Act of Will (29 page)

SCENE XLIII

One of Them

F
or 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.

I slumped down and kept very still, watching through my helm as the soldiers shouldered the corpse onto a table beside a pair of small metal doors. They removed his helm, cloak, and body armor, working quickly and methodically, as if they had done this many times before. When he was left wearing nothing but the light bloodstained clothes he wore under his armor, one of them took a long steel hook and used it to open the metal doors. As soon as the doors were opened I could see what they were doing. My heart sank.

It was a furnace. The chamber was hot and stuffy because they cremated their dead down here. They just used the same magic that allowed them to transport themselves into a fight to spirit any dead away to where they could be privately and absolutely disposed of.

And if I played dead much longer, they’d be sticking me in there to burn me with the others.

I got to my feet, checking that the funeral detail wasn’t coming for me yet, then moved quickly, looking for a way out, walking with what I hoped looked like a sense of purpose. It would only be a matter of time before they realized they were missing a dead body.

There were two stone staircases going up the sides of the chamber. I made for the left one, knowing that whatever was upstairs had to be better than this. I was halfway up when another piece of the puzzle fell into place.

Looking down, I could see that the floor of the great chamber was a single vast stone, pale and lustrous like quartz. It was the same as the rock in the stone circle by the farmhouse, the same as the crystals in the raiders’ helms. Whatever this place was, it had been built on an outcrop of that same rock. I stood there, staring at it.

“Get down there,” said a commanding voice at my elbow. It was a raider: an officer, judging by the lateral crest on his helm. “You’re blocking the stairs. We’re ready to move.”

I mumbled and stepped aside to let him pass, but he wasn’t to be sidestepped.

“I said get down there,” he growled. I wondered if I could come up with something that would get me up and out, but then I saw something that changed my mind.

Coming through the heavy oak door at the top of the stairs was the raider with the staff and the great horned helm. He moved slowly, and if the raiders always moved like cogs in a great machine, he was something different, something earthy and terrible, something animal but saturated with dark purpose. Immediately I knew that he was the one who worked whatever magic moved the raiders from place to place. Even at this distance I could feel his strangeness and the power that seemed to come off him like an odor. I wasn’t about to go up to meet him.

The officer who was ordering me to go down sensed his presence and fell silent as if unnerved. Hugging the cloak about me, I hurried down. He followed at my heels, and right behind us came the magic worker in his horned helm, breathing power and malice.

“Get your horse and weapons,” said the officer, and then turned away quickly, as if he was as anxious as I was to get away from the figure behind him.

Suddenly the raiders seemed to be everywhere, hemming me in, moving as a unit. With no other options, I moved with them, down a passage to a great curved corridor that circled the chamber we had just come from. In fact, it wasn’t a corridor so much as a long narrow room where the smell I had picked up before became almost overwhelming. It was a stable.

The raiders all seemed to know where they were going, and the moment I hesitated I was jostled until I got into the line. We kept moving as we filed past dozens of gigantic horses, all barded with leather and ring mail and cloaked in scarlet. Each raider opened the door to one of the stalls, seized the bridle of his mount, and waited. I had no choice but to do the same. Maybe we would lead our horses outside and I could slip away as soon as I had figured out where I was.

Then a sound went through me like thin steel, a high, wailing cry from the circular chamber, a keening that contained words I couldn’t catch. There was a great roar, as of thunder, a flash of white light that bounced off the walls and made the horses start and whinny. As I tried to calm mine down, I saw the mist begin to gather around both of us and knew only that whatever nightmare I had stepped into was about to get worse.

SCENE XLIV

The Raid

T
he mist had barely begun to clear when I felt the rain. It felt cool and refreshing after the stifling closeness of the stables, and it immediately made me think I was back where I had been. As the thin fog blew away I looked about me for the stone circle, then realized that I was also looking for Lisha and Orgos, desperately hoping that they would not be there when fifty crimson raiders appeared out of the air before them.

They weren’t there. But then, neither were the stones.

In the darkness, I could barely see the vast ring of raiders, though I heard them mount their horses as one. We were not in the Iruni Wood, but more than that I couldn’t say. The ground around us was open, the grass short as if it had been heavily grazed. A field, then. There were trees, but they were some way off, and the rain was lighter than it had been in the stone circle. If it was the same storm, then I could be south of the Iruni Wood, I thought, only a mile or two from that torched village where we had first encountered the raiders. If I made for the forest and headed north, I might find the farmhouse and the others.

But the raiders were already moving off, silent and purposeful as ever, and I knew that riding away would get me nothing more than a red-flighted arrow in my back. I clambered unprofessionally up onto my colossal horse, ignored the glance of the nearest raider as I swore my way into the saddle, and moved with them, trying to contain my dread at what might happen next.

As an actor I was used to noticing how people moved, and it suddenly occurred to me that even in the low light of the evening I didn’t look remotely like a crimson raider. I didn’t have the stature, or the physical confidence, and I was obviously terrified of my horse. I needed to get out of this situation before it got me killed.

Suddenly the column came to a halt and the officer up front gestured as another lit a torch. The column became a broad line facing forward, facing—more importantly—a village.

My horse seemed to know what to do, and moved into the line with the rest, but that didn’t make me feel any better. Riding through the downs between Adsine and Seaholme, we had passed half a dozen villages just like this, and they were largely the same: small, poor, and totally undefended. This was going to be a massacre, and I was going to be part of it.

You have to do something.

Like what?

Tell the raiders that butchering villagers is immoral. Tell them that the village is hiding an army.

Right. More arrows in my back.

I had no solution, no plan; but waiting for the order, waiting to participate in the raiders’ slow, methodical advance and the slaughter that would follow, was too much. The bronze helm felt like a vise on my head. I couldn’t breathe. I wanted to scream.

Instead, I put my heels to the flanks of my mount and charged forward alone.

I really don’t know what I was trying to do, but some dark and stupid part of my brain had said that if I could get into the village only a few seconds before the army smashed its way in, then some of the villagers might fight back. They couldn’t win, but maybe they would get enough time for a few to escape. . . .

The massive horse thundered erratically toward the dark buildings and I clung on for dear life, shouting muffled warnings and curses at the top of my terrified lungs.

Behind me, there was silence. My sudden assault had caught them off-guard, and I could imagine the horses shifting and rearing as their riders tried to figure out what was happening and what they were supposed to do. They would be after me in a moment, but I had a few seconds. . . .

An arrow flew out of the night from behind me and scudded past my right shoulder.

I reined my horse towards the central street and tore the helm from my head so that my screams would be heard. I saw a face at a window, small and wide-eyed, and a lamp lit in a house farther down the road. A door to what might have been a tavern creaked open a few inches and I felt eyes on me.

“Raiders!” I shouted. “Crimson raiders! They are coming. Get up! Defend yourselves!”

I turned in the silence and looked back to where the dark line of cavalry were lighting their torches and their arrows. My horse, sensing my unease, reared, and I almost fell off into the wet street. More lights were coming on, more doors and windows cracking warily. And then, with a rumble of hooves, the raiders spread themselves into a wide arc and began their slow and brutal approach.

Someone shouted a question from a window, but I couldn’t tell what they were saying so I just went on screaming the same thing over and over. A few men stumbled sleepily into the street, fumbling with bows and spears, mattocks and hoes. Then there were families with children, wide-eyed and crying, huddled in doorways, watchful and uncertain.

I turned back to the raiders, half hoping that this tiny alarm would deter their attack, but they were not so easily put off. They were coming closer, still slow but just as assured. My little diversion had done nothing. Then their burning arrows were loosed, and with a rush of wind like a great, vengeful sigh, thatch and timber caught fire all over the village. The crying and panic and the hopeless pleading for mercy swelled almost immediately, and it was clear that there would be no fighting from the villagers. I looked back to where the raiders waited, poised for their final assault, and you really couldn’t blame them. Even running seemed futile.

But I remembered the torched village in Shale and how the horse tracks didn’t go beyond the main street. They appeared, they destroyed, and then they disappeared. They didn’t wait around to be seen, and they didn’t hunt for survivors beyond the village limits. If I could get out and into the woods, I might have a chance. What else could I do?

I checked behind me and saw a door open in one of the houses about twenty yards away. A girl came out, maybe ten years old, brown shoulder-length hair and eyes like dinner plates. Holding her hand was a little boy. The raiders were coming and they had nowhere to go. I didn’t have time to go back for them. I couldn’t carry them anyway. And they’d be dead before I got there. Then I’d be dead too. I really didn’t have time to go back for them.

I went back for them.

I turned my horse as well as I have ever turned a horse, though that isn’t saying much, and set it cantering down the street towards them. Beyond them I could see where the raiders were pouring into the village. Some of them were dismounting and entering the houses.

“Give me your hands,” I called to the children. They didn’t scream. They stared. “Climb up,” I insisted. “I won’t hurt you.”

They backed hurriedly inside.

Go,
I thought.
You tried. You have to get out of here now.

Shooting a desperate look back towards the raiders and hissing terrified, exasperated curses under my breath, I dismounted and followed the kids inside.

“Where are your parents?” I demanded. More silent staring. I took the helm off with an oath and tried again. “Are you alone? Quickly!”

“In the next room,” said the girl.

“Your parents?”

“And granddad,” she said. “And uncle . . .”

“I can’t take them all. Only you. Quick.”

I held out my hand, but the boy huddled up to the girl and began to sob.

“We can’t leave them,” said the girl.

I stared at her, disbelieving. She was tiny, and she was at least as scared as I was, but she wasn’t about to change her mind.

“Get them,” I hissed, watching the door behind me. “Get them all. Quickly.”

The little boy ran into the next room, where there was a great deal of shouting and banging, but the girl stayed where she was, looking at me.

“What is your name?” she asked.

“What?”

“My name is Maia,” she said. Her eyes were still wide, but her face showed no distress, more curiosity and a hint of defiance. “What’s yours?”

“Will,” I said, checking behind me.

“Hello, Will.”

“Listen, Maia,” I said, “you are going to have to help get these people out of the village. Is there a back door?”

“Outhouse,” she said, pointing to a door in the far wall.

“Good,” I said. “Make for the outhouse, but keep going. Just run. As far from the houses as you can get.”

“What about the others?”

“Others?” I said.

“In the other houses?”

“We don’t have time,” I said.

“I could go,” said the girl. “I know how to get into Rafe’s house next door. And Mr. and Mrs. Delways’s.”

“There isn’t time,” I said again, turning back to the door.

“I can do it,” she said. And before I could say another word, she was going out the back way, scampering like a rabbit.

Her father came in, pointing a heavy crossbow at me. Behind him a family of faces crowded the doorway. He was a big man with the body and skin of a man who worked outdoors.

“Go out the back way and get clear of the village,” I said.

The father watched me as the little boy led his mother to the back door, his crossbow trained on me. Then suddenly he wheeled the crossbow toward the door, shooting quickly; too quickly.

I heard the bolt slam into the doorframe, and turned to see a raider already in the room, scyax swinging. The unarmed villagers shrank back towards the back door. Only I could stop him from killing them all.

I don’t think he expected a fight, and my crimson cloak had him momentarily confused, so my quick lunge caught him off-guard. He parried unevenly, suddenly too big for the room, as I shifted and cut like a gnat harassing a cow. But it only took a second for him to regain his composure, and then I was the one stumbling backwards, batting unsteadily at his blade as he closed on me. It would be only another moment now.

I was still clutching the bronze helm. With all my strength I hurled it at his head. It clanged against his own like a bell, and for a second he swayed as if concussed. I seized the moment, stepping sideways as he cut blindly, stabbing low and hard. He stepped backwards and sort of shrank, crumpling as if the wound had let all the air out of his body. If he wasn’t dead when he hit the floor, it happened very shortly thereafter.

For a moment I just stood there, breathing hard, feeling my arms shake and the furious, hot, and horrified blood singing in my ears. Then the cries of the boy brought me back, joined with the shouts and wails of the others.

“Quiet!” I said. “They’ll hear you and they’ll come looking for you. Go that way and follow Maia.”

They had to go now, or they would never get out. Outside I could hear the fires getting closer, and there were shouts of command as the raiders moved through the village. I peered out through the doorway, then stepped quickly into the street. Taking my horse by its bridle, I led it quickly round the back. I could still make the woods. . . .

“Will?” It was the little girl. I nearly kept going, but I just couldn’t. I turned and looked at her. “Should we follow you?” she said.

I looked at her and the huddle of terrified villagers behind her, so surprised by her trust that I forgot my own desire to get away.

“Yes,” I said.

And they did.

It was a noisy, messy, and disorderly affair, but they followed. Behind a large timber building farther down the street there were more, maybe ten or twelve, waiting for guidance and some magical path to safety.

“These are our neighbors,” said Maia simply. “They need to come too.”

I stared at them.

“Right,” I said. “Come on.”

And I led them.

It was getting darker, and that was all to the good, because back here on the track behind the houses there was only a scattering of barns and workshops, and a series of low, erratic hedges between the fields and cart tracks. There would be almost nothing in the way of cover till we reached the edge of the forest a very long mile to the north.

We moved quickly, but part of the village was already well ablaze. The sky was orange, flecks of burning tinder swirling and sparking in the heavy smoke, but there was no sign of the raiders, and I was fairly sure that I had killed the only one who could have seen us go. And besides, there was no reason for them to expand their hunt beyond the village. That wasn’t their way.

Except, of course, that there
was
a reason this time. Me. The raiders might have torched a dozen or more villages over the last few months, but this was the first time one of their number, one who had appeared with them out of the fog, had charged ahead of the attack and tried to sabotage the assault. They had lost me in the chaos of the battle—if you can call the slaughter that was going on a hundred yards behind me a battle—but I might just have done enough to make them curious about me. A bunch of random villagers, they couldn’t care less about, but one of their own undermining their murderous labors? A very different story. They would come after me. After us.