Act of Will Read Online Free PDF Page A

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.