Act of Will (35 page)

I felt Renthrette shift anxiously. We hadn’t discussed my story.

“Information?” he said. “What information?”

“I know where the raiders come from,” I said.

Again Renthrette moved, fractionally. They were both still and tense, waiting to hear what I had to say. I swallowed hard to steady my nerves. “They come from the lost kingdom of Bangladeia across the sea.”

I paused for effect and the count sat down slowly, as did Renthrette. I doubted either had heard of Bangladeia, and both, for quite different reasons, were about to start doubting my sanity.

“Over two hundred years ago,” I went on earnestly, “the people of Bangladeia were beset by a terrible calamity which the books of your library here describe as a dragon.”

“A dragon?” said Renthrette, a little too dryly.

“Probably a poetic description,” I added with the indulgent smile of a teacher imparting knowledge, “for something far more mundane. A drought or famine, for example. The small kingdom of Bangladeia was unable to support itself, and many of its people died. From the dregs of their civilization they formed an army and set to wandering from place to place, taking from others what they could not grow or produce for themselves. Somewhere along the line, it seems,” I went on, quite reasonably, “they met Relthor the Necromantic Sage of the Western Mountains, and through him they traded their souls for life. After a hundred and eighty years of wandering, they have found their way to your lands. The warriors are vampires. We must completely rethink our approach, since I am in no doubt that we are facing the ranks of the Undead, who dwell in the darkness of centuries and survive by drinking the blood of their victims.”

There was a long silence and they both looked at me with wide eyes.

“You think the raiders are vampires?” said the count, cautiously.

“Certainly,” I replied with becoming gravity. “And have been for a hundred and eighty years. They turn into bats between attacks.”

Renthrette’s mouth was moving, but no sound was coming out.

“So you’ll want to borrow some good horses,” said Arlest with a sort of resigned bewilderment. I couldn’t say if he was disappointed or just caught completely off-guard.

Renthrette found her voice and cleared her throat before saying slowly, “We are in no great hurry. Will has been working very hard over the last few days and is—” She paused for thought. “—rather
tired.
I will drive the wagon back to Greycoast and he can rest in the back.”

Now she was getting the hang of it. The two of them exchanged knowing glances, and Arlest nodded thoughtfully.

“I’ll provide some blankets,” he said kindly.

“That would be helpful,” I said, “and we will want as much garlic as you can get hold of.”

The count nodded slowly, his eyes wary. I tapped my finger on the side of my nose significantly and sidled over to the bar. I poured myself a very large glass of wine, downing it hurriedly as I muttered about sunlight and wooden stakes. Meanwhile, Renthrette and the count talked in concerned tones.

Fine. I get to be scapegoat again, but if it gets us out of this fortified charnel house in one piece, I’ll take it.

The rest of the dinner party arrived as I was conspicuously downing a third cup of wine, and they were informed of our decision to leave, along with a version of the reason. Nobody said too much about Bangladeia and its blood-swilling geriatrics. Renthrette didn’t speak to me until dinner was over, though she gave me a couple of long, blank looks while I was talking earnestly about vampire battle tactics and plotting the positions of certain ghoul units with pieces of cheese and cured ham. It was a quiet meal.

A couple of hours later we were on the road and Renthrette was driving. Once out of Adsine’s rutted and smelly streets I came up front and sat beside her. She turned a stony face on me and said, “What exactly were you trying to do, Will? Get us killed?”

“We were quite safe,” I answered cheerfully.

“I have never heard such rubbish in all my life,” she said, clutching her face in both hands for a moment. “I couldn’t believe my ears.”

“You told me to come up with a story. I did.”

“How could you come up with something so absurd? All that Bankle-Whatever-it-was rubbish—”

“Bangladeia,” I inserted.

“Whatever,” she snapped back at me. “If I hadn’t suggested you were going mad, he would have smelled a rat so fast that our heads would be on the block by now.”

“You’re a lousy judge of human nature.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means,” I said, “that so far they haven’t given us credit for discovering anything. They must believe that we’d fall for something utterly preposterous or they wouldn’t have invited us to share a castle with the raiders, would they? If Arlest really is responsible, then he brought us in on the assumption that we were too stupid to figure out the truth. They are dying for a chance to laugh at our stupidity, so I gave it to them, and they went for it. Hook, line, and sinker. You don’t have to be plausible. Just give them what makes them feel good about themselves.”

“Well, it seemed dangerous to me,” she said, a little less emphatically.

“A serious excuse would have made them analyze it seriously. In our position, our greatest strength is our ineptitude.”

She thought for a moment and said, “How on earth did you dream up all that garbage?” she said.

I couldn’t tell if this was supposed to be praise, but I took it as such.

“Actually,” I said humbly, “most of it is from a legend I came upon in the library. As I said, it’s probably a reworking of that ghost army story. If you see it as just a small, ruined country trying to win itself some profits by force, then it seems kind of similar to Shale’s current position.”

“So you were deliberately sailing close to the wind.”

“If you have to sail at all, you may as well get a thrill out of it.”

“But,” she said, coming back to the matter in hand with a jolt, “the raiders have attacked villages and convoys in Shale as well as elsewhere.”

“True. But, as you said, they also seem to have staged an attack on Arlest in which their own people got killed. Maybe they wanted to divert suspicion, or thin out the population a bit. You know, make resources go further.”

“That’s appalling.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “It is.”

As the sun got low behind us I turned over the question as to why Arlest had let us go. Though it was tempting, I couldn’t quite resign myself to the idea that—if it
was
him holding the reins of the raiders—he had believed us so completely that he no longer considered us a danger. That seemed far too casual for so meticulous an operation, even considering what a wooden sword our knowledge was. Someone in that room, maybe several or all of them, knew that our discovery of those barracks had always been a danger. That they took our departure so calmly bothered me and made me wonder for a moment exactly who it was who had been deceived. I felt the explanation in my bowels rather than in my head. They were about to do something that would make our suspicions and discoveries worthless: something conclusive.

It was getting too dark to go on, rather like this narrative. We would soon have to camp or stay in an inn. I told Renthrette that I was worried. For once she didn’t seem to want solid reasons. I wondered if she felt it too, that sense of brooding heaviness, like the air before a storm. I was glad when we came upon an inn and the chance for a beer and a night’s sleep. Renthrette suggested that we get up early and—if we could buy or rent them from the innkeeper—yoke two extra horses to the wagon. That way we might be over the Greycoast border by noon the following day.

Nothing of a remotely personal nature happened.

SCENE LI

A Decision

B
y the evening of the second day we were only ten miles from the road between Ironwall and Hopetown and we had worked our four horses till they staggered and snorted with resentment. I patted one on the neck and it tried to bite my hand off. I sat, gazing out of the back of the wagon, and wondered vaguely what I was supposed to do if the raiders appeared. Wave? Make one last move on Renthrette? It would have to be a quick one.

The track rolled through the Proxintar Downs until the Iruni Wood was small behind us. Atop each rise we looked for horsemen, and on one of the highest of the hills we could see the distant citadel of Ironwall to the southeast as the sun set. Even from this distance, it was impressive. We would make for it at first light and hope to find some of our company there, alive and well, though who knows what trouble they could have gotten themselves into by now.

I made a small fire by the wagon while a little light remained and put a billy of vegetables and water on it. Renthrette tended the horses, whispering secretly to them. We ate, and the meal was hot, but nothing more. It wouldn’t feed my soul, but it might sustain my body until the raiders had other plans for it.

For once she did not shrink away when I sat close to her, but her mind was elsewhere and I didn’t pursue the advantage. After a while, when her total lack of interest had started to infect me, I went to sleep under the wagon. I think she was grateful.

It was just becoming light when I heard my name called by a strong male voice. I jumped, bashed my head on the front axle, and rolled out, instinctively moving away from the caller. With the wagon between me and him I had time to cock my crossbow before I peered round the side. My first thought was that the raiders had come, and my second was that Renthrette was nowhere in sight. The Downs boasted little in the way of cover, and though she could have been hiding somewhere nearby, I doubted it. I heard voices out there and swallowed hard. Not for the first time, I thought my number was up. And I wouldn’t get to use all those great speeches I’d memorized. It was the actor’s nightmare, dying alone, poised to give the best performance of his career to an empty house.

“I’ll show them what Will Hawthorne is made of,” I muttered to myself, almost immediately regretting my choice of words. I dived out from behind the wagon, grunting as I hit the ground and shooting the crossbow towards the approaching people. The bolt whistled wildly off into the air and they ducked as it soared harmlessly overhead.

“It’s a good thing you still can’t shoot,” called a large black man. “If that had come near me, I’d have been really irritated.”

“Orgos!” I shouted. “Lisha! Where have you been?”

I ran towards them shouting random insults at the top of my lungs. And then I saw that they weren’t alone. With them, brandishing makeshift weapons that looked suspiciously like farming implements, were Maia, her parents, and the other villagers. Lisha had gathered more from the surrounding area, so that there were forty or fifty of them, probably all homeless and destitute, all looking for a cause around which to rally.

They were pleased to see me, and I got the distinct impression that even those villagers I had never met had heard things—good things—about me from the others. It was like being back on the stage in Cresdon.

“Hello, Will,” said Maia. She smiled a little but her eyes were as big and serious as ever. Recent events seemed to have aged her, and when she gravely put out her tiny hand to shake mine, it didn’t seem inappropriate. I said hello and chatted to the ones I recognized, though it was an odd dynamic, since we had been through fire and death together but knew nothing of each other. Most of them were no more than faces from a dream and I couldn’t think of anything to say to them. But they smiled and shook my hand or slapped me on the shoulder as if genuinely glad to see me; as if, in fact, they thought my presence would somehow help. They were all armed, even the children, and suddenly my heart sank, because this could mean nothing but torment and death.

“Will somebody tell me what’s going on?” I said.

“The raiders are out in force and moving this way,” said Orgos. “A lot has happened since last we spoke. Renthrette has told us of what you have discovered and we have the highest regard for you—”

“Save it,” I said, pretending not to care.

Orgos nodded and grinned before continuing his story. “When the raiders appeared in force on the Verneytha border a week ago, Mithos went to see the governor. Treylen authorized Mithos to take control of what troops were available, some two hundred light cavalry. We got word to Hopetown, where Garnet met with Duke Raymon. As the raiders moved out onto the moors of northern Greycoast, Mithos took command of the Verneytha cavalry and began to press them south. No blows have yet been struck, but we hope to join our small force with the armies of Hopetown and Ironwall to effect a pincer movement, trapping the raiders on the plains before the citadel. It will be a bloody encounter, but one which will end the threat of the raiders. We’ll need you to help organize our forces.”

I looked at them standing there, so brave and noble, and wondered if they’d forgotten the way the raiders had mauled us when we had crawled up from the coast with our cargo of coal. For a second I could smell the battle, see it, hear it, feel the sweat on my back and the blood in my eyes. I saw the raiders as I had first seen them in the flame and smoke of a sacked village, their lances lowered and bronze faces impassive. I pictured that crimson machine materializing out of the fog, biting through the untutored ranks of our boy soldiers and farmers, and my heart bled for them.

But most of all, it bled for me.

“I’m sorry, Orgos,” I said. “This is as far as I go.”