Act of Will Read Online Free
Author: A. J. Hartley
circumstances, and wondered vaguely if she could be related to Mrs. Pugh.
There was an open doorway that led into the house proper, a bed, a small table, and a wall of pine boards where the wing had been built out over the street so it butted up against a house on the other side.
“Got a weapon?” she asked in a businesslike tone. “Sword? Mace?”
I shook my head, temporarily dumbstruck. Of course I didn’t. That would have been illegal. She tutted pointedly, a look of bored exasperation on her wrinkled features, and started rummaging in a battered armoire, from which she produced a heavy-looking felling ax. She heaved it at me haft-first and it swung madly as I struggled to control its weight.
“Go on, you idiot, go on!” she snarled, hobbling away from the swaying ax head. “Cut it down before you kill us both.”
She indicated the pine-boarded wall. I stared at her, wondering if she was serious, then heard the banging and shouting of soldiers downstairs. She made an impatient gesture as if she was dealing with a mentally subnormal baboon and I, suddenly angry at her and pretty much everyone else in the world, swung the ax hard into the wood.
It was faintly satisfying to see the splinters fly. I gritted my teeth and hacked away as the old woman behind me kicked my shins and told me to get a move on. For a moment I was tempted to swing the bloody thing at her, but that desire was replaced by surprise at seeing a middle-aged man on the other side of what was left of the wall, climbing hastily out of a tin bath and staring at me with terrified astonishment.
I turned to thank the crabby old bag but found she was already descending to answer the door and deflect the Empire guards, clearly the only people she hated enough to be of such dramatic assistance to anyone. The man on the other side of the wall backed off with disbelief in his eyes as I set to climbing through the hole. He flashed a look of alarm at the ax, so I dropped it and made pacifying noises that in no way helped the situation. For about the fiftieth time since this nightmare began I wished I wasn’t wearing a dress and a cascade of blond curls. There was only one way out of the room, and I took it, blundering past him onto a landing and down a staircase, while he stood gibbering and staring as before. You couldn’t really blame him: it’s not every day that a cross-dressing ax murderer smashes his way into your bathroom. Not waiting to examine my surroundings, I found the back door and unbolted it.
Probably the best thing to have done would have been to walk calmly and maybe put on a coat or something, but such composure was beyond me. I sprinted aimlessly out into the alley and down the first street I came to, heading as far away from my lodgings as I could and stopped.
Where was I supposed to go? Cresdon just wasn’t that big, and it was entirely walled, all gates heavily guarded. Everyone I knew worked at the Eagle, and those who might still have offered me protection were probably busy worrying about their own necks, possibly from the depths of some imperial dungeon. An unavoidable truth was settling like a rock in my gut, and though I had begun the day worried that I wouldn’t get my life on the stage, I was going to end it with a very different set of priorities. I had to get out of town, perhaps out of Empire territory altogether. I began to run.
SCENE III
Desperate Times
I stopped running outside an inn.
It looked inviting: a board hung stiff in the still air proclaiming it, innocuously enough, the Silk Weaver’s Arms. I had passed it before but never been in, which was probably a plus. I was also thirsty and had detected a comforting smell of malt and hops from the door. I had run more this morning than in the last month. My heart seemed ready to burst, my muscles ached, and my thigh hurt and was still bleeding, however unimpressively. I had to calm down and think what I was going to do next. In short, I needed a beer.
It was
There was an open doorway that led into the house proper, a bed, a small table, and a wall of pine boards where the wing had been built out over the street so it butted up against a house on the other side.
“Got a weapon?” she asked in a businesslike tone. “Sword? Mace?”
I shook my head, temporarily dumbstruck. Of course I didn’t. That would have been illegal. She tutted pointedly, a look of bored exasperation on her wrinkled features, and started rummaging in a battered armoire, from which she produced a heavy-looking felling ax. She heaved it at me haft-first and it swung madly as I struggled to control its weight.
“Go on, you idiot, go on!” she snarled, hobbling away from the swaying ax head. “Cut it down before you kill us both.”
She indicated the pine-boarded wall. I stared at her, wondering if she was serious, then heard the banging and shouting of soldiers downstairs. She made an impatient gesture as if she was dealing with a mentally subnormal baboon and I, suddenly angry at her and pretty much everyone else in the world, swung the ax hard into the wood.
It was faintly satisfying to see the splinters fly. I gritted my teeth and hacked away as the old woman behind me kicked my shins and told me to get a move on. For a moment I was tempted to swing the bloody thing at her, but that desire was replaced by surprise at seeing a middle-aged man on the other side of what was left of the wall, climbing hastily out of a tin bath and staring at me with terrified astonishment.
I turned to thank the crabby old bag but found she was already descending to answer the door and deflect the Empire guards, clearly the only people she hated enough to be of such dramatic assistance to anyone. The man on the other side of the wall backed off with disbelief in his eyes as I set to climbing through the hole. He flashed a look of alarm at the ax, so I dropped it and made pacifying noises that in no way helped the situation. For about the fiftieth time since this nightmare began I wished I wasn’t wearing a dress and a cascade of blond curls. There was only one way out of the room, and I took it, blundering past him onto a landing and down a staircase, while he stood gibbering and staring as before. You couldn’t really blame him: it’s not every day that a cross-dressing ax murderer smashes his way into your bathroom. Not waiting to examine my surroundings, I found the back door and unbolted it.
Probably the best thing to have done would have been to walk calmly and maybe put on a coat or something, but such composure was beyond me. I sprinted aimlessly out into the alley and down the first street I came to, heading as far away from my lodgings as I could and stopped.
Where was I supposed to go? Cresdon just wasn’t that big, and it was entirely walled, all gates heavily guarded. Everyone I knew worked at the Eagle, and those who might still have offered me protection were probably busy worrying about their own necks, possibly from the depths of some imperial dungeon. An unavoidable truth was settling like a rock in my gut, and though I had begun the day worried that I wouldn’t get my life on the stage, I was going to end it with a very different set of priorities. I had to get out of town, perhaps out of Empire territory altogether. I began to run.
SCENE III
Desperate Times
I stopped running outside an inn.
It looked inviting: a board hung stiff in the still air proclaiming it, innocuously enough, the Silk Weaver’s Arms. I had passed it before but never been in, which was probably a plus. I was also thirsty and had detected a comforting smell of malt and hops from the door. I had run more this morning than in the last month. My heart seemed ready to burst, my muscles ached, and my thigh hurt and was still bleeding, however unimpressively. I had to calm down and think what I was going to do next. In short, I needed a beer.
It was