For 21 days of the year 2162, John Holt, an aging paladin in the now dwindling Order of Pelagius, attempts to keep his honor, fulfill his duty, and resolve past mistakes, as he confronts his own future.Called upon by a local sheriff to solve the mundane murder of a cattleman in New Hampshire, he is beguiled by the love of a good woman, finds himself entangled in the breaking of a local slave trade, snared by the correcting of a wrongful death he may have caused, and obligated to investigate another.Unknowingly at first, he must confront a greater power working to dominate the Myriad nations of the earth and the independent states of the heliosphere, even as a previously vanquished foe seeks revenge amidst a clash of history and circumstance-by plan and accident, using railguns, railroads, dirigibles, steam trucks, and river barges, and with the help of a horse named Rosie."Governments are by nature political. They are the product of expedience, convenience and compromise, not of principle. Governments are naturally malignant. They serve themselves first. They seduce the weak by promising what is not theirs to give. They grow for their own benefit. The Pelagian stands in the way of that bane. A Pelagian knight lives by principle, not politics. Governments fear us, but they accept us out of necessity. Most do. Though this will not always be the case. It is a conflict that is meant to be. Perhaps without end. But the darkness of the Elide must never come again. It is ours to do battle on that sacred ground, so that others may live in peace and lie safely in their beds at night to dream their dreams . . . I live as a free man. I die as a free man. My liberty is my life. I shall not complain. I shall feast!"If history repeats itself, the future may come more than once. . . Three generations after the end of the famines and plagues that were the end of history and known as 'The Elide, ' when the Long Wars are little more than legend, a much depopulated world has renewed itself again.The earth's abandoned colonies in the heliosphere are flourishing and independent, while the 'remnant' peoples of the earth have reorganized under weakened governments without armies.Trade between the outer nations and the earth has increased steadily as fears of lingering viruses fade and the demand by the former settlements for the earth's natural resources and raw materials like wood, fertile soil, and specific minerals, continues to grow.Subtly, but profoundly, humanity has divided into two parts: those who live on the earth, and those who live in the settlements of the heliosphere whose ancestors left Earth before the plagues and thus have little resistance to those viruses. This physical difference will remake the future, as most of mankind will never return to the Earth.In lore, some called them the Fifth Horsemen-the ones who slay the other four. During the generational terrors of pestilence, famine, and war, it was the knight who held the thin line of civilization and offered esperance to the survivors.Yet, in fact, it was something even more grand.It was ordinary men, ordered to kneel, who chose to stand