Act of Will

SCENE IV



A New Problem

The soldier’s eyes lit up: he drew his sword swiftly and had begun to shout when something stopped him. There was a brilliant flash, yellowish, like firelight, but sudden and stark, so that everything solid went flat and pale, casting hard shadows. I think there was a sound too—a bang? Or a sudden and powerful gust of wind? I wasn’t sure. And there was something else, something like falling asleep after too much beer and coming to again with a raging hangover, except that the entire process lasted no more than a few seconds. It was panic, I supposed, and some kind of weird head rush at being shoved into a crate with an Empire soldier about to drag me off to torture and execution. That had to be it.

But there was more. They were fighting. There was grunting and the unmistakable crash of metal on metal, and then a gasp of pain and the sound of a falling body.

God! I was involved in a murderous brawl with Empire guards: a capital offense if ever there was one. I clambered out of the box and started to crawl away.

Someone stepped over my back. I heard a weapon fall and then what sounded like cracking bone. I closed my eyes tighter till someone stood on my wrist and, with a yell of pain, I looked up. The pale kid who had been called Garnet faced a man who might have been the patrol officer. They had their fingers about each other’s throats and were fighting for control of the soldier’s shortsword. The other soldiers, astonishingly, seemed to be already dead. Or stunned, perhaps, since I could see no blood or wounds. The black man joined the last remaining fight, lending his considerable strength to wrenching the officer’s sword from his hand. The officer glared furiously as his strength gave out; then the kid freed himself, hit him once, very hard, in the face, and watched him crumple to the floor.

I struggled to my feet, struck again by how light-headed and unsteady I felt. By the time I was upright the three soldiers weren’t, and my barbaric saviors were busy binding the innkeeper’s hands and gagging his mouth with a pillowcase. The girl was standing over the officer who had gone down the hardest with a broadsword pointed at his neck. Something in her eyes was as scary as the sword point. It was time for me to get the hell out.

The pale man with the piercing green eyes was nursing his wrist, but the group was calm, businesslike despite their earnest speed and horrifying efficiency, as if this wasn’t the first time they’d dealt with Empire soldiers. I looked at the girl, half expecting to see her break down or scream hysterically, but she was as cool as the rest of them.

I coughed and muttered, “I’m dead. I may as well hang myself right now. ‘Put him in the box,’ they said, Your Worship. That’s it. I’m dead.” With a miserable whine of despair I looked at the bodies and added, with what I thought to be unmistakable sarcasm, “Great. Thanks a lot. I don’t know who the devil you people are but you just did me a real favor.”

The pale man looked at me with his homicidal green eyes and shrugged as if I had praised them.

“It was nothing,” he said. “They were looking for you, not us. They were off their guard, their weapons were sheathed, two of them had their backs to us, and we had one extra pair of hands.”

My disbelief found a new focal point. They were mad. They had to be.

The girl caught my glance and her smile slipped away, her blue eyes freezing onto mine with undisguised indignation. I swallowed and looked down.

“Time for some introductions and then a dressing of that wound,” said the olive-skinned man. I gave him a look of frank incredulity and bit my tongue. These maniacs had just casually assaulted three Empire guards, and were now going to invite me over for tea and crumpets.

“You just killed three people!” I exclaimed, unable to restrain myself further. “You just bloody killed . . . I don’t believe this. You just killed three people! Don’t you get it? Three! Count them. Now what? Eh? Who should we kill next? The emperor? No. Here’s an idea: Kill me. Please, go ahead. I’d hate to hold you up. You must have some children to massacre or something, so come on and get it over with. Save the Empire a job.”

“They aren’t dead,” said the black man.

“What?” I muttered.

“They aren’t dead,” he repeated. “Any of them. Though I thought that last one was going to give us no choice.”

“No choice?” I said, incredulous. “He nearly forced you to butcher him in cold blood? If someone says hello to you in the street, is that grounds for garroting? I mean, you must have all kinds of interesting ways of killing people who—I don’t know—ask you what time it is, or offer you a piece of fruit or—”

He clapped his hand over my mouth.

Actually, I was surprised they’d let me go on as long as I had. The pale kid stepped towards me with the guard’s shortsword in his hand and hatred in his emerald eyes. I struggled in the black man’s grip but couldn’t move. I shut my eyes and waited for the thrust of steel through my stomach. It didn’t come and, after a moment of stillness, I opened my eyes.

My would-be attacker had halted and turned his back on me, muttering his fury to the girl. More anxious glances were swapped, but the apparent leader stilled them with a gesture of his hand and a stern look at me. I swallowed hard and tried to regain composure.

“This is Orgos,” he said, indicating the black man, who took his big hand away from my mouth and extended it, smiling.

I stared at them in stunned silence as the introductions were concluded and my brain boiled softly. The pale savage who was no more than twenty was called Garnet, as I had already gathered, and the girl, who still hadn’t quite forgotten my look of distrust, Renthrette. I gave her a friendly smile and kind of wished I’d been more impressive during the fight. Kind of.

“We do not use the names we were born with anymore, so I am taking no unnecessary risks,” their swarthy leader went on. “I am Mithos, and I—”

“Mithos!” I bawled. “The Mithos! Oh God! Mithos the thief, bandit, cutthroat, and wholesale murderer?”

“You should know better than to trust the Empire’s propaganda,” he remarked grimly.

“All right,” I backpedaled, knowing the terms these psychopaths preferred to be known by, “Mithos the rebel and adventurer?”

“The same,” he said.