Act of Will

SCENE LIV The Gathering

The party greeted me pretty much as you would expect, Lisha with a small-but-genuine smile, Orgos with loud whoops and hugs and “I told you so”s to anyone who would listen, Garnet with a nod that said I had surprised him in a good way (for once) and a matey thump on the shoulder that nearly sent me sprawling. Renthrette just watched me in a sideways kind of manner, like someone keeping an eye on a dog that was likable enough but wasn’t to be trusted. Fair enough, I suppose.

I told them about the approaching Empire army and they exchanged thoughtful glances as they weighed my strategic advice and found it, somewhat surprisingly, to be sound. But as Lisha talked tactics, Orgos sharpened his swords, and Garnet muttered excitedly about having a go at the Empire once the raiders had been “eliminated,” Renthrette continued to watch me like I had just regurgitated an entire goat that had then wandered off bleating. In short, whatever trust she had placed in me between the Ugokan caves and our retreat from Adsine had evaporated with my running away, and my heroic return had only served to make her more suspicious. I opted, as is my wont, for a flirtatious playfulness designed to defuse the situation.

“You didn’t think I’d come back,” I said with a sly grin, the moment I caught her alone.

“Why would I?” she said, her eyes on the straps of some ring mail she was adjusting. “You ran away to avoid a battle.”

“And I came back to take part in two,” I inserted deftly. “Doesn’t that tell you something about who I am?”

“Right now,” she said, “all I want to know about you is whether or not you told the Empire how to find us.”

I had been prepared to fake a hurt surprise, but this was a lower blow than I had expected and my shock was genuine.

“You thought I’d turn you in?” I said.

“Did you?” she asked, and she was looking at me now, her eyes hard and cold and perfectly serious. I was aghast.

“If I had, would I have come back and warned you the Empire was on its way?”

She was silent and for a second I thought I had her, that she’d melt into apologies and confessions of how relieved she was to see me again.

“How could anyone figure out the way your mind might work?” she said.

That could, I suppose, have been a kind of compliment, but I doubted it. “Fine,” I said with dignity. “Fine.”

I was on the point of storming out when Garnet burst in.

“They’re coming,” he said. He seemed quite pleased.

The “they,” it turned out, were the raiders. Mithos and the governor of Verneytha were pushing them south onto the planes before Ironwall. A few days ago I wouldn’t have believed the palpable good humor that the Greycoast soldiers exuded at the prospect of facing the raiders, but things had changed, and memories, it seemed, were short. The raiders were charging into our trap like sparrows flying full tilt at a pane of glass. Well, maybe not sparrows. More like a kind of buzzard. But our window was made of two hundred Greycoast infantry, forty cavalry, and a contingent of about fifty homeless villagers. In time, the buzzard would claw its way through, but with three hundred men at its heels, time was what it didn’t have. Then we could get inside Ironwall and close up the citadel while the Empire sat outside, mulled their options, and finally went home. We were headed into our final battle, and the relief that that idea brought drowned any fear for what would happen while the window cracked.

I watched the villagers going through some basic training moves outside the city walls and then hurried up to the white buildings surrounding the duke’s palace. I met Garnet and forty cavalry from the Hopetown garrison, all humming with enthusiasm. Garnet was earnestly tightening the straps of his horned helm while Tarsha steamed quietly in the shadows. I was talking to him when Renthrette passed, scowling and looking away, ignoring Garnet as he called after her. He gave me an odd look, guessing that this had something to do with me. I gave him an awkward combination of nods, shrugs, and smiles all stacked precariously on top of each other, in an attempt to convey a sort of noncommittal goodwill. He returned a similar sequence and, thus sidestepping any recognizable species of communication, we parted, trying to figure out what the hell all that had been about. As I walked up to the palace I reflected that if meeting my friends was this strange, encountering His Pompous Immensity, the duke of Greycoast, was likely to be very bizarre indeed.

He was waiting for us in the uppermost marketplace, reviewing the citadel garrison with the rest of the party, save Mithos and Garnet. A buzz of excitement hung about the soldiers as they readied themselves. He stood scowling and shooting petulant orders at the squire who was trying to spoon him into large pieces of plate armor. Hearing us approach, he turned, sloshing and quivering like a rich dessert. He sort of smiled at us through his thick reddish beard like he had somehow been vindicated about our uselessness, and when he spoke, his civility was tempered with superiority and disdain. “I am gratified that you have come to lend assistance,” he said. “I’m sure it will make a difference.”

He gave me a long, cold look and I returned it blankly. I wasn’t sure exactly why I was there, but it certainly wasn’t to please him.

“Orgos,” he said, “I want you to lead B Company.”

He gestured behind him to a block of a hundred infantrymen. He went on, his manner declamatory, his heavy pinkish hands cutting the air like ax blades cleverly fashioned out of chopped pork. In his armor he looked hulkingly powerful and slightly ridiculous. He couldn’t turn his head without swiveling his entire body, and his arms stuck out short and awkward like the forelegs of a kangaroo.

“Form a barrier at right angles to the citadel gate,” he said to Orgos. “The enemy will come right at you. As they close in, I will send A Company out of the city, joining your force and striking the enemy in the flank simultaneously.”

“That will leave you no reinforcements in the citadel,” said Lisha. The duke glanced down at her as if he had forgotten she was there. His face crinkled into an avuncular smile. A bead of thick spittle stuck to his lower lip, and his voice was moist and thick.

“Well, my dear,” he said, “we have a very dangerous enemy which needs to be destroyed quickly before it can damage us. If we hold anything back from the first clash, we may lose our advantage in the field, and a few reinforcements will never win the day back for us. We must hit them hard, putting all we have into a single counterthrust.”

Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it, in other words.

“And you’ll be leading them into battle, will you?” I said, absolutely incapable of keeping my mouth shut.

“I shall be with them when they charge-” Raymon began.

“What does that mean,” I said, “ ‘be with them’? Will you be leading them or not?”

“Not leading them, exactly,” he said, as if it was a minor distinction. “But I will be there until they charge and, depending-”

“On whether there’s any risk involved whatsoever,” I interrupted him, “yes, I think I get the picture. You’ll ride around in your armor and be ready with the waves and the patriotic victory speeches-”

“I don’t think you, of all people, are in any position-”

“Probably not,” I agreed hastily, wondering-not for the first time-what I was trying to achieve. “But you know what? There’d be no raiders without people like you. Remember that.”

I don’t really know why I said it and I was far from clear what I’d meant, but it felt true and I was glad I had put it out there for him to think about. He didn’t, of course. He gave me a long, bewildered look, and then the squire tugged the strap of his breastplate too tight, and, with a snort of irritation, he turned on the armorer, barking indignation.

As they started hoisting the duke astride his stallion, a messenger arrived to speak to him. Though the horse was larger than the duke (a little) it looked like it might collapse under his weight at any moment, struggling as it was like an ant with a grapefruit. He looked, I was pleased to note, quite absurd, and everyone knew it. One of the soldiers looked deliberately away and smirked at his friend. Maybe that’s what did it. I had wondered about telling him of the hidden rooms in the Adsine keep and flaunting the fact that it had been me who found them, but he wasn’t worth trying to impress. The identities of the raiders didn’t matter now anyway. We’d go over all that after they had been vanquished.

The duke gave a single bark of laughter and set his horse to a laborious and unstable-looking trot, his face rosy and enthusiastic.

“The raiders are in sight,” he announced, his stallion wheezing like an octogenarian pipe smoker on a twelve-mile hike. “They are coming this way with the Verneytha cavalry at their heels.”

“I hope Mithos keeps his distance,” said Orgos. “If the raiders turn on him, he will never hold out.”

“Mithos knows the situation,” Lisha replied. “He will hold back until we are ready to engage them.”

“I must get that wagon set up,” I said to Orgos.

The air was heavy with an oddly joyous anticipation, and I saw how battle could be thrilling when you knew you were going to win. It was like watching a play you’ve seen before and enjoying not what happens but how it happens, suspending your knowledge of the ending in your head so you can relish it even more. And, like a lot of plays, it was about revenge, and few things feel better than that.

Orgos nodded briefly and clasped my shoulder. “Be careful out there,” he said.

“Oh, I will,” I assured him. “And you too.”

“Good-bye, Will,” he said. As he walked away I wondered why that sounded so final, but I was armored with optimism three inches thick and the thought glanced off like a spent arrow.