The Last Cavalier, Part 2a

This is the only full chapter I wrote for The Last Cavalier. None of the events here were mentioned in Rome's Revolution and I stole some of the detail to put in the historical part of The Ark Lords. I'll give you the next part tomorrow.

     Chapter 2
     It all started last year. Dad was getting ready to go out on his Long Ride. I knew it was getting close. It was always the same. Dad got quieter. We did our chores and sometimes we wouldn’t talk the whole day. And our meals. Mom always tried to make conversation but Dad would have none of it. Dad wouldn’t let Mom start a fire and she had to cook the food using the solar heater or the slow cook from the compost heat. It was hard but my mom knew she couldn’t break the rules. Not if Dad was going to go out and enforce them on other people. Dad kept a strict count of how many fires and how long and how many trees we planted.
     At night, I could hear Mom crying, yelling. Dad would never answer her back. I knew what it was about and I knew there was no answer. Dad was a Cavalier. He had to take the Long Ride. There was nobody else. The fact that everyone hated him and the other Cavaliers didn’t matter. It was our family’s birthright and our duty. Dad never shirked from it. He didn’t expect any thanks. The fact that he was protecting the Earth and all of Mankind, that was where he got his reward.
     Dad was sitting at the table, sharpening the tips of his cross-bow arrows. I counted nearly 50.
     “Why so many?” I asked him.
     “You never know what you’re going to run in to,” he said. He had his sharper stone on the table and dipped each arrow in water then ran it along the blade. Back and forth he drew it. Once in a while, he would touch the edge. When he was satisfied, he put the arrow in the quiver and started on the next one. When he was nearly done, he stopped.
     “Here,” he said, handing me an arrow. “You try it.”
     “Why?” I asked him.
     “Because you have to learn how some day,” he said. “It may as well be today.”

This is when I was still enforcing the "Rules of Green" and they weren't allowed to have open fires. I gave that up pretty fast as impractical. More tomorrow.