Cresdon, playing cards with Orgos in a quiet tavern.
Then, out of the stillness, came footsteps. The chancellor had walked onto the bridge. His expression was stern and somehow weary, but he had barely opened his mouth to speak when a handful of the raiders charged him with their scyaxes drawn. In a fraction of a second he was surrounded by a group of Shale infantry in their black and silver, their shields locked about him and their spears turned out like the spines of a porcupine. The small cell of raiders attacked them, but they didn’t last for more than a few seconds. When the skirmish stopped, another dozen or so of the crimson raiders had been slain. The rest threw down their arms and plucked off their helms. The monstrous machine suddenly had faces, many of them uncertain, embarrassed, or even ashamed. It was over.
The Empire troops seemed to recognize as much. They had no interest in taking on whoever would stand against them now that it was no longer clear who would come down on which side. I didn’t notice when they started to move, but they withdrew as one, and by the time I started looking for them, they were a thousand yards away and riding west.
Curiously, it was
“On behalf of Shale, and as one now taking control of that county on the demise of Arlest the Second, I submit my land, army, and people to your control. I regret the destruction our land and leader have caused and I can only ask that our current surrender be taken into account in the trials that will inevitably follow. I can only say that I am extremely sorry.”
I could think of nothing to say to that. I knew most of it was just political rhetoric, but I suppose that was the name of the game now. Raymon would have a field day. I only half believed Dathel: I would never know exactly what command he gave to those archers, but they had not shot even after the power of Orgos’s sword had passed. Perhaps he had been disobeyed. Perhaps he had picked up a new mood in the ranks that he hadn’t dared to contradict. I wondered if my words had made a difference and thought that they probably hadn’t. Not in the long term, anyway; words never do.
“How much of what you said did you believe?” asked Renthrette, appearing suddenly at my elbow.
“My little speech?” I asked. “I’m not sure. Does it matter?”
She thought for a moment and then smiled very slightly, a smile so small and so sad that you had to be looking for it to notice it at all.
“I suppose not,” she said.
It was a comic situation, of course, and quite implausible, this sudden surrender by the obvious victors. If I’d seen it onstage or read it in a book I’d say it was fiction at its most ridiculous, though fiction has that privilege. But, oddly enough, I had known it would work. I knew the instant Arlest started to talk to me as I lined him up in the crossbow’s grooves, because it was clear then that he didn’t understand the game. He thought it was a debate, an attempt to sway his troops with logic. It had been no debate; it had been theatre.
Mithos gave the responsibility for disarming the Shale forces to Raymon, who was suddenly anxious to please. Then he slipped away with the rest of the party. He was going to find Orgos’s body, and I was going with him.
SCENE LX The Curtain
Orgos lay in a dark, candlelit chamber that smelled of the wildflowers and incense on the table by his bed. Lisha had bandaged him and prepared a poultice. Some local wise woman had sung low incantations around the bed and anointed him with oils. Between them they had set his broken ribs and stopped the wound in his abdomen, but he had bled copiously, and they were unsure of what had been ruptured inside. It was unlikely that he would make it through the hour.
The bandages about his stomach were soaked through with blood, but that was somehow less disturbing than the greyish hue his whole body had developed, like a deep, inner pallor. From time to time his eyes opened slightly, but they were pale and sightless. Several times I found myself feeling desperately for his pulse, convinced that he was already dead.
The air was thick with the aroma of candle wax and petals. It was like a sanctuary or a crypt. I thought of the battle, of the pain in his face when the enemy had come at us in spite of our numbers. I thought of our flight to the citadel and his single-handed defense of the bridge, and suddenly I knew what I had to do.
Moving close to his bedside, I knelt beside him, took one of his large dark hands in mine, and began to talk.
I talked of honor and heroism. I told him what had happened after he was cut down by the raiders, how we had taken his position and held them off. I told of how the Shale soldiers had turned on their leaders and on the raiders themselves. I told him how we had thwarted the Empire, who was retreating back to Stavis even as we spoke. I told him everything and I thanked him for it. It was, after all, his victory.
I looked at his still face and his half-open eyes and, charged with emotion, I said, “So you
His eyes closed for a second and their lids rippled. When he opened them again, he could see me. His mouth moved, but at first no words came out. Renthrette gave him water and he drank it, looking at me. He mouthed something that I couldn’t catch and I had to lean in close while he tried again. “Will Hawthorne. ” he gasped, “you talk too much.”
I shrieked with joy as the others clustered around the bedside. Mithos looked at him and remarked, “I should have known Will could talk you round.”
“He’s better with words than he is with a sword,” Orgos said softly.
“Tough to imagine,” I said.
“Now that we have our swordsman back,” said Lisha, “Will is welcome to stay our wordsman.”
Words, like swords, have a way of getting people in and out of trouble. Morality was never my strong point, but I suddenly saw the attraction of being in the right and knowing it. Orgos always had, but for once this knowledge hadn’t been enough and he had to be reminded. In this, I suppose, we were similar after all. A writer like myself doesn’t pen plays just for the hell of it. There always has to be a sense that his audience, for the briefest moment and in some infinitesimal degree, are changed by what they hear onstage. It’s the same for swordsmen: When the opposite of your values rides at you hacking and spearing, grinning through their bronze helms, you need a little more than principle to keep your hopes for humanity alive. Orgos had needed to see victory more than ever before. He needed to know he could change the world.
I suppose there is an arrogance there, but I could relate to it. The fighter and the writer struggle with the balance of absolute omnipotence and total impotence that are intrinsic to their media. It’s that balance that keeps them on their toes. Yes, Orgos and I were more alike than I had ever suspected.
Orgos rose from his bed three days after the battle and within another week was recovered enough to walk around the citadel walls by himself. The bandages stayed on. During his recovery, Maia often came to sit beside him and hold his huge hands in hers. Maybe that did some good. He had become to her, and many of her friends and relatives, something of a hero-and by that I mean a real hero, not the actor I had been. I didn’t resent this. It seemed only right and proper that the latest act of heroism should banish all previous acts from the audience’s mind. I had been a hero because they had needed to see me as one. He was the genuine article.
Orgos and I spent a lot of time together and I noted in him a quietness that had been less evident before. It was a long time before I saw him polish and sharpen his swords again, and when he did, it was with a caution that verged on mistrust. When he grew sad or talked of the death and injury he had seen over the years, I would remind him of the battle on the bridge. Eventually the weariness and resignation left him and he grinned at me and said I’d been stupid to take them on by myself. Like he hadn’t, right?
