A. Hartley - Will Power

“It seems my finding you was fortuitous,” he said in a clear and faintly musical voice. “There are dark creatures abroad these days.”

There was a pause, then Orgos spoke. “I am Orgos, from Thrusia, and I offer our thanks for your help. As you can see, however, we have all suffered some hurt and Mithos, our leader, needs particular attention.”

“Forgive me,” said the stranger. “I am Sorrail of Phasdreille, a watcher of the paths. I first observed you an hour before sundown. I would have come to you earlier, but I was unsure of your allegiances. Your appearances are, shall we say, misleading.”

“Allegiance to who?” asked Orgos. “We are travelers in this land and know little of its business.”

“Indeed,” said Sorrail, “you must have come from far afield not to know what stirs in the mountains here. But come, bind your wounds and rest. I must chase these creatures of foulness to earth. I will return at first light to guide you.”

So saying, he took from inside his habit a leather satchel full of bandages and ointments. These he gave to Orgos and, without further comment, turned on his heel and left us, taking his strange spear with him.

“Helpful chap,” I remarked. This was a laughable attempt to make light of our brush with being steak (heavily marbled in my case). No one, myself included, was taken in for a moment.

There was another long silence and Orgos got to work on Mithos. Renthrette, whose injury was not so bad that she could not use her hands, took another roll of bandage and squatted beside me.

“Let me see your wound,” she said.

I removed the sodden rag of fabric about my wrist and her face darkened.

“I can bind it for now, but this needs more expert attention.”

I winced as she began to wind the fabric about my arm, but said nothing. The dressing was cool and slightly moist and gave off a sweet scent like honey and rose petals. Renthrette kept her eyes on her work but, as if considering the question even as she spoke, said, “Why did you throw that rock? This could have been avoided.”

“You have got to be joking,” I said. “They came in here after us.”

“They were beasts hunting. They might not have attacked,” she answered.

“True,” said Orgos from where he was examining Mithos, “but they did, and I don’t know why. There was something strange about these creatures, and never have I heard of bears and wolves hunting together so deliberately. These were no ordinary animals. Perhaps, as our new friend said, there are dark creatures abroad.”

Renthrette fell silent, thoughtful. I spoke up. “So what the hell were they? They sure looked like animals to me. Wolves and a bear. No question, no mystery.”

Orgos looked at me, and he could see that I was looking for agreement that would silence my own doubts. “Have you ever seen bears or wolves of that size?” he asked.

“Clearly they get a lot to eat,” I remarked, considering how close we had come to being just another meal on the run.

“Their voices,” gasped Mithos. We all turned to look at him. He was pale and still bleeding heavily. His words came with a struggle that clearly filled Orgos with alarm, and the feeling spread to Renthrette. “I have not heard. .” Mithos managed. “I have never heard animal voices so. . so coherent. . So much. . like. . speech .”

“Quiet,” said Orgos gently. “Lie still.”

But Mithos was right. It made no sense, but I had had the same feeling about the noises the beasts had made to each other. It was something similar to that deliberation with which they moved and the glimmer in their eyes. It wasn’t just watchful, and it wasn’t just hungry. Indeed, it wasn’t animal at all. There was a keenness there that had made me catch my breath. It was like you could see a mind through those eyes, a mind that was working, processing. It was an alarming sensation, and though I wanted to put it down to never having been this close to a wolf before, I knew that that wasn’t it. I have seen the eyes of beasts in cages before, and I have looked into the faces of dogs and cats and cattle and pigs, and what I have always seen is a blankness that tells of instinct: a gateway not into mind but into body, the creature’s impulses for food and self-protection. This was different. In the eyes of those wolves there had been thought .

Except, of course, that there couldn’t have been.

Gradually, and with some effort, the questions slipped from our minds and we grew quiet, finding our own ways into rest, even into sleep. When I woke there was a soft light in the cave and, for a moment, before the pain of my wound spiked through my wrist like a pickaxe, there was a sense of calm and contentment. The morning was fair and cold and I woke slowly, the corpses of great wolves gradually painting the night’s events as if they had been experienced by someone else.

We were sharing out the last of our sparse rations when Sorrail returned. He had been walking most of the night but still seemed a good deal fresher than I felt. Smiling, he drew a pair of rabbits from his satchel and laid them on the ground by the fire.

“Breakfast,” he said. “Not much, I’m afraid, but you need to restore your strength.”

He inspected our wounds and, though he paused long over my wrist and longer over Mithos’s side, he seemed satisfied. “We will need to carry him to the rest house,” he said, “but it is not far and the day is mild as yet. You sir, can you walk?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Good. It is unfortunate that your horse perished, but we can make a sling of the blankets and fasten them to my spear. It is a sturdy weapon and will bear his weight, I think.”

“And it’s magic,” I said. “Orgos has one of those.”

Sorrail gave me a swift glance, and there was something hard and unreadable in his eyes.

“Is it a secret?” I said. “I won’t say anything.”

He blinked, then said, “Orgos, you and I must carry Mithos between us. Perhaps the lady could roast us that brace of conies before we set out?”

So that was that. Sorrail told us what to do and we did it. He was a politely straightforward fellow, but he was companionable enough so long as you didn’t ask about his spear. I would never have dared presume to tell Renthrette to do anything as obviously “feminine” as cook, though she did it often enough. In this case, however, she set about skinning and preparing the meat without the slightest suggestion of having taken offense. In just over an hour we had dined and were ready to set out.

Sorrail said little as we made our way along the cinder path. His eyes were always scouring the crags and embankments and he barely responded to my questions, and then only obliquely. Like Mithos, he seemed to ration his words, as if there may not be enough to last him till the end of the week. He said that these were the Violet Mountains and that we were “many leagues” from the northernmost reaches of Thrusia. I wasn’t certain what a league was, exactly, but it didn’t sound promising, and despite his words I wondered if he had ever even heard of Stavis or Thrusia, since he clearly knew nothing about either. Given the fact that he styled himself a wanderer, this was not a good sign. I pressed him for names for this land, but he only repeated absently that these were the Violet Mountains and that beyond them lay the White City. Just when I was getting used to the idea that names had been shelved in favor of colors round here, he added that the White City was properly called Phasdreille.

He spoke like someone in a play: an old play, full of larger-than-life heroes. It was odd. I’d spoken lines like that, had even written a few. But the closest I had come to hearing them delivered as actual speech in real life was listening to Mithos and Orgos encouraging me to do my duty or some other damned thing, and neither of them came close to this character. I wanted to ask him if he was for real, or if he was rehearsing a part or something, but he also had Mithos and Orgos’s demeanor, which didn’t encourage questions, much less mockery. I risked a sort of smirk at him after he had made some remark about Phasdreille being “fairest of the cities of light” to suggest he was overdoing it a bit, but he just stared at me.