Darth John snow's Arc

Chapter 10 of 10

By the next dawn the stone building was full. Twelve riders could not fit inside its walls. Some slept on the floor. Some slept in the dirt outside. John heard the grumbling before breakfast. The girl met him at the door and said they needed more room, or the order would rot from the inside. They built that day and the next. The riders raised a rough wooden barn with open sides for sleep, and beside it a stone-footed barn for quiet training. In the yard between them they set a long oak table under a heavy roof, with a stone hearth at its head and twelve carved chairs. No man sat above another. They ate there that first night, shoulder to shoulder, and the grumbling died. The weeks after changed them. They drilled together until each knew the others' weak side and strong hand. John sat in the meditation barn and reached for the Force, and felt the twelve as one struck chord. He pulled the notes together. When they fought after that, they moved faster, swung harder, read each other without words. The three who heard the Force learned beside him, and he became their master in truth. The riders also turned soil. They planted grain and drove plows for the villages downriver, and the villages paid them in coin and bread and trust. By harvest the order was rich in stores and in name. Farmers waved them through gates without asking for the iron knot. The twelve no longer waited for John's word — they rode out on their own, ate at their own table, slept under their own roof. John watched from the doorway and felt the weight shift off him. The order had a home now, and it was no longer only his.