Hvergelmir shook her head. "We're not an army, and we don't live under martial law. When we disagree about things, there's no military tribunal, and we don't force those with lesser power ranks to bow to the people who have more. Fascism -- and the belief in the need for fascism and the police state -- are born out of wisdom taking a backseat to human fear. It's not the only way to get things done.
"Would organization be useful? Definitely. But suggesting something and putting it into practice are two different things." She sighed and waved a hand drearily through the air, demarcating her points. "Our communicators only work by letter, which makes them slow and tedious, and there's no 'To: Everyone I know' option. We don't have a base where groups of us can travel at a whim to meet regularly even if we wanted to, nor the benefit of Mauvian attachés to block our energy signals if we wanted to meet up somewhere here in DC. It's still worth doing, I'm not disagreeing with that, but -- you're underestimating how difficult it is to organize untrained strangers into a community just by carrier pigeon."
Talking to Wolframite was proving more than a little painful. It was difficult to have a conversation with a person who seemed to generally be fundamentally decent -- who was, in his way, trying to offer the knights
advice and seemed to feel guilty killing them dishonorably -- but who, despite all that, was still unwilling to take any action to follow through on his sympathies.
He understood that fearful, reactionary attitudes and tactics had no particular honor in them -- but he was afraid. Something terrible had happened to him, to people he cared about, and the terror that something like that might happen again left him cleaving to the things he knew and the system that was in place, hunkering in the shadow of that obelisk of power in hopes that such great and terrible strength, however unjust it could be, might at least protect him. He was willing to bathe in the blood of his enemies rather than risk his friends.
A sympathetic attitude, if not at all a laudable one. And, in the end -- she suspected -- an attitude that would prove fruitless. No one who lived sheltered in the arms of Chaos was truly safe. Nor did she imagine he'd like the person he became if he followed the road he was on down to its bitter, bloody end.
"There are no role model knights in the way you might be imagining them, no," she answered. "When we organize -- which we may someday do -- I still doubt it'll be under the command of a ruler. All knights are equal who sit at a round table, after all. And a Senate is a better thing than an Emperor. People seek authoritarian rule in times of fear because it's easy. But it isn't the only way that works. The only place that people really can't get by without a single field commander to make snap decisions is in the middle of the battlefield itself."
She shrugged. "In any event, I don't need a community to provide me with a clear purpose. I know why I choose to wear my uniform -- I don't need it dictated to me by someone. If I needed a crowd of other people at my back to strengthen my convictions, then they weren't very strong in the first place."
Hvergelmir turned the issue back to him. "Do you believe the world needs monarchies?"
