10 Word Exercise #3

Acknowledgement, green, heritage, squire, resolution, needle, assignment, measurable, fortified and landscape.

The only reading George Freeman had time for prior to his cruise on the Resolution, was to retrieve, then destroy, his next assignment. So it was with measurable relief he read, Heritage: A Knight’s Tale, simply for pleasure while aboard-ship.

The tale told of Robert Green, a squire who’d become one of King Edward’s most trusted knights, and his adventures riding the rolling landscape of Scotland assuring the King’s battlefronts were well fortified with enough men and supplies to stand protected against the enemy. And, right up to the part where King Edward knight’s him Sir Robert to reward him for being trustworthy, it was a story George could relate to.

There was little more than acknowledgement when an assassin, prepared to kill or be killed for his country, retired, as George well knew. What did he expect from an establishment whose needle on the dial of life was set to obscurity? Obscurity that, most of the time, he well understood was for his and his fellow agents’ protection.

Without it, he wouldn’t be retiring with all his limbs and faculties about him; he’d be dancing to the enemy’s tune. For that he was, and would always be, grateful, but once in a while something - fact or fiction - would tweak his desire for what others would consider a normal life.