Act of Will

SCENE XXIX The Fallen

Though many have fallen,” called Orgos from atop one of the wagons, “we ride in triumph to Ironwall. We owe much, even our very lives, to each other and to those who didn’t make it through. But we owe the most to one man whose courage and ingenuity saved the lives of many, perhaps of the convoy itself. When we reach Ironwall, we will celebrate, but for now let us simply cry, ‘Three cheers for Will Hawthorne!’ Hip hip, hoorah. Hip, hip. ”

This came as something of a surprise to me, and for a split second I thought it was an unpleasant joke at my expense. But they cheered loudly and gripped my shoulder and shook my hand and said I was a good fellow and a dashed fine general. And since their saying so seemed to make everyone forget what a fiasco the whole thing had been, I took my praise modestly.

I caught Renthrette watching me thoughtfully. Our eyes locked and I couldn’t think of anything to say. She tried to smile in an encouraging sort of way, but she still looked shocked and exhausted from the battle. I nodded quickly and looked away.

This was where I got off. I had seen enough and had decided that staying to be massacred with the rest of them was not my idea of a fun day out. I hadn’t told them yet, but I was done.

Funnily enough, it was Orgos who had made me realize that this was no place for me. In his little post-slaughter speech he had said in his proud, warrior voice, “We leave the field honorably, and had they charged us at the end, they would have learnt to their cost that valor permits no surrender.” He meant it, too. What I had intended as a prompt to get them to see the futility of what they were doing, he was echoing without a trace of irony.

Well, speak for yourself, mate. The road was littered with bodies. We had been inches away from being a huddle of corpses beside a few burning wagons, another failed defense against the raiders; but we would have died honorably and that made it all right. No. Honor is just the carrot that leads donkeys like Orgos to pointless deaths, leaving the downtrodden without a champion and the tyrants secure as before. Call me pragmatic, call me cynical, but I didn’t get it and I wasn’t about to die for it.

Despite Orgos’s words of honor and triumph, I detected a glimmer of panic amongst the party as they looked over the casualties. I suppose we are brought up to believe that the good guys always win in the end, though they might take a few tear-jerking losses along the way. Sooner or later the enemies are brought low by that superior skill, or that extra spark of intelligence, or that flash of magical power too mysterious for the narrator to have to justify it. Well, we hadn’t seen any of that. They had wiped our force out and toyed with the survivors. I’d seen some more of that strange light from Orgos’s sword, and something similar from Lisha’s spear, but whatever such things were, they clearly weren’t enough. For once, Lisha’s party didn’t have the edge, and-however much they tried to keep it to themselves-it shocked them like a spear in the side.

Before we set off I saw Mithos and Lisha standing together. He loomed over her in his stained armor and she talked up to him. Though I don’t know what was said, it was a while before they parted. When he caught my gaze I thought he faltered for a moment before he spoke. “Give them a hand putting that fire out, Will. Then help Lisha collect the dead for burial.”

I did, but I’m not going to talk about that.

There was something else as well, the icing on the whole horrible cake. We hadn’t killed any of the raiders. Not one. There wasn’t a single corpse on the battlefield wearing the scarlet and bronze of the enemy. This was troubling on several levels.

I had seen several of the raiders go down. I would have sworn that we had killed maybe a dozen-not a huge dent in their force, of course, but enough to prove they were mortal. I wandered the battlefield when the fog lifted, but there were none.

“The mist was thick,” said Garnet. “They must have come back and taken away their dead while we were tending to our survivors.”

“And the tracks?” said Renthrette, gazing out over the fields. “There are hoofprints on the battlefield itself. They radiate out for a couple of hundred yards. But beyond that, nothing. How did they get here? Where did they go?”