Will Power by A. J. Hartley Page A

one?” she snarled, her eyes still on Mithos and Orgos.
    “Then you’ll have to build a bivouac,” I said. Actually, I was far from clear what bivouacs were, though they were reputed to save the lives of outdoor types from time to time.
    “Do you see large numbers of trees around here?” Renthrette spat, lips curled with that special talking-to-Hawthorne contempt.
    “What?”
    “Branches,” she said. “Leafy boughs? Clods of soft earth and turf? Yards of twine or vines to hold the thing together?”
    Her scorn suggested that these things were somehow connected, even integral, to bivouacs, and that construction of one in our present conditions seemed unlikely.
    “You, no doubt,” I began, “would rather construct a three-story villa with a pool and one of those tiled porches with a little fountain and . . .”
    “Shut up, Will,” said Orgos, thoughtfully.
    “I was only trying to be helpful,” I said.
    “We need to find a cave,” said Mithos with a shrug. “And we’ll need to build a fire, so gather what wood you see as we go. There won’t be much, and we’ll need all we can get. Renthrette, you can walk from here. Use the rope to bundle up the firewood and tie it to the saddle.”
    She nodded once and slipped easily from the horse’s back, managing to hide her inevitable disappointment at no longer being the mountedescort poised to charge any dangerous but misguided beast that should come lumbering down the mountain into range.
    Above us came a screeching call, so sharp and loud that we all turned our eyes upward.
    “A kite,” said Orgos.
    “No,” I corrected him, “it’s a bird.”
    “A kite is a bird, idiot,” he said without malice. “A kind of hawk.”
    The bird was circling perhaps a hundred feet overhead, its tail black and forked like a swallow’s and its head down, watching. Its head and body were a brilliant white, even against the pale sky, and set off the black of the tail and wings strikingly. I was about to turn away from this before Orgos started one of his lectures on the wonders of nature, when a curious thing happened. A smaller bird flew up to the kite, chirping shrilly, then veered off and swooped low at us with only a yard or two of clearance.
    “A starling,” said Orgos. There was a note of confusion in his voice as his eyes followed the smaller bird to where it rejoined the kite, calling as before. The raptor, continuing to glide in tight circles, wings out straight, pinions splayed, returned a series of sharp whistles.
    “It’s not a starling,” said Mithos, eyes upturned. “I mean, it’s not
a
starling, it’s
the
starling. The one we saw before.”
    “Based on what?” I asked. “You’ve seen one starling, you’ve seen ’em all.”
    “Based on nothing,” said Mithos, dropping his eyes to mine. “A hunch. A sense of being watched.”
    This was, of course, quite absurd, but “absurd” is not a word which leaps to the lips when confronted with Mithos giving you one of those looks. Orgos? Maybe. Renthrette? Certainly, though you should expect to pay for it. But
Mithos?
Absurd? No. Mithos kept himself to himself, showing little emotion and letting the world go on around him till he told it to stop. When he gave orders, people followed them without question because he seemed so sure of his own mind and so dangerous to challenge. Not that he was violent or overtly threatening, you understand. He was just grim and powerful. Yes, that’s the word:
powerful
, in every sense.
    Now, though my brain said that the idea that these birds were keeping an eye on our progress and discussing it over a sandwich and a couple of pints was preposterous, the fact that it was Mithos who had said so gave it a kind of weird credibility. Renthrette watched him for amoment as if expecting further explanation, but he did not give any, and when she turned away, her face was blank, expressionless. Orgos nodded thoughtfully to himself and advanced along the cinder track, eyes skinned