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Chapter LXXI: Return to Jerusalem​

7 April 1609

“Did they pull you out of retirement, too?” General Schenkhuizen huffed a half serious question towards the older man approaching him.

“You’re too young to have retired,” was the other man’s retort, “You’re only in the middle of your forties, I’m already a decade past my half century mark. But no, they didn’t pull me out of retirement, I just happen to be passing by to make some reports to the Room about how the Viceroyalty is going when I heard they were sending you off to Jerusalem.”

“Nonetheless,” the General said with a sigh, “It’s good to see you again, Renault.”

Both had tired eyes and both slipped into an embrace in the fashion of two war veterans who had not seen each other in a dozen or so years, although it had certainly not been that long. As the two men exchanged exhaustions through their arms, the sun drooping below the wine-dark sea flickered its final farewell to the day travelers. Steadying arms on each other, both the old man and the old-acting general had to stay steady as the vessel cast off the Lisboan dock and started to make its way south towards the Pillars of Hercules.

“I’m glad I could get this opportunity to accompany you,” Renault said after both released their reunional embrace. “I’m not as young as I used to be, but hopefully my wits can still be of some use.”

“Is Carmen with you?” General Schenkhuizen asked as they now both turned to make their way towards the officers’ quarters of the galleon.

“You know her,” Renault replied with a creak in his Spanish, “she practically runs the place when I’m gone. She’s filling in for me back in San Francisco.”

The military officer opened up the cabin door for his older guest and kept it open for the senior one to pass first. “I’m guessing you’ve also caught up to speed about the current situation?” the General asked.

“You mean the latest suicide mission they’ve sent you on?” Renault replied with a sardonic chuckle. In his old age, the Burgundian accent rolled in his laughter a bit more than usual. “Six thousand against a force five times that size as soon as you land at the Levant.”

“His Eminence believes I’m the only one for the job,” the General sighed as he closed the door behind them.

“And you don’t believe you are?” the French one asked. There was no reply, but General Schenkhuizen found his way to a seat behind a desk. He casually offered the closest chair to his comrade.

“There’s been a lot on my mind since I retired,” was the pitiful answer the Dutchman gave.

“Amongst all of us who lost friends at the Disappearance,” Renault intoned with anticipation on the kind of clouds that muddied the General’s thoughts, “you were the one who seemed to deal with it the best. You went forward with your military career and secured the victory in the East as well as kept up the military schools here at home.”

“I had no choice then,” the General sighed outwardly pressing his elbows against the desk just enough to support his forehead with his fingertips. Kneading them seemed to bring the vision of Renault de Fronsac—slightly fatter in his older age than the General had remembered him from their first meetings in San Francisco and their subsequent cooperation in the Ming campaign—into vision. “Everyone was rushed and counting on each other to keep the Room afloat despite the fiasco. You know as much as anyone—you were there.”

The reminder caused a strange trembling to inadvertently escape Renault’s right hand. Renault gripped the chair’s handle quickly. His older eyes raced to the planks of the floor attempting to hold a welling of feeling that seemed to take hold in the older gentleman. General Schenkhuizen immediately straightened up from the response and his face dropped at the directness of the words—he forgot that this was the man who was there at the actual event. This was the man who retrieved the Timepiece after it had been used to erase an entire city off the map and everyone in it… including all their friends. “I’m sorry…” the General quickly corrected himself and put his eyes downward to the collection of maps and papers on his desk in apology.

“It’s alright,” Renault reassured the other as he relaxed into his seat. Already, however, as he spoke it was as if his words were lost in a whirlwind of air that caught his voice and silenced it. A vision of darkness enveloped his thoughts and the dimming daylight made way to an encroaching darkness of the cabin. Renault’s vision blurred and for a moment he could see that image once again of the Turkish city.

“Are you alright?” the General asked standing up for a second, but Renault raised a hand to keep him seated.

After a few moments of heady contemplation, the older man spoke. “It was like a hurricane,” Renault said slowly while his eyes were still focused on some far off point at the other end of the room where only the evening darkness was coalescing. “I’m not sure if you’ve experienced one yet, but after the darkness receded, my team and I were uprooted from the ground by some great wind that followed as if it was pulling us to the very epicenter of where it had happened. Some of us were taken up high into the air and dropped…”

The military officer had already read the reports before, but the tone in Renault’s voice kept him from interrupting. The harrowing imagery such an event seemed to similarly well up a knot in the General’s stomach as his friend spoke.

“When it was over, the city was gone,” Renault continued with a sedated whisper. The creak of the galleon as it passed along the waves dulled the edge of the poignant memories for the man and the waves crashing provided a cushion for him to describe his painful scenes. “Half of my men—the ones I placed close to the arena disappeared. What was left was like some Devil’s pit. Perfectly round like a workman’s bowl, the blackness that I saw unveiled emptiness where a town had once been. To this day, it still chills me.”

The weaving motion of the boat rocked both in their seats with a motherly care. The spoken memories dissipated into the chilly night time air. General Schenkhuizen watched, with reserved eyes, the still figure describing such a void to him. He felt it in his chest—it was as if that emptiness that Renault described was now forming in his gut. He trailed his eyes down to his maps. “In the end,” the officer said, “I suppose I always believed in Antonio.” Looking up, he was met by kinder eyes looking back at him. He couldn’t help but force a smile. “It’s probably why I’m still following directives even now.”

“It’s why we have to win at Jerusalem,” Renault said with a nostalgic exultation, “for the sake of what they fought for as well.”

General Schenkhuizen gave a wider smile at the thought and rose from his chair just as Renault was rising from his. The General extended his arm and Renault took it easily. “One last hurrah, then,” the younger one said.

“Just one more, and then I need to be on home before the wife gets even angrier,” Renault accepted with a laugh. As they shook hands, it was as if the specter of the opened memories was beginning to evaporate. “If you’ll excuse me then, I’ll get my quarters organized.” Renault made his way towards the door.

“Do you think what they say is true?” General Schenkhuizen asked as his guest was stepping away. It made Renault pause at the door with his hand halfway towards the handle. At first, the General seemed just as surprised by the reaction as the questioned one was about the query. “About… what His Eminence in the Room has been telling us,” he tried to clarify although a ball of uncertainty about the subject grew in his throat. “That one day,” he managed to finish, “they would return.”

Renault hovered his hand over the knob for a bit more and opened his mouth to respond. “I’ve thought about it,” Renault admitted grimly with his head lowered. “I’ve spoken with the new Cardinal and he seems to believe that this Raul Roxas…”

“If he is the next one to adopt the Jimenez line…” the General intimated cautiously.

Renault turned around quickly with his eyes a bit alarmed. “That’s not all that the new Cardinal told me,” the older one said with a strange urgency as if the General required this revelation quickly. “This Raul, he’s not just for selecting a new Janus.” As he spoke, he could see the general’s face twist in confusion and curiosity. “There’s a reason they sent him to fetch the Key—the Cardinal told me that Raul will be the one to–”

General Schenkhuizen raised his hand motioning for Renault to halt. Renault immediately paused but wrinkled his already wrinkly brow. It was then that he noticed that the General’s eyes were discerning away from him. Turning in the direction of the other man’s gaze, Renault spied a distorted and dim outline pressing up against a window.

It only took a second for the older man to draw his pistol. Wanting no warning for the spy, he rushed the door open and cocked his weapon simultaneously. “Uncle!” was the high pitched cry from the young lady crouched near the cabin window.

“Madeleine!” Renault cried back as he quickly holstered his weapon. “Que’est-que tu fais ici?” he rapidly questioned in their native French. The young lady, straightening up from her obviously eavesdropping stance, brushed her beautifully embroidered dress and approached her uncle with a kind of rehearsed alacrity.

“Oh, Uncle Renault!” she feigned a complaint, “I know you said I couldn’t come but you’re also telling me to start getting some real experience! And it would have been so boring back there at Lisboa! I’ve already bought all the dresses and shoes I need from there!”

“The battlefield at Jerusalem is no place for you! We’re dropping you off at Cadiz!”

“Oh no no,” the young lady complained again as her uncle’s face started to heat up in indignation, “You know that this is an express transport only, Uncle! We won’t make port until Jerusalem!” The knowledge of the trip elicited a terrible huff from the old man.

“I’ll send you out on a raft if I have to!” he threatened with a raised finger. “Imagine what your Aunt Carmen would say if she ever found out I got you into this mess!” It was at this same time that General Schenkhuizen stepped out onto the deck.

“Ahh, you must be the general they took out of retirement!” Madeleine said in her best Spanish before bowing lowly. She intentionally ignored the growing anger in her uncle. Before her uncle could say anything more she grabbed hold of the slow moving Dutchman and, crossing in front of her uncle, pulled General Schenkhuizen with a start onto the deck. “I’ve been dying to know more about you!” she let out with a dramatic flair. General Schenkhuizen was pressed into a gentleman’s stance as the young lady led them a few paces along the galleon’s upper deck.

“Now, young lady!” Renault called out but he was met only with a mischievous stare by his niece looking back at him while still leading the general on.

“Don’t worry uncle, I’ll return the general to you after he’s given me a proper tour of the ship!” she said as she mercilessly dragged the officer with her further away from her relative. Even the General turned back in bewilderment at his older comrade who merely sighed in resignation and lowered his hand. Whether they liked it or not, Madeleine de Fronsac was on her way to Jerusalem as well.

---​

5 May 1609

“Al-Quds is only a few miles down,” Abdullah told his master as he tightened the cloth wrapping around his superior’s arm as it quickly began to turn a hue of red. “All the better as we need to get you to a doctor quickly.”

“Thank you, Abdullah,” Zeren replied with a grunt as the constriction on his arm increased. His covered head rested warily against a smooth rock and was protected by a short shadow. “And yourself? Have you been hurt?”

Abdullah pointed to a small scratch on the top of his wrist and gave his younger captain a wry smile. “The Farsi dogs managed a bite here and there, but it was not Allah’s will that I should die today.” Zeren returned a smile and managed to bring his other hand across to pat his comrade on the shoulder. It had been months since they left the Bagdad area and the Westerners who told the two of them of the difficulty of their journey had not equivocated to them.

“How are the horses?” Zeren asked in between his thoughts.

“Yours won’t make it past the hour—you were too brave in charging that group before the others could support you,” Abdullah added. “You did not have to do that for the foreigners.”

“I am a man of my word, Abdullah,” Zeren insisted while grunting another noise from his throat as he stood up; Abdullah helped him to his feet. “I told them I would fight alongside them if they showed us a way home and I would easily fulfill that task even if it is just you heading back on that boat.”

Abdullah managed a smile at his master’s fidelity but he could read the despondence present in the younger man’s eyes that made that wish for death more careless than something derived simply from loyalty. “Perhaps,” the older one said lowly as he led his master towards where the others were hiding the horses, “if you are afraid of being punished for our failure, you should not return to Constantinople. I know of a few places where the Imperial administration might not look if you wish for an early retirement…”

Zeren held his right arm close to his body as he walked along the sandy field. He made sure to circuit around the dead bodies of Persian pursuers that they had just recently killed. Abdullah’s words washed in his mind. “It is a kind thought of you to offer, Abdullah,” he acknowledged as the two took sight of the other three preparing for the last leg of their journey, “but there is someone still left that I must speak to at home before that… Like I said… I intend to keep all my promises.”

---​

“Burak, when is that messenger going to arrive with my good news?” the prince snarled.

“Just a few more weeks, Amir,” the fat minister trembled as he kept his head low, “it will not be long until they reach us.”

Amir Shahim was not particularly fond of visiting the minister, and his patience was running thin. “I could have gotten results faster if I went to Bagdad myself!” the young man frothed as he sat in his seat. The minister, a guest on the far end of the table, winced so much that even the sumptuous dinner in front of him could not distract him from the anger of his patron.

“I promise it will not be much longer,” the minister attempted to soothe. Shahim seemed to relent and did not press it further. Perhaps the enticing fantasies of having Leyla fall into his hands at the moment the news of Zeren’s failure reached those walls could have held his anger at bay. “Furthermore,” the minister spoke up after a short pause, “there is another appointment for you today. Official business that the Sultan—your uncle—has deferred to your specialty.”

Shahim merely nodded and said “show him in,” before rising to his feet. It only took a moment before the sound of boots tapping against marble floor grew louder. Someone in all black had entered the chamber.

“Thank you for seeing us, Amir Shahim,” a translator said aloud for the man approaching.

“We are always ready to receive guests at the Sublime Porte here,” the Ottoman prince replied, “especially those who have come all the way from the north.” As they spoke, as if on cue, servants lowered curtains and blinds across the openings of the palisade and the chamber of moving bodies turned into a room deep in Silence.

“Lieutenant Drescher wishes to thank his Majesty for the courtesy,” the translator said.

interlude2.gif


Interlude​

“On May 6th 1609, the Ottoman Empire joins Persia in the Mediterranean War against Spain only a few months after the initial skirmishes in Mecca.”

Taguchi did his best to write down his notes, but even after having rested all weekend from the terrible ordeal and seeing off the body of his professor as it was transported to the airport, he was still unable to return to that regularity that he had sought after for so long. Even pockets of the lecture seemed to escape him as the thoughts of the past few days dominated the images before his eyes.

“Yes, go ahead, Maria,” the professor acknowledged one of the students.

“Will these dates be on the test?” the young lady asked.

Taguchi had spent the last half of that history class playing around with his mobile phone. His cousin had been sending him notes all day.

“We’ll be using the house a bit more,” was one of the messages he had received. It bothered him a lot, Taguchi thought. Why did his cousin and all those people have to go to his house in particular? Didn’t Hayato have mansions and safe houses elsewhere? Did it perhaps have anything to do with the history of the house? It was these thoughts that distracted him as the others busily jotted down notes. Perhaps it was because of what had happened in the house before Pablo and he had moved in…? The question made him think of that stain in the living room—the one that he always had forgotten to clean. The one that smeared a red stripe…

Taguchi’s eyes sagged visibly. It had been a few days of silence and contemplation ever since the days at the hospital and he had barely gotten any sleep. Why was Hayato trying to tell him things he wished he never heard? He wished so hard inside of himself to forget about those Keys, but he simultaneously could not help but be intrigued by these items that his patron had given his life for. “I have a few questions to ask you,” he sent a text to Hayato as class roared on. He resolved, he thought to himself that he had to at least find out a little bit more.

“Alright, that’s all the time we have today,” the professor at the front concluded. “We’ll pick up on the Jerusalem Campaign on Wednesday. See you all then.”

Chapter LXXII: The Jerusalem Campaign (coming soon)
 
You know, the first part of this update was very well written. Not that the rest of it wasn't, It is just that I always come back to the conversations we have about "Dialogue". Your Dialogue between the General and Renault was outstandingly written, fitting into the mood that you had built perfectly. I could so easily picture the two old warhorses reminiscing, and fighting the sadness of the memories.

It was absolutely perfect...right up until Madaline got caught and ruined it...but that was the point, and interjected well. Great update.

Oh yeah. I'm caught up!:D
 
Damn Madeleine, hiding all the GOOD information from us! :D

Still, interesting to figure out how the Jimenez line supposedly works...
 
There was a lovely bittersweet moment between the two old soldiers and a wonderful reminder of chapter one. Excellent. :cool:
 
grayghost: Hooray !!!! I'm so glad ! And thank you ! You're definitely a great inspiration !

Avernite: haha that pesky girl !

coz1: Thank you , sir !
 
Whew, what we were told here only leaves us with more questions. That, I suppose, is the price of learning; whatever one knows, it only opens up new lines of inquiry. It would get boring if we ever ran out of things to learn. :D
 
canonized said:
Taguchi’s eyes sagged visibly. It had been a few days of silence and contemplation ever since the days at the hospital and he had barely gotten any sleep.

Modeling yourself a bit, eh? Still praying for a smooth recovery. How did your exam go?

So, the time-piece 'wiped the city off the map'? Inconceivable!

Lt. Drescher a traitor? Inconceivable!

Bringing Renault and Grubby together again for another middle-eastern adventure? Inconceivable!

<You keep using that word...I don't think it means what you think it means!>

TheExecuter
 
Judas Maccabeus said:
Whew, what we were told here only leaves us with more questions. That, I suppose, is the price of learning; whatever one knows, it only opens up new lines of inquiry. It would get boring if we ever ran out of things to learn. :D

It also reminds me of the endless plots in Lost... :mad: ;) :D
 
Judas Maccabeus: Feel free to ask XD and tell us what you've learned !

TheExecutor: Thank you for your prayers and support ! Doing well on this front ! I'm glad you enjoyed the update too ! Yes lots of things brewing about .

Murmurandus: Love that show XD

LeonTrotsky: Welcome back to being caught up ! It's that season to be caught up it seems ! Yep , an entire town disappears ! Gasp ! The power of the Timepiece !
 
Wow. I'm impressed, and I wish I had started reading this monster before :) I've only read the first page so far, but I'm definitely intrigued by this story. It seems a bit long for me to read in one sitting like I like to w/ most AARs, but I'll certainly follow this one as much as I can (and maybe even try to catch up w/ it before it finishes ;) ).

All in all, keep up the good work! :)

(EDIT: I've also noticed that you seem to be something of an Eva fan. Glad that there aren't too few of us floating around ;) )
 
Specialist290 said:
Wow. I'm impressed, and I wish I had started reading this monster before :) I've only read the first page so far, but I'm definitely intrigued by this story. It seems a bit long for me to read in one sitting like I like to w/ most AARs, but I'll certainly follow this one as much as I can (and maybe even try to catch up w/ it before it finishes ;) ).

All in all, keep up the good work! :)

(EDIT: I've also noticed that you seem to be something of an Eva fan. Glad that there aren't too few of us floating around ;) )

We're very very glad to have you aboard and thank you very much ! Please feel free to comment as you go along , we love to hear new insights on old chapters ! And yes , I'm an Eva fan . In fact , English Patriot and I just watched Eva (for me , again for him the first time) so it's a jolly ole series !
 
Ahh an update! I almost missed it! I'd like to echo grayghosts words about Renault and Schenkuizen, beautifully written, looking forward to Jerusalem!


And EVA?, LOL Its hardly jolly! I'm still incensed about Shinji's behaviour throughout!
 
Now that I think about it...

That timepiece-effect sounds a bit like the cleansing of the taint in the Wheel of Time :)
 
English Patriot: Well thank you ! I'm glad their dialogue came out well !

Avernite: Tains of the Wheel of Time ? XD You'll have to explain that one to me !
 
canonized said:
English Patriot: Well thank you ! I'm glad their dialogue came out well !

Avernite: Tains of the Wheel of Time ? XD You'll have to explain that one to me !

taint is something in the book series 'The Wheel of Time'

Basically, this cleansing created a huge black sphere over a city, after which the sphere collapsed and a big round hole was formed.
 
Avernite said:
taint is something in the book series 'The Wheel of Time'

Basically, this cleansing created a huge black sphere over a city, after which the sphere collapsed and a big round hole was formed.

An interesting theory ! But yes you're mostly right with how the Timepiece affected that town .

Interview information going up NOW .
 
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Impresssive thread. Speechless.

Still reading... I'll need help to close my mouth, open in absolute bewildered amazement.
 
Kurt_Steiner said:
Impresssive thread. Speechless.

Still reading... I'll need help to close my mouth, open in absolute bewildered amazement.

Thank you very much , sir and welcome aboard ! I can't wait to hear what you think of the previous chapters ! Please , I do encourage you to post any comments as you read along !