Andrew Hartley - Act of Will

“Distracted?” I repeated vaguely. “How?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “She said something about exploiting her femininity, whatever that means.”

What did that mean? Selling fruit in a low-cut bodice? Hitching up her skirts and posing as a low-rent hooker? Doing exotic gypsy dances in the street with little cymbals on her fingers and tassels attached to her.

“You can start opening those coffins, if you like,” said Mithos.

I came back to reality, such as it was, and did so. Lisha lay quiet and peaceful in her small coffin, a strand of her long black hair across her face. I brushed it aside and looked at her. This deathlike trance didn’t look as bad on her as it did on the usually more animated features of Orgos. She looked as if she might open her eyes at any second and go about her business with a small nod of acknowledgment to me for not getting them all killed somehow. I was beginning to understand Garnet’s reverence for her. How could someone look so insignificant and make you feel so small and transparent?

I had to shift the top coffins to open those stacked underneath, which I couldn’t possibly have done except that Orgos had woken up. He looked dazed, but after stretching his broad shoulders he saw me and grinned.

“I guess you forgot to mention that we would all be sleeping for a while,” I said reproachfully.

“Guess so,” he said. “Help me up.”

I took his hand, and as he pulled himself upright he sort of half embraced me and slapped me on the back.

“Good to be alive,” he said, checking the slender cut on his arm.

I nodded. The things I had felt like saying before now seemed embarrassing and unnecessary, so I just said, “Make yourself useful and help me get these open.”

One of the coffins contained food and equipment, and the last two contained a pair of massive crossbows with slides that looked like they’d need a team of horses to draw them. They could probably skewer four men and their mounts at a hundred yards. I whistled, and Mithos called from the front, “They may help to even the odds a little if the raiders attack. The man who makes them called them scorpions.”

They’d pack one hell of a sting.

I said nothing as I climbed back through, one of the massive, brutal-looking bolts held loosely in my fingers. I wondered what it would feel like to be on the receiving end of one of those. No worse than being killed any other way, no doubt. Better than some, probably.

“I want you to take charge of them, Will,” said Mithos. “When we stop for lunch you can set one up and familiarize yourself with how it works.”

“So now we blast our enemy out of the saddle from a hundred paces?” said Orgos with a scowl.

“The raiders aren’t going to line up and fight you in single combat,” said Mithos flatly.

“And their lack of honor means that we resort to. these?” Orgos demanded, with a nod at the colossal crossbows.

“Absolutely,” said Mithos.

Orgos scowled again and started polishing the blades of his swords, as if to make a point.

I was with Mithos on this one.

Still, my feelings were mixed. The crossbows (an inadequate word for those great, clanking death throwers) made me feel powerful, but what happened when the enemy came in close? What chance did I have face-to-face against men who had to be killed with machines like these? And what of Mithos’s new faith in me? Will the missile man? Bill the linchpin, cornerstone of the outfit? Someone to be relied on when the enemy charged? Suddenly I saw why they were all so earnest. It wasn’t about honor and virtue at all. They just couldn’t bear the thought of screwing up and having the deaths of their friends on their consciences. I looked at the scorpion crossbows and felt a gathering knot of cold somewhere between my stomach and my groin.

“The chalk marks are too close together,” Mithos said, looking at a pale blotch on the road. “I hope there’s enough dust.”

“Any theories?”

“About where they’re going? We’re heading north. I’d say Verneytha. Possibly the capital itself.”

“Well, at least we’re ready for the raiders now,” I said.

“The crossbows?” asked Mithos.

“No,” I replied, “the coffins. One each.”

Ten miles south of Verneytha, the chalk vanished. We had lost them. But only for a moment. Garnet and Renthrette had retraced our path, and now they came cantering back from behind glowing with excitement.

“They left the road a quarter of a mile back,” said Garnet. “We picked up their trail a couple of hundred yards after the last chalk mark.”

We doubled back to where a narrow dirt track trailed off to the west through an orchard of small apple trees.

“We didn’t want to risk following the wagon without you,” said Garnet, proud of such superhuman restraint.

“It goes to a farmhouse,” said Renthrette. “There’s nothing else there.”

“Excellent,” said Lisha, and they grinned at each other as if she’d tossed them a bone to gnaw on. “Plan?”

“We get a closer look,” said Mithos.

It had started to rain, and the early-evening sky was heavy with dark clouds. We had concealed the wagon and horses in a grove of trees close to the road, and then moved cautiously through the orchard in silence.

The farmhouse was a rambling sprawl of ramshackle buildings gathered around a courtyard that housed a few chickens. The wagons we had pursued from Hopetown were there, their sides folded down, empty. There was no sign of life. We lay in the long, wet grass at the edge of the orchard and watched.

I was just starting to get stiff from the cold when a man in a white linen tunic emerged from the main house and walked around the perimeter, looking about him. It was Caspian Joseph, the man who sold me the pendant. He completed his circuit of the buildings and went back inside, apparently satisfied.

“Not much of a patrol,” said Garnet.

“I don’t think it was a patrol,” said Lisha. “Something is about to happen.”

And, right on cue, eight raiders emerged from the house in full armor.

I reached for my crossbow, but Orgos stilled me with a touch.

“They aren’t coming for us,” he whispered.

He was right. The raiders came out carrying two coffinlike boxes, walked around the pigpen, and moved away from us, towards. what?

“What’s over there?” I asked.

“Nothing,” said Renthrette. “Fields, orchards, the edge of the Iruni Wood.”

What was going on?

Caspian Joseph had followed them out, but once they got a little ways from the farm buildings, he turned back towards the wagons. The rain was falling more heavily now, and there was a rumble of thunder that lasted several seconds.

“Now is our chance,” said Mithos.

“For what?” I asked, fairly sure I wouldn’t like the answer.

“To look in the house,” he said. “I’m betting he’s alone. We can probably get in and look around without him seeing us. If he spots us, we can take care of him.”

“And the raiders?” said Orgos, as if all was perfectly reasonable thus far.

“Orgos and I will follow them,” said Lisha.

Mithos and the siblings clearly had the better deal, though I doubt they saw it that way.

“If we aren’t back by morning,” she added, “we’ll meet in Harvest at the governor’s palace. Will, you’re with us.”

So while the others set to investigating the house, I went trekking through the rain with Orgos and Lisha to see what grim little picnic the raiders were on. I was on strict instructions to keep my distance and not “engage” the enemy. As if I needed telling.