Act of Will wh-1

by Andrew James Hartley

  “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, still 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 Greycoast 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 sixty 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.”

  On the ground floor she caught hold of me and thrust me against the wall in a move worthy of her brother.

  “Now, you listen to me,” she began. “We saved your neck-”

  I’d heard this all before and turned away with disinterest. The barrack doors were open and over her shoulder I could see in and across the bunks of resting cavalrymen to the windows on the other side.

  Windows, I thought. On the other side.

  Suddenly something hit me like a falling buffalo. I said the word aloud to Renthrette.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Windows, look.”

  “So?”

  “Come upstairs.”

  I half dragged her up, past the second story, where we had been drinking, and on to the next, where a heavy oak door took us out onto the battlements. Still running, I led her to the front of the building, blinking against a light rain and what was probably a breeze on ground level, but felt like a gale up here.

  “What?” she demanded irritably as we reached the forward-facing parapet. I spun her to look back across the top of the keep. The wind picked up suddenly and I had to shout. “Look at the shape of the building,” I said. “The foundation is cross-shaped. Each level is the same size and shape. On the ground floor the crosspiece is the cavalry quarters, one room on the west side and one on the east. On the top floor the crosspiece is more battlements. But where’s the crosspiece on the middle floor, the floor where our rooms are, the floor where the count lives?”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Why are there windows on the middle story at the front and the back but none on the sides?” I said. “The cavalry barracks on the ground floor house two hundred men. There must be rooms of the same size directly above them that we’ve never even seen! There are probably doors behind those tapestries. God, Renthrette,” I exclaimed with sudden and heart-stopping fear, “we’ve found the raiders. They were here all the time.”

  SCENE L Implications

  No,” said Renthrette.

  She had said that a lot in the last half hour.

  “Yes,” I said. “It all makes sense.”

  “It makes no sense at all,” she said. “Why would Arlest shelter the raiders here? It’s crazy, and we have no evidence except for some idea.”

  I told her that investigation was too risky but, like her brother, she thought theories were for sissies. We walked along the long corridors that led to our rooms wondering if those moth-eaten tapestries concealed doors, but we were always under the casual watch of the guards. We thought, very briefly, about going to the chancellor or to the countess, or even to Arlest himself, but that was clearly hopeful to the point of stupidity. We had to presume they were all involved. That left us with a puzzle: How might we get a look in those rooms?

  An hour later the puzzle had changed. How had Renthrette convinced me to stand guard while she climbed a rope from the battlements down the side of the keep? We were back on the roof, where the troops were few and not so much casual as dormant. One of them asked me where my “lady friend” had got to and went off chuckling, convinced that she’d dumped me for some burly soldier. Nothing so mundane; she was swinging at the end of a rope, trying to force the second-story shutters with a throwing dagger. Naturally.

  But then she was calling me to climb down after her, and I had other things to worry about. I’m not fond of climbing; factor in a howling wind and a rain-slicked rope, and you might understand why it took me three hellish minutes to inch down to the shuttered window where Renthrette was waiting for me. Then she was muttering about my incompetence and pulling me in with the kind of rough, physical manhandling that always sounds like it should be exciting, but is usually just embarrassing.

  Inside was exactly what we had expected: one of two large dormitories identical to the cavalry barracks below. The room was deserted, but there were footlockers full of red-flighted arrows and scarlet cloaks hanging from racks around the walls. At one end of the room was a heavy door.
I felt we’d seen enough, but Renthrette tried it anyway.

  Behind it was a stone staircase.

  We inched down the stairs. They went not to the ground floor, but to a familiar round chamber in the basement, its floor glowing with the soft, white luminescence of the Ugokan caves and the Iruni stone circle. I stood on the steps and looked at it, as if I had seen it only in nightmares before. There was, thank God, no sign of the raiders, but the place alone gave me the creeps. Renthrette felt it too. She gazed wide-eyed at the room and then looked back to me. “It’s just as you described it,” she said.

  “You didn’t believe me?” I asked, momentarily incredulous.

  “Of course I did,” she said, “but, you know. You’re the storyteller, right? I thought perhaps you had embroidered it a little. Made it more dramatic.”

  “You want drama?” I said petulantly. “Try filling the place with raiders. That part was true too.”

  She gave me a slightly pained look. “Right,” she said. “Sorry.”

  All I wanted to do right now was get out of this awful place: not just the room, or the secret barracks, but the castle itself. For once, she seemed to agree. We retraced our steps, climbed back up the rope to the roof, and returned to our rooms, badly rattled but apparently undetected.

  It was difficult to decide where our discovery left us, other than with the sense that we should have thought of this weeks ago. There had been clues that we had managed to miss completely, like the fact that we’d been served conspicuously watered ale while the bar was piled high with beer barrels for its less public inhabitants. Or the prohibitively expensive horses at the huge ranch by the river, which was obviously just a big stable for the raiders who were on the ale over at Count Arlest’s House of Hell. What was more difficult to figure out was what we were supposed to do with our discovery.