Act of Will

by A. J. Hartley

  I looked back: a full platoon of Empire troops, numbering about twenty-five with an officer riding hard. They pulled ahead of us and waved us to a halt. Then they formed a single line, circled the wagon and our outriders, and stopped, spears leveled at us.

  Hiding in the back suddenly seemed like a good idea.

  “We are looking for one William Hawthorne,” barked the officer, “a notorious rebel. Dismount and stand clear of the wagon.”

  We did so, and eight soldiers climbed cautiously down from their mounts and held us at the tips of their spears while four others searched us and removed our weapons. Orgos gave me a reproachful look. No one spoke and I felt a wave of nausea washing over me. The officer, a large, tanned man with the hardened features of a soldier whose authority comes from experience in the thick of things, spoke to a younger man in the uniform of the town guard. There was a long silence and they just looked at us while someone opened the tailgate. A moment later one of the soldiers emerged from the back of the wagon and said, “Captain.” He held a heavy scale tunic in one hand and a battle-ax in the other. “The vehicle is laden with weaponry, sir.”

  The officer turned back to me, and a thick smile spread slowly across his scarred leathery face. The Cherrati-merchant story wasn’t going to cut it this time.

  “Which one of you is Hawthorne?” said the officer, pleased with himself. “Or would you rather identify yourself on the rack in Cresdon?”

  SCENE X

  Improvisation

  It’s a curious thing, the way language works. You tend to presume that you form an idea and then put it into words, but this is often not the case. Words seem to have a life of their own. They start, and your brain follows like a schoolboy, trying to keep up. This was what happened here. The plan was unformed, the ideas completely undeveloped, but when I opened my mouth, words came out.

  “I suggest, Captain, that you get back on your horse and return to the garrison before you make the kind of mistake that could end your career.”

  The officer looked momentarily knocked off balance, but then he smirked.

  “Identification papers, if you please, sir,” he said.

  “I think that if anyone should be producing paperwork,” I said, “it’s you.”

  The smirk was still there, but his patience was thinning fast. “And why would that be, sir?” he said, leaning in so that he loomed more effectively.

  “Because if I don’t see something with Harveth Liefson’s seal on it within the next couple of minutes, you are going to find yourself in very hot water.”

  Liefson’s name hit him between the eyes like a half-brick.

  “Commander Liefson?” he spluttered. “Why would I need Commander Liefson’s signature to take you in?”

  He was trying to be defiant, but there was a slightly hunted look on his face.

  “That’s something you’re going to have to ask him, aren’t you?” I said. “Or, I suppose,” I added thoughtfully, “you could take it up with Section Four.”

  Another half-brick. The captain shrank a little and his voice went a little up in pitch and down in volume.

  “Garrison intelligence?” he said. “They only handle internal operations.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “Perhaps we should continue this conversation in private.”

  There was a pause, and then a light seemed to go on inside the captain’s head and his mouth fell open. “But how do I know if you are really . . . ?”

  I climbed down from the wagon and started walking away, and a moment later, he followed. When we reached the circle of soldiers, he gave a hurried nod and they parted for us. I kept walking away from the road till we were safely out of earshot.

  “Now, just a moment,” said the captain, recovering a little of his former poise. “Where do you think you’re going? . . . ”

  “You call him Commander Liefson,” I said, turning quickly and speaking urgently. “And he has a seat on the council, but you might also know that he’s really Central Intelligence’s witch-finder general: something the most well-informed rebels have never guessed.”

  That wasn’t so much a half-brick as a ton of them. The captain took another step back and his mouth began to move as if he was searching for words that wouldn’t come.

  The captain paused, knowing that this was true and that this was far from common knowledge.

  “I am William Hawthorne,” I confessed. “I am also Major Johan Twiness, Section Four, Special Agent Eighty-three. You’re thinking I’m young to be a special agent, I’m sure. Recruited from Homewood Prep at age twelve. You know it?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I didn’t attend, unfortunately, but yes, I know it.”

  “Well,” I said, moving on, “I think my cover for this mission is now well and truly shot. And Liefson is going to hit the roof when he finds out that the regular infantry have sabotaged an internal espionage mission because they didn’t bother to consult with high command before turning the dogs loose.”

  He blinked, and I took the moment to motion him closer with a nod of my head.

  “You are Seventh Infantry, yes, Captain?” I said, my voice lowered conspiratorially.

  “Yes, sir. Captain J. F. Danek. Served throughout the Bowescroft campaign. Decorated for bravery in the siege of Althwaite, now placed with the Cresdon B Garrison, sir.”

  “Good man, Danek, outstanding,” I said. “So here’s the thing. I’ve been undercover for months. This morning some idiot corporal tried to take me in. Caused all kinds of trouble. I will have to lie low for a while so the rebels don’t get suspicious. Now, it seems to me that this situation can be saved if we move along swiftly, and you keep what you have learnt to yourself. Make your way slowly back to Cresdon and—this is most important—report none of this to your superiors, whom Section Four seem to consider unreliable.”

  “Are you suggesting, sir, that my commanding officer may be a security leak?” said the soldier, unable to conceal the faintest hint of glee.

  “Infantry man too, is he?” I asked.

  “No, sir,” said the soldier. “Straight from Thornbridge Staff Officer Academy, sir. Barely twenty-four. No active service.”

  “I see. You have my sympathy, Captain Danek. If I were you, I would lie low, say nothing, and watch your young commander like a hawk.”

  “I will do that, sir. Your suggestion to return, sir, is that an order?”

  “Would it make life easier for you if it were?”

  “I have to submit the reports on my company’s actions,” he said, slightly embarrassed by his predicament.

  “Very well, Captain Danek. You may consider my suggestion an order.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” He thought for a moment and then stood to attention, adding in his best military bark, “I shall lead my company back to Cresdon and complete my orders, sir!”

  “Good man,” I said. I received his salute with a superior nod and a smile of satisfaction and then marched back to the wagon, where the others were watching me silently, apprehensively.

  I climbed back up onto the wagon, and the others, as if in a daze, just stared.

  “What the devil did you say?” muttered Orgos.

  “Does it matter?”

  “Yes, actually.”

  “I used a little information that few people know,” I said, my eyes on the soldiers as they remounted their horses.

  As the soldiers walked out of earshot Garnet glared at me and said, “And how did you find out so much about Empire operations?”

  “Research,” I said. “I’m a writer.”

  “Not good enough,” said Garnet. “I’ve never heard of this Commander Liefson. How would you know that he headed up Section Four unless—?”

  “Because Harveth Liefson is a secret theatre fan and he goes to the Eagle in disguise every Saturday afternoon rain or shine,” I said. “He and I have shared many a pint together and he has, once or twice, confided rather more than he probably should.”

  Orgos was the only one who seemed c
ontent. Mithos’s eyes were cold and hard with suspicion. I smiled encouragingly but he just stared at me.

  The troops had turned their horses and, with a single gesture of his hand, their captain urged them back the way they had come at a slow trot. Mithos watched them go and then laid a strong hand on my wrist. His dark face and eyes only inches from mine, he whispered, “If you turn us in or lead us into a trap, Mr. Hawthorne, I swear I’ll run my sword through your heart before you can say my name.”

  I just sat where I was beside Orgos thinking vengefully that I should have turned them all in when I had the chance. I wasn’t entirely sure why I hadn’t.

  It was still light, but only just. We had seen nothing more of the Empire but couldn’t hope that my little ruse would hold them off for long. They might be back after us first thing in the morning, but I rather hoped old Harveth Liefson would cover for me for a few days. He had been quite a fan, and it really wasn’t in his interest to reveal how I had found out so much of his professional affairs. Liefson knew I was no rebel, and he was a decent sort of guy. No: there was no doubt that the Stavis garrisons would be on the lookout for us when we got there, but I doubted we’d have much trouble from the Empire on the road through the Hrof wastes.

  We pulled off the road into a glade of cedars and pines, as close to lush as we’d seen in twenty miles. We jumped down from the wagon—or rather Orgos jumped and I sort of fell—and immediately they were busy. Mithos’s attitude to me had changed again. That scary, watchful suspicion had vanished, or slid under a log like a snake.

  “Go and get some wood,” he said. “Nothing green and nothing too big. Just twigs and dead leaves for kindling. And don’t cut anything live. It kills the trees and it won’t burn.”

  “I know that. I’m not completely stupid,” I told him. “I don’t know why you want a fire anyway. It’s roasting out here.”

  “We need some hot water,” he answered tersely without looking up from the tent he was raising with Orgos. “Don’t you want to wash? Don’t you want a meal?” He paused to hammer a peg into the hard earth with a wooden mallet. “And don’t you want to keep the jackals and mountain lions at a safe distance?”

  He added that last one just to wind me up, as Orgos’s grin confirmed. The other two reasons would have been just fine.

  “Are there mountain lions around here?” I asked, trying to sound like I didn’t believe him and couldn’t care less either way.

  “Some,” he said. “Though they tend to move closer to water. This heat can really make them irritable.”

  “I’ve heard of massive mountain lions sighted round here,” Orgos added helpfully, “even in the summer. Real monsters. I heard of a guy who was camping out here and one came right into the tent and—”

  “All right, I’ll get the wood,” I said, and left.

  By the time I had got a good armful, dropped it off by the wagon, and gone back for another, the light was going fast. I was poking around for more sticks when I saw it, just out of the corner of my eye. It reared up and its head sort of hung there in the air, its hood flared. I’m no naturalist, but I know a cobra when I see one. They turn up from time to time in the city, but this was the first time I’d seen one up close outside a street show. It watched me, its tongue flicking slightly. I wanted to call out to the others but didn’t dare. Could snakes hear? I didn’t even know that. I turned my head to face it and felt like I was about to pass out.

  “Don’t look at it.”

  Garnet was behind me. I hadn’t heard him approach. “They spit venom into your eyes,” he said. “Look down and back off slowly.”

  “They spit venom?” I muttered, fear making me stupid.

  “Just back away,” hissed Garnet, rather like the snake.

  I moved and the cobra reared another few inches and made a gasping, hostile sound like Mrs. Pugh on rent day. Garnet slipped between me and it with his ax in his hand. I edged back, then scrambled away and watched Garnet staring at it. It was a good ten feet away but looked big enough to strike most of that distance. Shielding his face, he too backed off, towards me. When he reached me and the snake lowered itself to earth I spluttered, “Why didn’t you kill it?”

  “It wouldn’t have harmed you so long as you kept your distance.”

  “And if it comes back?”

  “We’ll be sleeping,” said Garnet. That was supposed to be reassuring. He added, “It can’t eat anything as big as us so it will only strike at us if we threaten it. How can we threaten it if we are asleep?”

  Great. So we would be sharing our camp with all manner of reptiles, which was fine so long as we didn’t move and force them to kill us all.

  “Snakes have worse social skills than you,” I remarked. “I can’t believe you didn’t swing for it while you had the chance. What do you carry that ax for if you never use the bloody thing?”

  “Oh,” he replied menacingly, “I use it, all right.”

  They put me on first watch. I asked what I was supposed to do and Renthrette, her lips curled with the contempt she reserved for me, said, “You watch.”

  That was really helpful. So I spent an hour sitting by the dying fire looking around through the night and reflected on the day. I had washed in a bucket of warm water until it was cool and brownish. I had eaten two raw carrots and some stewed mutton and potatoes flavored with the herbs Orgos found hereabouts. Not bad, but not duckling. Though I had presumed that Renthrette would do the cooking, she had left it all to Mithos and Orgos while she repaired a broken wheel spoke on the wagon, just to prove me wrong. The two men worked silently together, used to each other. How long had they been together? Ten years? More, perhaps. Ten years of tents and wagons and bloody snakes and swords. They must be out of their minds.

  And I was with them. I had relieved myself in the bushes, drunk from a smelly waterskin in the wagon, and shot my little crossbow over and over until I could hit a tree at twenty paces every other time. I had been reprimanded by Mithos for bringing green wood and for shooting at live trees. I had been vaguely threatened by Garnet and ignored utterly by his good-looking sister. If things didn’t change soon, I was going to make a real pig’s ear out of the rest of my life.

  I had watched Renthrette and her brother unpacking their stuff and laying it out. Everything was meticulously arranged: cooking pots stacked together, rope neatly coiled, horse bridles and harnesses untangled and hung up, mail corselet oiled and laid out, sword at the ready in case of emergency. Renthrette had spent much of the evening stitching some clothing, and I had watched her working with the same careful, regulated focus that typified the pair of them. I looked over to where she had bedded down in a small tent and thought about going to wish her good night, but figured she’d probably knife me as soon as I was in range.

  The cicadas and crickets in the treetops buzzed and clicked smugly to themselves. Twice I heard an owl somewhere and tried to find it, wandering around the makeshift tents and trail fodder where the horses lay, but it just laughed at me invisibly. I nodded to Orgos, who lay awake inside the back of the wagon on a pile of boxes draped with the materials that had got us out of Cresdon.

  “Have you done your watch?” he said, and his voice was low and hoarse.

  “Not quite,” I said. “There isn’t much to watch, and if there was, I wouldn’t see it till it had bitten my leg off. Maybe nothing’s hungry. Garnet’s on next but he’s sleeping.”

  “Then leave him be. I’ll do it. I can’t sleep anyway.” He sat up and dropped to the ground, stretching and pulling on his ring mail in an irritatingly easy motion. In the darkness he was just a shadow, save when he looked at me and I saw his eyes bright and clear. Taking one of those long swords of his he wandered over to where I had been sitting and said, “Get some sleep, Will. We have a long way to go tomorrow and we’re going to have to move fast, probably off the road. Whether the Empire comes after us or not, we’re in dangerous country and will be for a while. Sleep tight. Don’t let the mountain lions bite. If they do . . .
well, I guess you bleed to death.”

  “Funny,” I said. “Thanks.”

  SCENE XI

  Of Gorse and Wild Thyme

  I slept under the wagon in a sleeping bag of cotton so thin that I could feel every contour of the hard ground beneath me, and dreamed of the fight in the Cresdon pub when I had met the party. I was back in the chest and the soldier was opening it, seeing me, grinning . . .

  And then . . . something.

  I couldn’t remember it properly, but there had been a strange amber light. . . .

  When I woke, my right arm numb and my back aching, I found myself wondering how my life could have been so screwed up in only twenty-four hours. Half an hour later, Mithos told me in a confiding voice that I wasn’t exactly pulling my weight as far as dismantling the camp was concerned. This was true. I started to tell Mithos that I had a bad back, but he just gave me one of those please-don’t-waste-my-time looks of his and tossed me a canvas bag that felt like it had a cow in it.

  So I lugged bags and boxes back into the wagon and Mithos watched and prompted me to the thrilling act of high adventure I might try next: washing the breakfast pans. I fed the horses (at arm’s length). I stamped out the fire and buried the ashes. I put more stuff in the wagon. I wasn’t sure I could take all this excitement.

  Orgos re-dressed the wound on my leg, which showed no sign of infection and would be gone altogether soon.

  “Morning, Will,” said Garnet unexpectedly. “Will you be riding on the wagon again today?”

  “I expect so,” I said guardedly. “Why?”

  “Would you mind doing me a favor?”

  I regarded him steadily and waited.

  “It’s not a big job but my hands will be full since I’ll be riding escort. Some of the armor we acquired in Cresdon needs cleaning up.”

  Of course: more menial labor for the party’s mentally subnormal help. He handed me a coarse, heavy sack, which clanked against my legs.