Francis LaPorte and the Association of Good Fellows

The Leader

Wednesday, 21 Iyar, 5693

Freitag stepped towards the front of the room with a smile when he caught a glimpse of the distinguished emissary who had come on behalf of the former king and his dark eyes captured the light from the window of the outer hall as he did.

His mind had been on this meeting for much of the week. He had instituted the old state colors and played to the old state allegiances of so many in Garma, especially those more traditional sorts within the Kingsmen element. It was all a game, but one which he had been blessed to win.

Naturally all of this renewal and returning to the past would bring some form of question from the good king. The disposal of the gold of the republic and a returning to the white stripe of the imperial garb might mean the restoration of the empire also to its rightful King, Wassel. Doubtless, he still thought of himself as the divinely ordained and illustrious ruler over Garma.

One of the officers showed the man in, and Freitag rushed to meet him when he entered his study, hurrying as a man to meet his long forgotten friend.

"Verehren Freitag," the man said, extending his long arm in greeting.

Freitag waved him off with a confident grin. "Herr Gerner," he pronounced, charming the man with his warmth. "How good of you to come!"

Freitag had a peculiar way of making everyone feel comfortable around him, especially those whom he wished to leave a nice impression with at the end. He had long found that people were much easier to control when they were pacified, and proper pacification, he was convinced, came as the result of a carefully administered mix of pleasant words and forceful action. Shows of strength and violent threatenings were never so far as an inch beyond him, but they had no place in meetings with diplomats. For Gerner, he would put on his happy facade and show himself more sympathetic and caring than he truly had capacity to be.

"Yes, well thank you," Gerner replied, seeming to relax a little. He had been flattered by the warm reception the chancellor had given him and let down his guard. "King Wassel was most cheered at the news of your invitation being extended towards me. That you would honor his request in such a way is very kind. We have all been very pleased to read in the press of your continued successes."

Freitag smiled, becoming a little annoyed. That was, in fact, exactly what they were — his successes, and all of his success had been under the new republican government. Wassel had nothing to do with it. He was, in fact, old news, a former king whose throne had been reduced to rubble in the ruins of history.

Wassel had been a weakling and acted as one, not only surrendering the war with victory so clearly in sight, but even going so far as to abdicate. Yet now this man had come back again to see if the king might be delivered the empire back on a platter by him, a man of strength. There was no question in the mind of Daniel Freitag who the leader of Garma was or even who he was meant to be. He knew that in himself he had the power by which to resurrect the torn down empire and execute vengeance on their enemies. There was not a soul alive who could stop him, and Wassel was no exception.

"Yes, Herr Gerner, my success has been quite impressive, hasn't it?" he replied, linking his fingers behind him and taking a few steps back towards a chair at his desk. "It's almost as if a leader might acquire the confidence of his countrymen and find himself a place in their hearts if such a man was determined not to sell out his own people to foreign powers and influence."

The balding man in the monocle watched him with a startled look in his emerald eyes. The harsh tone which Freitag had taken was threatening. The Chancellor's composure had begun to unravel, and, as a result, his guest was becoming uneasy.

The last spitting remark by Herr Freitag was one made pointedly as a jab at Wassel's handling of the former war, wherein he had called for his people to "fight to the last" and promised "victory on all fronts". The good king for whom Freitag and so many others in Garma had fought had sworn off surrender and denied any possibility of a defeat only to be found holding secret meetings behind closed doors with the leaders of Sylvia, Unum, Müsil, and Inglegrad with a very different tone. He, in Freitag's mind, had sold them all out, betraying his own people and fatherland.

Later, Wassel had called the situation "hopeless", seeking to justify himself and his spineless action, but just because the war had been lost on paper did not make it lost in the minds of men like Freitag. In his heart, as in the hearts of many of those whom he kept gathered around him, not the least of them Girdle, Truett, and Desnik to be named, the war had never ceased and the humiliation of this vindictive peace to which they had been temporarily subjected was no more than one last failed policy of their former monarch.

Gerner shifted his weight from one foot to the other, uneasy. What, after all, could a man say in such a position as his? He had been sent as an emissary of his lord in order to represent his interests. He could hardly agree that the king was unworthy of rule or in any way inferior to Freitag's leadership.

"Yes. May the banner of our great nation raise high above her enemies," he said, approaching the subject with diplomatic care, then added, "and may our lord the king return, also."

Freitag gave a sinister smile, binding up his anger for the moment, and wrapped his knuckles round the back of his chair until they were white, a nervous habit which he had employed for years without intention.

There were many who felt as Gerner did, that the king should be brought back to rule over Garma and that the royal throne of monarchs should again be established, but Freitag would not hear of it. This was not a returning to the glories of a romanticized past as so many in Garma had come to believe. No, this was a move in an entirely other direction, a decisive march into the future of the new Garman Empire beneath the unparalleled guidance of Freitag's godlike leadership. He would hear of nothing less, nor would he tolerate the voice of any dissenters.

So, he looked on Gerner with blackened eyes and said, "Herr Gerner, gone are the days of the kings and monarchs who once ruled over our magnificent land. This is the dawning of a new day, the resurrection of a victorious empire under my control. Since the stroke of Wassel's pen upon the treaty of surrender, we have lived beneath the burden of a guilt which was not ours, but now I have been established as leader, and I will make the world see on whose heads the guilt is to be laid."