Act of Will (12 page)

I caught Garnet’s glance of shocked anger and realized that I had put my arm around Lisha’s shoulders in a matey kind of way and was being, at best, casual in the way I told her my feelings on the matter. I froze and drew myself back to attention, murmuring, “But . . . er, if you don’t mind me sitting in on your discussion, I would be grateful. My concern is that at present I would be more of a hindrance to you than a help. I am already in your debt for getting me this far.”

That ought to do it. She smiled again—disarmingly—and asked me to sit down. I did so. whatever she looked like, you did what she said, if only because Garnet looked ready to remove vital organs from anyone who didn’t hang on her every word. At the table the lamp’s ochre glow was stronger, and shooting Lisha a sidelong glance I saw, with a start, not a girl but a woman. A very young-looking woman, admittedly, but that was a feature of those Eastern females; any girl between fourteen and forty-five looked about the same age. I put her around thirty, but I had no real clue. In a short skirt and ribbons she might have passed for twelve. Except maybe for her eyes.

She did all the talking and the others sat there as if enchanted, saving their few questions till she had finished.

“The situation is a simple one, though I fancy the solution will not be,” she began, unrolling a piece of mapped vellum. “Stavis is here,” she said. “To its immediate east is a ninety-mile stretch of grassland and scattered hamlets. East of that the land is more fertile, but almost as sparsely populated and with few decent roads. Even traveling as the crow flies we would have to get across two hundred and forty miles of precious little. It’s not hard country, but it would be very slow. I think our best bet is to sail along the coast and dock in the south of Shale. It is the count of Shale who requires our presence. He is operating on behalf of his own lands and those of Grey-coast to the east and Verneytha to the north.”

I shifted in my chair, and I think I made some kind of noise. Not words exactly, just a sort of grumbling sound, like the sound your stomach makes after one of Mrs. Pugh’s breakfasts.

“What?” she asked. “Will, do you have something on your mind?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Just . . . Those places. Shale, Greycoast, and Verneytha. I used to hear stories about them when I was a kid. Sometimes they come up in old plays. I kind of forgot they were real.”

“What kind of stories?” said Lisha seriously.

“Oh, you know,” I said. “Old tales of witches and sorcerers. Kids’ stuff.”

“Yes,” she said, as if I’d raised some important point. “The legends go some way back.”

She paused for a second and looked around the table at our expectant faces. I kind of wanted to laugh at the situation, these seasoned fighters taking their orders from this little bit of skirt, talking about musty old stories of witchcraft and God knew what else. It was obviously ludicrous; so why was no one laughing?

I remembered a flash of amber light which knocked down enemy troops, a light the same color as the stone in Orgos’s sword. . . .

But that made no sense. If being around these idiots was making me believe in magic, then I really should get away before I lost my mind altogether.

“The problem is simply this,” she went on in the same measured, unaccented tones. “The three lands are connected by a series of vital trade routes upon which they depend for their economic survival. Recently these roads have been plagued by raiders. Not random groups of bandits such as you encountered on your way, but an organized force of trained soldiers, perhaps numbering a hundred or more. The three countries have soldiers of their own, but have been unable to track down the raiders who are slowly but surely bringing ruin to the region. Our task therefore is one of detection rather than of combat; we must determine who is responsible for these assaults and supply the baronies with the information necessary to engage and defeat the raiders.

“There is one more thing of which I think our employers are unaware. Over the last two months the Empire garrison in Stavis has almost doubled in size. Since there has not been any sign of revolt here, I fear that the Diamond Empire intends to push further east still. Shale, Greycoast, and Verneytha may prevent the Empire’s advance, but only if their current situation is reversed promptly. Are you willing to take on the task?”

If that was a genuine question, no one treated it as such. They nodded with hasty nobility and only I found myself looking doubtful and chewing over details of what she had said. Details such as 240 miles by sea and an enemy of over a hundred trained soldiers. She continued deliberately, “Good. You have come a week ahead of time, which gives us longer to prepare. Will, you should speak with Orgos as to how you can best use that time. And now it is late and we must begin our preparations early tomorrow. Sleep well. It is good to be with you all again.”

She smiled around at them with what seemed to be genuine affection and for a moment looked more like a mother than a daughter.

“Mithos,” said Lisha, “show Will to his room, please.”

I watched them grinning at each other like they were at some kind of family reunion and wondered, not for the first time, how long I could hope to last in their company.

SCENE XIV

The Hide

T
hey were up at cockcrow. I lay in bed, a single sheet pulled up to my neck, and watched resentfully as Orgos shaved himself with the straight-bladed dagger he wore inside his tunic.

“Come on, Will,” he breezed. “There’s a lot to do and we are counting on you to prove yourself to Lisha.”

“Why didn’t you bloody tell me she was a woman?” I snarled at him.

“It’s a point of security,” Orgos said to the window as he parted the curtains and let the hazy morning sun fall on his face. His black skin was wet and he looked alert and energetic, curse him.

“So long as people presume the party leader is a man, she’s harder to trace. I didn’t want to deceive you unnecessarily, Will,” he said, turning back to me and smiling, “but Lisha is invaluable to our operations.”

“Why? What is so bloody special about her? She looks half my age and has a tenth of your strength. What use is she to you lot? I don’t see why you even have her on board, let alone take orders from her and—”

“Easy, Will,” he replied, sitting himself down on my bed so that I had to squirm to avoid getting my legs broken. “Just take it from me. She is the equal of Garnet or Renthrette in combat and can beat all of us with a spear or a rapier. Yes, even me. Her other gifts you’ll see if you are around long enough.”

I shrugged, something which is not easy to do horizontally with a heavy sword master sitting on you.

“She just wasn’t what I expected,” I muttered.

“What did you expect, Will? Some barbarian chief with a poleax and war paint?”

“No! Yes. I don’t know what I expected,” I protested, “just not . . .”

“A woman?”

“Yes, but that’s not the point.”

“You sure?”

“Of course.” I rolled over and buried my face in the pillow. “I like women.”

“Then there’ll be no problem,” he said, giving me a significant look.

I breakfasted alone on eight rashers of bacon and fried bread. I couldn’t help thinking that this “operations base” wasn’t really much of a place. Sure, it was in a nice area, but it was just a house, and a largely empty one at that. So why the big deal? Why keep the place at all when it was surely safer for a group of outlaws like them to stay on the move?

Garnet and Renthrette were out, probably eyeing the markets for bargains, methodically moving from stall to stall in search of a better deal, tabulating every mind-numbing detail.

“Something to show you,” said Orgos, emerging from the kitchen.

He led me into a large room with a fireplace at one end, reached up, and snapped back a lamp bracket fitted to the side of the chimney breast. The entire chimney, including the dusty hearth, swung easily aside, revealing a heavy-looking door of dark wood on huge brass hinges.

“Operations base,” he said simply. “We call it the Hide. Don’t touch anything down here until I say you can. There are half a dozen trap devices designed by Arthen of Snowcrag. You’ve probably heard of him. He kept the Empire out of the mountain halls for six months virtually single-handedly. Anyway, Lisha had him defend this place for us when we brought him east.”

“You got Arthen out of Snowcrag before it fell?” I asked, staring. Arthen was the stuff of legend.

“Yes, though only Mithos and I were with Lisha then. There were others, of course, but they are no longer with us.”

He continued, barely missing a beat.

“In any case, there are ballistae down here that could skewer three armored men together so, like I said, touch nothing.”

“Sounds good to me.”

With a large steel key he opened the door, which, like the fire-place, slid easily aside despite its obvious weight. Inside I caught the acrid smell of oil lamps and found myself on a wooden landing atop a flight of stone steps spiraling into the earth. There was a lever by the doorframe. Orgos pulled it and, with a clanking of gears, the fireplace closed us in.

I moved to descend the stairs but Orgos caught my arm and held me back. Before he took another step he unhooked a lantern from the wall, turned up its flame, and groped under the wooden banister rail with his left hand. Again something clicked, and he smiled at me in the lamplight.

“Some of the stairs have special features,” he said cheerfully. I gave him a nervous smile and didn’t ask for details.

At the foot of the stairs was another armored door that was already open. Orgos showed me in.

“Welcome to the Hide,” said Lisha, who was sitting at a table in what appeared to be a library. Mithos was with her, consulting a stack of charts. He looked up and watched me as Lisha continued, “Orgos puts a good deal of trust in you, Will, considering how long he’s known you. I hope his faith is justified. You can never speak of this place to anyone. Many lives depend on us, and we cannot afford to be merciful to those who would expose us. Do I make myself clear?”

I nodded, and tried to count the number of death threats I had had since Rufus turned me in. Still, there was something slightly comic about all these grave and menacing words coming from the party’s girlish “leader.”

“I understand perfectly,” I said, playing along, trying to match the gravity and seriousness of her tone. Orgos and Mithos looked at me with small smiles of satisfaction. The impulse to pat me on the head or feed me an apple must have been almost overwhelming.

Lisha’s eyes met mine and I had the odd sensation of being somehow transparent, as if she could read my thoughts and my petty deceptions. I didn’t like the feeling.

“We will leave here next Tuesday or Wednesday, depending on when we can get a ship,” she said, rising to her feet and stepping lightly towards me, “so you have six days which you may use as you think best. If you need money for arms or other equipment, speak to Mithos. I suggest you do some riding, but don’t bother buying yourself a horse. We’ll have to get mounts in Shale. I’ve taken horses by ship before and it can take days for them to recover from the voyage.”

Whatever you say, doll
. I glanced around the racks of books. There were texts from all over the world, written in a dozen different languages, though most were in my native Thrusian and its ancient forebear, Threshalt. The collection was not so much varied as wildly diverse. Cookbooks sat next to manuals on siege techniques and indexes of poisons. I lifted down something on “dialectal oddities” and gazed at it with mild revulsion.

“What would possess anyone to write anything this tedious?” I mused.

Orgos materialized at my elbow and looked at the book.

“Can Will borrow this?” he said.

“Certainly,” she said.

Orgos beamed and heaved it into my arms saying, “Something to keep you busy, Will. See what it has to say about Shale.”

“Thanks a lot, Orgos,” I muttered.

Mithos turned to Lisha and said, “I forgot to mention that Will has an ear for accents. Since Thrusian is the basic language of the Shale region, that may prove a useful skill.”

So I did have a role. A genuine useful function for humble Will Hawthorne? Will the linguist. Bill the talker. Will Hawthorne, leading authority on the world’s most boring two-foot-thick book. This was the literary equivalent of metal polishing. Still, it sounded a damned sight safer than swinging swords about, so I figured I’d go with it. I clasped the book to my chest, as if I couldn’t wait to curl up with it.

Lisha’s black eyes glittered at me and I felt my irritation and resentment shining through like torchlight.

“We’ll find something more exciting for you later,” she said.

“What?” I murmured, unconvincingly. “No, this is fine. Great. Right up my street, is this. Dialect books. Brilliant.”

She just nodded and I felt stupid again.

“Perhaps you can research those old tales of the lands we are visiting,” she said.

“All that magic and sorcery bollocks?” I said. “Sure. If you like.”

Keep me safe and fed and I’ll read whatever rubbish you like
, I thought.

The next room was a gym, hewn out of the stone and running below the foundations of the houses above. As Orgos was to demonstrate over the next hour, you could tone and strengthen every major muscle in the body with the stuff they had in there, a pretty depressing prospect for a man like me, as was the announcement that I was to “eat more healthily” from here on. No more bacon, in other words. Probably leaves, and the odd handful of seeds.

“After lunch,” said Orgos, apparently unironically, “we’ll see if we can get you up on a horse for a while. Bring your crossbow and you can practice that too. If we have time, we could go for a quick swim in the harbor and then have one more workout before bed.”

Great. All my life I had avoided weapons, exercise, a sensible diet, horses, and water. Now they were all I had.

My book on dialects was dry as a Hrof well and turgid as . . . well, something very, very turgid that I can’t think of at the moment. One particularly riveting chapter was “Major Inflectional Features and Word Usage Common to Shale and Its Environs.” A real corker.

It was tough to believe, but I started to prefer the prospect of perching on the back of a horse to reading. At least up in the saddle I had the challenge of controlling my bowels as the beast started to move, and as the days went by and I continued to avoid some horrible, limb-mangling accident, it became, if not actually enjoyable, then at least less nauseating. A week wasn’t going to turn me into a rider (nor would it make me a weapon master) but I began to feel fractionally less terrified up there and that, Orgos assured me, was half the battle.

The swimming was a very different story. Only once in the whole week did I get out of my depth, and then I was so convinced that I was going to drown that I almost did. By the fourth day I had made no progress whatsoever and it seemed that my fear of water was actually increasing. I told Orgos that my body didn’t float. I wasn’t sure what the problem was but I just wasn’t a buoyant kind of person.

“Right,” he said unhelpfully, and pushed me off the dock. I yelled and gargled quite a bit, but when he showed no sign of coming in after me, I floated. Sort of. By the end of the week I still couldn’t swim a stroke but I didn’t
automatically
equate any body of water larger than a bath with certain death.

As for the Empire, things had been quiet. I was even getting used to seeing their casual patrols, which frequented the markets and dockyards. Down by the water there were always crowds of people hawking and trading their wares or their favors, and you could easily lose yourself in the crowds if panic set in. A pair of soldiers leaned on a fishing boat one day and laughed as I flailed about in the water. In Cresdon I might be a notorious rebel; in Stavis I was just some kid who couldn’t swim.