Andrew Hartley - Act of Will

Mithos looked to Lisha, and there was a pregnant pause before she nodded. “Just be careful,” she said.

Garnet glanced at his sister and both of them grinned broadly. So this was how you cheered them up: offer them the kind of task any sane person would give their right arm to avoid.

“Can we take Tarsha?” Renthrette asked, trying in vain to stifle her excitement.

“No,” said Mithos firmly. “If anything will get you noticed, it’s that damned horse.”

Renthrette would have said more but Garnet gestured suddenly for silence. He tipped his head to the door. A moment later came the sound of careful footsteps coming towards us in the corridor outside, then a knock.

Garnet stepped behind the door, his ax drawn. I grabbed my crossbow but hadn’t had time to cock it when Mithos called, “Come in!”

The door creaked open, admitting the inn’s serving boy with a large jug.

“More beer,” he gasped, struggling to find a place where he might set it down. “It’s from the landlord. On the house.”

“Thank you,” said Mithos as the boy left.

“That was very civil of him,” I said, refilling my mug.

“Well,” said Orgos, taking my beer before I could take a sip, “now we know how they plan to get to us.”

“Hey, get your own-” I began.

“Have you seen anyone give anything away in this town?” said Orgos. He took the jug and poured the beer into an empty chamber pot in one smooth motion. Then he put his hand into the jug, scooped out a thin smear of grainy sediment, and tasted it gingerly.

“Not poison, but they’ll be expecting us to get a very good night’s sleep this evening,” he concluded, adding, “They’re going to be so disappointed.”

We slept two to a room as before, or rather, we sat up all night two to a room. I was with Orgos. Renthrette and Garnet had slipped out as soon as it got dark and were waiting for the Joseph wagons to move. The rest of us were to stay where we were and wait to be assassinated.

Orgos sat in the corner, one sword across his lap. He had been absently polishing it but had begun to doze a little. I was wide awake, so I let him sleep and watched for both of us. We had a single oil lamp turned so low that you could see no more than shadows. I thought of the dark-eyed assassin who had shot at us in the bar and wondered if it would be him slinking in to finish the job he botched last time. Then I thought they might torch the whole building as they had fired the Sherwood, but that was a noisy and unreliable means of assault, even if we were supposed to be in a drugged stupor. I wondered why they hadn’t just poisoned the beer they’d sent up, but I suppose we had been there long enough for people to know that I was the only one who drank beer in any quantity and at least two of the party never touched the stuff (unless I was educating one of them in the delights of getting totally hammered). Time passed and Orgos began to snore softly. I began to think we had overestimated our peril.

Fat chance.

At about two o’clock, when the night was darkest, I was staring blankly into the middle distance when the dark frame of the door seemed to blur. I blinked. A thin mist was gathering in the center of the room.

Staring at it, I poked Orgos. He grunted and continued to snore.

It was getting colder and the mist seemed to be thickening.

“Orgos!” I hissed, turning the lamp up and reaching for one of his swords, the one with the crystal in the hilt.

I shook him again and this time his eyelids fluttered and opened, then tightened in confusion. The fog, which stood in a narrow, six-foot column in the center of the room, was no longer merely thick; it looked as if you could touch it. There was even some color in the greyness, as if the shape was becoming solid. A moment later the mist had coalesced further and it was now unmistakably a man, a man in the full helm and scarlet cloak of the raiders.

Orgos snatched up his other sword and leapt to his feet as the mist seemed to blow away, leaving the raider-now solidly present-close enough for us to see the pale stone set between the eyes of his helm. For an uncanny moment we just stood there, and then his hands moved, and for the first time I noticed that he seemed to have no scyax or weapon of any kind.

He was holding only a small wooden box. His first and only motion was to flip the lid open and dump its contents onto the floor, where it collected in three liquid puddles.

I didn’t know what he was doing, but I was sure I had to stop him. I held up Orgos’s sword and focused my mind on bringing out that flash of light and power from the crystal.

Nothing happened.

By the time Orgos had pushed past me and crossed the room with his sword poised to strike, the mist was already gathering about the raider. Orgos swung his sword, but it passed through what was now only a column of smoke which blew away in the wind of the sword stroke.

“What the hell was that?” I shouted.

And then the lamplight picked up what I had taken to be the dark fluid which the raider had tipped out of his box, and I could see that it wasn’t fluid at all. It was legs: thin, spindly, and covered with short bristling hair, tentatively reaching and feeling their way around.

Spiders.

Now, spiders have never bothered me particularly, and although these were bigger than most, at five or six inches across, I can honestly say that my first sensation was one of relief. Given the strangeness of what had just happened-the mist, the menace of the raiders-spiders seemed like the soft option. I was wearing boots and would make short work of these three little assassins with a lot less trouble than I would a single crossbowman. I turned to Orgos and found him frozen to the spot with terror, his eyes wide.

So Orgos was an arachnophobe! Perfect, I thought. Time to show a little courage of my own.

I grinned at him but he was staring at the floor. When I took a step towards him, he raised a hand to stop me and hissed, “Yellow wolf spiders!”

I selected one and raised my boot.

“Piece of cake,” I muttered sotto voce.

Then it jumped.

As I’ve said, spiders, even big hairy ones, don’t really bother me. When those spiders launch themselves at your face, however, the matter takes on an altogether different complexion.

I threw myself back, shutting my mouth as the spider hit me for fear of it getting inside. For a fraction of a second I felt its body, soft and warmish, those thin, clawed legs struggling for purchase on my face. Then Orgos was sweeping the thing to the ground with his hand and finishing it off.

I backed away, stunned into inaction as Orgos expertly and stealthily lanced another with his sword and deflected the third as it jumped at him. It fell by the shuttered window and burst with a soft plopping sound.

“Oh my God!” I gasped, panic and revulsion overcoming any pretense at courage. “What the hell are those? Those fangs were an inch long. And what kind of spider jumps at your head when you go near it?!”

He approached me, examined my face, and then became quite still, staring at his right hand. He moved it into the lamplight and frowned.

There was a thin cut just above his knuckles.

“Yellow wolf spiders,” he said again, quietly, and with a resignation I didn’t like.

“One bit you?” I whispered.

“Let’s hope not,” he said in a voice no more than a breath. “If we’d been asleep, we wouldn’t have had a chance. Assassins in the Thrusian marsh villages use these things all the time. They are extremely reliable killers.”

I just looked at him. He smiled, but it was a small, grim kind of smile.

“But. I mean, you’re going to be all right, aren’t you?” I said.