Act of Will

by A. J. Hartley

  “Doing what?” I asked.

  “It could release a stopper or plug or something. Paint, perhaps. Then it would leave a spot on the road each time it clicked over.”

  “Paint is too obvious,” said Orgos. “What about chalk dust?”

  “Can you do it?” said Lisha.

  “I need the parts,” said Orgos, turning the wheel. “There’s a clockmaker’s in the next street. They should be glad of the chance to sidestep the trade tax.”

  “Hang on,” I said suddenly. “How are we going to get at the wagon?”

  “Not sure,” said Lisha. “We’ll meet in the street outside the house. Make your way there as indirectly as you can. Will, you get the chalk.”

  “What? Where from? It’s the middle of the night. Where am I going to get chalk dust at this time?”

  “I don’t know,” she answered. “But I’m sure you’ll think of something.”

  Great. It was midnight and I was out looking for chalk dust. Who works with chalk? Artists? Circus weight lifters? I didn’t know many of those. I had some vague idea it might be used in metal casting, but I wasn’t sure. Then it hit me.

  Bread crumbs.

  Not far from the Bricklayer’s Arms was a block of buildings hung with the aroma of fresh bread and pastry. At the far end, where the run-down houses leaned erratically and the roads were potholed and overgrown, was the house I had entered with Orgos, the first of the three Joseph houses to have been crossed off our list. I could hear running water not too far away: a stream. With the bakeries all clustered in this area it seemed safe to assume there’d be a mill.

  There was. I ran across a rickety wooden bridge, and rapped on the door.

  “What is it?” said a floury middle-aged man in overalls. His arms were thick and powerful and a cloud of white hung about him, stirring as he moved.

  “I want to buy some chalk dust.”

  “Are you trying to be funny, pal? I ought to punch your face in. And if you’re from the union or the food marketing committee, I want to see some papers. I’m saying nothing until I do.”

  “I’m not,” I assured him calmly. “I just want some chalk dust and I want it now.”

  “You’ve got a cheek coming round here—”

  I held out six silver pieces and he shut up as if thumped with half a brick. He gave me a doubtful look, returned his gaze to the coins, and said, “How much do you want?”

  I gestured with my hands, showing an area a couple of feet square.

  “That’s all?”

  “That’s all.”

  “Wait here.”

  In a moment the exchange was complete.

  “That ought to be plenty,” he said. “Half of one part chalk to one and a half parts flour. More than that and the bread’ll taste like powdered rocks.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  Strolling back into the inn’s stable yard ten minutes later, I looked up and saw a face peering through the curtains of one of the guest rooms’ leaded windows. I had seen him in the bar the night before and had had the idea that he was too obviously doing nothing. He was in his late thirties, a lean, sinewy man with a pink complexion and hazel eyes. He was smoking a long-stemmed clay pipe and looking fixedly into space. I remembered the pipe, and was sure I had seen him before coming to Hopetown. Across a barroom back in Shale? His tobacco, I remembered, was strong with a curious flowery scent. He stood at the window looking down at me, the slim white pipe balanced between his fingers. Just a traveler preparing for bed? Perhaps.

  “All right,” said Lisha, “here’s the plan.”

  We had taken our food up to her room and I had been busily eating as she and Mithos whispered with Orgos. Garnet was standing by the door, ax in hand. Renthrette inexplicably offered me a bite of her apple.

  We turned to Lisha and she rolled the map out for the hundredth time.

  “If they know we’re following those wagons, we are in trouble. We have to make it look like we’re still here.”

  “We must also be especially alert tonight,” added Mithos grimly. “They know where we are and want us dead.”

  There was a thoughtful silence, and then Lisha said, “That would actually be quite convenient.”

  “Of course,” I agreed, deadpan, “I mean, still being alive next week would simply wreck my schedule.”

  “If they attack us and we can convince them we didn’t survive . . . ” Lisha mused.

  “. . . it could buy us some time,” Mithos finished.

  “That will depend on their method of assassination,” said Orgos like a man choosing between fish or chicken.

  “Someone will have to watch the Joseph house,” said Mithos. “And get that chalk device fitted to one of their wagons.”

  “Garnet and I will do it,” said Renthrette quickly. She was sick of waiting around while People Less Qualified (me) got to do stuff.

  Mithos looked to Lisha, and there was a pregnant pause before she nodded. “Just be careful,” she said.

  Garnet glanced at his sister and both of them grinned broadly. So this was how you cheered them up: offer them the kind of task any sane person would give their right arm to avoid.

  “Can we take Tarsha?” Renthrette asked, trying in vain to stifle her excitement.

  “No,” said Mithos firmly. “If anything will get you noticed, it’s that damned horse.”

  Renthrette would have said more but Garnet gestured suddenly for silence. He tipped his head to the door. A moment later came the sound of careful footsteps coming towards us in the corridor outside, then a knock.

  Garnet stepped behind the door, his ax drawn. I grabbed my crossbow but hadn’t had time to cock it when Mithos called, “Come in!”

  The door creaked open, admitting the inn’s serving boy with a large jug.

  “More beer,” he gasped, struggling to find a place where he might set it down. “It’s from the landlord. On the house.”

  “Thank you,” said Mithos as the boy left.

  “That was very civil of him,” I said, refilling my mug.

  “Well,” said Orgos, taking my beer before I could take a sip, “now we know how they plan to get to us.”

  “Hey, get your own—” I began.

  “Have you seen anyone give anything away in this town?” said Orgos. He took the jug and poured the beer into an empty chamber pot in one smooth motion. Then he put his hand into the jug, scooped out a thin smear of grainy sediment, and tasted it gingerly.

  “Not poison, but they’ll be expecting us to get a very good night’s sleep this evening,” he concluded, adding, “They’re going to be so disappointed.”

  SCENE XL

  The Assassins

  We slept two to a room as before, or rather, we sat up all night two to a room. I was with Orgos. Renthrette and Garnet had slipped out as soon as it got dark and were waiting for the Joseph wagons to move. The rest of us were to stay where we were and wait to be assassinated.

  Orgos sat in the corner, one sword across his lap. He had been absently polishing it but had begun to doze a little. I was wide awake, so I let him sleep and watched for both of us. We had a single oil lamp turned so low that you could see no more than shadows. I thought of the dark-eyed assassin who had shot at us in the bar and wondered if it would be him slinking in to finish the job he botched last time. Then I thought they might torch the whole building as they had fired the Sherwood, but that was a noisy and unreliable means of assault, even if we were supposed to be in a drugged stupor. I wondered why they hadn’t just poisoned the beer they’d sent up, but I suppose we had been there long enough for people to know that I was the only one who drank beer in any quantity and at least two of the party never touched the stuff (unless I was educating one of them in the delights of getting totally hammered). Time passed and Orgos began to snore softly. I began to think we had overestimated our peril.

  Fat chance.

  At about two o’clock, when the night was darkest, I was staring blankly into the middle distance when the
dark frame of the door seemed to blur. I blinked. A thin mist was gathering in the center of the room.

  Staring at it, I poked Orgos. He grunted and continued to snore.

  It was getting colder and the mist seemed to be thickening.

  “Orgos!” I hissed, turning the lamp up and reaching for one of his swords, the one with the crystal in the hilt.

  I shook him again and this time his eyelids fluttered and opened, then tightened in confusion. The fog, which stood in a narrow, six-foot column in the center of the room, was no longer merely thick; it looked as if you could touch it. There was even some color in the greyness, as if the shape was becoming solid. A moment later the mist had coalesced further and it was now unmistakably a man, a man in the full helm and scarlet cloak of the raiders.

  Orgos snatched up his other sword and leapt to his feet as the mist seemed to blow away, leaving the raider—now solidly present—close enough for us to see the pale stone set between the eyes of his helm. For an uncanny moment we just stood there, and then his hands moved, and for the first time I noticed that he seemed to have no scyax or weapon of any kind.

  He was holding only a small wooden box. His first and only motion was to flip the lid open and dump its contents onto the floor, where it collected in three liquid puddles.

  I didn’t know what he was doing, but I was sure I had to stop him. I held up Orgos’s sword and focused my mind on bringing out that flash of light and power from the crystal.

  Nothing happened.

  By the time Orgos had pushed past me and crossed the room with his sword poised to strike, the mist was already gathering about the raider. Orgos swung his sword, but it passed through what was now only a column of smoke which blew away in the wind of the sword stroke.

  “What the hell was that?” I shouted.

  And then the lamplight picked up what I had taken to be the dark fluid which the raider had tipped out of his box, and I could see that it wasn’t fluid at all. It was legs: thin, spindly, and covered with short bristling hair, tentatively reaching and feeling their way around.

  Spiders.

  Now, spiders have never bothered me particularly, and although these were bigger than most, at five or six inches across, I can honestly say that my first sensation was one of relief. Given the strangeness of what had just happened—the mist, the menace of the raiders—spiders seemed like the soft option. I was wearing boots and would make short work of these three little assassins with a lot less trouble than I would a single crossbowman. I turned to Orgos and found him frozen to the spot with terror, his eyes wide.

  So Orgos was an arachnophobe! Perfect, I thought. Time to show a little courage of my own.

  I grinned at him but he was staring at the floor. When I took a step towards him, he raised a hand to stop me and hissed, “Yellow wolf spiders!”

  I selected one and raised my boot.

  “Piece of cake,” I muttered sotto voce.

  Then it jumped.

  As I’ve said, spiders, even big hairy ones, don’t really bother me. When those spiders launch themselves at your face, however, the matter takes on an altogether different complexion.

  I threw myself back, shutting my mouth as the spider hit me for fear of it getting inside. For a fraction of a second I felt its body, soft and warmish, those thin, clawed legs struggling for purchase on my face. Then Orgos was sweeping the thing to the ground with his hand and finishing it off.

  I backed away, stunned into inaction as Orgos expertly and stealthily lanced another with his sword and deflected the third as it jumped at him. It fell by the shuttered window and burst with a soft plopping sound.

  “Oh my God!” I gasped, panic and revulsion overcoming any pretense at courage. “What the hell are those? Those fangs were an inch long. And what kind of spider jumps at your head when you go near it?!”

  He approached me, examined my face, and then became quite still, staring at his right hand. He moved it into the lamplight and frowned.

  There was a thin cut just above his knuckles.

  “Yellow wolf spiders,” he said again, quietly, and with a resignation I didn’t like.

  “One bit you?” I whispered.

  “Let’s hope not,” he said in a voice no more than a breath. “If we’d been asleep, we wouldn’t have had a chance. Assassins in the Thrusian marsh villages use these things all the time. They are extremely reliable killers.”

  I just looked at him. He smiled, but it was a small, grim kind of smile.

  “But . . . I mean, you’re going to be all right, aren’t you?” I said.

  “I really don’t know,” he said.

  “Of course you will,” I said, with a breeziness I didn’t really feel. “You’re Mr. Adventurer, the battle-hardened weapon master. You’ve got a magic sword, for God’s sake. Supposedly. You can’t get killed by a spider! What kind of story would that make?”

  “The real-life kind,” he said, and there was no smile on his face now. “Wait here. I have to speak to Lisha.”

  I stared at him as he left, momentarily lost for words. There was a chill panic in the pit of my stomach and a desperate voice in my head.

  No. He can’t die. Not Orgos. He’s . . .

  What? My friend? I don’t think the possibility had occurred to me before now.

  It seemed he was gone for hours. When he crept back in, I stood up.

  “Well?” I said.

  “Well, what?”

  “Are you going to be all right?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “It looks like a bite, but it isn’t deep, so the venom might not have got into my system. Lisha cleaned it up and . . . We’ll see.”

  He offered me a small glass bottle and said, “Drink this.”

  I uncorked it and smelled the contents.

  “Will it help?” I asked.

  “If you were bitten and we didn’t notice? No. Drink it anyway.”

  I did so and it went down warm with a sweet, citrusy aftertaste.

  “Now lie down and wait,” he breathed.

  “But what if that is a bite?” I hissed back, gesturing to his hand.

  “We’ll know soon enough,” he sighed, “or, at least, you will. In the meantime, you can give me my sword back.”

  I did. The thing was useless anyway.

  “You know, Orgos,” I began, unsure of where the sentence would end up, but sure I had to say something, “when I first met you guys, I felt totally . . . I mean, I think that you have—”

  “Tell me tomorrow,” he said.

  He glanced at me and the smile was back, a little wan, maybe even sad, but there nonetheless.

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll tell you tomorrow, then.”

  I think, even at the time, I knew that that wasn’t going to happen.

  SCENE XLI

  Rest in Peace

  It was dark. I woke strangely, my senses seeming to revive one at a time. I felt numb throughout my body, and though I tried to move, it was as if my muscles were still asleep. I was lying on my back, arms formally by my side. It was an unnerving feeling, lying stiff in the blackness, listening to my heart quicken. I tried flexing each part—legs, shoulders, chest, straining against whatever invisible bond kept them so uncannily still—but nothing happened.

  I’m dead, I thought. My body has shut down, and only my mind is still alive. Those hairy little bastards got me after all.

  But then I could feel something near my fingertips: my shirt fabric. In a moment or two I could move my hands and wiggle my toes, and within another agonizing half-minute, life spread back up from my extremities and my body finally awoke.

  I rolled to the right, or rather began to, and found I couldn’t. There was some kind of wall against my side. It smelled of pine. I rolled the other way with the same result. Panic seized me as, trying to sit up, I found the same solid restraint immediately above me. I was in a box.

  Not just any box, though.

  I clawed desperately at the wood with my fingernails as the awf
ully familiar shape of the thing registered: a coffin.

  So I was either dead and having some kind of ghostly moment of consciousness, or someone had thought I was dead and I soon would be.

  It was bloody typical that I should die, in this miserable fashion, through someone else’s stupidity. I drew up my forearms and attempted to bang on the underside of the lid, knowing immediately that it was a complete waste of time. I probably had about eighty cubic feet of dirt weighing down on me, slowly splintering the timber till the rats and worms got through.

  Let’s hope I’m dead by then, I thought. This body might not be up to much, but I didn’t want to stand (or rather lie) by as it got stripped down (an eye here, a kidney there) by vermin even lower than I had been in life. I pushed at the lid again.

  And against all the odds, it moved. The lid lifted perceptibly and a crack of light appeared at its edge. I gasped away my terror-stricken panic and pushed hard. It splintered and tore free. Laughing with relief and shielding my eyes, I sat up.

  I was in the back of the wagon and we were moving. There were five other coffins, neatly stacked and completely filling the wagon.

  Now, it could have been that morbid obsession that sometimes draws us to glimpses of death, or it could have been feelings for my comrades that I had not really admitted, but I grabbed a conveniently positioned crowbar and began to jimmy the sides of the nearest coffin.

  Burning with a dreadful anticipation, I freed the lid and pushed it aside. Inside was Orgos. Any hopes that he had been placed here prematurely crumbled as I touched his cheek. He was stiff, unresponsive, and cold as the grave.

  I studied his still, lifeless face and felt a sense of loss and failure. Orgos was dead, and the knowledge that he had taken the bite to save my hide made it worse.

  “Afternoon, Will,” said a voice from the front of the wagon.

  I turned to find a man smiling at me. His face was grubby and his clothes hung in rags, but there was something about the voice . . .