trouble."

Mike cannot help but laugh and says, "Wow you've given this some thought brother. If you would have spent this much time on your Trig you would've made honor roll."

Justin turns a bit red, runs his fingers through his hair and says, "Frig off brother, well boys and girls it's getting late, we need to ride."

Mike had not noticed how late it was already and looks around and says to his friends, "Well boys thanks for the visit and I will do my best to get to town for our little date."

"Looking forward to it brother, now boys lets get those horses." Justin says as he, Pete and Paul make their way out of the barn and back to the main house.

Claire waits until the boys have left and finally asks, "So where does that leave us then?" As she moves closer into him, he places his arms around her and they look into each others eyes.

Mike can feel the nervous butterflies in his stomach begin to well up and he asks, "Where do you want it to leave us?"

Claire smirks at him and says, "That's' not fair, I asked you first."

Mike lets down his guard, takes a deep breath, lets it out and answers, "Claire I think the world of you, I always have. So many times I wanted to let you know but it was never right, or maybe I was just too scared."

Claire answers, also feeling the butterflies in her stomach, "Yeah I know, I feel the same way. Seems pretty wasteful to let all that time go by when we both felt the same way."

Mike has to laugh at the painful irony of it all and asks, "Yeah no crap, so what do you say we stop wasting time then?"

"Best idea I've heard all day," Claire says laughing as she smiles at him with her brown eyes sparkling. "But I want to see you and just you, not six other guys OK. I love your friends I do, but this has to be you and me, OK?"

Mike could not agree more. He needs to be with her and when he is with her it needs to be about the two of them and no one else. "Gotcha babe, after this raid crap is settled we will have a day for just us, to talk and see where this thing is going to lead us." Mike says reassuring her. Claire's butterflies are gone and she feels safer than she ever thought she would in someone's arms. "Sounds fantastic," Claire says as she leans in to kiss him. They kiss deeply and make out for a couple of minutes before Mike walks Claire back to her horse. Mike sees his friends off and stands watching them until they ride past the grove of the farm and out of sight. The gang knows they are being followed back to town thanks to Tony. So they make a large loop around town and split up when they finally arrive and make their way back to their respective homes.