Soldiers of Ancient Seas, Part 2: Fools Rush In

 Sometimes the observer is themselves observed, and such was the case with Oliver Row.

     Ah, yes, the one and only Oliver Row.

     In the grand scheme of things, not much of a legendary figure.  There were certainly circles where he was, even when he was a she.  A multitude of lives.  All shared along a similar quest, a destiny yet unwritten, vague, ambiguous, but somehow always lurking about.

     Oliver Row belonged to that tradition history on the planet Earth ascribes to such fictional luminaries as Van Helsing, who in the pages of a book helped take down a vampire, and in that lineage Oliver had been in pursuit of legends all his lives.  He, too, had once helped take down a vampire, and encountered many other monsters besides, some of them mere humans, although in my humble estimation…Is there really such a distinction?  Is it really necessary?  Humans are such a mess.  Though I suppose, it’s a trait shared on many worlds by many so-called intelligent lifeforms…To be fair.

     Oliver Row, as the traditions would have it, was a shared sobriquet, and many individuals had given up their given name to work under it, and in this particular story, the Oliver Row in question had done so quite happily, driven to distraction on this occasion in the pursuit of the mysterious “Agent,” whom Oliver had discovered in association with something called the House of Stars, which if he hadn’t taken quite so long in finding, would have led to me, one and the same “Agent,” in much shorter fashion. 

     First he was going to have to find Sia, but that, too, was going to have to wait, as was any real understanding of what any of his lives meant.

     Along the way to destiny, life tends to be mundane.  Actually, even destiny is mundane as it’s happening; it only matters in hindsight, usually in terms of regret and only sometimes in glory.  Sorry to be so melodramatic about it.  I’ve been following the careers of Oliver Row for too long not to be a little nauseated by all of it, the way Oliver himself wonders at this very moment what’s keeping our dear Sia.

    Since neither of them will know of my existence very soon, allow me to introduce myself: The woman Oliver knows only as the “Agent” is in fact named Night, or so I’ve equally chosen to be known.  You’ll find out more as they do, and that will do for now, thank you.

     For now, revel in the mediocrities of Oliver Row!

     Oliver, whose namesake died a hundred years ago, and whose detailed accounts of all activities fills a series of notebooks that really only Oliver Row ever cares about, protected in briefcases, satchels, whatever is currently at hand to protect them from the elements and doubles visually for anyone at hand as probably the implements of the trade, the doodads and gadgets used against monsters, weapons.  Ha.  If only.  Just a bunch of words, nonsense, whatever makes such a life worth living.  Same as anyone else.  Very much like Sia, really.  Oliver Row: nothing much more than another hapless would-be published author.  Memoir waiting to be accepted.  Movie rights available!

     When the original and only legal Oliver Row passed away slumped in an alley, there had been a homeless youth made aware from the sensationalized accounts accepted as fiction by the world at large who happened to come across the body and collected works.  This is how the legend really started, in just such humble circumstances.  The youth spent years trying to make sense of it, and tracking down new challenges, until he realized Oliver had belonged to an organization known as House Argos, the history of which the original and neophyte was in total ignorance, Argos being the dog who was the lone individual capable of recognizing Odysseus when he returned in secret to Ithica.  Suffice to say, but House Argos is an ancient society dedicated mostly to keeping alive the dim flame of learning.  It is, in Earth parlance, a bunch of nerds, nothing more.

     Such is the background of Oliver Row as he exists today.  To claim the title, all one has to do is become aware of the existence of the tradition, and merely be deemed adequate by the current one to replace them.  A fluke of circumstances, really.  The files had been digitized over the years, even published in limited editions never circulated due to popular disinterest, under a variety of colorful titles, increasingly easy in modern times but with scarcely different results. 

     The current Oliver Row inherited the title from a woman, who relinquished the title.  In fact, in recent years the role has changed hands with alarming frequency.  Interpret that with any amount of cynicism you deem appropriate.  This Oliver was once known as Marty, but that was a lifetime ago, or so the months can sometimes suggest. 

     He came across the existence of the “Agent” by chance, on the internet, where all modern life on Earth plays out, and the House of Stars, although he had no idea, as no one could on such a planet at such a developmental level, no matter how alarmingly important such knowledge happens to be, as so much fodder for mindless conspiracy theories.  Oliver Row, by any name or face, though, never lets good knowledge go to waste, and immediately suspected it was worth following up. 

     Which is to say, he became obsessed.

     It just so happened that a young woman named Sia had developed the same mania, and her name, or her aliases, though nothing so petty caused much difficulty for Oliver Row, quickly caught his attention, too, and that was how they began their tumble down the rabbithole…

Soldiers of Ancient Seas, Part 1: "Finest Kind"

It’s hard to remember her, in the greater context of her life, as the girl who was so utterly lost in the world, flailing about to try and find her place in it.  That’s really how all such lives are, in my experience anyway.  But that was Sia as the events of this particular story begin.

     Sia was at that time a young adult, which in those times had become something of an albatross, neither prepared to take on the big challenges expected to get ahead nor capable of asserting herself in a world dominated by her elders.  She’d moved away from home and begun the series of petty employments that was to keep her in her tenuous independent existence, and yet she would never have described herself as happily settled, nor content in the life, which was why she began exploring the parts of her past she was most curious about, her ancestry, and what she supposed she would discover about herself along the way.

     Being chronically short of funds, her recourse was free search engines and all the pitfalls therein, the utter vagaries of the results, the inability to refine them so that she might know instantly whether she was absolutely correct in the findings or had been led gloriously astray.  She plugged in the names she knew, the grandparents on both sides, and found her great-grandparents and further beyond that, and she guided herself along these waters with a name she’d heard her mother use, Duende, hoping that she might come across it, although she had no idea how except through dumb luck, and in tracing the origins of the name itself, hoped to bridge the gap between what she might find and the desperation of her yearning.

     Now, Sia was on the whole a resourceful person, and wasn’t overly shy in the pursuit, so when she wanted to consult a relative, her uncle, she did, and that was how she confirmed her mother’s tale, that there was a Duende, that somewhere in the crossroads of her French and Scandinavian pasts she might discover the name for herself.  She cross-referenced Viking raids, settlements, and what she had learned in the genealogies, and that was where she discovered the gap.  Right where she expected to find Duende.  Whoever they were.

     Which is to say, Sia found herself stymied.

     Which is to say, Sia grew frustrated.

     It’s all well and good to have a goal and a general understanding of one’s frustration with the cosmos, quite another to find that there’s not going to be much more satisfaction in this pursuit than in the rest of one’s life, and that was about the sum total of Sia’s existence at this early stage.  This happens to be a story where there are much wider discoveries waiting around the corner, but at the start it looks very much like anything else in the humdrum world, and Sia herself mind-numbingly ordinary, if even that, and very much aware of it, but also that she could imagine greater things than that, and the curse of knowing it.

     To top it all off, she was also quite isolated.  No one much to talk to about all this, except maybe her mother, but, and Sia very much adored her mother, this was never going to be a conversation that they could share.  She yearned more than anything for someone with whom such things were possible.

     Instead, in the meantime, she stared at a screen and hoped it might spontaneously give her the answers she sought.  No such search engine was powerful enough to deliver such magic.  She appreciated the age in which she lived, in which she could search the vast sum of human knowledge as captured by the internet, or could stroll to a bookshelf and discover anything not found therein, and how humiliatingly limited it still was, and how all of that was somehow prone to mismanagement, mostly by the everyday custodians known as mankind.  Basically, to be concise, all that knowledge reduced to petty insults expressed with a poor grasp of the language (any of them).

     She developed poor posture, not really because of all this, or the metaphorical burden of her existence, but through sheer existential angst, and possibly also from all the reading, both on her phone and in books.  She found herself worrying, when she thought about it, what kind of image she presented.  Her hair was straggly, not so much styled as caught in desperate snatches.  She was always brushing it out of her eyes, a slightly gold color that had been mistakenly described as brown throughout her life, or possibly they’d brightened.  Anyway, she was always trying to relax.  She took frequent naps, mostly to rest her eyes.  She wore thick glasses when she didn’t have her contacts in, which was whenever she didn’t need her contacts.  She tried not to avoid the contacts too much.  She worried constantly about her eyes, and basically everything else.  That’s mainly why she spent so much time investigating her ancestry, and why she needed to find something important there.

     It’s funny that we really don’t know what lies ahead.  It’s got to be strange living a nonlinear life, when you know everything all at once.  I guess I’ll have to look into it.  Always kind of busy, though.

     Sia plowed ahead with what she tried valiantly to not consider a disappointing life.  She tended to use the library when she was online.  She didn’t yet have unlimited internet on her phone, so she used, and trusted in, the library’s wifi, and also the ability to browse the books, the newspapers, the magazines, everything that had made as tidy an order of her life as she’d ever managed.

     The problem was that she couldn’t spend her life reading.  The rest of it still had to happen, and the rest was invariably disappointing, and Sia was absolutely aware she was chasing what was probably some fictional version of a past that didn’t have anymore practical applications than adding to her own knowledge, which she had so far utterly fail to convince the world at large as having any real meaning.

     Still, there had to be something there.  “Duende.”  It had always sounded important.  She just had no idea how, except for vague family legend, something in the remote and incredibly dim past.  If history didn’t record it, there wasn’t much meaning to it.  Right?

     She sat back, stretched her neck, pretended it was irrevocably wrecked already, closed her eyes, and imagined.

     Which was how she did her best work.

The Duke: "Wanderer," Pages 1-22

 PAGE ONE

 

Panel 1 (splash)

The Duke, standing in a dark street corner, lighting a cigarette, cupping his free hand around the flame from the match.  The Duke is still in his late fifties here, “grizzled, old” by those standards (as per his description in original Dead Butlers script), to allow for a guy who can reasonably clean up for that image used on the cover of the original Nine Panel Grid book release)

 

CAPTION: Hun City

 

CAPTION: I believe in the inherent goodness of mankind.

 

 

PAGE TWO

 

Panel 1

A car pulls up beside The Duke.  Inside is a woman, late thirties early forties, staring at The Duke’s cigarette.

 

ANGIE: Get in.  We’re already late as it is.

 

ANGIE: Still trying to make sense of these guys.  I’ll never understand it.

 

Panel 2

Close-up of The Duke, still smoking in Angie’s car.

 

DUKE: You don’t have to.

 

Panel 3

Angie’s car from the front.

 

ANGIE: So let me just try and get this straight, just for the record.

 

DUKE: Off the record.

 

ANGIE: Yeah.  Of course.  Like always.

 

Panel 4

Angie’s car from the back, although we don’t see much besides Hun City at night.  Not anything that’s ahead of them, although later we’ll learn that they’re tailing someone.  We don’t need to see that yet.

 

ANGIE: We’re on the hunt for Jerome Taggart’s daughter.

 

ANGIE: But we’re also trying to satisfy your curiosity in what happened to the Ferryman’s dead apprentice.

 

ANGIE: Who doesn’t seem to be so dead.

 

Panel 5

Angie looking over at The Duke in the passenger seat.  “Bemused” would be the expression to use in describing her face.

 

DUKE: No.  Not so much.  Maybe he never was.  I don’t pretend to understand these things.  Way above my paygrade.  Everyone’s.

 

 

PAGE THREE

 

Panel 1

They’ve reached the highway.  This is an establishing shot of a panel.  No dialogue, no captions.  Here, technically, we’re seeing the car they’re tailing for the first time.  It’s night but there’s plenty of traffic.

 

Panel 2

Angie’s looking straight ahead again but now it’s The Duke looking in her direction.

 

ANGIE: Listen, ditch the smoke.

 

DUKE: Whatever you say, Angie.

 

Panel 3

A shot of the passenger window opened and the cigarette being flicked out.

 

DUKE: Taggart worked for MI5, back in the old country, in the old days, before he became a butler for Adam Hemingway.

 

Panel 4

Angie’s pressing the button in her door panel to close the passenger window, The Duke staring at her.

 

ANGIE: Forceful retirement, the report suggested, but not much else. 

 

ANGIE: The trouble was, he couldn’t leave it behind. 

 

Panel 5

The Duke absently pats his pocket, still having the urge to smoke.

 

DUKE: Old habits.

 

 

PAGE FOUR

 

Panel 1

The Duke is gesturing in front of them, which is our first indication that they are indeed tailing someone.

 

DUKE: Look, just pay attention to the road.

 

Panel 2

Close-up on Angie, her eyes narrowing. No dialogue.

 

Panel 3

Pulling back a little to see her hands gripping the steering wheel.

 

ANGIE: Didn’t stop him from leaving behind a daughter.

 

ANGIE: Cassandra Dawes.  Cassie.

 

Panel 4

Pulling back further for another look at the road, where we see only a few cars ahead of them now, which means one of them is definitely the one they’re tailing.

 

DUKE: Followed in her old man’s footsteps. 

 

DUKE: Joined the Agency.

 

Panel 5

Angie allows herself a light moment, almost cracking a smile as she glances at The Duke again.

 

ANGIE: Yeah.  The other one.

 

ANGIE: Shares that obsession of yours.

 

ANGIE: Wonder you never applied yourself.

 

 

PAGE FIVE

 

Panel 1

Another shot showing us the road, with even fewer cars.  Say we started with five or six and then three or four, and now it’s two or three.  All in the same arrangement of lanes.

 

Panel 2

Now it’s The Duke shooting Angie and irritated look.

 

DUKE: Slow down, will ya?

 

DUKE: Think they didn’t spot us already?

 

Panel 3

Now Angie is positively angry, glaring ahead.

 

ANGIE: Who, the homicidal maniac you let stroll out of our offices?

 

Panel 4

Now there’re no cars between them.  We can see the man in the other car, now.  He’s wearing a black ski mask.  Normally he’s got a costume.  This is Switchblade.  He didn’t have a lot of options at the time.

 

Panel 5

The Duke staring resolutely ahead, Angie still pissed off.

 

DUKE: Good police work doesn’t always look like good police work.  That’s kind of the point.  Which you should’ve learned by now.

 

 

PAGE SIX

 

Panel 1

Angie’s pulled up beside Switchblade’s car.  They’re driving parallel now.

 

ANGIE: No real point pretending now anyway.

 

Panel 2

The Duke looks across Angie at Switchblade, who’s still looking straight ahead.

 

DUKE: No, I suppose not. 

 

DUKE: It was enough to prove a point.

 

Panel 3

Switchblade’s car pulls ahead.

 

DUKE: Steady.

 

ANGIE: Oh, don’t worry about that, Duke!

 

ANGIE: Switchblade ain’t getting away.  Not this time.

 

Panel 4

The Duke places a hand, hovering, over Angie’s at the wheel.

 

DUKE: No need to push it.

 

DUKE: He gets it.

 

Panel 5

Another shot at the road, the cars again separating.

 

 

PAGE SEVEN

 

Panel 1

Daylight.  We’re jumping ahead in time.  The roadways are clogged.

 

Panel 2

The Duke grips a coffee, now.

 

DUKE: Whether she asked for the assignment or it was simply luck of the draw, her man’s Bandit.

 

ANGIE: Yeah.  Coincidence.

 

Panel 3

Angie, squinting her eyes.

 

ANGIE: We lost ’em, hours ago.

 

Panel 4

The Duke, sipping his coffee.  No dialogue.

 

Panel 5

Angie swatting her hand at the cup, knocking it into him.

 

DUKE: We know where he’s headed.

 

 

PAGE EIGHT

 

Panel 1

The Duke, brushing his trench coat.  It doesn’t appear to be wet.

 

DUKE: Thank god I was just finishing that.

 

Panel 2

Angie is placing the cup in a plastic bag she’s got planted in the center console.

 

ANGIE: Oh, not that Godsend freak?

 

ANGIE: Of course I knew it was done.  I keep a clean house.

 

Panel 3

They’re pulling into an off-ramp, into Traverse.

 

Panel 4

Now they’re traveling through the city proper.

 

Panel 5

Now they’ve pulled in front of Traverse Police Department.

 

 

PAGE NINE

 

Panel 1

The Duke and Angie in the lobby speaking with some uniformed officers.

 

DUKE: We’ve got one of ours walking your streets.

 

ANGIE: Not one of ours.  A visitor.  Like he is here.

 

Panel 2

The Duke pulling Angie aside.

 

DUKE: Not now.

 

DUKE: They’ve seen the guy, too.

 

DUKE: They know all about Switchblade.

 

Panel 3

Close up on Angie.

 

ANGIE: Not enough.

 

Panel 4

Following the group from behind as they walk down a corridor.

 

DUKE: Switchblade.

 

DUKE: You boys know all about that one.

 

Panel 5

Angie looking behind them, almost as if she expects to see Switchblade there.

 

 

PAGE TEN

 

Panel 1

Now The Duke and Angie are walking the streets of Traverse.

 

DUKE: You need to keep your cool, Angie.

 

Panel 2

Down an alley.

 

ANGIE: Oh, sure.

 

ANGIE: Tell me to keep a level head.

 

ANGIE: Never seemed to stop you.

 

Panel 3

They’re speaking with a homeless man in the alley.

 

DUKE: Just wondering if you’ve seen a friend of ours.

 

DUKE: Probably wearing a ski mask.  I’m very aware you see those types around here.  This one would probably have a rather large knife.  No idea how he would’ve gotten one so quickly.

 

DUKE: But he’s resourceful.

 

Panel 4

Close up on Angie.

 

ANGIE: And dangerous.

 

Panel 5

Pulling back to see both The Duke and Angie.  No particular need to see the homeless man.  The Duke’s suppressing an exasperated look.

 

DUKE: Yeah.

 

 

PAGE ELEVEN

 

Panel 1

A flash somewhere in the alley causes both The Duke and Angie to redirect their attention.

 

Panel 2

They’re both dashing off down the alley.

 

ANGIE: Probably set this up.

 

DUKE: You don’t know that!

 

Panel 3

Back out of the alley, they’re looking in opposite directions down the street.

 

Panel 4

Angie’s taken off.

 

Panel 5

The Duke chases after her, behind.

 

 

PAGE TWELVE

 

Panel 1

The Duke is still trying to catch up with Angie.

 

DUKE: Will you just let me catch up?

 

ANGIE: And just let our friend get away?

 

Panel 2

From the other direction, we see Switchblade, still in the ski mask, ahead of them, with The Duke still trailing Angie.

 

DUKE: That’s not what I mean and you know it!

 

Panel 3

We see Switchblade dodge into another alley.

 

Panel 4

The Duke is stretching out a hand to grasp Angie’s shoulder in an effort to slow her.

 

DUKE: Angie…!

 

Panel 5

Angie still reaches the new alley first.

 

DUKE: You need to think about this!

 

 

PAGE THIRTEEN

 

Panel 1

The Duke has caught up with Angie, who’s staring down an empty alley.

 

DUKE: He’s still wanted for murder. 

 

DUKE: And we’re here because of the other murder.

 

DUKE: It’s dangerous, Angie!  Keep your head in the game!

 

Panel 2

Angie turns around, full anger in her face.

 

ANGIE: I know!

 

ANGIE: Don’t you think I know? 

 

ANGIE: Dawes is dead.

 

Panel 3

The Duke reaches out a hand again, for a shoulder, this time in consolation.

 

DUKE: But he didn’t do it. 

 

DUKE: He couldn’t have.  He wasn’t even in Traverse when it happened.

 

Panel 4

Angie brushes the hand away.

 

ANGIE: He might as well have.

 

Panel 5

Angie sprints out of the alley again.

 

 

PAGE FOURTEEN

 

Panel 1

A hand reaches for The Duke, catching him by surprise.

 

Panel 2

The Duke spins around to see Switchblade, who indeed has a huge new blade in his hand.

 

DUKE: We can talk this out.

 

Panel 3

Angie has returned to the alley, now holding her service weapon firmly in both hands.

 

ANGIE: Hands where I can see them!

 

Panel 4

Switchblade grips The Duke from behind, holding the knife across his throat.

 

DUKE: Angie, please.

 

Panel 5

Angie walking toward the pair anyway.

 

ANGIE: Do you have any idea what we’ve gone through to find you, “Switchblade”?

 

ANGIE: Too much.

 

ANGIE: Too much trouble.  And bullshit.

 

ANGIE: My pal here had his ideas.  See where it got him.  I’ve got others.

 

 

PAGE FIFTEEN

 

Panel 1 (splash)

Switchblade throws his knife at Angie as she shoots back.

 

 

PAGE SIXTEEN

 

Panel 1

The Duke cradles Angie, the blade buried deep in her chest.

 

DUKE: Angie…

 

Panel 2

Flashing lights fill the alley as The Duke continues to clutch Angie.

 

DUKE: I had it under control.

 

Panel 3

Paramedics are collecting Angie.

 

DUKE: I knew what I was doing.

 

Panel 4

The Duke watches as Angie is rolled into the ambulance.

 

DUKE: I had a plan.

 

Panel 5

The Duke, alone in the alley.

 

DUKE: I don’t understand.

 

 

PAGE SEVENTEEN

 

Panel 1

The Duke at Angie’s side in the hospital.  Her eyes are closed.

 

Panel 2

The Duke at the memorial service.

 

Panel 3

The Duke at the cemetery.

 

 

PAGE EIGHTEEN

 

Panel 1

The Duke at his desk.

 

CAPTION: It wasn’t supposed to play out like that.

 

Panel 2

The Duke looking through folders.

 

CAPTION: I don’t blame her.  I don’t even blame Switchblade.

 

Panel 3

Someone talking to him in the office.

 

CAPTION: I don’t blame the system.

 

Panel 4

The Duke standing up, the other person clearly annoyed that he hasn’t been paying attention,

 

CAPTION: It’s just something that happened.

 

Panel 5

The Duke walking past the person without saying a word.

 

CAPTION: Just something that happened.

 

 

PAGE NINETEEN

 

Panel 1

The Duke walking through the station.  He’s holding a file.

 

CAPTION: You see all these connections.

 

Panel 2

The Duke walking through the parking garage.

 

CAPTION: As a cop, you just can’t help it.

 

Panel 3

The Duke finds his car.

 

CAPTION: You see more of the picture than anyone else.

 

Panel 4

The Duke opens the door to his car.

 

CAPTION: It’s just not so easy doing something about it.

 

Panel 5

The Duke is now seated in his car, but isn’t driving yet.  He’s placed the folder in the passenger seat.

 

CAPTION: There are the facts, and then there’s what you can prove.

 

 

PAGE TWENTY

 

Panel 1

Close up on the file, which has “Bandit” written on it.

 

CAPTION: For instance, I know as well as Angie did what did and did not occur, in Traverse.

 

Panel 2

The Duke’s car driving through the parking garage.

 

CAPTION: What did, and did not, occur here in Hun City.

 

Panel 3

The Duke waving at the ticket agent on the way out.

 

CAPTION: And what did, and did not, occur in Bowie.

 

Panel 4

The Duke’s car has emerged into the street.

 

CAPTION: I know, objectively, that Bandit had nothing to do with this.

 

Panel 5

The Duke’s car disappears into city traffic.

 

CAPTION: That doesn’t mean I can’t hold him responsible.

 

 

PAGE TWENTY-ONE

 

Panel 1

Stopped at a red light, The Duke glances down at the folder.

 

CAPTION: It angers me.

 

Panel 2

His hand flips it open.  We see a glossy picture of Bandit.

 

CAPTION: Not what happened.

 

Panel 3

The same hand grips the picture.

 

CAPTION: Why.

 

Panel 4

The hand closes on the picture, bending it.

 

CAPTION: It’s a matter of escalation.

 

Panel 5

The Duke’s car, exterior. Traffic is flowing again.

 

CAPTION: I don’t know what happened to him.  At the moment I don’t even care. 

 

CAPTION: I only know that a series of events occurred.  And Angie is dead. 

 

CAPTION: There’s no good reason for that.

 

 

PAGE TWENTY-TWO

 

Panel 1 (splash)

Same as the first page.

 

CAPTION: Bowie

 

CAPTION: I no longer believe in the inherent goodness of mankind.