Andrew Hartley - Act of Will

“Let go of the crossbow,” said Arlest, “and perhaps we can-”

“I’m not interested in perhaps, ” I remarked with a crooked smile, which he reflected at once. “I’m interested in a fast horse to get me out of here and some of the silver you now have so much of.”

“What about your friends?”

“I can’t save them,” I said. “You have to kill them, as you will have to kill everyone in the city. You know that, and your men know that, and they accept it.

“Everyone,” I continued with the same studied lack of concern, “every able-bodied man who might threaten your safety, any women who love those men, must die. And since you can’t be sure that their children won’t grow into rebels, angry at the rape and murder of their parents by your forces, you’ll have to spit them on pikes too. Some would blanch at such an idea, but not you. It will be easy for you. After all, you’ve been doing it for months.

“Wiping out villages in Shale was your masterstroke,” I said with an admiring smile. “Who would suspect a man would butcher his own people? Brilliant. Your men must be disciplined, but the real credit goes to you. How do you get a soldier to slice open his own neighbors, maybe even his own family? How many of your men’s wives and girlfriends have had their heads and limbs hacked from them by their own comrades-in-arms? And all because you told them to!” I said, with the same note of amazed admiration. “This is your world now, Arlest. Orgos’s world bleeds and dies with him. Yours is the world of might and expedient atrocity, and principles cannot hold out against it.”

A curious ripple had been building amongst the ranks of the regular Shale soldiers. Perhaps it was because I knew they had played no part in the earlier raids, perhaps it was just because I could see their faces: in any case, it was them that I had been speaking to, not to the Empire troops. Certainly not to the bronze-masked raiders or to Arlest, the controlling monster.

He spoke hurriedly, then, conscious that something was happening around him. “This has wasted time enough. I see what you are trying to do, but, like your dead friend, you will achieve nothing.” He looked past me at the gate, but there had been another ripple, and I saw in his face the knowledge that he should not have mentioned Orgos again.

“Orgos could not believe someone like you existed,” I said. “Yet I doubt he would have shot you down, even now. He’d wait for you to attack and then he would respond on even terms.” I smiled sadly. “He taught me many things, but I have something of your realism after all. Orgos would not cut you down, but I will.”

I don’t know if he didn’t believe me or if he just wasn’t listening. He muttered to the chancellor at his side and thirty soldiers came forward and assembled at the end of the bridge, bows poised and arrows in place. I thought of swinging the crossbows onto them and firing, but for once the leader needed to take responsibility for his orders. The chancellor spoke to the platoon commander and the archers drew back their bows and waited for the order.

Behind me, Mithos, Lisha, Renthrette, and Garnet stood shieldless, disdaining to flee or take cover. I looked along the faces of the archers, their eyes narrowed and their forearms tight with the strain.

Arlest’s eyes met mine and held them. He smiled, a tiny rippling of the corners of his mouth and a spot of light in his eyes. Then he opened his mouth to give the word. On impulse-though what that impulse was, I couldn’t really say-I put one hand to the hilt of Orgos’s sword, which hung at my side.

I touched the pommel stone and, for once, I felt its power. I saw my purpose and its value with absolute clarity. There was a great flash of pale light that began at the sword and spread outwards like ripples on the surface of a pond. I felt the energy leave the sword, passing through me, but some of that energy came from me too, and the sensation was powerful and draining. As the wave of light passed over Dathel’s poised archers, their eyes flickered, their taut arms relaxed, and their arrows fell to the ground. They blinked in their confusion and I pulled the trigger.

Arlest pitched forward, blood spurting from his nose and mouth as he died. I wheeled the other crossbow, sighted, and shot the countess from her horse. There was no other movement or sound. Very slowly the archers relaxed their arms.

I wasn’t sure what had happened, and I didn’t care.

A long, disbelieving silence followed. I sat on the wagon and put my face in my hands for a moment as relief gave way to grief. I was suddenly too tired to stand, and all I wanted to do was go to sleep and wake up in Cresdon, playing cards with Orgos in a quiet tavern.

Then, out of the stillness, came footsteps. The chancellor had walked onto the bridge. His expression was stern and somehow weary, but he had barely opened his mouth to speak when a handful of the raiders charged him with their scyaxes drawn. In a fraction of a second he was surrounded by a group of Shale infantry in their black and silver, their shields locked about him and their spears turned out like the spines of a porcupine. The small cell of raiders attacked them, but they didn’t last for more than a few seconds. When the skirmish stopped, another dozen or so of the crimson raiders had been slain. The rest threw down their arms and plucked off their helms. The monstrous machine suddenly had faces, many of them uncertain, embarrassed, or even ashamed. It was over.

The Empire troops seemed to recognize as much. They had no interest in taking on whoever would stand against them now that it was no longer clear who would come down on which side. I didn’t notice when they started to move, but they withdrew as one, and by the time I started looking for them, they were a thousand yards away and riding west.

Curiously, it was me Chancellor Dathel addressed when he approached us. As ever, his tone was as dark and serious as his robes.

“On behalf of Shale, and as one now taking control of that county on the demise of Arlest the Second, I submit my land, army, and people to your control. I regret the destruction our land and leader have caused and I can only ask that our current surrender be taken into account in the trials that will inevitably follow. I can only say that I am extremely sorry.”

Sorry?

I could think of nothing to say to that. I knew most of it was just political rhetoric, but I suppose that was the name of the game now. Raymon would have a field day. I only half believed Dathel: I would never know exactly what command he gave to those archers, but they had not shot even after the power of Orgos’s sword had passed. Perhaps he had been disobeyed. Perhaps he had picked up a new mood in the ranks that he hadn’t dared to contradict. I wondered if my words had made a difference and thought that they probably hadn’t. Not in the long term, anyway; words never do.

“How much of what you said did you believe?” asked Renthrette, appearing suddenly at my elbow.

“My little speech?” I asked. “I’m not sure. Does it matter?”

She thought for a moment and then smiled very slightly, a smile so small and so sad that you had to be looking for it to notice it at all.

“I suppose not,” she said.

It was a comic situation, of course, and quite implausible, this sudden surrender by the obvious victors. If I’d seen it onstage or read it in a book I’d say it was fiction at its most ridiculous, though fiction has that privilege. But, oddly enough, I had known it would work. I knew the instant Arlest started to talk to me as I lined him up in the crossbow’s grooves, because it was clear then that he didn’t understand the game. He thought it was a debate, an attempt to sway his troops with logic. It had been no debate; it had been theatre.