Act of Will (21 page)

“Fight me, damn you!” roared Orgos.

He leapt into the mass of bronze-and-crimson warriors with Mithos at his heels. Garnet’s horse ploughed into the enemy and he leapt from it, swinging his ax as he dived. I caught a glimpse of Renthrette trading blows with two of them. There were dozens more. Absolute victory was theirs, but the party fought them still.

Then I saw Lisha. She stood apart, watching as the last of our men fell to the scyaxes. There were only two or three of our escort still fighting and the muddy earth was thick with corpses swathed in royal blue cloaks. Still, Lisha dug her heels into the glossy flanks of the black warhorse called Tarsha and crashed into the throng of the enemy.

“No!” I shouted.

The battle was lost. She heard me and for a split second her eyes found me out, oblivious to the plunging and stamping of her battle-trained stallion. Then she raised her black-shafted spear and struck downwards. There was a bluish spark like a small lightning storm, and a thunderous roar. I stared, astonished. Two raiders fell before her, and Tarsha’s hooves rained down upon them. The rest of them parted before her in confused panic as she made her way to where the remainder of our company stood: Orgos and Mithos with their blades outstretched daring the enemy to attack, Garnet and Renthrette bleeding but angrily defiant, and two or three tattered soldiers from Greycoast, the last of our hundred-man escort. They gathered about Tarsha’s steaming sides, and Lisha, her black hair spilling from her helm, looked sternly about her. I was pretty sure that sixty or more of the enemy remained, but only a couple of dozen were visible. The others had melted away in the mist, and that could mean only one thing: They were about to attack again.

It was now or never.

I slipped between the wagons and started to head in the opposite direction, hoping to lose myself in the misty fields till it was over. Then I could get a horse and head north. My adventuring days were done.

“Where shall we stand, sir?”

It was one of the Greycoast spearmen, who had recognized me. He had retreated to the wagons, to hide, probably, but now he had regained his laughable courage. He wasn’t alone, either. There were five or six others, one with a horse and a couple with bows, all clinging to the shelter of the wagons but now watching me expectantly.

“Do what you like,” I muttered, clambering over a dead horse to the far side of the road.

“Sir?” said the soldier.

“Be heroic,” I muttered sarcastically. “Charge!”

“That way, sir?” said the bewildered soldier, squinting out into the misty emptiness where I was heading and then glancing back to where Mithos and the rest stood, squared for the final, inevitable assault on the other side.

“Oh, yes,” I said. “Definitely this way, if you value your skins.”

With that I started to run into the mist where it was densest, getting as far away from the wagons and the battle as I could. The few remaining stragglers ran after me, though God alone knew what they thought they were doing. Distantly I heard Orgos shouting at the enemy back there, but I ran on, gasping for breath, my heart thudding against my ribs, no thought in my head but escape.

Then the wind gusted, and everything changed.

The mist ahead shifted. It rippled clear for a moment and I saw the scarlet cloaks of forty men no more than ten yards away. They were dismounted, getting ready for a quiet attack on the rear that would wipe out the survivors. I would have sworn they hadn’t been there only seconds before, but they were there now, and I had run right into them.

I froze. The heavy mist was coursing back into place all around us. They obviously hadn’t seen me, and with care I might still slip by them and make a run for it. I was considering how I might do this when one of the infantrymen who had “fled” with me ran blindly into my back. I fell forward with a startled cry and, as I hit the ground, my temperamental crossbow went off. There was a shout of pain as one of the raiders twisted to the ground clutching his abdomen, and then a stuttering and scattered shout as the half-dozen men who had followed me pitched their spears and shot their bows.

The raiders were, of course, in no real danger. They were, however—perhaps for the first time in their savage career—taken completely off-guard. They weren’t ready to fight and they didn’t know whom they were fighting, where the enemy were, or how many they numbered. One horse fell, maybe more, and one of the Grey-coast troops got in close enough to lunge his spear into the stomach of one of the unwary raiders. No more than shadow figures in the thick mist, the raiders stumbled about in the confusion, trying to get back into their saddles, calling out to each other and nervously watching for their equally shadowy attackers. A few more arrows fell amongst them and I heard another shout of pain. I don’t know if they lost any others, but I do know that in seconds they were gone: mounted and fled.

“Brilliant!” said one of the spearmen, wheezing heavily.

“What?” I gasped, still lying on the damp ground.

“That was a stroke of tactical genius,” he said as the others gathered about us, exhausted and beaming. “And real courage,” he went on. “It’s an honor to serve under you, sir.”

With that commendation and a grin of triumph, they hurried back to the wagons for more. I sat there in the mud for a moment and then, very slowly, followed.

By the time I found my way back to the road the survivors had gathered with the party. The raiders stood a hundred yards away, regrouped and orderly, though somehow you could tell that there was to be no final attack. I slipped in amongst the party, hoping that as Mithos’s name had saved me in the burning village, so his presence would now. We stayed where we were, conscious of the wagons smoking behind us but staring at the crimson, faceless line.

And then the raider with the horned helm and the staff finally moved, raising his arms in some grand gesture. The staff traced a slow circle in the air and, as the raiders began to walk their mounts away, I had the odd impression that the mist was getting thicker around them. Only a solitary officer, distinguishable by the lateral plume across his helm, paused and looked back at us before he too pulled his horse around and rode slowly away into the mist. He seemed to fade as the fog thickened, and then they were gone.

SCENE XXIX

The Fallen

T
hough many have fallen,” called Orgos from atop one of the wagons, “we ride in triumph to Ironwall. We owe much, even our very lives, to each other and to those who didn’t make it through. But we owe the most to one man whose courage and ingenuity saved the lives of many, perhaps of the convoy itself. When we reach Ironwall, we will celebrate, but for now let us simply cry, ‘Three cheers for Will Hawthorne!’ Hip hip, hoorah. Hip, hip . . .”

This came as something of a surprise to me, and for a split second I thought it was an unpleasant joke at my expense. But they cheered loudly and gripped my shoulder and shook my hand and said I was a good fellow and a dashed fine general. And since their saying so seemed to make everyone forget what a fiasco the whole thing had been, I took my praise modestly.

I caught Renthrette watching me thoughtfully. Our eyes locked and I couldn’t think of anything to say. She tried to smile in an encouraging sort of way, but she still looked shocked and exhausted from the battle. I nodded quickly and looked away.

This was where I got off. I had seen enough and had decided that staying to be massacred with the rest of them was not my idea of a fun day out. I hadn’t told them yet, but I was done.

Funnily enough, it was Orgos who had made me realize that this was no place for me. In his little post-slaughter speech he had said in his proud, warrior voice, “We leave the field honorably, and had they charged us at the end, they would have learnt to their cost that valor permits no surrender.” He meant it, too. What I had intended as a prompt to get them to see the futility of what they were doing, he was echoing without a trace of irony.

Well, speak for yourself, mate. The road was littered with bodies. We had been inches away from being a huddle of corpses beside a few burning wagons, another failed defense against the raiders; but we would have died honorably and that made it all right. No. Honor is just the carrot that leads donkeys like Orgos to pointless deaths, leaving the downtrodden without a champion and the tyrants secure as before. Call me pragmatic, call me cynical, but I didn’t get it and I wasn’t about to die for it.

Despite Orgos’s words of honor and triumph, I detected a glimmer of panic amongst the party as they looked over the casualties. I suppose we are brought up to believe that the good guys always win in the end, though they might take a few tear-jerking losses along the way. Sooner or later the enemies are brought low by that superior skill, or that extra spark of intelligence, or that flash of magical power too mysterious for the narrator to have to justify it. Well, we hadn’t seen any of that. They had wiped our force out and toyed with the survivors. I’d seen some more of that strange light from Orgos’s sword, and something similar from Lisha’s spear, but whatever such things were, they clearly weren’t enough. For once, Lisha’s party didn’t have the edge, and—however much they tried to keep it to themselves—it shocked them like a spear in the side.

Before we set off I saw Mithos and Lisha standing together. He loomed over her in his stained armor and she talked up to him. Though I don’t know what was said, it was a while before they parted. When he caught my gaze I thought he faltered for a moment before he spoke. “Give them a hand putting that fire out, Will. Then help Lisha collect the dead for burial.”

I did, but I’m not going to talk about that.

There was something else as well, the icing on the whole horrible cake. We hadn’t killed any of the raiders. Not one. There wasn’t a single corpse on the battlefield wearing the scarlet and bronze of the enemy. This was troubling on several levels.

I had seen several of the raiders go down. I would have sworn that we had killed maybe a dozen—not a huge dent in their force, of course, but enough to prove they were mortal. I wandered the battlefield when the fog lifted, but there were none.

“The mist was thick,” said Garnet. “They must have come back and taken away their dead while we were tending to our survivors.”

“And the tracks?” said Renthrette, gazing out over the fields. “There are hoofprints on the battlefield itself. They radiate out for a couple of hundred yards. But beyond that, nothing. How did they get here? Where did they go?”

SCENE XXX

Ironwall

I
t was evening by the time we reached the city. A slight buzz of excitement rose up from the wagons as the citadel’s towering walls and turrets came into view. In other circumstances I might have been impressed too, since it far outshone anything I’d ever seen in the Empire lands, but I was having a bad day. It seemed like I’d had a lot of bad days lately. Since I blamed my companions for that, I ignored their vaguely awestruck whispers about the scale of the fortifications and glowered at the Greycoast capital.

Ironwall looked like it had emerged from the earth. It was completely contained by its perimeter wall—no straggling inns and houses overspilling the city proper—and only the road we were on showed signs of civilization beyond its massive battlements. It breathed unassailable authority from its granite bulk. I shifted uneasily in my saddle as the thing got closer, filling the horizon and looming over us like storm clouds.

Renthrette had raised the beaver of her helm by the time we approached the huge gatehouse, but her face gave so little away that she might as well have kept it down. She had been like that since the battle: quiet, watchful, uncertain. It was weird and a little scary. If the raiders could leave her unsure of herself, then their powers had no limits.

She had ridden ahead to announce our coming, since it took about ten minutes to get the massive porticullis open, and by the time we got there, soldiers and townsfolk had gathered along the walls to watch our entry. I think they were cheering. I dismounted, tethered my horse to the back of the wagon, and climbed inside, where I felt less exposed. Garnet rode out to the front looking brave and stalwart.

An expensive-looking wagon bearing a silversmith’s arms was stuck in the roadway, trying to get out of the city and head north. The old man driving it paused to cheer us on. He wore a silver pendant at his throat shaped like a sun disk with a huge blue stone in the center. The cheering increased, muting only slightly as the corpse wagons passed over the bridge and into the city.

Duke Raymon had left his litter and stood before us, shaking Mithos by the hand and beaming conspicuously to the crowd. He was dressed in turquoise silk with a fur mantle and looked regally impressive. There was a touch of swagger in his gait, which may once have merely been his size but was now part of his politician’s confidence. On either side of him stood Arlest, count of Shale, and Edwyn Treylen, governor of Verneytha. In a voice meant to be heard throughout the region, he said, “Welcome, thrice-noble Mithos and your honorable companions. Today you have shown the people of Greycoast that there is yet hope. The ruthless enemy of our people, the enemy indeed of the free world, will be vanquished. This cargo is of great import to us, but more so is this victory over the crimson tyrants who rape our land. Together we have shown them that we will not submit to their barbarism. Greycoast and its allies stand firm and will give no quarter to those who persecute the innocent. We will sorrow for those who fell, but we will also celebrate the dignity of their ends, for their blood has been turned to gold by the service they have performed for their country. We salute you all for your stand against evil.”

The crowd exulted and waved their Greycoast flags. They threw flowers and their petals fell about us like snow. The injured remnants of our escort smiled proudly and shouted back words of triumph and determination. God help them.

Only when we reached the palace did the duke’s smile slip away. He began to scowl at us irritably before finally slamming his fist on the great walnut table before him and roaring, “Sixty-five dead and thirty injured? Three wagons destroyed and the contents of one other all but burnt up? You incompetent fools!”

I stared at him in astonishment as he released the chain clasp at his throat and shook off his fur mantle, his face red and ugly with sudden anger. Arlest was watching uncertainly, his features drawn and his eyes weary. The weaselish Treylen looked out of the window, as if stepping out of the room.

Mithos said, in a deliberately measured tone, “We brought the majority of the cargo to Ironwall as requested. The casualties we sustained were . . . regrettable, but apparently unavoidable.”

“Unavoidable?” bellowed the duke, his mouth wide through his beard, the fat in his cheeks quivering. We were in his throne room, a large stone chamber surrounded by guarded archways from which his words echoed.

“Now, Raymon,” said Arlest, conciliating. “I’m sure the party did what it could—”

The duke cut him off, continuing to berate us as if the count weren’t really there. “You are professionals,” he snorted, his voice full of derision, “but you can’t protect a few wagons with a hundred men? How is it possible that you could have lost so heavily? And how is it possible that you pathetic mercenaries emerged unscathed?”

At these random insults and queries I saw Garnet, his green eyes suddenly lit with fury, lay his hand to the haft of his ax. Lisha also saw and touched his wrist gently with her fingertips. He froze. Mithos answered, “The men you gave us were untrained and inadequately equipped to deal with such an adversary.”

“So you sent them in to protect your worthless hides?” shouted the duke.

“We stood in the front line,” persisted Mithos, his voice still restrained, but with an increasing edge of bitterness. “We fought alongside them and organized them as best we could. Ask them. The enemy was vastly superior to our force, something we were unprepared for.”

“Unprepared for?” the duke responded. “You were warned—”

“You gave us raw recruits!” Mithos inserted. “What did you expect?”

There was a frosty pause, and Treylen turned back from the window, as if he thought that what happened next might be interesting. Greycoast stepped up to Mithos’s chest and whispered hoarsely into his face,

“How dare you interrupt me and toss me this abuse! You are in Ironwall now, friend, and I have great power here. Absolute power. If you do not learn some respect for your superiors, it will be beaten into you. Henceforth you will address me as ‘sir’ and speak only when you are asked to. Is that clear?”

Mithos looked at him silently, his fists clenched so that the olive skin of his knuckles whitened. By the heavy entrance door a pair of guards exchanged swift glances and swung the heads of their pikes round towards us. Treylen raised one eyebrow, curious to see how Mithos would respond.

“Is that clear?” repeated the duke of Greycoast, leaning closer still to Mithos.

“Yes,” said Mithos slowly, adding, after a pause, “sir.”

“Good,” said the duke with an unpleasant smile of satisfaction. “Now—”

I couldn’t take it anymore. “No, it’s not good, and I’ll respect my superiors when I meet them.”

This was probably not the best thing I could have said, but I figured I was out of this farce for good, so what the hell. I continued, “I’m sure that Your Most Excellent Majesty was grieved that you couldn’t be with us when the convoy was attacked, and I for one wish you had been around to enlighten us with your brilliant military mind, but you weren’t. You see,” I said, starting to feel good about myself for the first time in weeks, “I know it
sounds
like child’s play, defending ten wagons of coal with a hundred soldiers who are waiting for their voices to break, but that’s because you wouldn’t know a battle plan if it bit you in your massive ass.”

Lisha stirred but I cut her off before she could say anything.

“No,” I said quickly, with a look in her direction, “it doesn’t matter anymore, so I’ll say what I like. Now, Your Royal Immensity, judging from your speech to the ignorant masses earlier, you either have no grasp on reality or choose to ignore it when it suits your political career.”

I couldn’t stop. I was enjoying myself, and he wasn’t the only one who needed someone to blame. I pointed my finger squarely at him and went on. “You spoke of their dignified deaths. What do you know about death? I was there and there was no dignity. Not that you care. I’ll bet the armed escort that brought you home from Seaholme was a sight better trained than the boy soldiers you left with us. But then, what’s a hundred boys compared to a duke? You probably eat close to that at a sitting.”

I sat down.

“Are you finished?” he murmured, with the kind of cold reserve that you know is going to explode any second.

“For the moment,” I said cheerily.

“Did you know that throughout Greycoast, treachery is punishable by death, the traitors being hanged, drawn, and quartered?”

“No, I didn’t know that.”

“And do you know how we define treachery here?” asked the duke.

I thought for a moment and said, “Calling you a fat, self-important bastard would probably do it.”

“Guards!” he called, lashing out with one heavily braceleted fist. They came at me with their pikes and rapiers. His knuckles caught me just under the chin, and I felt my head lurch up and back so that the room spun for a second. I whirled away from him, barely retaining consciousness as my teeth slammed together. The guards descended on me like hawks. They pinned my arms behind my back and, at the duke’s cursory command of “Get him out of my sight,” they marched me out. One guard gestured to Garnet in a way that suggested the misguided nature of any intervention on his part. They had to virtually carry me out of the room.