Andrew Hartley - Act of Will

“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.”

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.