Act of Will

by A. J. Hartley

  The house was in a wealthy suburb with roofs of blue slate and glass in the windows. The grey stone buildings dotted with ancient shells were as different from the lurching ruins of Cresdon as the paved, guttered streets were different from Cresdon’s ratty alleys. On the corner, two men sold spidery crabs and immense lobsters. Orgos enthused about steamed lobster, but I took one look at the massive claws of one antique blue monster and wagered a few silvers on the beast taking the arm of anyone who tried to get it out of the tank.

  As we stabled the horses and unloaded the wagon, Mithos said to me, “The party leader is not expecting us yet since we left Cresdon earlier than intended. I am not sure what the precise nature of the task ahead of us is, but if you wish to come further with us, I could speak on your behalf. Unless you have other ideas, of course?”

  “No,” I muttered uncertainly, “I have no other plans.”

  I wasn’t actually thinking about my plans at all, because something in the reverential way Mithos and the others referred to their nameless leader was beginning to get to me. My mildly resentful disinterest was quickly being replaced by curiosity. whatever I felt about my companions, I could not avoid the fact that they were a rather unusual group of individuals. Once I had admitted this grudging respect for them I was faced with the problem of putting a face to the leader they so clearly looked up to. When I tried to get some information out of Garnet concerning their mission east of the city, he told me that he didn’t care what they were doing as long as “the leader” decided the cause was worthy. For a second he looked reflective, so I jokingly broke the mood by asking him if he would lay down his life for his precious leader.

  “Unquestionably,” he replied instantly.

  Idiot.

  The rain began again in a sudden flurry and we hurried into the house, stamping our feet and shaking our cloaks. Somewhere upstairs I heard footsteps: the party leader? My heart was beating a little faster as we entered the dim hallway, but Mithos just turned to me and said, “Will, we will meet the leader alone first and then invite you in.”

  I nodded dumbly and they left me standing there, listening to the rain drumming on the roof and wondering what I’d got myself into this time.

  One by one they creaked their way up the wooden staircase. I pushed a door open and stepped into a bare room with a couple of chairs and waited, listening to the wordless muttering above me.

  They were gone for five minutes. Maybe a little more. It felt like an hour. Then came footsteps on the stairs and Mithos appeared, beckoning to me. Instantly my heart began to patter again and I followed him up, sucking in my stomach (no mean feat) and squaring my shoulders.

  At the top of the darkened stairs a door was ajar from which light and gentle conversation trickled out onto the landing. Mithos, now no more than a bulky silhouette above me, pushed the door wide and stepped inside. Before I had even crossed the threshold I heard him speak my name in introduction and, trying to look strong and silent, I glanced around.

  The room was small and windowless, lit by an oil lamp that hung from the rafters and glowed yellowish, the shadows russet and amber. Garnet, Renthrette, and Orgos sat at a table looking at me, and a girl in a long dress of blue cotton stood on the other side. I caught her black eyes and, taking her to be the maid, thought vaguely that she was going to offer me a beer. I looked around for the party leader.

  I turned swiftly to see if he was behind the door. He wasn’t. I looked back and the girl in the blue dress spoke. “Welcome to Stavis, Will, and to our company. I am Lisha, elected leader of the group.”

  I stared at her aghast, and I think my mouth fell open. She looked about fifteen. She was tiny. Smaller than me! Her hair was long, black, and straight and she had the small, elegant features and olive skin of the Far Eastern races.

  But that’s off the subject. What I was actually thinking as the point was pounded home like a tent peg through my skull was No chance, mate. You have to be bloody joking. This might be your party leader’s daughter or even his bit on the side, but . . . Then I caught Renthrette’s glance of knowing satisfaction and I knew that this was indeed “the leader.”

  She came towards me and shook my hand in a businesslike manner, ignoring absolutely the look of astonishment that gripped my face.

  “Pleased to meet you, Will,” she said. Her voice had no accent. I don’t mean it was untainted by any special dialect; it had no accent at all. I could listen to her for hours and have no clue where she came from.

  “What?” I said.

  “Lisha,” she prompted with a small smile.

  “Right,” I muttered woodenly. My eyes were starting to sting after all that staring at her, so I blinked them deliberately.

  “And you are interested in joining us?” she said evenly.

  For some reason this question brought a panicked chaos of un-certainty as I tried to cram this girl into the picture and then come up with a verdict.

  “Well,” I hazarded, “I don’t know about join, but I may like to travel with you. Part of the way. A little distance. For a while, like.”

  Did I really want to entrust myself to the wishes of this diminutive female? Hardly. I could see myself enjoying a few hours of cross-cultural entertainment with her, if she was up for it, but follow her? Respect her word and put my life on the line at her command? Fat chance. Still, I couldn’t have hoped for a less menacing-looking leader, and it did seem that one of my theories about Renthrette was well out of play. I cheered up.

  “Well,” I went on over the silence, “Mithos here said I might be able to tag along, and I reckon I could be useful. And, er, I could really do to get out of the Empire for a while, if you follow my meaning. I’m not sure I’m all that desperate to return to Cresdon. Also, Stavis. I mean it looks real nice—seafood, diverse architecture, and stuff—but it’s not really my kind of town. You know what I mean, love? I’m sure you all have a ball here, but me? Too much water for a start, and . . .”

  I caught Garnet’s glance of shocked anger and realized that I had put my arm around Lisha’s shoulders in a matey kind of way and was being, at best, casual in the way I told her my feelings on the matter. I froze and drew myself back to attention, murmuring, “But . . . er, if you don’t mind me sitting in on your discussion, I would be grateful. My concern is that at present I would be more of a hindrance to you than a help. I am already in your debt for getting me this far.”

  That ought to do it. She smiled again—disarmingly—and asked me to sit down. I did so. whatever she looked like, you did what she said, if only because Garnet looked ready to remove vital organs from anyone who didn’t hang on her every word. At the table the lamp’s ochre glow was stronger, and shooting Lisha a sidelong glance I saw, with a start, not a girl but a woman. A very young-looking woman, admittedly, but that was a feature of those Eastern females; any girl between fourteen and forty-five looked about the same age. I put her around thirty, but I had no real clue. In a short skirt and ribbons she might have passed for twelve. Except maybe for her eyes.

  She did all the talking and the others sat there as if enchanted, saving their few questions till she had finished.

  “The situation is a simple one, though I fancy the solution will not be,” she began, unrolling a piece of mapped vellum. “Stavis is here,” she said. “To its immediate east is a ninety-mile stretch of grassland and scattered hamlets. East of that the land is more fertile, but almost as sparsely populated and with few decent roads. Even traveling as the crow flies we would have to get across two hundred and forty miles of precious little. It’s not hard country, but it would be very slow. I think our best bet is to sail along the coast and dock in the south of Shale. It is the count of Shale who requires our presence. He is operating on behalf of his own lands and those of Grey-coast to the east and Verneytha to the north.”

  I shifted in my chair, and I think I made some kind of noise. Not words exactly, just a sort of grumbling sound, like the sound your stomach makes after one of Mrs. Pugh’s brea
kfasts.

  “What?” she asked. “Will, do you have something on your mind?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “Just . . . Those places. Shale, Greycoast, and Verneytha. I used to hear stories about them when I was a kid. Sometimes they come up in old plays. I kind of forgot they were real.”

  “What kind of stories?” said Lisha seriously.

  “Oh, you know,” I said. “Old tales of witches and sorcerers. Kids’ stuff.”

  “Yes,” she said, as if I’d raised some important point. “The legends go some way back.”

  She paused for a second and looked around the table at our expectant faces. I kind of wanted to laugh at the situation, these seasoned fighters taking their orders from this little bit of skirt, talking about musty old stories of witchcraft and God knew what else. It was obviously ludicrous; so why was no one laughing?

  I remembered a flash of amber light which knocked down enemy troops, a light the same color as the stone in Orgos’s sword. . . .

  But that made no sense. If being around these idiots was making me believe in magic, then I really should get away before I lost my mind altogether.

  “The problem is simply this,” she went on in the same measured, unaccented tones. “The three lands are connected by a series of vital trade routes upon which they depend for their economic survival. Recently these roads have been plagued by raiders. Not random groups of bandits such as you encountered on your way, but an organized force of trained soldiers, perhaps numbering a hundred or more. The three countries have soldiers of their own, but have been unable to track down the raiders who are slowly but surely bringing ruin to the region. Our task therefore is one of detection rather than of combat; we must determine who is responsible for these assaults and supply the baronies with the information necessary to engage and defeat the raiders.

  “There is one more thing of which I think our employers are unaware. Over the last two months the Empire garrison in Stavis has almost doubled in size. Since there has not been any sign of revolt here, I fear that the Diamond Empire intends to push further east still. Shale, Greycoast, and Verneytha may prevent the Empire’s advance, but only if their current situation is reversed promptly. Are you willing to take on the task?”

  If that was a genuine question, no one treated it as such. They nodded with hasty nobility and only I found myself looking doubtful and chewing over details of what she had said. Details such as 240 miles by sea and an enemy of over a hundred trained soldiers. She continued deliberately, “Good. You have come a week ahead of time, which gives us longer to prepare. Will, you should speak with Orgos as to how you can best use that time. And now it is late and we must begin our preparations early tomorrow. Sleep well. It is good to be with you all again.”

  She smiled around at them with what seemed to be genuine affection and for a moment looked more like a mother than a daughter.

  “Mithos,” said Lisha, “show Will to his room, please.”

  I watched them grinning at each other like they were at some kind of family reunion and wondered, not for the first time, how long I could hope to last in their company.

  SCENE XIV

  The Hide

  They were up at cockcrow. I lay in bed, a single sheet pulled up to my neck, and watched resentfully as Orgos shaved himself with the straight-bladed dagger he wore inside his tunic.

  “Come on, Will,” he breezed. “There’s a lot to do and we are counting on you to prove yourself to Lisha.”

  “Why didn’t you bloody tell me she was a woman?” I snarled at him.

  “It’s a point of security,” Orgos said to the window as he parted the curtains and let the hazy morning sun fall on his face. His black skin was wet and he looked alert and energetic, curse him.

  “So long as people presume the party leader is a man, she’s harder to trace. I didn’t want to deceive you unnecessarily, Will,” he said, turning back to me and smiling, “but Lisha is invaluable to our operations.”

  “Why? What is so bloody special about her? She looks half my age and has a tenth of your strength. What use is she to you lot? I don’t see why you even have her on board, let alone take orders from her and—”

  “Easy, Will,” he replied, sitting himself down on my bed so that I had to squirm to avoid getting my legs broken. “Just take it from me. She is the equal of Garnet or Renthrette in combat and can beat all of us with a spear or a rapier. Yes, even me. Her other gifts you’ll see if you are around long enough.”

  I shrugged, something which is not easy to do horizontally with a heavy sword master sitting on you.

  “She just wasn’t what I expected,” I muttered.

  “What did you expect, Will? Some barbarian chief with a poleax and war paint?”

  “No! Yes. I don’t know what I expected,” I protested, “just not . . .”

  “A woman?”

  “Yes, but that’s not the point.”

  “You sure?”

  “Of course.” I rolled over and buried my face in the pillow. “I like women.”

  “Then there’ll be no problem,” he said, giving me a significant look.

  I breakfasted alone on eight rashers of bacon and fried bread. I couldn’t help thinking that this “operations base” wasn’t really much of a place. Sure, it was in a nice area, but it was just a house, and a largely empty one at that. So why the big deal? Why keep the place at all when it was surely safer for a group of outlaws like them to stay on the move?

  Garnet and Renthrette were out, probably eyeing the markets for bargains, methodically moving from stall to stall in search of a better deal, tabulating every mind-numbing detail.

  “Something to show you,” said Orgos, emerging from the kitchen.

  He led me into a large room with a fireplace at one end, reached up, and snapped back a lamp bracket fitted to the side of the chimney breast. The entire chimney, including the dusty hearth, swung easily aside, revealing a heavy-looking door of dark wood on huge brass hinges.

  “Operations base,” he said simply. “We call it the Hide. Don’t touch anything down here until I say you can. There are half a dozen trap devices designed by Arthen of Snowcrag. You’ve probably heard of him. He kept the Empire out of the mountain halls for six months virtually single-handedly. Anyway, Lisha had him defend this place for us when we brought him east.”

  “You got Arthen out of Snowcrag before it fell?” I asked, staring. Arthen was the stuff of legend.

  “Yes, though only Mithos and I were with Lisha then. There were others, of course, but they are no longer with us.”

  He continued, barely missing a beat.

  “In any case, there are ballistae down here that could skewer three armored men together so, like I said, touch nothing.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  With a large steel key he opened the door, which, like the fire-place, slid easily aside despite its obvious weight. Inside I caught the acrid smell of oil lamps and found myself on a wooden landing atop a flight of stone steps spiraling into the earth. There was a lever by the doorframe. Orgos pulled it and, with a clanking of gears, the fireplace closed us in.

  I moved to descend the stairs but Orgos caught my arm and held me back. Before he took another step he unhooked a lantern from the wall, turned up its flame, and groped under the wooden banister rail with his left hand. Again something clicked, and he smiled at me in the lamplight.

  “Some of the stairs have special features,” he said cheerfully. I gave him a nervous smile and didn’t ask for details.

  At the foot of the stairs was another armored door that was already open. Orgos showed me in.

  “Welcome to the Hide,” said Lisha, who was sitting at a table in what appeared to be a library. Mithos was with her, consulting a stack of charts. He looked up and watched me as Lisha continued, “Orgos puts a good deal of trust in you, Will, considering how long he’s known you. I hope his faith is justified. You can never speak of this place to anyone. Many lives depend on us, and we cannot afford to
be merciful to those who would expose us. Do I make myself clear?”

  I nodded, and tried to count the number of death threats I had had since Rufus turned me in. Still, there was something slightly comic about all these grave and menacing words coming from the party’s girlish “leader.”

  “I understand perfectly,” I said, playing along, trying to match the gravity and seriousness of her tone. Orgos and Mithos looked at me with small smiles of satisfaction. The impulse to pat me on the head or feed me an apple must have been almost overwhelming.

  Lisha’s eyes met mine and I had the odd sensation of being somehow transparent, as if she could read my thoughts and my petty deceptions. I didn’t like the feeling.

  “We will leave here next Tuesday or Wednesday, depending on when we can get a ship,” she said, rising to her feet and stepping lightly towards me, “so you have six days which you may use as you think best. If you need money for arms or other equipment, speak to Mithos. I suggest you do some riding, but don’t bother buying yourself a horse. We’ll have to get mounts in Shale. I’ve taken horses by ship before and it can take days for them to recover from the voyage.”

  Whatever you say, doll. I glanced around the racks of books. There were texts from all over the world, written in a dozen different languages, though most were in my native Thrusian and its ancient forebear, Threshalt. The collection was not so much varied as wildly diverse. Cookbooks sat next to manuals on siege techniques and indexes of poisons. I lifted down something on “dialectal oddities” and gazed at it with mild revulsion.

  “What would possess anyone to write anything this tedious?” I mused.

  Orgos materialized at my elbow and looked at the book.

  “Can Will borrow this?” he said.

  “Certainly,” she said.