Act of Will (25 page)

SCENE XXXVII

Time for a Beer

M
y intention to abandon the party had been only temporarily suspended, but this new attempt on my life put a slightly different complexion on things. It bore thinking about.

On the one hand, of course, it made my desire to get away from the party and the arrowheads, lance tips, fire, and death that seemed to follow them about stronger still, but it also made life without the likes of Mithos at my side rather less appealing. And painfully brief. Without him, I would have been snuffed out like a candle, and not a particularly bright candle at that. Scattering crossbow bolts on the ground in a moment that called for absolute silence hadn’t been too bright, and it had been an act of unprecedented mercy that Mithos hadn’t killed me himself. His glower on returning from the empty street softened into a resigned sigh and the muttered remark that it “could have happened to anyone.” Perhaps so, but it had happened to me, and, to my mind, it usually did. The idea of running from the party, top though they were on someone’s unpopularity list, was, for someone with my combat skills, roughly equivalent to going swimming with three or four large rocks chained to my legs. I wondered absently if the party members thought of me as the rock chained to their legs. I made a mental note to be a little nicer to them, in case they should decide that this rock-lugging bit wasn’t worth the effort. If I was cut free of the party, I would sink. Fast.

“I wonder,” said Mithos in the voice of a man who had been hunted before, “whose idea that was.”

“The raiders’, obviously,” I said.

“You think so?” he asked pensively. “It takes more than a few red feathers to make a crimson raider. And until now they’ve seemed almost anxious to keep us alive.”

Mithos left me to think this over and I took out the map we had been looking at earlier.

“Hi, Will!” said Garnet enthusiastically. “I heard about the attack. We must be making progress.”

That was Garnet logic for you.

“I see you’ve got the map there,” he said, keen as mustard. “Considering tactics?”

“Er, yeah,” I answered, wondering what I had been doing and realizing with muted shock that he was sort of right. I had been having those Adventurer Thoughts again. In the circumstances, that was odd.

“So,” he said, sitting down.

“So?”

“Here we are,” he said, pleased again, “in a pub.”

“That’s right,” I answered, conscious of the way he was putting me on my guard again.

“Two mates out for a beer,” he concluded.

I thought “mates” was a bit strong, but I let it go. There was a pause and I sat back in my chair as he looked hopefully about him and then back to me.

“Garnet, is there something on your mind?”

“No,” he answered emphatically. “Not at all.”

“You want to talk about the guy who shot at us? . . . ” I guessed, reluctantly.

“No,” he said with a little gesture of defiance. “Let’s not talk work.”

So that’s what it is
, I thought,
when someone tries to skewer your jugular with a crossbow bolt: work
.

“I just thought,” he went on, “that we could, you know, do what ordinary people do.”

“I’m an expert on that,” I said.

“I thought you would be. So what do they do? Ordinary people, I mean.”

“They drink, they talk, they play games, they pick up women . . . ” I said.

“Games?” he asked.

“You know, cards, darts, dominoes, or something.”

“Let’s play cards,” he said with an enthusiasm that said it was going to be a long night.

“What can you play?”

“Nothing,” he said, slightly frenetic now, “but you can teach me, right?”

This was getting seriously strange. But I watched the slightly hunted way he seemed to be looking around, the shifty nervousness, like a kid about to be deliberately naughty, and it made a kind of sense to me. Garnet had been with the party for years. In that time he had gone from child to dignified warrior with his ax and his honor code, and he had never had a second to sit back and be an ordinary kid, make a fool of himself, get a little wild, and have a good time without worrying if he was being noble or righteous. Now I was here, representing all he had missed, all he didn’t know of the ordinary world, and he was cautiously ready to give it a shot.

Fair enough, I thought. Endearing, really.

Time to educate him in some of life’s simple pleasures. We ordered beer, or, rather, I ordered it for him. He had no preferences.

We got six pints: a selection of ales, a lager, a wheat, and a milk stout. He gulped down one of the ales and was halfway through the lager when, with a sudden sense of alarm, it occurred to me that he had never drunk beer before. Even in those party meetings, I wasn’t sure I had ever seen him take more than a sip at a toast. The fact that he had finished one of the ales, the lager, and had made serious headway on the stout by the time the thought had fully registered confirmed both my suspicions and my panic.

“Let’s take it easy, shall we?” I said, grasping the beer in his hand and pushing it back down onto the table.

“This is great,” he said, apparently unaffected. “Let’s get some more. I didn’t know it would be this much fun, just sitting in a bar.”

I grinned and sat back as he got to work on another ale. I supposed I was overreacting. Things didn’t look so grim after all. I went to the outhouse and, on my way back, walked into Renthrette. She smiled at me rather warmly and I knew that I had somehow gained masculine adventurer points by nearly getting killed again. She was wearing a light summer dress and had let her hair down. It took about thirty seconds for things to get grim.

“I heard you were with Garnet and thought I’d join you.” She smiled, her eyes meeting mine. This rash of goodwill was a veritable epidemic. “I hope you’re looking after him,” she said coyly.

I chuckled and said, “He’s over—”

I had started to point to our table, which she had her back to, when I saw Garnet, sprawled across the table in a pool of spilt beer. He had drunk at least two pints in the time I had urinated away one.

“Er, I think he just left,” I spluttered. “Yes. You can probably catch him if you leave quickly.”

“You can come with me, then.”

“Yes. Yes, I mean, I could do that,” I said, thinking desperately. “But, well. But I have to settle the bill.”

“I’ll wait,” she said, nicer—damn her—than she had ever been before.

“Well, it could take a while. We had some, er . . . complicated drinks and—”

“Complicated?”

“Yes.”

“How?

“Well, you know. Complicated. Complex.”

She gave me a blank look.

“Mixed!” I exclaimed. “They were mixed drinks and it always takes a while for the barman to figure out how much they cost.”

“Oh,” she said. “I’ll sit down then.”

She turned, took a few steps towards the table where Garnet was now dragging himself upright with a bleary, vacant look in his eyes, and froze.

Then, very slowly, she turned and there was the look I knew so well: cold, cynical, murderous, and reserved entirely for me.

“He drank too quickly . . . ” I began.

“This is your fault,” she muttered in a voice like dripping acid.

“Renthrette?” said Garnet distantly. “I don’t feel well.”

As his sister turned to him, he seemed to reconsider this statement and amended it.

“I feel
really
bad,” he said, clearly surprised.

I made a run for it, slamming a few coins on the bar as I left. I could handle a lot of things, but Renthrette protecting her cub from the evil Mr. Hawthorne wasn’t one of them. I had reached the door when I heard the guttural surge and splash of vomit, followed by Renthrette’s imperious yell:

“William Hawthorne, come back here!”

No chance. No chance whatsoever.

SCENE XXXVIII

The Razor’s Edge

G
arnet had stayed in bed late, groaning. Renthrette had banged on my door, and while I lay still, pretending not to be there, it occurred to me that this was the first time she had actually wanted to come in. The irony was almost unbearable.

It was going to take three people to maintain surveillance on the remaining two Joseph houses. That meant only half of the party could be spared to investigate the Razor’s keep, but since even Lisha’s little band wasn’t stupid enough to go storming a castle with a small army inside, numbers didn’t matter too much. We just had to decide who was going where.

Garnet and Renthrette were tired of surveillance and thought this Razor thing sounded like action. They put their names forward, which would count me out; after the previous evening, I didn’t want to be anywhere near them. I figured I’d just stay where I was and let Mithos chaperone the dismal duo.

I should have guessed that things wouldn’t be decided so democratically. That night I was told to get my stuff together. Orgos and Lisha and I were going to see Mr. Razor and his boys. Garnet and Renthrette, though pleased to see the back of me, must have been livid.

“Will, do you want to ride Tarsha?” asked Lisha as we saddled up.

“Nope,” I said with a slight shudder.

“Why not?” she asked as she launched herself into the saddle.

“Because I value my life,” I answered, “as if you didn’t know. Where’s the wagon?”

“We aren’t taking the wagon,” Orgos beamed. “Too slow. Just fill your saddlebags and we’ll go as we are. Hopefully we’ll be back in a couple of days.”

“By about three or four o’clock we should come to an inn,” said Lisha. “The Sherwood. That’s less than a mile from the keep. We can stay there.”

Six hours on horseback,
I thought, clambering awkwardly into the saddle.
Wonderful.

Orgos grinned at me. I told him to go away, or words to that effect, and he spurred ahead, laughing. My horse started slightly at the movement and I fell off. It was going to be a long day.

The tracks we followed took us directly west towards Shale through meadows of long, sweet-smelling grass, hedged fields of barley, and clustered fruit trees. We went at a canter, occasionally walking the horses to let them get their breath back. Whenever we started to move faster again, I gripped the reins and the beast’s thick mane as tightly as I could until the panic subsided.

We ate our lunch of cold chicken, goat cheese, and coarse-ground oat bread by a clear stream where dragonflies hovered. Orgos chilled a bottle of plum wine in the stream and we shared it among us. Lisha preferred the water. She told us the names of the plants that grew by the stream and their uses, and then I watched her entice a red-and-black butterfly into her fingers and study it carefully, tenderly, before it flew away. I was going to remark that this was a bit odd for the grim party leader, but something in her glance told me not to.

The sun was hot as we rode the rest of the day, so we took it slower than before. I had a very slight headache from the wine, but I was also getting more relaxed and at ease on horseback and the miles passed surprisingly quickly. Orgos told me more tales of ancient battles and heroes, and I recited parts of the banned Thrusian history plays. Orgos lapped it up. It almost felt like I had something in common with this principled swordsman and his artifact of power. Weird.

The sun was still high when we rounded a bend in the hedged track and saw the Sherwood set back from the road, its chimneys placidly curling smoke. I was sweating a little and was glad of the shady porch where we could take our boots off while the stable boy dealt cautiously with Tarsha. The kid looked awestruck and terrified at the same time, which I could relate to.

The innkeeper was glad to see us. He introduced himself and offered us cold roast pheasant for supper. We bathed, changed, and came down to eat as the sun set. Apart from two blokes at the bar, we had the place to ourselves.

“Innkeeper!” I called, trying out the local dialect with fair success. “This is the best piece of roast pheasant I’ve ever had. Do you know that? I mean it.”

The innkeeper smiled with genuine pleasure. The two men at the bar had turned around and were nodding agreement. They were big, athletic types with thick sculptured biceps and suntans. Probably laborers.

“Trapped ’em in the woods myself yonder, sir, I did,” said the innkeeper.

“Remarkable,” I said. “Just the right gamy flavor without being too sharp, and moist but not greasy. This is a tribute to the bird. Remarkable. I expect it is much in demand round these parts?”

“To tell you the truth, sir,” he said, “there aren’t many people around here. The farmers just come in for a pint in the evening.”

“What about that castle up the road there?” I asked him smoothly. A cloud passed over his face.

“Aye, sir,” he muttered, starting to turn away, “I supply them.”

“Not good customers?” I ventured.

“Depends what you mean by good, doesn’t it?” he said.

Seizing our beer jug, he shuffled off to the bar.

“Interesting,” said Lisha. “But don’t be too obvious.”

“Me, obvious?” I asked, faintly offended. “Subtle Will? Please.”

“So,” I said as the innkeeper came back, “gives you a hard time, does he?”

“Who?”

“Whatsisname,” I said, pretending to fumble for it. “The Razor.”

“You know him?” the innkeeper asked, suddenly uneasy.

“Only by repute,” inserted Orgos.

“Very wealthy man is Mr. Thurlhelm,” said the innkeeper. “Gets anything he wants. Servants, women, entertainers, the best food and drink around; you name it.”

“How did he make his money?”

“He was an arms dealer in the West,” he confided. “Thrusia. Sold to the rebels for years until he realized they were going to lose. Then sold to the Empire. Never comes in here himself, of course, but his people do.”

“Are there a lot of people at the keep?” I asked.

“Not usually,” he said. “But they get visitors. Big groups of them. The servants talk about them, but only when they think no one’s listening, if you know what I mean. Not popular, Mr. Razor’s guests. But they never leave the castle, so that’s all right.”

“You’ve never seen them?” I asked, trying not to grin with excitement.

“No one does,” he said. “We only know they’re there when they send their food and drink orders.”

“More than usual, is it?”

“Three, four times as much,” he said. “No one leaves the castle while it lasts. Then things go back to normal.”

“And you’ve never seen these guests arrive?” I said, as if this was a minor curiosity.

“I’ve never even heard their horses on the road.”

We thought for a moment and there was silence. The men at the bar had stopped talking. They had their backs to us. I wondered how much they had heard and whether it mattered. I had no idea whether we had been talking loudly, but suspected we had.

“How often does this happen?” Lisha asked.

“Once a month or so, sometimes more.”

We sat around and nothing happened, save that the two men from the bar drank up and left a couple of minutes after our talk with the innkeeper. Lisha and Orgos exchanged significant glances. I looked up and muttered, “Well, at least the raiders eat.” The others gave me a blank look. “I mean, they appear out of nowhere and their corpses don’t stay put. It’s good to know they actually have to have food sent to them. It means they’re human.”

It was dark outside the Razor’s keep. Nights were short at this time of year and I figured it would be dawn soon. We had ridden past the fort and tethered our horses just under the lees of the Elsbett Wood, a hundred yards or so to the west. The castle was square and surrounded by a wall topped with a gatehouse flanked by a pair of turrets. In daylight it probably looked like a toy: a rich man’s whimsy. At night it was rather more forbidding, despite the glowing windows. We nestled amongst the trees and watched the silhouettes of sentries moving between the parapets. There was a faint sound of music and laughter drifting from within like smoke.

I yawned and stretched. We had rested for a few hours before we left the inn, but my body still told me I should be asleep. I thought about Garnet sitting in Hopetown sullenly grinding his ax blade with slow circles of his whetstone, and Renthrette watching over his shoulder in case he missed a bit. I couldn’t help feeling sorry for Mithos having to babysit those two little rays of sunshine. The thought made sitting out here in the middle of the night slightly more appealing.

I wandered into the trees a little way off to relieve myself—too much beer, as usual. I had just about finished when I noticed that the quality of the darkness had changed: it was getting misty. In seconds the mist was a thick fog pooling among the trees. It was odd the way it just seemed to come out of nowhere, and, though the night had been warm, the temperature seemed to drop dramatically. And there was a strange quality to the mist. It reminded me of something. . . .

The convoy from Ironwall. The scarlet cloaks flashing through the dense, grey air . . .

I felt the prickling of the hair on the back of my neck. I was still, holding my breath.