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Copyright 2024 James LaFond

A Crackpot Book

Publisher Lynn Lockhart

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Dust Cover

Savay Dawkins faced the apex of his aspiration with a tremble of trepidation. For his teacher, Eurodite Jackson, the man who he had relied on for Insight, Nearsight and Farsight, he who had embodied all of the arts of The Confessor, did now reside beyond the grave that held his rent form. Tears threatened to shame the face of Savay Dawkins as he recited the only psalm he had memorized.

There, across the flag-stacked grave, stood the grim-faced man he served. King Jon Trust, risen from the ranks to rule the Six Klans of Christ’s Country. The very master of battle place, The King had been well served by Confessor Jackson and Twelve Presbyters. Yesterday, upon the dawning of the 5th of May, in The Year of Our Lord 2498, as Savay, most Junior Presbyter of the King’s Covenant Counsel, plucked a perfect white goose for three ink quills, his seniors had, all of them, been horribly slain by a vile resurrection of Satanic weaponry. But one extra-Biblical literate man now remained in the Army, Savay Dawkins, the most ignorant, and possibly last of his bookish kind.

Written on Location in the Ohio Valley

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Dedication

For Barry Bliss who offered to push this Pulp writer around a vast museum in a wheel chair—thank you so much, Barry, and for the large font version of Mister Greer’s brilliant article on the future.

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Inspired by the insightful essay on military futures:

Deindustrial Warfare: A First Reconaissance

January 31, 2024

John Michael Greer

Also inspired by Phillip Jose Farmer, author of Riverworld, and Hadon of Ancient Opar, and specifically Two Hawks from Earth. The latter story was brought to mind on reading Greer’s article, as well as the novel Comming of the Horse Clans, author forgotten and the novel by Poul Anderson, Vault of the Ages.

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Graveside Recital of Savay Dawkins

“Here, unto You GOD Almighty, Good King Jon Trust returns to your trove of dust, he who you set above us to teach. We humble souls who hope t0 follow in his wake, recall a psalm, long ago sung to You, The ONE.

“Blessed be Jehovah my rock,

Who is teaching my hands for fighting,

My fingers for warfare;

My loving-kindness and my stronghold,

My secure height and my Provider of escape,

My shield and the ONE in whom I have refuged,

The ONE subduing peoples under me!” [1]

“GOD gather Confessor Eurudite Jackson, to swaddle him in your Eternal fold.

“GOD preserve King Jon Trust!

“Amen.”

The attending soldiers, troopers and gunners, their officers having been tutored in letters and numbers, in the main by The Confessor, stood solemnly as they intoned, eyes upon the grave, “Amen.”

The officers then all looked up to Heaven, where the heavy, snow-laden clouds gathered. A white-bearded sergeant of Signal Corps, called for taps, and the bugle sang sadly.

Forgotten by most that he breathed upon the Earth, the forlorn “Confessor by Attrition,” wandered in empty halls within, the shelves of the Books of his Life mostly barren. There, wandering those shadow-haunted lanes, that of a true Confessor would bend, lean and bulge with books, the orphaned presbyter, declared a Confessor by his King mere hours ago, searched among the tangled roots of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and, as his Departed Master Observed, conducted his midday meditation.

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Soliloquy, 6th of May

‘Good GOD, save my King, despite my wobble-read brain. Be it not that my fool counsel causes hurt to his benign rule, and never to his Dread Art—war, sanctified under Your Word.

‘Confessor, this flunk presbyter so misses you!’

‘Amen.’

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The Nine Acts of Confessor Satay Dawkins

-1. The Counsel of One

-2. Benediction Run

-3. Drummer Rowan

-4. Trooper Sean

-5. Gunner Myles

-6. Sergeant Gyles

-7. Heathen Sam

-8. Sniper Cody

-9. Corporal Brick

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Notes

-1. Psalm 144 was the last which Satay studied under The Confessor, who did assign his youngest presbyter to the task of encouraging the soldiers with those psalms he declared to have been authored by King David, the poetical slayer of giants, in his entreaties to The One True God. Good King Jon Trust, man of wits, wiles and many grits, did lead his men, his nation setting forth from their ruined riverside city, at the head of the Klan’s Promised Lands, against enemies as vile as any ancient Philistine.

Satay suffers from leaky memory and has problems recalling, in proper word, the passages of that great and sacred book he has read over a dozen times. Confessor had encouraged him as a Farseer of a presbyter, assuring him that the leaky memory that afflicted him at recital, would build Farsight like a bricklayer raises a forge without true knowledge of the smith’s trade. Satay dearly wished to believe this advice from his Master, so that he recalled it waking, in dream and in prayer, beseeching God Almighty to improve him in mind and soul.