Andrew Hartley - Act of Will

The storm had begun with gusto now, and we probably could have walked right behind the raiders and they wouldn’t have known we were there, but we went from tree to tree and ditch to ditch to be on the safe side. In fact, it was the first time since the mission had begun where I felt a kind of thrill: They didn’t know we were here, so we had the upper hand. Of course, if they suddenly turned and wheeled those scyaxes of theirs up to fight, that would change very quickly. We had had enough difficulty fighting them on even terms. With three of us against eight of them (assuming that the coffins didn’t spring open and release another couple of zombie raiders to make it a round ten), we wouldn’t have a chance.

Renthrette had been right. The edge of the Iruni Wood, which we had seen from the Shale side that night in the burning village, loomed sudden and black out of the storm. The raiders went in.

I faltered, but Lisha, moving close to the ground like an animal, her spear clasped in both hands, kept going. Orgos drew his sword and gave me a nod of something I took to be encouragement. I followed.

It was better in the woods. There was more cover and less light. But I had barely had the chance to acknowledge this when muffled voices came through the pattering rain: They had stopped.

Lisha raised a warning hand and Orgos fanned right. She nodded to me, and I, cautiously, moved left, unsure of what I was doing, certain that the snapping twigs under my feet would bring those crimson-cloaked monsters screaming out of the rain.

We inched forward and the light changed subtly. Somewhere up ahead there was a break in the trees. A few more yards and we saw it: a clearing like a great hole in the forest. In the center was a circle of rough-hewn stones, each a little larger than a man. I hesitated. The place felt odd-dangerous-and not just because the raiders were here. I peered round a great oak into the clearing. In the middle was another rock, different from the others, pale and lustrous so that it seemed to glow slightly in the odd light of the storm.

The raiders entered the circle, several of them crouching by the coffins they had carried. They were opening them.

I turned to stare at Lisha, consumed with certainty that something bad was going on, something strange that I didn’t want to see or be a part of, something that would make all that talk of magic swords look like very small potatoes indeed. I could barely see her through the gathering darkness and lashing rain. She caught my gaze and pointed. She wanted me to get closer to the stones. I swallowed hard and chose the biggest.

The raiders were busy with their coffins, so none of them was looking my way. There was a flash of lightning, followed by a lengthy roar of thunder. It was now or never. I scampered through the wet bracken and flattened myself as quietly as I could against one of the great half-sculpted stones.

The raiders opened the coffins and lifted out a pair of corpses, both dressed in scarlet and bronze. These they dragged over to a pair of the standing stones only a few yards to my left, and propped them up in sitting positions. I stayed low and watched as the raiders gathered in a tight circle around that central milky boulder.

And then I had an idea.

Moving as quickly as I could, I slid over to the next stone, paused, then moved to the next, and the next. In a matter of seconds I was hiding by one of the great monoliths against which a dead raider lay. I didn’t think about Lisha or Orgos, or pleasing the party, or risking my life. I just had an idea and I was suddenly overwhelmed by what I can only describe, albeit inadequately, as curiosity. There was something I needed to know, and the presence of the raiders wasn’t going to stop me from finding out.

It wasn’t like they were going to see me anyway. It was dark, and the rain was coming down in sheets, and the wind was howling, and they were all wearing those closed helms with tiny eye slits and standing in a little huddle thirty yards away with their backs to me. I could just look quickly and then get away. Just a peep. Two seconds. Tops.

I scrambled round the stone and stared at the dead raider’s bronze face. The stone between his eyes was just like the others I had seen, and it had the opaline pallor of the rock in the center of the circle. I thought I heard voices from the raiders and glanced over my shoulder. Their voices rose in unison and sounded rhythmic: a chant.

Whatever they were going to do with this raider corpse, it would involve that crystal in his helm. I was sure of it. It was set right into the metal, so I couldn’t pry it out. Instead, I fumbled at the chin strap and tugged the helm off. The raider’s eyes were open but sightless, and there was blood on his chin, but otherwise he looked quite ordinary and quite dead.

I bolted, stepping quickly back round the standing stone and crouching, feeling my chest heave and my pulse race. Real evidence, at last. The mystery of the raiders was inextricably bound to the crystals in their helms. That was why the only raider corpse we had seen before today was one that had been beheaded and taken by those ritualists in Ironwall. The stone in the helm had power, the way Orgos’s sword had power, though what it did, I wasn’t sure.

Then the chanting from the center of the darkened circle rose suddenly above the storm and ended with a shout. There was a crack of something that might have been thunder, but the pale light that accompanied it wasn’t lightning. For a second it was bright as day and the standing stone at my back threw a long, hard shadow; then it was dark again. I didn’t notice the mist for a second, but when I did, all my curiosity and triumph evaporated in the old panic. The raiders were coming! They were going to materialize in front of me and I was sitting here with one of their helms in my hand.

I fumbled for my sword, still clutching the helm, but then I saw that the stone in its forehead was glowing softly. As it glowed, the mist grew denser. And I finally understood what the helm did. The mist wasn’t bringing a raider to me, it was gathering around the helm in my hands. It was taking me with it.

For a second the greyness of the mist was complete. Then it began to thin and I instantly knew that I was not where I had been. There was no rain. There was a glow, as of torchlight, and I could see great stone walls and arches. I was inside some vaulted chamber that had no windows and smelled strongly of horses. It was hot and stuffy. And there were raiders everywhere.

There must have been fifty of them. They were walking in pairs, some carrying boxes and weapons, some dragging corpses. They were all in full armor and looked like they were getting ready for something important. The mist was still clearing about me. Before it blew away altogether, I did the only thing I could think to do and jammed the raider’s helmet on my head. Instantly the world got a little darker, narrower, and more claustrophobic as I peered at it from inside the helm.

I was standing in one of a series of arched alcoves around the wall of a huge circular room. To one side was a stack of scyaxes, to the other a pile of folded crimson cloaks. I grabbed one of each, threw the cloak over my shoulders, and hoped it would do. It was stuffy and dry in there and I could feel the sweat breaking out all over me. On the other side of the room, I could see a handful of raiders stepping out of similar alcoves and guessed they were the ones who had traveled with me from the stone circle in the Iruni Wood. Two of them started dragging one of the corpses from the circle. The other corpse, minus his helm, was probably still there. I had taken his place.

The other raiders walked away. Only two were to do the job of funeral detail and they hadn’t come for me yet. I watched, thinking fast. If I played dead well enough, I might yet get out alive.