Will Power wh-2

by A. J. Hartley

  All of a sudden I caught sight of a figure running from the library and bounding up the steps on the far side of the breach with a large crossbow in his hands. Correction: her hands. It was Aliana, robed in a long, cream habit belted at the waist. I waved. She kept running and, on reaching the head of the stairs, crouched behind a shattered parapet and took aim at something down below.

  The earnestness of her effort to be significantly involved in a battle taking place on the other side of the city amused me slightly and, chuckling, I leaned casually over the wall. My indulgent laughter perished.

  On the bank below, three great war barges were beached. Each carried about thirty goblins, which were now spilling out and skulking cautiously, weapons poised and ready for the trap that wasn’t there, inching toward the gaping, inviting space that had once been the wall. Taking in the other barges which were gliding silently across behind them, I came to the inevitable conclusion: The battle was lost.

  The stillness was broken by the snap-twang of Aliana’s crossbow. A large goblin fell to its knees clutching its shoulder and the others scattered instinctively, wheeling large, hide-covered shields up over their heads and scuttling for the cover of the boats and the walls. But no more bolts rained down on them from above and their high, caustic cries of alarm were quickly replaced by confused hissings. Their faces, invisible to me from the walls, turned to each other and they whispered fiercely. Then, with a cry of resolution, they began to emerge from their cover and, some shifting apprehensively, some running with long, rangy strides, they began moving toward the breach once more.

  I, who had been clutching my parapet out of sight, allowed myself to breathe and looked hurriedly around. The guards, thanks to my tactical genius, had all gone to defend the gate, leaving the walls quite deserted. Then movement on the other side of the breech reminded me of Aliana. She fired again and, as before, the cry of pain from below was accompanied by a scramble for cover. But she was separated from me by twenty feet of air where the walls had been, and there was no one else to defend the place.

  She looked across and recognized me in the dim light, but her eyes were hard. “Go for help, Mr. Hawthorne,” she shouted, but I was still exhausted from running over here in the first place, and I’d have to circumscribe three quarters of the city before I found anyone.

  “Your side is closer to the front,” I shouted, moving toward the twenty-foot pile of roped stone blocks which rose like some monolithic tower out of the breach’s strewn boulders. “You go.”

  She looked from the enemy to me and back, then she nodded, rocked onto her haunches and up into a sprinting run toward the nearest tower. In seconds she was gone. I swallowed hard and glanced over the wall.

  The goblins, who had emerged rather faster than last time, were now straightening up and moving toward us, their eyes flashing from the undefended walls to the heaped rubble and wooden scaffold where the repairs were. It was a narrow pass and would necessitate them climbing over the masonry-strewn foundation and timber frame, but it wouldn’t take them more than a few minutes to get through. Perhaps I could pick them off one by one as they swung themselves over the scaffolding. .

  Right. Even if I can aim this thing better than I’ve ever done before, I’ll still be lucky to get three of them before they break through and come up the stairs after me.

  This was crazy. I wondered if by moving around and firing from different spots I could trick them into thinking the walls were stuffed with guards lying in wait. No. I couldn’t fire anything like fast enough to make that work.

  So, as is often my response to finding myself in a tight corner, I started to talk. Aloud. To myself.

  “Are they close enough?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Just a few more feet.”

  “Are they ready on the other side?”

  “Yes. They won’t know what hit them.”

  “Get that catapult ready. Pass me those bolts.”

  “Ready, sir. . ”

  I was never that good at voices, really, but I figured I’d just created at least six different people with accents from various parts of Thrusia, Shale, and the Empire. One of them sounded drunk and another was mentally subnormal, but then, so was I for trying something this laughably destined to fail.

  The fact remained, however, that Aliana’s shots had come from the other side of the breach and this exercise in auditory puppetry, however inept, had the goblins slowing and gazing up at the other side of the fractured wall with sudden apprehension. There was a pause as words were exchanged between them. For a moment, nothing seemed to move, then several of the goblins turned back to the shore and my hopes were shattered as surely as the wall itself had been.

  Another barge had landed. Its prow was a great door that fell heavily on the shingle with a dull splash. The goblins close by limped hurriedly away and turned to watch with their eyes cowed, their bodies low and nervous like jackals abandoning a carcass to a lion. I stared fixedly at the barge and, from the darkness within, something huge began to emerge. I saw its eyes like glowing coals and the vast curl of goat-like horns that spread out and back, each wider than the span of a man’s arms. I saw each forepaw’s talons click on the gangplank like the claws of a great reptile and the waves of muscle that flexed and rippled beneath its thick and scaly hide. It gathered in a kind of crouch, and its form was something like a man’s, but gargantuan and with bestially deformed features like the devils in ancient prayer books. As it emerged, its tail rose behind it, lashing the air as it lowered its immense, bullish snout and snorted.

  A low gasp slid out of the goblins and they spread still wider, now in total silence. The beast gathered itself, shrugging off the cramp of the barge, and raised its thick, cabled neck and shoulders. The fiery eyes rose twenty feet into the air until they seemed to be looking into mine. When it reached its full height it stood only six or seven yards below me, its muzzle clearly moist, and its horns coiled and spread like giant shells, stretched and twisted by the hands of some terrible creator. For a moment, everything else was darkness and there was only me and that thing of night and malice, peering into my soul. Again it snorted-a deep, rolling thunder that seemed to shake the very walls-then it lowered its head. It took a step and the walls shook. A cascade of loose stone trickled down the splintered sides of the breach and the timber scaffold groaned. It seemed I could feel its thick breath on my face. Struck with a cold terror, I looked away and started to run for the tower door.

  It clawed at me from below, a great sweeping reach with immense, ape-like arms covered with short, bristling hair and hands-hands-with fingers the length of my legs and nails like blackened sabers. I dived low behind the parapet and the monster tore part of the wall away. Blocks of granite exploded in a haze of lethal fragments and landed in a shower of stones, one of which fell hard across my shoulders and left me breathless. I rolled painfully onto my back and saw the immense clawed hand reaching over the shattered parapet and grasping like some blind, nightmarish spider at the space where I had been.

  Then it slid away into the air outside and there was complete silence, ominous and short-lived. I heard the rushing air as the hand came smashing in again. I scrambled up and, as the hideous paw tore through the wall by the tower door, found I had nowhere to run but to the breach itself. As the fingers crawled their way toward me, I scuttled to the end of the wall where the giant slabs of masonry were piled, lashed into place with guy ropes thick as my arms.

  The hand swept toward me, wrenching the crenelations from the walls as it did so, so that I had no choice but to go down before it reached me. I clambered over the wooden rail and felt desperately with my feet for the rungs of a ladder. The giant hand clutched at empty space a yard in front of me and I heard the scythe-swing of its talons. One of them found the ropes that held the enormous stack of blocks for the wall repairs and slashed through them so that the tower of stone shifted ominously. Reaching lower, desperately feeling with one foot, I found the ladder and slithered down to th
e planked structure below, which straddled the rubble like a bridge to the other side of the breach. An arrow soared past me and another slammed into the pine rail in front of me. I ducked into a precarious crouch and looked out to the shore.

  The goblins were preparing to enter the breach four or five abreast, and they were going to march, not climb. Whatever was in their way-foundation, fallen rocks, scaffolding; even me, if I stayed there-was going to be plowed aside by that creature, that thing, that blasphemy of all that was natural. And there was nowhere for me to go, nothing for me to do. In a pair of strides the size of a coach and horses, the beast was on the shore again. Then it turned toward the breach and lowered its immense horns to charge. There was a sigh of satisfaction from the goblins, then the sound of its footfalls, pounding and reverberating like thunder in a canyon.

  There was no ladder on the other side and the narrow plank bridge had no way down to the ground. Unthinkingly, I dashed back the way I had come and flung myself back up the ladder as the animal, if animal it was, smashed into the breach like a dozen elephants. Stone and lumber exploded and the entire bulwark seemed to roll backward, hang in the air, and crash to earth. It took several hacking seconds for the dust to settle. Where the breach had been dammed with its own fallen weight, the rock and mortar had been thrown backward into the city. There was still a pile of rubble, but it was half what it had been and I found myself hanging over a fifteen-foot drop. Of the timber bridge and frame which had run over to the other side, there was no sign. Knowing that it could reach up and tear me away from the wall if it wanted to, I grabbed the rung above me and dragged myself up as the ground shook again and the monster came on.

  This time I was looking up when it tore into what was left of the wall. The tower of granite slabs at the top of the ladder shuddered and a rope snapped free, whipping back on itself like the monster’s tail. I didn’t look down at the great horns which were surely below me; I just scrambled up as fast as I could, grabbed the shortsword from my belt and hacked at the first rope I saw.

  The goblins were closing in on the breach now, but the clearance wasn’t complete. The ground trembled again and with a noise like a bursting drum, the beast rammed its way through. One rope gave and lashed my face as it did so, though I was too busy hewing madly at the next to feel the blood run down my cheek. The stone blocks squealed and groaned and I looked up, sure I would be pinned beneath the tower. Below me, the beast was worrying the remains of the shattered wall, grunting as it stooped its huge, bullish shoulders and plowed at what remained with its horns. It clambered into the breach, its great clawed hands pushing through like a swimmer parting the waves before him. A cheer went up from the victorious goblins. It stopped and looked up and, in the sudden silence, it heard the song of the last straining rope, tight as a harp string, before my blade bit through it. I rolled out of the way and waited.

  Nothing happened. The tower of stone rocked slightly, but it did not fall. I sat up and peered down into the dust that rose from the breach. The creature looked up very slowly and saw me. I rolled backward, leaped to my feet, and charged the pile of blocks with all my weight, slamming my shoulder into it. Again, nothing happened; I merely sagged, clutching my shoulder. I heard it coming before I saw it. When I looked down, it was climbing.

  It scaled the rubble pile in the breach in under a second with an astonishing, gorilla-like reach and agility. It lunged at me and its claws cut the air inches from my abdomen. I stepped back, but the beast had, for whatever reason, stopped. I peered cautiously over the edge and it looked back at me with eyes that smoldered with hatred and anger. It was clinging to the shattered wall like a great bat, its claws biting deep into the very stone. Apart from a sudden flare of its vast nostrils, it was quite still.

  “You obscenity,” I said. “You filthy, twisted aberration! You unholy and unnatural-”

  I doubt it understood me, but it leaped at me with a bellow of rage, clawing at me with its hands and splintering the stone where I stood with its horns. I jumped back as the monster reared up, and the great stack of masonry finally began to sway out over the breach. The beast roared again, but now the tower of stones was falling and the monster could not get out of the way. The pile fell as a single unit, a great slab of granite that only broke into its component parts on the creature’s back and shoulders. The earth shook. The beast crumpled, broken by the weight of the stone, and almost filling the breach. Its breath escaped in a last roar that turned into a whine and trailed off into nothing. Then there was silence again.

  A chill wind broke over the city wall and, still squatting on the shattered rampart, I shivered, suddenly conscious of the sweat which had broken out all over my body. A coarse, gray dust stuck to me like sand and, when I brushed my arm distractedly, it scraped the skin away. I stood and looked down into the half-filled hole where the dark, almost unbroken skin of the beast was growing pale and indistinct as the same dust settled all over it. Then a wail went up from the goblin force on the beach, a keening cry of confusion, fear, and even-it occurred to me-grief.

  Some of them were already scurrying back into their boats; others stood motionless, staring at the giant carcass and considering the odds against their continuing the assault unaided. Then there was a new sound: a blanket of drumming hooves, so many hooves that their individual staccato was lost in a long, unbroken roar. I turned to see a column of horsemen rounding the far corner of the forum and galloping toward me. They wore plate armor and heraldic shields. At their head was Sorrail.

  The goblins heard them, too, and their indecision vanished. In seconds they were scrabbling up the slick prows of their war barges, pushing, struggling, and climbing over each other to get in and away. A pair of the larger ones waited, glancing uneasily at the city walls, while the rest boarded. Then they put their shoulders to the slick timbers and shoved the vessels back into the river, all the while shouting over the confused din of the others. As their oars folded out in an erratic wave and began to stab desperately into the water, I turned and raised both arms to greet the cavalry. Relief, gladness, and triumph blended, and I bellowed over the retreating goblins.

  SCENE XIII Stranger Still

  So the battle was won, and many more goblins fell to our horsemen as they fled into the woods. I say “our,” but I felt like a part of the victory only inasmuch as I was not on the losing side. You might expect that I would be hailed as a hero for playing so instrumental a part in the triumph, showered with honors and wealth, given the keys to the city’s extravagant larder (I couldn’t believe the king and his cohorts ate the tasteless muck we’d been fed so far), and surrounded by beautiful court ladies all anxious to touch my greatness. As you will have realized by now, I am not one to let minor scruples stand in the way of serious reward, and I was more than ready to sit back and wait for my golden goblet to be filled without pausing to explain that my actions were more self-preservatory than heroic, more accident than valor. I didn’t get the option.

  The soldiers who relieved me at the walls were delighted to see the monster fall, but an odd hush came over them when they saw me clinging to the shattered parapets. Sorrail gave me a long silent look and then led the charge on the goblins, his face troubled.

  The news of my actions spread round the troops quickly for a while and then, though I wasn’t sure when the change took place, there was a conspicuous lack of interest in my doings. By the afternoon the news was dead and I wandered alone through the marketplace where many soldiers were marching back to their garrisons amidst cheers and applause from the townsfolk. I was ignored. I caught some soldiers talking to each other about how Sorrail had led a unit of crack guardsmen from the king’s palace to pull the stone ramparts down on the invading monster, as if it had been planned that way from the outset. I thought this a bit much, and said so.

  “That’s not the way I heard it,” I cut in. “I was under the impression that Sorrail was on the other side of the city and that the monster hadn’t even been seen until one of the Outsiders.
.”

  “You mean, one like you?” said one of the privates with something akin to contempt.

  “Very like me, actually,” I replied, curtly. “Yes.”

  “Oh, yes,” said the other, a tall young man with mocking eyes. “I heard that, too. You met the black fiend and wrestled it to death by yourself.”

  “Of course not,” I began. “But. .”

  “Of course not,” said the young man coldly, “that’s what I thought.”

  They turned on their heels and walked away, smiling grimly to each other.

  As I was considering this, Garnet and Renthrette appeared.

  “Can you believe I’m not even getting credit for this?” I demanded.

  “For what?” said Garnet.

  “My brave defense of the city!” I said. “Who do you think dumped ten tons of quarried stone on that goblin wall-crusher? Who do you think stalled the enemy as they boiled around the walls and leveled their hellish champion moments before victory was assuredly theirs?”

  “Sorrail,” said Renthrette, with a shrug that suggested she thought I was joking around and found it only mildly amusing at best.

  “No, I’m serious. It was me. Sorrail was with you lot at the front.”

  “Only for a short time,” said Garnet. “Then he led his men to encounter the horned beast at the breach.”

  “But it was dead by then!” I protested. “I killed it.”

  “No, Will,” said Renthrette. “You didn’t. You know you didn’t.”

  She said it almost kindly. I stared at her.

  “I’m sure you tried to help. . ” she began.

  “Oh, right,” I said. “I tried to help but failed because I am-you know-incompetent and degenerate. And then Sorrail-who is a hero, virtuous and mighty-showed up to save the day. All hail Sorrail!”