Act of Will

by A. J. Hartley

  Moving purposefully between the corpses on the bridge, I advanced to where the wagon teetered on the edge, its front wheels already half submerged in the moat, hacking wildly at whomever I ran into. Despite the surprise attack, I barely managed to scratch them. One of them snorted softly as he stepped back off the bridge. It was an odd sound, and for a second I didn’t realize what it was, but then it came again and spread amongst them: They were laughing at me.

  That somehow brought me to my senses. I glanced at the sword in my hand, a sword that had always felt uncomfortable however much I’d practiced with it, and I slid it into my belt. I would keep it for my friend till they took it from me, but I couldn’t wield it. Then I climbed into the tailgate of the wagon and, as the boards under my feet seesawed back to something like a horizontal plane, got behind the nearest scorpion crossbow and swung it round. Arlest was impatiently ordering more soldiers to clear the way. I felt for the trigger as he turned to look at me, sweat breaking out all over my body. Arlest’s eyes met mine down the grooves of the huge crossbow, and for a second he seemed unnerved. But only for a second. Then there was nothing but scorn in his face.

  “You’re a murderer, Arlest,” I said to him, my voice surprisingly calm. “A butcher.”

  “No, William,” he said, almost calmly, “I am a soldier. A professional man of the world, while you are an emotional amateur. Not even that. You weren’t even a fighter before you came here, were you?”

  I said nothing, but stared at him, wondering what I was going to do. I had a crossbow trained on his heart. The portcullis still ground its way up. Time wasn’t a factor to either side anymore. But it somehow seemed imperative to continue the conversation. He wouldn’t listen, but there were things I needed to say anyway.

  Arlest didn’t seem to care what I did. He merely called insults at me across his troops. “Let’s not play games, now. You are a coward, Will Hawthorne. My men told me how you hid behind a wagon when they attacked you on the road from Seaholme. We laughed about it. You are hiding again, even in this, your moment of glory. You’re hiding behind those crossbows and your sense of righteous anger and bravery.”

  “Not bravery,” I corrected him. “I am not a brave man. I am a realist, too. After all, look what happens to bravery,” I said, gesturing to where Orgos lay. “He was the bravest, most valiant man I ever knew—”

  “Don’t sentimentalize the moment, Mr. Hawthorne,” Arlest shouted back, his eyes fixed on mine, no trace of nervousness in them despite the scorpions aimed at him. “He was a mercenary. A hired killer.”

  “No, Arlest,” I said, stifling any hint of emotion. “He was a great man, in his way. He was a man of principle. A man of honor. A friend. But that is, as you say, sentimental. There is no room in the world for friendship or principle or honor. That is why he’s dead. I understand that now. Such things have no place in our world.”

  There was a glimmer of surprise in Arlest’s eyes and I shrugged slightly, as if making a confession. I heard footsteps behind me and risked a glance.

  Garnet was ducking under the portcullis. In front of him Renthrette was getting to her feet, an arrow in her bow and her helm tipped back so her face showed, pale and intense in its grief. Mithos and Lisha followed, tired and numb with sorrow, and crouched by Orgos’s body. Behind them a crowd of ragged soldiers, citizens, and the remnants of the villagers stood watching through the gateway like prisoners in a dungeon, or the audience at some bizarre theatre. Their need to see what was happening out here had almost stifled their fear.

  I turned back to Arlest and said, with his own condescension, “Fools like Orgos always fight back. They think it’s noble.”

  There was a whisper of confusion behind me. Garnet, I think.

  “This is fighting back?” Arlest laughed caustically, but he was laughing as much with me as at me. “Five of you and a corpse against a thousand? He won’t be fighting back anymore, and neither will you. Any of you. The Orgoses of this world will always finish up dead on the bridge, while people like me, perhaps even Duke Raymon, will thrive.”

  “He’s not dead,” said Mithos quietly from the gate. “Almost, but not quite.”

  I did not dare turn to look, but I heard them move him. They rolled him under the portcullis and Mithos said to those on the other side, “Make him comfortable before he dies.”

  I looked at Arlest and he was utterly impassive, appraising me like one who has bought the best seats in the house and feels he has the right to criticize your performance.

  “Perhaps I could join you,” I began. “In return for sparing your life. One of the realist survivors.”

  “You?” he laughed, though there was definitely a note of curiosity in his disdain. “What about friendship and honor?”

  “What about them?” I replied. “If those things really meant anything to me, I’d be charging you on a white stallion.”

  “Hawthorne!” called a voice from behind me, a voice charged with desperate anger. “You lying, cowardly snake.” It was Garnet. I didn’t turn.

  “Let go of the crossbow,” said Arlest, “and perhaps we can—”

  “I’m not interested in perhaps,” I remarked with a crooked smile, which he reflected at once. “I’m interested in a fast horse to get me out of here and some of the silver you now have so much of.”

  “What about your friends?”

  “I can’t save them,” I said. “You have to kill them, as you will have to kill everyone in the city. You know that, and your men know that, and they accept it.

  “Everyone,” I continued with the same studied lack of concern, “every able-bodied man who might threaten your safety, any women who love those men, must die. And since you can’t be sure that their children won’t grow into rebels, angry at the rape and murder of their parents by your forces, you’ll have to spit them on pikes too. Some would blanch at such an idea, but not you. It will be easy for you. After all, you’ve been doing it for months.

  “Wiping out villages in Shale was your masterstroke,” I said with an admiring smile. “Who would suspect a man would butcher his own people? Brilliant. Your men must be disciplined, but the real credit goes to you. How do you get a soldier to slice open his own neighbors, maybe even his own family? How many of your men’s wives and girlfriends have had their heads and limbs hacked from them by their own comrades-in-arms? And all because you told them to!” I said, with the same note of amazed admiration. “This is your world now, Arlest. Orgos’s world bleeds and dies with him. Yours is the world of might and expedient atrocity, and principles cannot hold out against it.”

  A curious ripple had been building amongst the ranks of the regular Shale soldiers. Perhaps it was because I knew they had played no part in the earlier raids, perhaps it was just because I could see their faces: in any case, it was them that I had been speaking to, not to the Empire troops. Certainly not to the bronze-masked raiders or to Arlest, the controlling monster.

  He spoke hurriedly, then, conscious that something was happening around him. “This has wasted time enough. I see what you are trying to do, but, like your dead friend, you will achieve nothing.” He looked past me at the gate, but there had been another ripple, and I saw in his face the knowledge that he should not have mentioned Orgos again.

  “Orgos could not believe someone like you existed,” I said. “Yet I doubt he would have shot you down, even now. He’d wait for you to attack and then he would respond on even terms.” I smiled sadly. “He taught me many things, but I have something of your realism after all. Orgos would not cut you down, but I will.”

  I don’t know if he didn’t believe me or if he just wasn’t listening. He muttered to the chancellor at his side and thirty soldiers came forward and assembled at the end of the bridge, bows poised and arrows in place. I thought of swinging the crossbows onto them and firing, but for once the leader needed to take responsibility for his orders. The chancellor spoke to the platoon commander and the archers drew back their bows and waited for the order. />
  Behind me, Mithos, Lisha, Renthrette, and Garnet stood shieldless, disdaining to flee or take cover. I looked along the faces of the archers, their eyes narrowed and their forearms tight with the strain.

  Arlest’s eyes met mine and held them. He smiled, a tiny rippling of the corners of his mouth and a spot of light in his eyes. Then he opened his mouth to give the word. On impulse—though what that impulse was, I couldn’t really say—I put one hand to the hilt of Orgos’s sword, which hung at my side.

  I touched the pommel stone and, for once, I felt its power. I saw my purpose and its value with absolute clarity. There was a great flash of pale light that began at the sword and spread outwards like ripples on the surface of a pond. I felt the energy leave the sword, passing through me, but some of that energy came from me too, and the sensation was powerful and draining. As the wave of light passed over Dathel’s poised archers, their eyes flickered, their taut arms relaxed, and their arrows fell to the ground. They blinked in their confusion and I pulled the trigger.

  Arlest pitched forward, blood spurting from his nose and mouth as he died. I wheeled the other crossbow, sighted, and shot the countess from her horse. There was no other movement or sound. Very slowly the archers relaxed their arms.

  I wasn’t sure what had happened, and I didn’t care.

  A long, disbelieving silence followed. I sat on the wagon and put my face in my hands for a moment as relief gave way to grief. I was suddenly too tired to stand, and all I wanted to do was go to sleep and wake up in Cresdon, playing cards with Orgos in a quiet tavern.

  Then, out of the stillness, came footsteps. The chancellor had walked onto the bridge. His expression was stern and somehow weary, but he had barely opened his mouth to speak when a handful of the raiders charged him with their scyaxes drawn. In a fraction of a second he was surrounded by a group of Shale infantry in their black and silver, their shields locked about him and their spears turned out like the spines of a porcupine. The small cell of raiders attacked them, but they didn’t last for more than a few seconds. When the skirmish stopped, another dozen or so of the crimson raiders had been slain. The rest threw down their arms and plucked off their helms. The monstrous machine suddenly had faces, many of them uncertain, embarrassed, or even ashamed. It was over.

  The Empire troops seemed to recognize as much. They had no interest in taking on whoever would stand against them now that it was no longer clear who would come down on which side. I didn’t notice when they started to move, but they withdrew as one, and by the time I started looking for them, they were a thousand yards away and riding west.

  Curiously, it was me Chancellor Dathel addressed when he approached us. As ever, his tone was as dark and serious as his robes.

  “On behalf of Shale, and as one now taking control of that county on the demise of Arlest the Second, I submit my land, army, and people to your control. I regret the destruction our land and leader have caused and I can only ask that our current surrender be taken into account in the trials that will inevitably follow. I can only say that I am extremely sorry.”

  Sorry?

  I could think of nothing to say to that. I knew most of it was just political rhetoric, but I suppose that was the name of the game now. Raymon would have a field day. I only half believed Dathel: I would never know exactly what command he gave to those archers, but they had not shot even after the power of Orgos’s sword had passed. Perhaps he had been disobeyed. Perhaps he had picked up a new mood in the ranks that he hadn’t dared to contradict. I wondered if my words had made a difference and thought that they probably hadn’t. Not in the long term, anyway; words never do.

  “How much of what you said did you believe?” asked Renthrette, appearing suddenly at my elbow.

  “My little speech?” I asked. “I’m not sure. Does it matter?”

  She thought for a moment and then smiled very slightly, a smile so small and so sad that you had to be looking for it to notice it at all.

  “I suppose not,” she said.

  It was a comic situation, of course, and quite implausible, this sudden surrender by the obvious victors. If I’d seen it onstage or read it in a book I’d say it was fiction at its most ridiculous, though fiction has that privilege. But, oddly enough, I had known it would work. I knew the instant Arlest started to talk to me as I lined him up in the crossbow’s grooves, because it was clear then that he didn’t understand the game. He thought it was a debate, an attempt to sway his troops with logic. It had been no debate; it had been theatre.

  Mithos gave the responsibility for disarming the Shale forces to Raymon, who was suddenly anxious to please. Then he slipped away with the rest of the party. He was going to find Orgos’s body, and I was going with him.

  SCENE LX

  The Curtain

  Orgos lay in a dark, candlelit chamber that smelled of the wildflowers and incense on the table by his bed. Lisha had bandaged him and prepared a poultice. Some local wise woman had sung low incantations around the bed and anointed him with oils. Between them they had set his broken ribs and stopped the wound in his abdomen, but he had bled copiously, and they were unsure of what had been ruptured inside. It was unlikely that he would make it through the hour.

  The bandages about his stomach were soaked through with blood, but that was somehow less disturbing than the greyish hue his whole body had developed, like a deep, inner pallor. From time to time his eyes opened slightly, but they were pale and sightless. Several times I found myself feeling desperately for his pulse, convinced that he was already dead.

  The air was thick with the aroma of candle wax and petals. It was like a sanctuary or a crypt. I thought of the battle, of the pain in his face when the enemy had come at us in spite of our numbers. I thought of our flight to the citadel and his single-handed defense of the bridge, and suddenly I knew what I had to do.

  Moving close to his bedside, I knelt beside him, took one of his large dark hands in mine, and began to talk.

  I talked of honor and heroism. I told him what had happened after he was cut down by the raiders, how we had taken his position and held them off. I told of how the Shale soldiers had turned on their leaders and on the raiders themselves. I told him how we had thwarted the Empire, who was retreating back to Stavis even as we spoke. I told him everything and I thanked him for it. It was, after all, his victory.

  I looked at his still face and his half-open eyes and, charged with emotion, I said, “So you can’t die! We need you to champion the things you fought for and you can’t do that on your back in some cemetery. You held off an army, damn it! There’s too much for you to do here. You have to come back and finish the story.”

  His eyes closed for a second and their lids rippled. When he opened them again, he could see me. His mouth moved, but at first no words came out. Renthrette gave him water and he drank it, looking at me. He mouthed something that I couldn’t catch and I had to lean in close while he tried again. “Will Hawthorne . . .” he gasped, “you talk too much.”

  I shrieked with joy as the others clustered around the bedside. Mithos looked at him and remarked, “I should have known Will could talk you round.”

  “He’s better with words than he is with a sword,” Orgos said softly.

  “Tough to imagine,” I said.

  “Now that we have our swordsman back,” said Lisha, “Will is welcome to stay our wordsman.”

  Words, like swords, have a way of getting people in and out of trouble. Morality was never my strong point, but I suddenly saw the attraction of being in the right and knowing it. Orgos always had, but for once this knowledge hadn’t been enough and he had to be reminded. In this, I suppose, we were similar after all. A writer like myself doesn’t pen plays just for the hell of it. There always has to be a sense that his audience, for the briefest moment and in some infinitesimal degree, are changed by what they hear onstage. It’s the same for swordsmen: When the opposite of your values rides at you hacking and spearing, grinning through their bronze helms, y
ou need a little more than principle to keep your hopes for humanity alive. Orgos had needed to see victory more than ever before. He needed to know he could change the world.

  I suppose there is an arrogance there, but I could relate to it. The fighter and the writer struggle with the balance of absolute omnipotence and total impotence that are intrinsic to their media. It’s that balance that keeps them on their toes. Yes, Orgos and I were more alike than I had ever suspected.

  Orgos rose from his bed three days after the battle and within another week was recovered enough to walk around the citadel walls by himself. The bandages stayed on. During his recovery, Maia often came to sit beside him and hold his huge hands in hers. Maybe that did some good. He had become to her, and many of her friends and relatives, something of a hero—and by that I mean a real hero, not the actor I had been. I didn’t resent this. It seemed only right and proper that the latest act of heroism should banish all previous acts from the audience’s mind. I had been a hero because they had needed to see me as one. He was the genuine article.

  Orgos and I spent a lot of time together and I noted in him a quietness that had been less evident before. It was a long time before I saw him polish and sharpen his swords again, and when he did, it was with a caution that verged on mistrust. When he grew sad or talked of the death and injury he had seen over the years, I would remind him of the battle on the bridge. Eventually the weariness and resignation left him and he grinned at me and said I’d been stupid to take them on by myself. Like he hadn’t, right?

  We had gotten lucky. It doesn’t usually work like this, as we well knew, but for the moment, everything was on our side. We spent a few anxious days watching Greycoast’s western border but the Empire never came back. I guess there were too many troops still intact for them to risk achieving by force what they had hoped to win by guile. We sat at the head table of a banquet of roast beef loins and exotic game birds and laughed with relief. We were cheered in the streets and people bought us drinks wherever we went. Women hung about me with glazed eyes. Gorgeous women. I was the conquering hero (one of them, anyway), and everyone wanted to know me. Funnily enough, I didn’t want the attention so much, now that I had it. I spent a lot of time with the other party members and Renthrette smiled knowingly at both my offenses and my triumphs.