Act of Will

by A. J. Hartley

  God alone knew what I could do to stop such visions from becoming reality, but I had to try.

  SCENE LIII

  Back on the Horse

  I rode as fast and as hard as I have ever done, and while that isn’t saying all that much, I covered a lot of ground and was well inside Shale territory by lunchtime. I had to assume that the Empire would march on the surviving armies as soon as they could be removed from each other’s throats. That meant they would head for the plains outside Ironwall, where Mithos was pushing the raiders towards Garnet and Orgos with whatever armies Greycoast and Verneytha could muster. It would take me several hours of steady riding just to get in sight of the citadel, and that was if I rode as the crow flies. But the crow flew straight through Adsine, under the very eaves of the keep that housed the raiders. I told myself that with the mystical transportation methods open to them, the raiders were unlikely to be trotting through the streets of Adsine, especially if the ordinary people of Shale didn’t know that the raiders were their neighbors and brothers, but it was impossible to be sure. I bent low in the saddle, pulled my cloak over my head to shelter me from rain and prying eyes, and spurred my horse towards Adsine.

  I figured I had two choices as I entered Adsine and felt the keep watching blankly from the high ground in the center of the town: I could either charge through the streets as quickly as I could (fast but conspicuous); or I could walk my horse in a nonchalant fashion, blending in nicely and taking about a decade to cover four hundred yards. In the end, I followed both impulses, entering the city slowly and inconspicuously and then, when I glimpsed the first stray Shale trooper in his black-and-silver armor, bolting with panic and charging out of town as if the hosts of hell were at my heels. Remarkably, then, I managed to be both slow and conspicuous, once more demonstrating exactly why I wasn’t cut out for this kind of life at all.

  I didn’t slow down till Adsine was a good half hour behind me, and I spent that half hour glancing backwards in search of pursuing horsemen. Knowing that those horsemen could be wearing black, red, or white and it would be equally bad news for Will the Hopeless Fugitive wasn’t encouraging, but I saw no traffic on the road at all until I reached the Proxintar Downs. There the road was clogged with bullock carts as a convoy of farmers and miners tried to get out of Ironwall before the approaching storm. Part of me wanted to warn them of the perils that awaited them as they headed west, but I doubted that my various enemies would bother with the likes of them, and I resented their abandoning of my friends. The fact that I had also abandoned my friends twenty-four hours ago was conveniently clouded by my sense of heroic purpose. I was a warrior returning to save the day, bringing crucial information and a keen eye with a crossbow, putting my life on the line for my friends. Well, kind of.

  To be honest, my newfound heroism was due at least in part to a plan I had been forming in my head. If I could get to the party in time to explain the situation as I saw it, we would have the upper hand. We could hit the raiders hard and fast while our force still outnumbered theirs, then we could take the remains of our army into Ironwall and sit out the Empire’s assault. Those Diamond soldiers were looking for an easy victory, not a lengthy siege of the most secure citadel in the region. If we could get inside as soon as the first battle was over, they would probably just trek back to Stavis with their tails between their legs. People are fond of saying that knowledge is power. This time it might actually be true: knowing that the Empire was on its way might be all we would need to turn them back.

  The sun was at my back and turning a deep red by the time the massive citadel came into view across the plains before me. I put my heels to my horse’s flanks and reached the guardhouse moments before they were due to lower that massive portcullis for the night. Indeed, they started its immeasurably slow and clanking descent as soon as I was in, and even though it took ten minutes to close completely, it was the most comforting sound I’ve ever heard in my life. I went up onto the walls before I sought out the party and gave a last look westwards to see if any of our enemies were coming.

  SCENE LIV

  The Gathering

  The party greeted me pretty much as you would expect, Lisha with a small-but-genuine smile, Orgos with loud whoops and hugs and “I told you so”s to anyone who would listen, Garnet with a nod that said I had surprised him in a good way (for once) and a matey thump on the shoulder that nearly sent me sprawling. Renthrette just watched me in a sideways kind of manner, like someone keeping an eye on a dog that was likable enough but wasn’t to be trusted. Fair enough, I suppose.

  I told them about the approaching Empire army and they exchanged thoughtful glances as they weighed my strategic advice and found it, somewhat surprisingly, to be sound. But as Lisha talked tactics, Orgos sharpened his swords, and Garnet muttered excitedly about having a go at the Empire once the raiders had been “eliminated,” Renthrette continued to watch me like I had just regurgitated an entire goat that had then wandered off bleating. In short, whatever trust she had placed in me between the Ugokan caves and our retreat from Adsine had evaporated with my running away, and my heroic return had only served to make her more suspicious. I opted, as is my wont, for a flirtatious playfulness designed to defuse the situation.

  “You didn’t think I’d come back,” I said with a sly grin, the moment I caught her alone.

  “Why would I?” she said, her eyes on the straps of some ring mail she was adjusting. “You ran away to avoid a battle.”

  “And I came back to take part in two,” I inserted deftly. “Doesn’t that tell you something about who I am?”

  “Right now,” she said, “all I want to know about you is whether or not you told the Empire how to find us.”

  I had been prepared to fake a hurt surprise, but this was a lower blow than I had expected and my shock was genuine.

  “You thought I’d turn you in?” I said.

  “Did you?” she asked, and she was looking at me now, her eyes hard and cold and perfectly serious. I was aghast.

  “If I had, would I have come back and warned you the Empire was on its way?”

  She was silent and for a second I thought I had her, that she’d melt into apologies and confessions of how relieved she was to see me again.

  “How could anyone figure out the way your mind might work?” she said.

  That could, I suppose, have been a kind of compliment, but I doubted it. “Fine,” I said with dignity. “Fine.”

  I was on the point of storming out when Garnet burst in.

  “They’re coming,” he said. He seemed quite pleased.

  The “they,” it turned out, were the raiders. Mithos and the governor of Verneytha were pushing them south onto the planes before Iron-wall. A few days ago I wouldn’t have believed the palpable good humor that the Greycoast soldiers exuded at the prospect of facing the raiders, but things had changed, and memories, it seemed, were short. The raiders were charging into our trap like sparrows flying full tilt at a pane of glass. Well, maybe not sparrows. More like a kind of buzzard. But our window was made of two hundred Greycoast infantry, forty cavalry, and a contingent of about fifty homeless villagers. In time, the buzzard would claw its way through, but with three hundred men at its heels, time was what it didn’t have. Then we could get inside Ironwall and close up the citadel while the Empire sat outside, mulled their options, and finally went home. We were headed into our final battle, and the relief that that idea brought drowned any fear for what would happen while the window cracked.

  I watched the villagers going through some basic training moves outside the city walls and then hurried up to the white buildings surrounding the duke’s palace. I met Garnet and forty cavalry from the Hopetown garrison, all humming with enthusiasm. Garnet was earnestly tightening the straps of his horned helm while Tarsha steamed quietly in the shadows. I was talking to him when Renthrette passed, scowling and looking away, ignoring Garnet as he called after her. He gave me an odd look, guessing that this had something to do with me. I gav
e him an awkward combination of nods, shrugs, and smiles all stacked precariously on top of each other, in an attempt to convey a sort of noncommittal goodwill. He returned a similar sequence and, thus sidestepping any recognizable species of communication, we parted, trying to figure out what the hell all that had been about. As I walked up to the palace I reflected that if meeting my friends was this strange, encountering His Pompous Immensity, the duke of Greycoast, was likely to be very bizarre indeed.

  He was waiting for us in the uppermost marketplace, reviewing the citadel garrison with the rest of the party, save Mithos and Garnet. A buzz of excitement hung about the soldiers as they readied themselves. He stood scowling and shooting petulant orders at the squire who was trying to spoon him into large pieces of plate armor. Hearing us approach, he turned, sloshing and quivering like a rich dessert. He sort of smiled at us through his thick reddish beard like he had somehow been vindicated about our uselessness, and when he spoke, his civility was tempered with superiority and disdain. “I am gratified that you have come to lend assistance,” he said. “I’m sure it will make a difference.”

  He gave me a long, cold look and I returned it blankly. I wasn’t sure exactly why I was there, but it certainly wasn’t to please him.

  “Orgos,” he said, “I want you to lead B Company.”

  He gestured behind him to a block of a hundred infantrymen. He went on, his manner declamatory, his heavy pinkish hands cutting the air like ax blades cleverly fashioned out of chopped pork. In his armor he looked hulkingly powerful and slightly ridiculous. He couldn’t turn his head without swiveling his entire body, and his arms stuck out short and awkward like the forelegs of a kangaroo.

  “Form a barrier at right angles to the citadel gate,” he said to Orgos. “The enemy will come right at you. As they close in, I will send A Company out of the city, joining your force and striking the enemy in the flank simultaneously.”

  “That will leave you no reinforcements in the citadel,” said Lisha. The duke glanced down at her as if he had forgotten she was there. His face crinkled into an avuncular smile. A bead of thick spittle stuck to his lower lip, and his voice was moist and thick.

  “Well, my dear,” he said, “we have a very dangerous enemy which needs to be destroyed quickly before it can damage us. If we hold anything back from the first clash, we may lose our advantage in the field, and a few reinforcements will never win the day back for us. We must hit them hard, putting all we have into a single counterthrust.”

  Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it, in other words.

  “And you’ll be leading them into battle, will you?” I said, absolutely incapable of keeping my mouth shut.

  “I shall be with them when they charge—” Raymon began.

  “What does that mean,” I said, “ ‘be with them’? Will you be leading them or not?”

  “Not leading them, exactly,” he said, as if it was a minor distinction. “But I will be there until they charge and, depending—”

  “On whether there’s any risk involved whatsoever,” I interrupted him, “yes, I think I get the picture. You’ll ride around in your armor and be ready with the waves and the patriotic victory speeches—”

  “I don’t think you, of all people, are in any position—”

  “Probably not,” I agreed hastily, wondering—not for the first time—what I was trying to achieve. “But you know what? There’d be no raiders without people like you. Remember that.”

  I don’t really know why I said it and I was far from clear what I’d meant, but it felt true and I was glad I had put it out there for him to think about. He didn’t, of course. He gave me a long, bewildered look, and then the squire tugged the strap of his breastplate too tight, and, with a snort of irritation, he turned on the armorer, barking indignation.

  As they started hoisting the duke astride his stallion, a messenger arrived to speak to him. Though the horse was larger than the duke (a little) it looked like it might collapse under his weight at any moment, struggling as it was like an ant with a grapefruit. He looked, I was pleased to note, quite absurd, and everyone knew it. One of the soldiers looked deliberately away and smirked at his friend. Maybe that’s what did it. I had wondered about telling him of the hidden rooms in the Adsine keep and flaunting the fact that it had been me who found them, but he wasn’t worth trying to impress. The identities of the raiders didn’t matter now anyway. We’d go over all that after they had been vanquished.

  The duke gave a single bark of laughter and set his horse to a laborious and unstable-looking trot, his face rosy and enthusiastic.

  “The raiders are in sight,” he announced, his stallion wheezing like an octogenarian pipe smoker on a twelve-mile hike. “They are coming this way with the Verneytha cavalry at their heels.”

  “I hope Mithos keeps his distance,” said Orgos. “If the raiders turn on him, he will never hold out.”

  “Mithos knows the situation,” Lisha replied. “He will hold back until we are ready to engage them.”

  “I must get that wagon set up,” I said to Orgos.

  The air was heavy with an oddly joyous anticipation, and I saw how battle could be thrilling when you knew you were going to win. It was like watching a play you’ve seen before and enjoying not what happens but how it happens, suspending your knowledge of the ending in your head so you can relish it even more. And, like a lot of plays, it was about revenge, and few things feel better than that.

  Orgos nodded briefly and clasped my shoulder. “Be careful out there,” he said.

  “Oh, I will,” I assured him. “And you too.”

  “Good-bye, Will,” he said. As he walked away I wondered why that sounded so final, but I was armored with optimism three inches thick and the thought glanced off like a spent arrow.

  SCENE LV

  The Enemy

  The gatehouse was a mass of soldiers waiting for their orders. The drawbridge was down and the portcullis hung on its chains high above us. Since it took an age to lower the thing and we would be sending soldiers out right up to the moment when the raiders hit us, it would probably stay open all day. I watched Renthrette and Lisha organizing a line of spears and crossbows. It was all oddly familiar, but this time the sun was high, the air was clear, and we outnumbered the enemy two to one.

  I moved around the wagon, freeing the bolts and folding the sides down halfway. I clamped the axles and began to assemble the massive crossbows. After that I slipped my head into my mail shirt, felt its coolness and weight through the soft leather beneath. All around me the village irregulars prepared themselves to meet the crimson raiders once more, the sun shining on their makeshift armor and newly ground ax bits. I belted my sword about my waist and laid a shield on the wagon floor as if I was a hero who knew what he was doing.

  Renthrette was already armored and ready, though she had yet to put on her helm. I watched her dig her heels into the sides of her horse and shout at the swelling and straightening line of boar spears and homemade pikes; then she turned suddenly and looked north. I stood up and could just make out a dust cloud, broad and low on the horizon. Trumpets sounded from the citadel turrets and a cry of wild joy went up around me like when the dogs see the bear.

  From the gatehouse came the first hundred of the Greycoast infantry, Orgos mounted on a white charger at their head. He wore a tunic of russet linen with dark leather armor, waxed and overlaid with rings of steel. A helmet of iron and boars’ tusks covered his head and the nape of his neck, topped with a black horsehair plume that trailed to his shoulders. Apart from the angular cheek guards, his face was exposed. While I felt like a hero but looked like an idiot in armor that didn’t fit—a fish out of water of the duke-of-Greycoaston-a-horse variety—Orgos was the real thing, and looked the part. He crossed our lines and nodded briefly to us, a nod of confidence and dignity. The men around me watched him and you could feel the way his presence lifted their hearts. I fiddled with my crossbows.

  In the mouth of the gatehouse
I could see the first ranks of A Company waiting, pressed to the walls to allow Garnet and his Hopetown cavalry to exit the city and veer towards us. They wore silver scale armor and chromed helmets with short blue capes like the men who had escorted us from Seaholme, but they looked confident and professional. Their hooves clattered over the bridge, and an appreciative shout went up from the Greycoast soldiers. Garnet, sitting pale at their head in grey mail and a horned helm, adjusted his shield and gestured to the riders with his battle-ax. They wheeled in front of the wagon, then formed a block at the corner of the citadel facing towards the center of the plains. Garnet also looked the part, calm and impressive astride that bloody immense horse. I scowled and wondered why I was the only one who looked like he’d walked out onto the stage by accident. Whatever I thought about the coming encounter, I still felt like a sham. Even the bloody villagers looked like they knew what they were doing, and most of them were armed with gardening implements.

  The dust cloud was coming, but I figured we had a few minutes yet, more if they slowed their approach. I lifted one of the crossbows onto its assembled tripod and bolted it into place, swinging it round and looking down its twin grooves like an expert. Renthrette was unhitching the horses from the front of the wagon and leading them away, and as I snapped the last bolt into place she looked up at me silently, shading her eyes with her hand.