Act of Will

by A. J. Hartley

After I had finished my rather meager and somewhat edited life story and declared all I owned in the world (now down to four silver pieces, a single copper coin, the clothes I stood up in, and two bits of lead), Mithos motioned us into the corridor, out of earshot of the struggling innkeeper, and addressed the group. The bar was silent and there was no sign of other soldiers.

  “We have no choice but to leave. We can handle three light foot patrolmen easily enough, but they’ll have a platoon of hoplites after us within the hour. We must get out of Cresdon and quickly, or else we’d have to lie low for some time. And since we have an appointment in Stavis in less than three weeks, that gives us no time to hide from the Empire here. It will take at least a week of hard traveling to reach Stavis, so I suggest we move now, before the alarm has been raised.”

  “What about me?” I demanded, made angry by my panic. At the moment I was caught between the devil and the deep blue sea: the grinding judicial system of the Empire and the savages I was rooming with. I couldn’t decide which prospect was more terrifying.

  “You will have to come with us,” Mithos replied with a dissatisfied look in his dark eyes and a sigh in his voice.

  “What? He’s a child!” exclaimed the girl. “He will get us all killed! At best he’ll slow us down and risk exposing us. And if he decides to turn us in, what then?”

  “He won’t,” said Mithos grimly. It wasn’t so much a vote of confidence as a threat, and I recognized it as such. “You need us, Master Hawthorne,” he said with a half-smile. “And we can’t take the chance of leaving you behind to inform on us. If that offends you, consider us your ticket out of Cresdon. Your crime is a small one, but the Empire would brand you a rebel for it, and you know how they love to make examples of rebels. How many of the bodies that hang from the basilica gibbets are rebels, and how many are shopkeep ers, blacksmiths, and actors who the Empire decided were rebels?”

  “I try not to concern myself with politics,” I muttered, trying to stop my hands from trembling. He had a knack of saying all the things I didn’t want to think about and making them sound even worse than I had thought they were.

  “You are concerned with them now,” said the girl bitterly. “Would that you had been concerned about them before. Though what you could have contributed to the cause I don’t know.”

  “Renthrette,” said Mithos swiftly, “we have no time for bickering. The boy will leave Cresdon under our aegis whether he likes the idea or not.”

  “I’m not a boy!” I exclaimed. “I’m eighteen. A man.”

  The girl—who couldn’t have been more than a year older than me—snorted with disdain.

  Mithos, ignoring my indignation, told me my options in a matter-of-fact tone: “Should you decide, once we’re outside Cresdon, to ride with us to Stavis, you’ll come as one who must earn his keep and keep his place. Or we can part company when we are a comfortable distance from the city. It’s your choice. You will find us trustworthy unless you endanger our mission.”

  I nodded my agreement, anxious to go along with anything that would get me away from this inn. But as for trust, he could forget it. William Hawthorne trusted no one, and wasn’t about to start with a handful of murderous rogues he knew little—all bad—about. I figured I would have them get me clear of the city. Nothing more.

  My one anxiety—apart from the Empire, of course—was that they might feel obliged to do away with me to protect their precious identities before they headed for Stavis, the easternmost reach of the lands taken by the Diamond Empire armies. To seem keen to go with them might make me seem less of a security risk, though the journey itself, if it came to that, would probably kill me.

  The Empire had come from the northern mountains of Aeloria, financed by the precious stones mined in their homeland. They had clad their legions in white, their pennants, banners, and cloaks over-laid with the blue diamond motif. So had they acquired their name: the Diamond Empire, wealthy, cold, hard, sharp, and smugly eternal. They had crushed the lands that bordered Aeloria and pushed south to the kingdom of Thrusia. We had fallen hard and taken the edge off the Diamond’s advance for a while. Then greed set their eyes across the virtual desert plains of the Hrof wastes—a land drier than Thrusian grain whiskey or the wit of an Empire centurion—to Stavis in the east, a sickeningly prosperous port. They extended a thin finger of their force, unable to feed and water a more smothering movement in so harsh a region, took Stavis, and held it. The Hrof remained a wild place to this day, and you’d need a rollicking good reason to cross it. There was little Empire presence on the road, though the bandits, scorpions, and vultures had their own plans for you. If you make it to Stavis, you are back in proper Empire territory, but once you get through the town and head east, you are free. That might be the rollicking good reason I needed.

  They probably had another.

  “What is your mission?” I asked.

  “That’s our business,” Mithos answered quietly, but with a deliberation I was not supposed to question.

  “Thanks a lot,” I snapped. “So you expect me to go trekking across the bloody Hrof with you, knowing that the trip is going to be an absolute swine, and you won’t even say where we’re going! That’s great, that is. Your name has been all over this town for months, years! But because you did me an unrequested favor and saved me from the bloody Empire, putting me right on top of its wanted list in the process, you expect me to go picnicking with you in the desert, even though it wouldn’t surprise me if you put a dagger in my spine to save water. I’d be safer doing a week in the stocks.”

  “People die in the stocks,” Garnet hissed, his green eyes flashing. I think he rather liked the idea. He was right, of course. The worthy townsfolk couldn’t always be trusted to throw no more than fruit and veg at whoever was chained in the marketplace.

  I went on nonetheless. “At least I wouldn’t be looking over my shoulder to see whether you thugs were about to . . .”

  Garnet got up. His fist was clenched round the haft of a large and mean-looking battle-ax, so I shut up quickly. He came for me anyway, grabbing a handful of dress just below my chin in a pale, strong hand and hoisting me against the wall. His eyes burned hard as emeralds and he placed the cold iron of the ax bit to my cheek. I half stood, half hung, and silently tried not to urinate. I could feel his heart racing and see the whiteness of his knuckles where they grasped the ax handle, and I braced myself for what would come next. In the end he just released me suddenly and, as I crumpled, said, “Find your own way out of Cresdon then, worm.”

  That put a different complexion on things.

  “Sorry,” I muttered. “Stressful day, you know?”

  I tried a cautious smile. Whatever I thought of them, I believed they might be able to get me out, something I couldn’t do by myself.

  “Can I do anything to help?” I tried.

  “Unlikely,” said the girl.

  “Can you do a Cherrat accent?” said Mithos.

  “Who? Me? Are you joking?”

  “No. Can you do it?”

  “A little, I think,” I said, doubtful as to what part this new madness was to play in my escape.

  “Let’s hear it,” said Mithos calmly, leading us back into their room.

  They checked on the innkeeper and began getting their things together, then started changing clothes. The girl turned her back first so I could see nothing worth speaking of. I caught Garnet’s eye and leered towards Renthrette, hoping for a little manly understanding, but he looked murderously back. I stopped looking at her and stared disconsolately at the floor. God, what a mess.

  “Sell me this shirt,” continued Mithos.

  “What?”

  “Pretend you are a Cherrati merchant and—”

  “Oh, I see. Well, er . . .” I faltered, quickly deciding that to behave like a lunatic in the company of lunatics was only reasonable. I started talking, hunching up my shoulders as I had seen the extravagant Cherratis doing in the marketplace at weekends. I was quite good at things
like this, worthless though they were. I tilted my head and spoke through my nose. “You! Yes, you. Did you ever see quality like this? Feel that sleeve. That’s quality, my friend. The finest . . . what?”

  “Silk,” he prompted.

  “The finest silk you’ll put your unworthy hands on this side of the great river. Purchased at great expense from the hill tribes of the North and embroidered by the twelve virgin priestesses of Cherrath-waite. And would I ask twelve silver pieces of you? No sir, not twelve. Not ten. A mere eight silver pieces. What, you cheapskate, will you ruin me? All right, all right, I’ll take seven. . . .”

  Shortly, Mithos smiled and told me to stop. “You have a talent, my friend,” he said. “Perhaps we’ll find a use for you yet. Now get rid of that dress and put the shirt on. And the trousers and boots. You’ll probably need a belt with those. There’s one in that box. Can you shoot a crossbow?”

  “Kind of,” I answered. “So long as you don’t expect me to hit anything with it.”

  “Take this,” he said. He handed me a whimsical little crossbow, one of the light, one-handed kind which was legal within the city. It probably wouldn’t do much damage to anyone in armor but it was a lovely piece of work: polished russet wood inlaid with silver. It was exactly what a Cherrati would carry.

  Orgos was to ride with me in a wagon full of “borrowed” trade goods whose origin I dreaded to consider. He looked good too, I must say. There are more blacks native to Cherrat than to these parts, so he didn’t look at all out of place in his dark leather and crimson silks. He girded on a rapier (another weapon deemed legal because it wouldn’t penetrate the plate cuirass of an Empire soldier), and completed the picture with a plumed cap.

  When Renthrette turned I was disappointed to note that she was dressed in the drab, coarse, and shapeless fabrics of a peasant. She gave me a blank look and turned away. I obviously wasn’t making much of an impression. She made light of a crate I could barely have lifted and my vague interest took another hit. This was unfortunate, since it was only my focus on her that was stopping me from thinking about all the terrible things I probably should have been thinking about, like where I was, who I was with, what I was doing, who was most likely to kill me, and whether they would do it this afternoon or sometime later in the week.

  Orgos checked the ropes binding the innkeeper and the soldiers, all of whom were awake and frightened-looking in ways I would not have believed possible from Empire troops, and then ushered me out, heaving a box onto his shoulder and bidding me take the last bag. When only a couple of crates were left, Mithos led us into the corridor and spoke quickly. “Master Hawthorne, do as Orgos says. Speak only when you have to. I don’t want you being chased across rooftops again. There is an inn called the Wheatsheaf about a mile along the Stavis road. We will meet there, hopefully, for lunch. If we are not all together by nightfall, those who have arrived should head for Stavis at dawn tomorrow. Orgos, you take the wagon through the southwestern gate. And Will?” he said, bending down to my level and speaking carefully into my face. “Don’t even consider turning us in. If you do and they don’t have you up on the scaffold with us, burning your entrails in front of your dying eyes, I’ll make sure someone from our side does something similar. It may be less public, but it would probably feel about the same. Good luck.”

  We left the tavern at a moderate pace and I kept my eyes turned down. With a flick of the reins Orgos set our four Cherrati mares walking out of the inn’s yard and into the streets. I fiddled with my crossbow and wondered if I should just shoot myself now and save them the trouble.

  SCENE VI

  The gatehouse

  A light summer rain had begun to fall as we left the inn. The Cresdon streets were rapidly being churned to mud by cart wheels, horse hooves, and the shaggy, lumbering cattle they breed in these parts. Orgos steered the wagon expertly enough and, at first, said nothing, so I was free to take a last look at the city, as we hit potholes of reeking, stagnant water deep enough to drown a sheep. All in all I wasn’t going to miss this place too much, even if I knew absolutely sod-all about what lay outside it.

  Frequently we slowed to a virtual stop to negotiate the wagon through streets so narrow that we scraped against houses and shops on both sides. Most of them were white plaster and timber-framed ruins that tier fractionally outwards like inverted pyramids. The thatched roofs on either side of the street almost meet in the middle, but at ground level you can drive a wagon through. Just. I lost count of the number of times the street was blocked by some imbecile taking his geese or chickens to market. It took us three-quarters of an hour to cover about a mile and a half, a good ten minutes of which was spent arguing with the red-faced driver of the hay cart that was coming from the opposite direction.

  I was not used to handling weapons (other than wholly ineffectual stage swords, of course, and since I had played almost nothing but girls, I didn’t get to handle those much either), and the feel of the crossbow in my hands, though it was little more than a toy, excited me. As we passed the hay carter, I let him glimpse it and he stopped throwing insults at us. Orgos noticed and frowned at me.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I wouldn’t have used it.”

  “You got that right,” he remarked warningly. “And use your accent.”

  “What? Why? There’s no one around.”

  “Get used to it now,” he insisted, still using the nasal, singsong tones himself, “and you’ll be more comfortable should it become essential.”

  “I’m shy,” I answered with a coy smile that was supposed to amuse him and make him sympathetic. It didn’t.

  He leaned his face close to me and his black eyes fastened on to mine as he whispered, “This is not a game, boy, and there is more than just your scrawny neck on the chopping block. I am not requesting that you practice that accent, I am telling you to. Else get off my wagon.”

  “Right,” I muttered, scared of his earnestness.

  “What?” he demanded, making his point carefully.

  “I mean, right you are, there, sir,” I replied in the best imitation of Cherrat as I could manage. He grinned, satisfied, and his white teeth glowed impossibly in his black face. His features seemed capable of slipping from death-threatening hostility into amiable good humor without so much as a pause for thought.

  I hadn’t spent much time amongst black people for, in these parts, they tended to be wealthy merchants: hardly the types to frequent the Eagle. When you saw them it was usually in the marketplace, and I mean the traders’ market, not the bruised-fruit-and-rancid-meat places. They were well dressed, well spoken, and accompanied by servants and occasionally “attendants” (the euphemistic term applied to bodyguards to keep them legal). These guards couldn’t carry much in the way of arms in the town, of course, but they could be weighed down with plate armor and battle-axes on the roads. That was legal so long as they didn’t travel in groups of more than four.

  People tended to be respectful of the black merchants for their wealth and education, but you sometimes got a sense of resentment simply because they were outsiders, a resentment aggravated by the fact that our town was occupied by foreigners. I was rather fascinated by the darkness of Orgos’s skin, the tight curl of his hair, and the broad features of his face. Fascinated, but not reassured. I don’t suppose I’d ever been this close to a black man before, and that actually made me feel worse. I wouldn’t miss this lousy town, if I got out of it, but Orgos, with his fake accent and unfamiliar appearance, reminded me of how little I knew of the outside world I was being thrown into, and I resented him for it. Whether I resented him enough to turn him over to the guards on the gate remained to be seen.

  “What was that flash of light?” I said, suddenly remembering something that had been nagging at me.

  “What flash of light?”

  “Back at the inn,” I said. “When the soldiers came in. There was a flash of light, bright like a firework. I wasn’t looking right at it, but I saw the way it lit the room and then . . . I
don’t know. I got confused or sick or something.”

  “It must have been a spark from swords clashing,” he said. He stared ahead of him.

  “A spark that lit the whole room?” I said. “No way.”

  “I can’t think of what else it would be,” he said. “I didn’t notice it.”

  I knew he was lying, but I had no idea why or what else it could have been, and since he was twice my size, a notorious criminal, and armed to the teeth, I said nothing.

  We got stuck behind a cart containing a peasant family in bright but soiled clothes, though they were less relevant than the two underfed bullocks pulling them. We had to (I could barely believe it possible) reduce speed.

  All cursing aside, we came to the gatehouse too soon for my liking. Once again, I felt the steely grasp of terror’s mailed gauntlet tightening about my genitals. Around us the houses, hawkers, and wandering livestock had melted away and we found ourselves in a corner of the great sand-colored stone wall that circled the city. Fifty feet up, pairs of infantrymen walked the parapeted wall. Sentries, their white diamond-motif cloaks drawn about them against the rain, looked down upon us through the eyeholes of bright steel helms, their bows over their shoulders. I stared wide-eyed at Orgos, who made the smallest calming gesture with one hand and reined the horses.

  At the angle of the two vast walls was the gatehouse, surmounted by a watchtower. The bullock cart in front of us stopped and the driver climbed down. A burly foot patrolman was asking him questions and pointing dismissively at the people in the wagon.

  The dozen guards who stood alert in the gateway itself were the business end of the Empire. They too wore the white diamonded cloaks, but they bore large round shields protecting them from knee to shoulder. Iron cuirasses encased their thoraxes, and their helms were crested with white horsehair and left only their eyes uncovered. Over their thighs and abdomens they wore skirts of white linen with metal rings sewn on. Shortswords hung at their waists, a pair of light javelins stood by their sides, and in their right hands they clasped long wooden spears tipped with fine steel. They scared the living daylights out of me.