Act of Will

SCENE XVIII



Harsh Realities

I dozed for a couple of hours and then ate lunch with the rest of the party: cold pork salad and two slabs of brown, grainy bread. You could tell it was cheap stuff because it had that powdery taste that you get when the flour has been cut with ground chalk as a baker friend had once explained, the sacks weigh in heavier and you get a better price for inferior goods. It was pretty shoddy stuff. There didn’t seem much point in being a count if you couldn’t get decent bread. On top of that, dessert was a wizened apple and my first gulp of the ale told me it had been significantly watered down. I was beginning to get a sinking feeling about this place.

Then came a tour of the castle, the near-mute Chancellor Dathel steering us round the ground floor’s central block of guards and infantry quarters, then into the western and eastern wings, which housed the cavalry. In each of these large white-plastered rooms of bedsteads with regulation blankets and footlockers, the reclining soldiers thundered to their feet and stood erect and silent.

One time, just to break the monotony, I started to wander around the soldiers, looking over their armor as if I was inspecting them. I picked up a burnished helmet, plumed with black horsehair, from on top of a footlocker and rapped on it with my knuckles as the soldiers stood rigid around me, eyes fixed on nothing.

“What’s this made of, soldier?” I demanded of one of them.

“Iron plates riveted to leather, sir!” barked the soldier after a second’s hesitation.

“And what would be harder than that?” I asked.

“Sir?” stammered the soldier.

“What’s tougher than iron and leather?”

“Steel, sir.”

“What else?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“What are you made of, Private?”

There was a flicker of confusion in the soldier’s face, and after a painful pause he said, in the same military shout, “I don’t think I understand the question, sir.”

“Are not the muscles and bones of a Shale trooper harder than steel, soldier?” I asked with patient dignity.

“No, sir,” said the soldier.

“Oh. I mean, isn’t your heart hardened with courage?”

“Er, well, sir—”

“Figuratively,” I added hastily, “Private, figuratively. It’s kind of a trope, a sort of poetic allusion, you see. . . .”

“Yes, sir. I see, sir.”

The chancellor coughed politely, like a small beetle anxious not to offend but with the unmistakable hint that we didn’t have time for this. I gave one last penetrating gaze to the assembled troops and said “At ease” to the nearest officer.

As they relaxed with a shifting of feet and a sudden rush of mutterings, Dathel caught my eye and held it. I turned to leave with as much dignity as I could salvage, but found myself face-to-face with an amused and bewildered Orgos, who pulled a what-the-hell-was-that-supposed-to-be? look, while Garnet scowled.

I really didn’t care to see the bloody kitchens and meeting hall, but we marched through them all the same. Garnet and Renthrette exchanged significant looks and made penciled notes on little squares of parchment. After a while I caught Garnet’s arm and asked him what the story was.

“You’d know if you’d shut your mouth and open your eyes once in a while,” he muttered. “What were you doing back there?”

“Being an adventurer,” I said. “I thought it was obvious. Admittedly I haven’t quite got the part down yet. . . .”

“The part?”

“Yes,” I explained, “you know, the adventurer role. The language, the mannerisms, and all that. But I’m working on it.”

“It’s not a role,” Garnet gasped, offended. “It’s a way of life!”

“Well, yes, kind of. But it’s still a performance, you know? And you can help me flesh out the role by telling me what you keep writing down. . . .”

“You have no idea, have you?” he said, still aghast. “You will always just be the same lying, deceitful—”

“Oh, thanks. Keep your precious observations to yourself then.”

He grabbed me by the shoulder and pushed me back against the wall, his favorite way of getting my attention, and snarled, “Just stay out of my way and don’t soil our profession with your playacting.”

“I’m only trying to get the adventuring, you know, the life, right.”

“Well, start taking notice of things for yourself,” he spat contemptuously. “We have just seen the living quarters of eleven hundred men,” he added. “That’s two hundred cavalry and seven hundred infantry for deployment in times of open conflict, without touching the two-hundred-strong guard force that holds the castle itself.” He gave me an excited look, apparently forgetting his irritation.

“So?” I said.

“That’s a lot of soldiers.”

“Yes,” I agreed, giving him the bewildered look he had given me, “it is.”

Just to score a private point I sidled over to Renthrette as we ascended the stairs to the second floor behind the silent chancellor and said, “Did you happen to figure out how many servants there are here?”

“Upstairs?” she said, consulting her notes. “Twenty-three.”

“Thank you.” I smiled simply. It was as I had suspected; they were both as mad as each other.

“Not at all, Will.” She half smiled, dubious but apparently pleased that I was showing interest. “Chancellor,” she said, raising her voice slightly, “what is the male-to-female ratio amongst the kitchen and cleaning staff?”

Hell’s teeth, I thought. This adventuring lark was one thrill after another.

The second floor’s two northbound corridors were hung with faded tapestries, the silk plucked and moth-eaten. Semiprecious stones that had once been stitched to them had been lost or stolen, leaving only spots of less-faded color and a few hanging threads. I considered grabbing some of the ones that were left but figured that this wasn’t the time.

We had returned to the dining room on the second floor and my boredom knew no bounds. The chancellor nodded to a staircase that spiraled up through this floor and beyond. “The third floor is merely ramparts and siege equipment, with a small watchtower in the center, but if you wish me to show you around—”

“No, thanks,” I said hurriedly. I knew Renthrette would be looking daggers at me so I added, “You have been so kind already and I’m sure we can look over the third floor by ourselves.”

His thin mouth smiled briefly, and with an “As you wish,” he saw us back to our rooms. He was making his farewells when we heard a cry of panic. The chancellor wheeled and muttered, “The count’s rooms!”

Mithos was the first to run, unsheathing his broadsword as he did so. Orgos drew a dagger and joined him in a couple of long, powerful strides. The others bolted after them and I followed, like a sheep who didn’t want to be left alone. Over the sound of their feet I heard the crack of a heavy weapon striking timber.

It had never occurred to me that I would need a weapon, since I was sharing a fortified building with over a thousand trained soldiers. The realization that I was completely unarmed (as the others plucked knives and swords from their clothes) came too late; I had already rounded the corner.

One of the guards at the count’s door was dead, his throat and shoulders slashed open. The other was slumped against the wall with a crimson-flighted arrow in his chest and blood running from his mouth. A wild-eyed man in the black cloak and heavy scale of a Shale infantryman was hacking at the count’s door with a huge two-handed weapon that looked like an ax, but bigger. Scarier. As we approached, he turned on us.

Mithos advanced on him, his sword held at arm’s length to parry the wide arc of that massive blade. I froze as Orgos edged closer, his knife drawn but pitifully inadequate. Mithos made to strike, but the soldier lowered his grip and swung the vast, curved ax bit at arm’s length, tracing a deadly semicircle around him. Every time he swung it, you could hear the sound as it cut the air. Mithos drew back, as close to uncertain as I had ever seen him.

The man in the black cloak turned suddenly and slashed that ax at us in a great whistling sweep. I took a step back and felt the air move against my face. The others gave him a little more ground, watching his eyes for a sign of what he was going to do next. He couldn’t turn back to the locked door, so unless he surrendered, he was going to try to come through us. I took another step back.

He seemed to scan our faces, as if picking the weak point of the circle that hemmed him in, and when his gaze fell on me—scared and weaponless—he seemed to decide.

Guards suddenly appeared from the main corridors, running and shouting, their spears leveled. He saw them, and his eyes grew wide and bright. With a cry of rage, he raised the ax high above his head and sprang right at me. I leapt back just as the guards arrived. At least two of their spears penetrated his chest and stomach.

As his ax fell and his roar became a fading scream I twisted my eyes away. I don’t think I was the only one.

Everyone looked at each other with stunned, bewildered relief.

“Do you know him?” asked Mithos, stooping over the corpse.

Dathel muttered, “Not one of ours. I’d swear to it.”

As the guards lifted him his black cloak fell open and we stared at it in silence. Stitched carefully to the inside was a lining that was clearly not regulation. There was no design or pattern on it. It was red. A crimson as deep and vivid as a new wound.