Act of Will

it and spare him the anxiety.

“Do you feel you have made progress?” he asked, not looking hopeful.

I instantly thought of that hellish journey to Ironwall with burning coal wagons and bleeding boys and hoped to God that we wouldn’t have to talk about that. Words make you live it all again.

“There are certain possible solutions which we have pursued,” said Renthrette, “and managed to cross off.”

The count nodded thoughtfully and asked, “And have you any ideas as to the whereabouts of the raiders?”

“Again, it is more a question of where they are not,” she answered. “We have narrowed the range of possibilities.”

I took the opportunity to lead the conversation away on a random stream of subjects from the weather to the state of our horses (about which I knew nothing). I talked for about three minutes and no one said anything, just drank their thin soup and dipped their chalky bread in it, for, as I can be sparkling in conversation when I want to be, so I can be downright tedious. Too many things from the past few days couldn’t be spoken of, and not merely for security reasons. I wasn’t about to go through it all again, nor was I to deprive the dead of their dignity by telling the horror of their ends.

I figured I’d bore the count and his wife to their beds instead: “I saw some trees outside that reminded me of some back home. Can’t remember the name, but they have a sort of smooth bark with pointed leaves that go red in the autumn. Sort of red, but darker. Brown, perhaps, is closer. A reddish brown. Or, rather, a brownish red. You know the kind I mean? Pretty, as trees go. Well anyway, we used to have one right outside my house. When I was a child, I used to climb it. I remember every night at about six o’clock, my mother used to come out looking for us. My mother was a smallish woman who made shoes. When I say ‘smallish’ I mean about my height. Probably a few inches less. Not short, exactly, but kind of small. The shoes she made were a sort of brown a bit like the tree, but not exactly brown. ”

And so on.

No one could stand too much of that for long. The countess suppressed a yawn and I wound the thing up as anticlimactically as I could. They smiled politely and tried to figure out ways to escape before I started on another topic.

We retired for a drink before bed. I was exhausted, but Renthrette, having slept most of the day, seemed to want to talk for once. My blithering over dinner had ensured that no one would want to sit with us into the small hours, so we were alone.

She was wearing her bottle-green dress again and had her hair down. Her skin had lost the pinkish burn it had developed when we first crossed the Hrof wastes, softening into a tan that showed off the blue of her eyes. I thought about mentioning this, but didn’t. I poured her some wine and sat on a beer barrel behind the counter.

I found myself drinking and talking aimlessly about acting in Cresdon and running from Rufus.

To my astonishment, she started laughing. “What were you talking about tonight at dinner?” she said. “Something about a tree you used to climb. What was all that about?”

“I just didn’t want to talk about what we’ve been doing,” I mumbled. “I’m getting tired of rehashing it all.”

“I think I know what you mean,” she said gravely.

I looked at her sharply. There was no sarcasm. She was looking at the threadbare carpet and cradling her half-empty wineglass.

“It’s just, I don’t know,” I said quickly, “kind of painful to have to keep thinking about, you know-”

“The convoy,” she said.

“I suppose so, yes,” I sighed. “And the visit to the Razor’s keep, and the attack on the village. Both attacks. Both villages. It seems that all I’ve done over the last couple of weeks is watch people die.”

“I know,” she said softly. I watched for the usual mask of steel to slip over her face, but it didn’t. She just looked at me sadly, and something passed soundlessly between us, as if we had come out of a play together, a tragedy, and didn’t need to talk about it.

“Was there a tree, Will?”

“What?”

“Was there a tree where you grew up, like in your story?”

I thought about what I should say. I could tell her about all the trees she could ever wish to hear about. I could pour out nostalgia, paint a picture with words of a happier time for Will Hawthorne, and she would pity me and take me in her arms.

“No,” I said. “There was no tree. I made it up.”

She looked at me for a long time, until I could stand it no more and looked away. Without warning, she kissed me quickly on the cheek and stood up. “Good night, Will,” she said.

She was gone before I was able to reply, closing the door as she slipped through it. It was the kind of kiss you might bestow on a nine-year-old or a pet rabbit, but genuine for all that. I poured myself another drink and replayed it all in my head.

Almost twenty-four hours later I was back there again. The bar storeroom was piled high with beer barrels (apparently the only thing they had in good supply) but I thought wine made me look classier, so I opened the only bottle there as Renthrette arrived. We hadn’t seen each other all day and her manner was deliberately casual. She hadn’t forgotten the previous evening, but didn’t want to dwell on it. Not that there was much to dwell on.

She had a message from her beloved brother. The raiders had made no attacks for a week now, the longest respite since they had begun.

“That’s great news!” I exclaimed. “We must have whittled them down bit by bit. A casualty here, a casualty there. The ones who were poisoned in the caves must have been the last.”

“No,” she said. “They weren’t. You know there are dozens, possibly hundreds of them left. They are lying low. Perhaps one of the party has got close to finding them and they daren’t move. Perhaps they are preparing for a bigger attack than any so far.”

Sometimes I wish people would just take things at surface value. Analysis is a great complicator of existence.

Naturally, she was right again. Word came from Orgos in Greycoast within the hour that a number of raider units, totaling perhaps 160 men, maybe more, seemed to be coming together in northern Greycoast. They had been seen by Verneytha border patrols but they had, curiously, not vanished, continuing to move slowly, quietly, and without making further attacks.

I was aghast.

“A hundred and sixty or more!” I exclaimed. “Hell’s teeth, that’s more than we ever thought there were! Still, no match for the six of us, eh?” I added. We had obviously made a real dent in their operations.

“Why are they suddenly being so obvious?” Renthrette mused aloud.

“Like you said, something’s happening.”

“And we are stuck here,” she said miserably.

“Good,” I said sulkily.

“Don’t you feel we should be there with the party? They will gather together, all of them. We should go.”

“And die as one big happy family. What a treat.”

“We’re achieving nothing here,” she said, getting up impatiently. I gave her a suggestive glance and said, rather stupidly, “That depends on what you’re trying to achieve.”

She shot me a pointed look as if what I had meant vaguely romantically had sounded merely lecherous.

“That didn’t come out right,” I said, too frustrated to put my heart into sounding apologetic. I poured myself a glass of wine and looked at the floor, instantly recognizing it as Square One.

“Is that wise?” she said frostily, regarding the wineglass as an elderly schoolteacher might.

“Very,” I said, drinking deeply. “I need to relax more. In fact,” I added, tipping the dregs of the bottle down in one gulp, “I’m going to get some more.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea-” she began.