Act of Will

by A. J. Hartley

  “What the hell is this?” I whispered.

  Renthrette adjusted the flame of her lantern and we got a better look at the cavern. We saw a dozen bedrolls and as many cloaks and weapons strewn about, but no sign of a struggle. I walked over to the back of the cavern and found a well shaft, almost brimming with dark water. Behind it was another dead raider, his helm in his hands and a twisted look on his desiccated face. I sat on the edge of the well and looked at him. They could not have been dead more than a couple of weeks, perhaps only days.

  “The enemy has been tracking our movements since we showed up,” said Renthrette. “They knew we were bound to come here at some point.”

  “You think this was a trap?” I said. “For us?”

  I looked around some more, considering the damp stone of the walls as it picked up the light and glowed pale as opal. The entire cave sparkled softly with that same crystalline rock.

  Well, at least you know how they got here.

  Which meant that more raiders could appear here any second, taking the places of their comrades who had been killed.

  “Renthrette!” I said. “I don’t think we should be here.”

  She was crouching by the four seated corpses, and looked in my direction when I spoke. I was going to say more but then I heard a sound somewhere below me: it was a glugging sound, thick and liquid. I snatched the lantern and peered into the waters of the well. There was a moment of near-silence, the soft dripping of water resonating through the caves and tunnels, and then it came again, this time resembling a gurgling, bubbling sound that I could feel vibrating through my stomach. The water stirred, as if it was beginning to boil.

  Something was coming up.

  I leapt to my feet and ran, shouting, “Get out! There’s something in the well!”

  I hit the opposite wall as the water sloshed over the rim and splashed onto the floor. I turned and saw, or half saw, the faint haze of an almost colorless cloud breaking from a bubble in the water.

  “Gas!”

  We ran.

  We ran out and up, back the way we had come. With each step I fought my dread of the tightening of my lungs, a dry, sickening drowning feeling. . . . I stumbled and fell more than once. I held my breath until I could go no farther and had to gasp the thin cavern air, terrified of sensing some scent or flavor that would mean death. I was at Renthrette’s heels all the way, heedlessly bashing my knees against the stone until we burst from the caverns into the afternoon light. I’ve never run so hard or so fast in my life.

  We threw ourselves into the dust and drank the air, wheezing and laughing at our escape. She sort of half embraced me in her joy, and I hung on until her desire to break away became unavoidable.

  “Just some kind of gas,” she said, amazed.

  But there was no “just” about it. I thought of those doubled-up corpses inside; we had survived where the raiders hadn’t. They weren’t invulnerable. They weren’t unbeatable. We weren’t destined to lose every time we saw them. I grinned at Renthrette and she grinned back, without distaste or suspicion. It was about time.

  We readied the wagon and made for Adsine, pushing the horses as hard as we dared in the heat. Renthrette was as matey now as she had ever been, and I tried to think of a way to capitalize on her good humor. It wasn’t that she was never civil to me, but actual pleasantness tended to be the kind of thing you record in a ledger, like a lunar eclipse or the birth of a two-headed cow.

  “It was a good thing you saw that gas,” she said with a disarming smile as we rolled into the afternoon.

  “I heard it first, gurgling down there like the witch’s cauldron in a children’s story.”

  “I don’t really know any stories,” she answered. “Once our waiting woman—”

  “Hold it! You had servants?”

  “A couple,” she replied.

  “Tough life,” I muttered.

  “One of them was my old wet nurse,” she explained, ignoring me. “She was once caught telling us stories and was replaced. My father said that such fantasies were corrupting nonsense.”

  “I’ve heard that before,” I sighed. “For a while back in Cresdon I was held personally responsible for the collapse of morality and religion all over the region. I wish I had been. Maybe you saw some of my plays,” I ventured hopefully.

  “I’ve never been in a theatre,” she said.

  “Never? You’re joking! Never?”

  “Did I miss something?”

  “Theatre is where the world makes sense!” I exclaimed. “It’s where we admit the roles we play daily, where we confess our love of intelligence and evil. It’s where . . . You aren’t listening, are you?”

  “What?” she said suddenly. “Oh, I’m sorry, Will. I was trying to remember Nurse’s story.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m used to it.”

  “It was something about a girl, and a dragon who was so lonely that he wept constantly—”

  “And his tears flowed down the mountains and threatened to drown the village,” I said hurriedly. “Yes, I know it. But it was a boy, not a girl.”

  “In mine it was a girl,” she said.

  “Whatever.”

  She paused for a long, thoughtful moment and then, with what I took to be courage, looked at me and said, “I don’t remember how it ended. The story, I mean.”

  It was a request, of sorts.

  “Well, as you’d expect, I suppose,” I said. “The little girl has to save the village, so she goes up into the mountains and petitions the dragon to stop crying. At first the dragon is angry and he weeps tears of rage so that the waters rise to the windowsills of the houses below and the villagers have to go upstairs. Then the little girl tells him about her family and how they are in danger, and the dragon cries tears of sadness so that the waters rise to the door lintels and the villagers have to climb onto their roofs. Then the little girl, realizing that the dragon is merely lonely, offers to befriend it, and the tears stop. The waters subside and they all live happily ever after. The end. Not much of a story really.”

  “I like it,” she said without taking her eyes from the road ahead.

  “I suppose it has a certain charm,” I confessed, watching her.

  She was staring ahead so as not to show me her face but I caught her rubbing her eyes before she turned and smiled at me. “Thank you,” she said.

  In three hours Adsine lay below us, its keep on the hill by the river. To the east were the stables, which were Shale’s last economic asset. Then there were woods, and the Wardsfall, which snaked gradually south and east to Greycoast. As soon as we got there I would have to go back to playing ambassador and soldier to the count and his entourage. Part of me would much rather stay on the wagon with Renthrette. I could do without the raider corpses and running through dark tunnels with gas clouds at our heels, but the trip had been pleasant in some ways. I wasn’t sure what it was about her I liked, if “liked” was the word, and she sometimes got right on my nerves, but . . .

  There isn’t an easy end to that sentence, is there?

  Renthrette smiled and I guessed she sensed my mixed feelings about reaching Adsine. As the sun sank, red and clear, we crossed the bridge and gave our names to the guard at the gate of the keep.

  There it goes again, I thought, watching the sun go down. I’m still alive. Kind of miserable, admittedly, but alive.

  For a brief, unreadable moment, Renthrette slipped her arm about me and squeezed me to her side. I jumped slightly, taken by surprise. She smiled, and murmured, “Cheer up, Will.”

  I gave her a blank look and waited for the punch line. Then the guard returned and, as he led the horses by the bridle, she released me. The moment, Whatever it had been, evaporated.

  SCENE XLIX

  Adsine Again

  I got my old room back. There was my bath and my bed as before, and I found myself wondering what had happened to the dreams of wealth and glory I had contemplated on my first night here. Renthrette was next door. Chancellor Dathel, stil
l in his black robes of office, left us with instructions to join the count for dinner in an hour. Everything was as it had been, the downstairs bustling with bored infantry and cavalrymen with nothing to do but exercise, tend their equally bored horses in the courtyard stables, and flirt with the maids. It was reassuring to know that their castle duties gave most of them solid alibis for the major raider attacks. It made me feel safer.

  I had a bath, dressed slowly, and wandered round the second floor. Over by the south wall I came upon a tiny library, not much larger than my bedroom. To keep my mind off Renthrette I browsed some collections of old plays, many of which I already knew. It struck me that I hadn’t seen a single theatre in any of the three lands. It was a shame; these people could use one. I pulled out a volume of local folktales and flicked through it for ten minutes or so, wondering if I could learn more about the spectral army from two and half centuries ago, while trying to convince myself that dinner would be an improvement on last time.

  It wasn’t. If anything, it was worse. The continued activities of the raiders were having telling effects on Shale. Even Arlest, as he told us apologetically, could not afford to pay what his neighbor countries were demanding for basic foodstuffs. The count was, as before, subdued and strained, wearing a plain robe belted with rope and a simple copper circlet on his head. Renthrette smiled at him encouragingly, but he looked sad and tired. Something in his wife’s eyes suggested a concern for his health. He was getting slimmer all the time, as if he was an image of the land he governed.

  Renthrette related our escape in the caverns and his eyes filled with concern, so that I nearly told her to drop it and spare him the anxiety.

  “Do you feel you have made progress?” he asked, not looking hopeful.

  I instantly thought of that hellish journey to Ironwall with burning coal wagons and bleeding boys and hoped to God that we wouldn’t have to talk about that. Words make you live it all again.

  “There are certain possible solutions which we have pursued,” said Renthrette, “and managed to cross off.”

  The count nodded thoughtfully and asked, “And have you any ideas as to the whereabouts of the raiders?”

  “Again, it is more a question of where they are not,” she answered. “We have narrowed the range of possibilities.”

  I took the opportunity to lead the conversation away on a random stream of subjects from the weather to the state of our horses (about which I knew nothing). I talked for about three minutes and no one said anything, just drank their thin soup and dipped their chalky bread in it, for, as I can be sparkling in conversation when I want to be, so I can be downright tedious. Too many things from the past few days couldn’t be spoken of, and not merely for security reasons. I wasn’t about to go through it all again, nor was I to deprive the dead of their dignity by telling the horror of their ends.

  I figured I’d bore the count and his wife to their beds instead: “I saw some trees outside that reminded me of some back home. Can’t remember the name, but they have a sort of smooth bark with pointed leaves that go red in the autumn. Sort of red, but darker. Brown, perhaps, is closer. A reddish brown. Or, rather, a brownish red. You know the kind I mean? Pretty, as trees go. Well anyway, we used to have one right outside my house. When I was a child, I used to climb it. I remember every night at about six o’clock, my mother used to come out looking for us. My mother was a smallish woman who made shoes. When I say ‘smallish’ I mean about my height. Probably a few inches less. Not short, exactly, but kind of small. The shoes she made were a sort of brown a bit like the tree, but not exactly brown. . . .”

  And so on.

  No one could stand too much of that for long. The countess suppressed a yawn and I wound the thing up as anticlimactically as I could. They smiled politely and tried to figure out ways to escape before I started on another topic.

  We retired for a drink before bed. I was exhausted, but Renthrette, having slept most of the day, seemed to want to talk for once. My blithering over dinner had ensured that no one would want to sit with us into the small hours, so we were alone.

  She was wearing her bottle-green dress again and had her hair down. Her skin had lost the pinkish burn it had developed when we first crossed the Hrof wastes, softening into a tan that showed off the blue of her eyes. I thought about mentioning this, but didn’t. I poured her some wine and sat on a beer barrel behind the counter.

  I found myself drinking and talking aimlessly about acting in Cresdon and running from Rufus.

  To my astonishment, she started laughing. “What were you talking about tonight at dinner?” she said. “Something about a tree you used to climb. What was all that about?”

  “I just didn’t want to talk about what we’ve been doing,” I mumbled. “I’m getting tired of rehashing it all.”

  “I think I know what you mean,” she said gravely.

  I looked at her sharply. There was no sarcasm. She was looking at the threadbare carpet and cradling her half-empty wineglass.

  “It’s just, I don’t know,” I said quickly, “kind of painful to have to keep thinking about, you know—”

  “The convoy,” she said.

  “I suppose so, yes,” I sighed. “And the visit to the Razor’s keep, and the attack on the village. Both attacks. Both villages. It seems that all I’ve done over the last couple of weeks is watch people die.”

  “I know,” she said softly. I watched for the usual mask of steel to slip over her face, but it didn’t. She just looked at me sadly, and something passed soundlessly between us, as if we had come out of a play together, a tragedy, and didn’t need to talk about it.

  “Was there a tree, Will?”

  “What?”

  “Was there a tree where you grew up, like in your story?”

  I thought about what I should say. I could tell her about all the trees she could ever wish to hear about. I could pour out nostalgia, paint a picture with words of a happier time for Will Hawthorne, and she would pity me and take me in her arms.

  “No,” I said. “There was no tree. I made it up.”

  She looked at me for a long time, until I could stand it no more and looked away. Without warning, she kissed me quickly on the cheek and stood up. “Good night, Will,” she said.

  She was gone before I was able to reply, closing the door as she slipped through it. It was the kind of kiss you might bestow on a nine-year-old or a pet rabbit, but genuine for all that. I poured myself another drink and replayed it all in my head.

  Almost twenty-four hours later I was back there again. The bar storeroom was piled high with beer barrels (apparently the only thing they had in good supply) but I thought wine made me look classier, so I opened the only bottle there as Renthrette arrived. We hadn’t seen each other all day and her manner was deliberately casual. She hadn’t forgotten the previous evening, but didn’t want to dwell on it. Not that there was much to dwell on.

  She had a message from her beloved brother. The raiders had made no attacks for a week now, the longest respite since they had begun.

  “That’s great news!” I exclaimed. “We must have whittled them down bit by bit. A casualty here, a casualty there. The ones who were poisoned in the caves must have been the last.”

  “No,” she said. “They weren’t. You know there are dozens, possibly hundreds of them left. They are lying low. Perhaps one of the party has got close to finding them and they daren’t move. Perhaps they are preparing for a bigger attack than any so far.”

  Sometimes I wish people would just take things at surface value. Analysis is a great complicator of existence.

  Naturally, she was right again. Word came from Orgos in Grey-coast within the hour that a number of raider units, totaling perhaps 160 men, maybe more, seemed to be coming together in northern Greycoast. They had been seen by Verneytha border patrols but they had, curiously, not vanished, continuing to move slowly, quietly, and without making further attacks.

  I was aghast.

  “A hundred and si
xty or more!” I exclaimed. “Hell’s teeth, that’s more than we ever thought there were! Still, no match for the six of us, eh?” I added. We had obviously made a real dent in their operations.

  “Why are they suddenly being so obvious?” Renthrette mused aloud.

  “Like you said, something’s happening.”

  “And we are stuck here,” she said miserably.

  “Good,” I said sulkily.

  “Don’t you feel we should be there with the party? They will gather together, all of them. We should go.”

  “And die as one big happy family. What a treat.”

  “We’re achieving nothing here,” she said, getting up impatiently. I gave her a suggestive glance and said, rather stupidly, “That depends on what you’re trying to achieve.”

  She shot me a pointed look as if what I had meant vaguely romantically had sounded merely lecherous.

  “That didn’t come out right,” I said, too frustrated to put my heart into sounding apologetic. I poured myself a glass of wine and looked at the floor, instantly recognizing it as Square One.

  “Is that wise?” she said frostily, regarding the wineglass as an elderly schoolteacher might.

  “Very,” I said, drinking deeply. “I need to relax more. In fact,” I added, tipping the dregs of the bottle down in one gulp, “I’m going to get some more.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea—” she began.

  “I’m not interested in your ideas,” I said quickly.

  “You can’t—” she began.

  “Watch and learn. This is called ‘The Hawthorne Guide to Staying Alive.’ Step one: When five of your friends suggest that you fight a hundred and sixty trained killers, go home immediately.”

  I walked out of the room and down the corridor, passing the count’s rooms and the long, straight wall with the tapestry, Renthrette running at my heels.

  “Step two . . . ,” I continued, descending the stairs and ignoring her spluttered attempts to interrupt, “spend the rest of your life sitting in a bar, drinking lots of beer, playing cards, and picking up women.”