THE DECLARATION

The group was back in the war room later that afternoon, this time joined by Proctor Byllewyn and Brother Jamesis. The two men of Gybi talked excitedly about the prospects of war with Avon, but both of them, particularly Proctor Byllewyn, seemed to Luthien to be holding some serious reservations. The young Bedwyr didn’t know how much Brind’Amour had told them of the previous meetings, but he could guess what was troubling them.

All eyes went to the door as Brind’Amour entered, his features locked. “This will be our last meeting,” he said with all confidence, “until we rejoin at Carlisle’s gates.”

Murmurs of approval rolled about the table. Luthien kept his eyes on the men of Gybi—Proctor Byllewyn’s wide smile showed that he was more than a little intrigued.

“I will entertain the ambassadors from Gascony and Avon presently,” Brind’Amour explained. “The charges will be openly declared.”

“War should not be declared until our armies are ready to march,” Byllewyn interjected.

“But they are,” Brind’Amour insisted. “Even the force from Gybi.”

Byllewyn’s expression turned dour. “You and I still have much to discuss,” he protested quietly, calmly.

“Not so,” replied Brind’Amour. “With all deference to your position, good proctor, and with all understanding that I am in desperate need of your influential cooperation, I cannot undo what has been done.”

“You have signed a treaty with Asmund?” Byllewyn asked, his tone growing sharp.

There it was, Luthien realized. The men of Gybi, so recently under siege by the Huegoths, were not thrilled at the prosect of an alliance with King Asmund.

Brind’Amour shook his head fiercely, his huge white beard flopping from shoulder to shoulder. “Of course not,” he replied. “My signature will not be penned until that of Proctor Byllewyn is in place on the document.”

“You presume—” the proctor began.

“That you have the best intent of Eriador in mind,” Brind’Amour interrupted.

Byllewyn rested back in his chair, not knowing how to respond.

Brind’Amour turned and whistled and the door opened immediately. In strode a tall, powerful-looking woman, handsome but fierce, with black hair and black eyes and the assured gait of a true warrior.

“Kayryn Kulthwain, the leader of the Riders of Eradoch,” Brind’Amour explained, though she needed no introduction. She was well-known to the people in the room, particularly to the two men of Gybi.

“My greetings,” Byllewyn extended, standing in salute to this warrior, a close ally of the folk of Bae Colthwyn. Byllewyn had met with Kayryn many times in Mennichen Dee for the great trading carnivals, and the two shared great respect and great friendship.

“Kayryn Kulthwain,” Brind’Amour said again, “the duchess of Eradoch.”

The title brought a moment of stunned silence.

“Duchess?” Katerin echoed incredulously.

“It is time for us to put our kingdom in line,” Brind’Amour explained. “Wouldn’t you agree, Duke Byllewyn, who is second in line to the throne of Eriador?”

Byllewyn slumped back down in his seat, overwhelmed. Brother Jamesis, beaming from ear to ear, put a comforting hand on his shoulder. All about the oval table, expressions shifted from ecstatic to confused, encompassing every emotion in between.

“A logical choice, would you not agree?” Brind’Amour asked them all. “Who in the land is more experienced in matters of state than our dear Proctor Byllewyn of Gybi?”

“False flattery to seal a necessary alliance?” Byllewyn asked slyly.

“Well-earned respect,” Brind’Amour assured him, “though I admit that the alliance is necessary.”

“None in this room, none in all of Eriador, would dispute the choice,” Luthien piped in, and those words were indeed important from this man, the Crimson Shadow, perhaps the only man in all of Eriador whose claim as second in line for the throne of Eriador was greater than Byllewyn’s. Luthien understood the importance of this as did Brind’Amour, for Gybi was viewed by most of northern Eriador as the spiritual center of the kingdom.

“I demand that the Huegoths be kept in close check,” the proctor said at length. “I’ll not have them slaughtering and enslaving innocents, Eriadoran or Avonese!”

“We have formulated our plans with exactly that in mind,” assured Brind’Amour, who was happy to have Gybi serve as his moral conscience. “They will be kept offshore as much as is possible, and when they do come to land, they will be escorted by an Eriadoran force of at least equal strength.”

Byllewyn chewed on that information for many seconds. “We will meet with Asmund when this is concluded,” he finally agreed. “My folk will not sail beside the Huegoths, though!”

Brind’Amour was already nodding. “My hope is that the militia of Gybi will run with the Riders of Eradoch to lead the charge from Malpuissant’s Wall,” Brind’Amour explained. “With both Byllewyn and Kayryn Kulthwain to guide them, the march to Carlisle will go smoothly.”

Byllewyn nodded his approval, and both Brind’Amour and Luthien sighed, realizing that the major obstacle in properly launching this war had just been overcome. Without the support of Gybi, the support from Eradoch would have been tentative indeed. Now, with Proctor Byllewyn and Kayryn Kulthwain in agreement and fully in the fold, northeastern Eriador’s proud and independent folk would take part in the campaign with all their hearts.

“Ethan will be my link to the Huegoths,” Brind’Amour explained, “and to the eastern Eriadoran fleet.”

“I am thinking that you put much stock in a man who has proclaimed his allegiance to King Astound,” Oliver interjected.

Brind’Amour conceded the point. “He is Bedwyr,” the Eriadoran king replied, as though that alone should suffice.

“I will go with the Huegoths,” Brother Jamesis unexpectedly volunteered. “I understand their ways,” he said in the face of the doubting expressions. “And their honor.”

Brind’Amour looked to Byllewyn, who nodded his agreement.

“Very well, then,” the king said. “My two eastern arms are thus secured.” He paused, his gaze settling on Katerin. The woman understood what he was asking of her. In the previous war, Katerin had served well as emissary to Port Charley. She among them best understood the seafolk of western Eriador. Katerin was of that same stock.

“I will ride out for Port Charley this day,” she agreed, ignoring the crestfallen expression that came over Luthien at the proclamation.

“I will get you there more quickly than any horse,” Brind’Amour said with a smile.

“I will go with her,” came Luthien’s not-unexpected call.

Brind’Amour smiled and did well to hide his chuckle. “You will strike due south,” the king replied. “At my side, with Shuglin and Bellick and the dwarfs, with Siobhan and the Fairborn, and with the militia of Caer MacDonald. Praetorian Guards await us, my young friend, and their hearts will surely sink at the knowledge that the Crimson Shadow, the man who outmaneuvered legendary Belsen’Krieg, has come against them.”

Luthien couldn’t deny the logic, or dismiss the call of his country. “Then Oliver will go with Katerin,” he decided, and it made sense, for the halfling had been with Katerin during her first mission as ambassador to Port Charley.

Oliver started to protest, but Siobhan, sitting beside him, kicked him in the ankle. He looked to her and went silent, realizing that this one’s heart was for Eriador first, for him second.

“I hate boats,” was all the complaint the halfling offered, though his blue eyes, so obviously full of longing, locked on to the fair Siobhan as he spoke.

“Then it is settled,” Brind’Amour said. “Now let us turn our discussion to the meeting I must soon hold with the ambassadors. We each will have a role to play.”

 

 

Felese Raymaris de Gilbert was a tall and slender man with soft gray eyes and dark hair, neatly coiffed, and a clean-shaven, unblemished face. His posture was perfect, but he did not appear rigid; his dress was fashionable and rich, but he did not appear foppish. And unlike many Gascon (and Avonese) lords, he did not reek from an overabundance of perfume. His hands, though manicured, were not soft from luxury.

Felese had been chosen by the Gascon lords to represent them to the tough Eriadorans for just these reasons. The man had a lord’s appearance, but a workingman’s sensibilities, a rare combination that had set him in good standard in the court of Brind’Amour.

He stood now beside puffy Guy deJulienne in Brind’Amour’s audience room, facing the grim-faced king of Eriador. DeJulienne’s gaze was more centered on the king’s companions standing behind the throne, particularly on the gaily dressed halfling who stood beside the fair half-elf named Siobhan.

Oliver eyed the foppish Avonese as well, winking and blowing kisses at the man.

It was a strange scene for the two ambassadors, and Felese was worldly enough to know that something important was brewing. Brind’Amour sat in his customary throne, but a second seat had been brought in and placed beside the first. It was empty, and Felese, suspicious and wary, hoped that Brind’Amour meant to announce that he would soon wed, or something as innocuous as that.

Judging from the king’s companions, standing with perfect posture in a line behind the chairs, he didn’t think so. Anchoring the line to Brind’Amour’s left stood the tough dwarf with the bushy blue-black beard, Shuglin by name. Beside him stood Proctor Byllewyn of Gybi, a most important man in Eriador, and next to him, a fierce-looking black-haired woman, obviously a warrior. Then, at the king’s left shoulder, stood Katerin O’Hale, a fiery woman Felese longed to know better. Looking to Brind’Amour’s right, the ambassador was reminded of the impossibilities of such a tryst, though, for there stood Luthien Bedwyr, the famed Crimson Shadow, slayer of Duke Morkney and hero of the last war.

And also, Katerin’s lover.

Beside Luthien came Oliver deBurrows, a fellow Gascon, that most curious of fellows. Felese liked Oliver quite a bit, mostly because of the way the halfling unnerved deJulienne, whom Felese did not like at all. Anchoring the line on Brind’Amour’s right stood the half-elf Siobhan, a former slave, leader of the notorious Cutters, a band of Fairborn who had ever been a thorn in the side of those who would unlawfully rule Eriador.

Felese looked them over carefully, trying to guess the intent. It was the presence of Kayryn Kulthwain, the one he did not know, who finally tipped him off. This was no announcement of a future queen of Eriador, Felese realized, for these were Brind’Amour’s generals!

“I do appreciate your coming here on such short notice,” Brind’Amour said casually.

“We are entertaining a great guest?” deJulienne asked, nodding to the empty chair.

“A fellow king,” Brind’Amour replied.

“Huegoth?” Felese asked hopefully, for news that the war on the eastern shores was at its end would have been most welcome to the Gascon.

Brind’Amour didn’t miss that excited smile, and he also noticed that deJulienne didn’t seem so pleased.

The Eriadoran king shook his head. “No,” he replied. “Not Huegoth.” Then, without dragging out the suspense, Brind’Amour motioned to one of the guards standing in front of a side door. The man opened the door and an orange-bearded dwarf, regally attired in a flowing purple tabard hanging loosely over gleaming silver mail, strode confidently into the room.

Both ambassadors went down to one knee as the orange-bearded dwarf walked past to take his seat beside Brind’Amour.

“I trust that you two are familiar with King Bellick dan Burso of DunDarrow?” Brind’Amour asked, and he did well to hide his smile at the hint of a frown tugging at the edges of Guy deJulienne’s mouth.

“I am honored, good King Bellick,” said Felese sincerely.

“My friend Brind’Amour has spoken well of you,” Bellick answered, and neither ambassador missed the importance of the fact that Bellick had not referred to Eriador’s leader as “King Brind’Amour.”

“I, too, am honored,” said deJulienne.

Bellick snorted derisively and looked to Brind’Amour.

“I have summoned you here to announce a truce,” Brind’Amour explained, then looked to his dwarvish friend. “More than a truce,” he corrected. “Know you that the kingdoms of Eriador and DunDarrow are now one.”

Felese wore a grin, though he realized that the situation in Avonsea might soon deteriorate. DeJulienne, though, openly gawked, obviously displeased by the prospect of taking such unwelcome news to his merciless king!

“Under Eriador’s flag?” Felese asked.

Brind’Amour looked to Bellick, and both shrugged. “Perhaps we will design a new flag,” Brind’Amour said with a laugh, for they hadn’t even thought of such minor details.

“But you, Brind’Amour, will speak for DunDarrow in Eriador’s dealings with Gascony?” Felese pressed, thinking that this might work out well for his merchant kingdom.

“Well-reasoned,” replied Brind’Amour.

Guy deJulienne could hardly contain himself; he knew by the fearful flutter of his heart that something bigger would be revealed here.

Brind’Amour saw his discomfort, and so he played along, enjoying the spectacle. “All goods traded between Gascony and DunDarrow will flow through Port Charley,” he explained. “Port Charley to Caer MacDonald, and then distributed to the dwarvish encampments in the Iron Cross.”

Guy deJulienne was trembling.

“And what of the east?” Felese pressed. “When will Chalmbers be opened to Gascon trade?”

“The fighting in the east is ended,” Brind’Amour announced, and it seemed to him as if deJulienne was having trouble drawing breath. How the Eriadoran king was enjoying this! “The men of Isenland will not fight in the face of Eriador’s fleet.”

“A stolen fleet!” deJulienne blurted before he could help himself.

Brind’Amour shrugged and chuckled, willing to concede that irrelevant point. “However gotten, the fleet flies under Eriador’s flag, and the fierce Huegoths will not battle with these ships, for they have no desire to give aid to Greensparrow, who is Eriador’s enemy.”

The words sent a shock ripple through the gathering, sent murmurs along the line behind the Eriadoran king and even from the guards standing at the room’s three doors. All of those waves seemed to gather heavily on the shoulders of the foppish diplomat from Avon.

Baron Guy deJulienne worked very hard to control himself, to steady his breathing. Had Brind’Amour just declared war with Avon?

“Surely we have not come together on this glorious occasion to hurl insults,” said Felese, trying to soothe things. The news of the Caer MacDonald–DunDarrow alliance was marvelous, the news of cessation of hostilities with the Huegoths even better, and Felese didn’t want the continuing animosity between Eriador and Avon to put a damper on this bright situation. From Gascony’s greedy perspective, it was better for all if the two kingdoms of Avonsea were at peace.

“Insults?” deJulienne managed to stammer. “Or threats?”

“Neither,” Brind’Amour said sternly, coming out of his seat to stand tall over the foppish man. Felese tried to intervene, but the powerful wizard simply nudged him aside. “Know you that there will be no peace between Eriador and Avon as long as Greensparrow sits on Avon’s throne,” Brind’Amour proclaimed, as overt a gesture of war as could be made.

“How dare you?” deJulienne said breathlessly.

“My good King Brind’Amour,” soothed the shocked Gascon ambassador.

Brind’Amour relaxed visibly, but did not sit down and did not let the scowl diminish from his face. “We asked for peace,” he explained. “In good faith earlier this same year, we signed in Princetown with Duchess Deanna Wellworth, who spoke for King Greensparrow of Avon, a binding document for peace.”

“Binding!” echoed deJulienne loudly, pointing an accusing finger and seeming to gain a fleeting moment of momentum.

Oliver blew him a kiss and the distraction gave Brind’Amour the upper hand.

“Broken!” the Eriadoran king roared, coming forward, and the stunned deJulienne skittered backward and nearly tumbled. Brind’Amour did not pursue him physically, but his verbal tirade continued the assault. “Broken by cyclopians, working for your treacherous king! Broken by the spilled blood of Eriadoran innocents in hamlets along the Iron Cross!

“Broken,” shouted Brind’Amour, motioning to his stern-faced fellow sitting calmly in the second throne, “by the spilled blood of DunDarrow’s dwarfs.”

“Be not a fool!” deJulienne pleaded. “We have Huegoths to contend with, and so many other . . .”

Brind’Amour waved his hand and the terrified man fell silent. “We of Eriador have a more pressing enemy.” Then, responding with his trump card, Brind’Amour motioned again to the two guards standing at the door over to the side of the room. Again the door was opened and a miserable Resmore was dragged in by two elven escorts.

Felese stood back in thoughtful posture, his hand stroking his fashionable goatee.

“Now you know your enemies, foolish pawn of Greensparrow,” Brind’Amour said to deJulienne. “Go to your king. War is at your door!”

The man of Avon, horrified, ran from the room, but Felese remained, seeming truly intrigued. “A friend of Greensparrow’s?” he asked, indicating Resmore, who was in a crouch on the floor, seeming barely conscious.

“The duke of Newcastle,” Brind’Amour replied. “Sent into the mountains by Greensparrow to incite the cyclopians into war against Eriador and DunDarrow. I will furnish Duke Resmore’s complete confession for you to take to your lords.”

The man nodded. He had no intention of committing Gascony to the war, and Brind’Amour didn’t ask for, or expect, such a pledge. All that the king of Eriador needed was for Gascony to stand with him in spirit or, at the least, to remain neutral.

“I will send my messengers at once,” Felese replied, and bowed and turned to leave. He looked back at Brind’Amour and nodded, all the confirmation the king of Eriador needed. Then he left the room, his mind whirling with the possibilities. For the Gascons, this situation might well prove profitable. No matter the outcome, both sides would soon need tons of supplies.

Back in the audience room, Brind’Amour motioned to the guard at the door on the opposite side of the room, and when they unlocked it, it nearly burst apart as King Asmund and Ethan stormed in.

“You did not introduce your other ally,” Ethan explained. “My king feels slighted.”

“I did not reveal the most potent of my weapons,” Brind’Amour replied, bidding Asmund to take the unoccupied throne at Bellick’s side, Brind’Amour’s own.

The proud Huegoth puffed out his chest and accepted the seat of honor, satisfied with the gesture and with the description of his warriors as Brind’Amour’s “most potent” of weapons.

 

 

OPENING MOVES

I will keep Asmund and my people from bloodlust,” Ethan assured Luthien quietly. The two of them stood along the side wall of a small, unfurnished chamber. A few feet away, Brind’Amour worked his magic, opening a tunnel through the stone and across the miles, a fast run to Chalmbers. King Asmund, Proctor Byllewyn, and Brother Jamesis stood beside the old wizard, the two men of Gybi waiting patiently, but the Huegoth king obviously anxious.

Ethan looked to Asmund and couldn’t suppress a grin. It had taken him a long time to convince Asmund to come through the tunnel to Caer MacDonald. Now, though Asmund desperately wanted to get back to the Dorsal Sea and his fleet, it seemed as though another battle would have to be fought.

Luthien was too busy scrutinizing Ethan to take note of the sight that had brought a smile to his brother’s face. The younger Bedwyr was encouraged by Ethan’s continuing shift back toward their family. Ethan’s unsolicited promise to keep the Huegoths in line during the war showed that the man cared deeply about Eriador. How deeply? Luthien had to ask himself, and as yet he had no answer. In that same promise, Ethan had referred to the Huegoths as “my people,” a notion that Luthien was finding harder to dispute.

The two walked over to the others as Brind’Amour, clearly growing weary from his extensive use of magic over the last few days, completed the passage. This was the old wizard’s second magical tunnel this day, having earlier delivered Kayryn Kulthwain back to Eradoch, where she would gather her forces.

“My folk will join with me in Chalmbers,” Proctor Byllewyn explained.

“They have sailed from Gybi already,” Jamesis added. “Escorted by the thirty galleons of Eriador’s Dorsal fleet.”

“Our fishing boats will remain in dock there,” the proctor went on. “It is not so far a march from Chalmbers to Malpuissant’s Wall, where my folk of Gybi will meet with the forces of Dun Caryth and Glen Albyn, as well as Kayryn Kulthwain and her fierce riders.”

“Out with you then,” insisted Brind’Amour. “Captain Leary leads the Eriadoran fleet and anticipates your return.”

Proctor Byllewyn and Brother Jamesis bowed curtly and said their farewells, promising victory, then entered the tunnel without hesitation.

“One of your longships awaits you at Chalmbers’s dock,” Brind’Amour said to the nervous Huegoth king.

“Will it wait long enough for me to walk?” Asmund asked, managing a slight chuckle. Rennir followed suit, laughing exuberantly, but the king’s other Huegoth escort was distracted at that moment.

“Luthien Bedwyr,” Torin Rogar called, joining Luthien and Ethan at the side of the room. “We never found chance to speak of my kin who was your friend.”

“We will meet again,” Luthien promised.

“In celebration,” said Torin determinedly. He clapped Luthien on the shoulder, then nodded to Ethan and moved back to join his king. He and Rennir stepped into the swirling blue mists together, paving the way for Asmund.

“I look forward to our meetings when this is at its end, King Brind’Amour,” said Asmund. “We have much to learn from each other.”

Brind’Amour took the huge man’s wrist in a firm and sincere clasp. Luthien and Ethan exchanged hopeful looks at the encouraging words.

“Do not tarry,” Asmund ordered Ethan, and with a deep breath to steady his nerves, the Huegoth king went into the magical tunnel.

“Eriador free,” Luthien said as he and Ethan walked to the spot.

Ethan turned to him, curiously at first, but his expression gradually and surely changed to one of excitement. “Eriador free,” Ethan offered, “my brother.”

They hugged each other tightly, and for that short moment, Luthien felt as close to Ethan as he had through all their years together in Dun Varna. At that moment, Luthien understood that Ethan could proclaim whatever heritage he desired, but the truth of it was that he and Luthien were of the same blood, were indeed, as Ethan had just generously offered, brothers.

“Until we meet again,” Ethan said.

“At the gates of Carlisle!” Luthien called as his brother disappeared from sight, lost in the fast pace of the swirling blue mists.

“A pity there weren’t more of you,” Brind’Amour snickered under his breath. Luthien looked at him curiously, not understanding the comment.

“Your father sired two fine sons,” the old wizard explained. “A pity there weren’t more of you.” Brind’Amour walked past Luthien, patting him comfortingly on the shoulder, then exited the room, heading for his bed and some much-needed rest.

Luthien stood for a long while watching the wizard’s tunnel diminish and then disappear altogether. He missed Ethan already! The last year or so, since he and Oliver had stumbled into Brind’Amour’s secluded mountain cave, then into a revolt against Duke Morkney that quickly degenerated into open rebellion against Avon, had been such a wild ride for the young Bedwyr that he had hardly given his absent brother much thought. Ethan, to his knowledge, had been far away in the Kingdom of Duree, fighting with Greensparrow’s loaned troops beside the Gascon army.

Only when Luthien had finally returned to Dun Varna and seen Gahris on his death bed, had he found time to focus attention on his past, on his lost brother and his redeemed father.

Then, suddenly, Ethan had been thrown back into Luthien’s life. Luthien’s emotions swirled as had Brind’Amour’s tunnel, moving along at a pace no less swift, but with a destination far less clear. Ethan was returned, perhaps, but Gahris was dead. That much was certain.

Luthien’s father was dead.

The young Bedwyr bit his lip hard, trying to hold the tears in check. Eriador needed him, he reminded himself. He was the Crimson Shadow, the hero of the last war and destined to lead this war. He could not stand facing a blank wall in an empty room and weep for what had gone before. He could not . . .

But he did.

 

 

“I will deliver Brind’Amour’s head unto you,” the woman promised.

King Greensparrow rested back comfortably in his plush throne, throwing both his legs over one arm of the great chair and studying closely the fingernails of one hand. The pose did little to diminish Deanna’s suspicion that the king was greatly agitated. He had called to her through an enchanted mirror, a call she had at first decided not to answer. The urgency of his tone, though, could not be ignored, and Deanna had concluded quickly that if she did not go to her own enchanted mirror in her private quarters, Greensparrow would likely show up in Mannington, something the duchess most definitely did not want to see!

“Where is Taknapotin?” Greensparrow asked, the question Deanna had feared all along.

Deanna put on a perplexed look. “Where should the fiend be?” she replied.

“I want to know.”

“In Hell, I would suppose,” Deanna answered. “Where Taknapotin belongs.” Greensparrow didn’t believe any of her explanation, Deanna realized by his sour expression. He was indeed closely tied to the fiend he had given to her, as she had suspected. Now the king had her backed into a corner because he could not contact his demonic spy.

Deanna silently congratulated herself on the power of her dismissal of Taknapotin. Her enchantment and the breaking of the crown had apparently blasted the fiend from the world and put him beyond even Greensparrow’s considerable reach.

—Unless the king was bluffing, Deanna suddenly feared. Unless Taknapotin was sitting in Greensparrow’s throne room, out of view, sharing a diabolical joke with the merciless king of Avon.

Deanna understood that her fears showed clearly on her face. She quickly composed herself and used that involuntary expression to her benefit.

“I have not been able to contact him since . . . since Selna . . .”

Greensparrow’s eyes widened—too much, Deanna realized, for the name of Selna had struck him profoundly, confirming to the duchess that her handmaid was indeed yet another of Greensparrow’s spies.

“. . . since Selna broke my crown,” Deanna lied. “I fear that Taknapotin took offense, for the demon has been beyond my call—”

“Broke your crown?” Greensparrow interrupted, speaking each word slowly and evenly.

For a moment, Deanna expected the man to fly into a fit of rage, but he composed himself and relaxed in his chair, settling comfortably.

He is angry about Selna and the crown, Deanna told herself, but he is relieved, for he believes the lie, and now thinks that I am still his willing puppet.

“The crown was indeed a link between you and your demon,” Greensparrow confirmed.

And between you and my demon, Deanna silently responded.

“I enchanted it those years ago, when first you came into your power,” Greensparrow said.

When you murdered my family, came Deanna’s angry thoughts.

“I will find another way back to Taknapotin,” the king offered. “Or to another fiend, equally malicious.”

Deanna wanted to divert him from that course, but she realized that she would be walking dangerous ground. “I will not wait,” she said. “I can destroy Brind’Amour without Taknapotin, for I have my brother wizards and their fiends at my call.”

“You must not fail in this!” Greensparrow said suddenly, forcefully, coming forward in the throne, so close to his mirror that his appearance became distorted, his pointy nose and cheeks looming larger and more ominous. “It will all dissolve when Brind’Amour is dead. Eriador’s armies will fall into disarray that we might destroy them one by one.”

“Brind’Amour will die within the week,” Deanna promised, and she feared that she might be correct.

A wave of Greensparrow’s hand broke the contact then, to Deanna’s ultimate relief.

Back in Carlisle’s throne room, the king motioned for the two huge and ugly one-eyed cyclopians holding the enchanted mirror to be gone, then turned to Duke Cresis. DeJulienne, returned from Caer MacDonald, stood beside the brute, twitching nervously. He had been the bearer of ill tidings, after all, not an enviable position in Greensparrow’s court!

Greensparrow’s laugh put the ambassador at ease; even militant Cresis seemed to relax somewhat.

“You do not trust her?” Cresis reasoned.

“Deanna?” Greensparrow answered lightly. “Harmless Deanna?” Another burst of laughter followed, and deJulienne chimed in, but stopped and cleared his throat nervously when Greensparrow sat up abruptly, his face going stern. “Deanna Wellworth is too filled with guilt to be a threat,” Greensparrow explained. “And rightly so. To turn against me, she must explore her own past, wherein she will discover the truth.”

Cresis was nodding at every word, deJulienne noticed, and he realized that the brutish duke of Carlisle had obviously heard all of this before. DeJulienne had not, though, and he was perplexed as to what his king might be hinting.

“Deanna was my link to the throne,” Greensparrow said bluntly, looking deJulienne right in the eye. “She unwittingly betrayed her own family, giving me personal items from each of them.”

DeJulienne started to ask the obvious question, but stopped short, realizing that if what Greensparrow was hinting at was the truth of Avon’s past, then his king was a usurper and murderer.

“All that I feared from Deanna was the loss of Taknapotin,” Greensparrow explained, looking back to Cresis. “But if that fool handmaid broke the crown, then I understand why I have not been able to make contact, a situation that should be easily rectified.”

“What of the coming war?” Cresis asked. “The Eriadorans will soon march, and sail.”

“Fear Eriador?” Greensparrow scoffed. “The ragtag farmers and fisherfolk?”

“Who won the last war,” deJulienne reminded, and he regretted the words as soon as he spoke them, as soon as he saw the dangerous scowl cross Greensparrow’s hawkish features.

“Only because of my absence!” the king roared angrily. Greensparrow sat trembling, his bony knuckles turning white as he clasped the edges of his throne.

“Indeed, my mighty King,” deJulienne said with a submissive bow, but it was too late for the man.

Greensparrow snapped a fist into the air, then extended his long fingers. Beams of light, a rainbow of hues, shot out from each of them, joining and swirling into one white column, roughly the length and breadth of a sword blade.

The king sliced his arm down, the magical blade following.

DeJulienne’s left arm fell to the floor, severed at the shoulder.

The man howled. “My King!” he gasped, clutching at the spurting blood.

With a growl, Greensparrow brought his hand in a straight-across cut down low.

Off came deJulienne’s left leg and the man toppled to the floor, his lifeblood gushing out from the garish wounds. He tried to call out again, but only managed a gurgle. He did lift his remaining arm in a feeble attempt to block the next strike.

It was taken off at the elbow.

“My absence was the cause of our defeat,” Greensparrow said to Cresis, ignoring the squirming, shivering man on the floor. “That, and the incompetence of those I left in charge!

“And because of Gascony,” Greensparrow reasoned. “The Gascons thought a free Eriador would profit them greatly; little did they realize the importance of Carlisle’s protection from Huegoths and other such troubles.

“This time,” Greensparrow went on, coming right out of his seat and pointing a finger to the air, “this time, the Gascons understand the truth of pitiful Eriador and will not ask that we make peace.” The king gingerly stepped over the now-dead deJulienne. He noticed Cresis then, noting particularly the worried look on the ugly face of his duke.

“This is exactly what we wanted!” Greensparrow yelled, and howled with laughter. “We prodded Eriador and foolish Brind’Amour declared war.”

Cresis relaxed somewhat, remembering that this was indeed the outcome that he and Greensparrow had plotted when they had sent the cyclopian tribes into raiding actions against Eriador and DunDarrow.

“They have perhaps fifty of our ships remaining,” Greensparrow went on, accounting for the twenty the Huegoths had reportedly sent to the bottom. “The mere fact that so many of our fine warships were lost to those savages only confirms that the Eriadoran fisherfolk can hardly sail the great galleons.” Greensparrow flashed Cresis a wild, maniacal look. “Yet we have more than a hundred, crewed by experienced sailors and cyclopian warriors. Half the Eriadoran fleet will soon enter the Straits of Mann. I have a like number of warships waiting to scuttle them.”

“It could be a costly battle,” pragmatic Cresis dared to interrupt.

“Not so!” yelled Greensparrow. “When the ships of Baranduine join in, another hundred strong, then that threat is ended.”

The eager king grew more excited with every word, savoring the anticipation of complete victory. “Brind’Amour will then think himself vulnerable on his western shore and he will have to turn his forces about for Montfort before he ever gets out of the mountains.”

It seemed perfectly easy and logical, and so Cresis again allowed himself to relax. Greensparrow came right up to him, put a hand on his shoulder.

“That is assuming that the old wizard is even alive at that time,” he whispered in the cyclopian’s ear. Then he leaped away, taking care to avoid the gore that had been his ambassador to Caer MacDonald.

“Do not underestimate Deanna Wellworth, my one-eyed friend,” Greensparrow explained. “With the powers of my dukes and their demons at her bidding, Deanna will catch the old wizard and show him that the time of his magics are long past.”

Greensparrow stopped suddenly and went silent. He had to find a way to contact Taknapotin once more. Or to get Deanna another demon, if that was his only choice.

“Easy enough!” he shouted, though Cresis had no idea what he was talking about.

The cyclopian was comforted anyway. Cresis had been with Greensparrow all the score-and-two years of the king’s reign. In fact, Cresis, once an ambassador from the cyclopian tribes to Avon’s rightful king, had been an instrument of Greensparrow’s rise. The brute had personally murdered four of the five sons of the king, Deanna Wellworth’s brothers. His reward had been a position as Carlisle’s duke, and in the years of his service, Cresis had learned to trust in Greensparrow’s merciless power. Well-advised were those who feared the king of Avon.

DeJulienne was yet another testament to that truth.

 

 

The next time Luthien saw Brind’Amour, the wizard was again at work evoking a magical tunnel. This time the destination was due west, not east, to Port Charley.

This parting would be no less difficult for Luthien than the last. Oliver and Katerin stood patiently by as the gray wall transformed into a bluish fog and gradually began to swirl. To Luthien’s surprise, Oliver held Threadbare’s reins in hand, the ugly yellow pony standing quietly.

Oliver’s gaze kept drifting to the back of the room, where stood Siobhan, the half-elf seeming cool and impassive. It took Oliver a long while to even get her attention. Then, he merely offered her a resigned look, and lifted his hand, in which he held both of his green gauntlets, to the tip of his wide brim in salute.

Siobhan nodded slightly, and Oliver’s heart skipped a beat as he caught a glimpse of the true pain in Siobhan’s green eyes. She was sad that he was leaving!

Bolstered by that thought, the romantic halfling stood tall—relatively speaking—and stared resolutely at the widening passageway.

Katerin caught it all, and managed a slight, confused smile. She moved away from Oliver and over to Luthien, sweeping him up in her wake and going to the furthest corner from the others.

“Oliver and Siobhan?” she whispered incredulously.

“I know nothing,” Luthien answered truthfully.

“The way she looked at him,” Katerin remarked.

“The way I look at you,” Luthien added.

That gave Katerin pause. She had been so caught up in the tumultuous events preceding the war, she hadn’t even realized the pain her lover was feeling. Studying Luthien’s expression now, she finally understood. He had found Ethan, only to lose Ethan again, and now she, too, was going from his side—and all of them were walking into danger.

“You needn’t go,” Luthien pleaded. “Oliver could serve as Brind’Amour’s eyes.”

“Then all that our king will see is a ship’s rail and the water below it,” Katerin quipped, a not-so-subtle reminder that the halfling wasn’t the most seasoned of sailors.

A long moment of silence passed between them as they stood, staring deeply at one another. They could find another emissary for Brind’Amour, they both knew that, and Katerin could remain at Luthien’s side. But it was not to be. Among Brind’Amour’s tight court, Katerin was best suited for this most-important mission. These few had been the leaders of the revolution, and now were taking their rightful places as the generals of the war. Their duty was to Eriador, and personal feelings would have to wait.

Both Luthien and Katerin came to this complete understanding together, silently and separately.

“Perhaps I could go with you, then,” Luthien offered on a sudden impulse. “I, too, am of Isle Bedwydrin, and familiar with the ways of the sea.”

“And then again I would have a Bedwyr son by my side, protecting me,” Katerin remarked, a bit of sarcasm creeping into her soft tone. “Perhaps Brind’Amour could recall Ethan, for he, too, is of our island home.”

A twang of jealousy came over Luthien, showing clearly on his face.

“And Ethan’s surely the cuter,” Katerin continued.

Luthien’s eyes widened; he didn’t even realize that he had been taken until Katerin burst out in laughter and kissed him hard on the cheek.

Her face grew serious once more as she moved back from the man, though. “Your place is with our king,” she explained firmly. “You are the Crimson Shadow, the symbol of Eriador free. In truth, I believe that Oliver, your most-noted sidekick, should remain with you and Brind’Amour as well, but perhaps his absence will not detract from your presence, and his presence on the ships should help me keep the coastal folk from forgetting their king.”

Her words ended the debate once and for all, clearly spelling out to Luthien the duty before him, and before Katerin. As she went on, though, Katerin’s face grew grim, and she offered more than one glance at Siobhan, standing still by the door at the back of the room.

“You will march across the land in the company of Siobhan,” Katerin said.

Luthien sighed and tried to empathize with the emotions he knew Katerin must be feeling. Siobhan was his old lover, after all, and Katerin knew that all too well. But Luthien had thought that painful situation a thing of the past, had thought that he and Katerin had resolved Siobhan’s rightful place as their common friend.

He started to protest, gently, but again Katerin burst out in laughter and kissed him hard, this time staying close and moving her lips to his.

“Let us hope you are not so gullible when facing an emissary of Greensparrow’s,” the woman whispered.

Luthien held her all the tighter, squeezed her close until Brind’Amour announced that the tunnel was complete, that it was time for Oliver and Katerin to go.

“You mean to take the pony?” Brind’Amour asked Oliver, and from his weary tone it seemed to Luthien that he had asked that question many times already.

“My Threadbare likes boats,” Oliver replied. He looked to Luthien and snapped his fingers in the air. “And you did not believe me when I said that I rode my horse all the way from Gascony!” he declared. Then he motioned and whispered to the yellow pony, and Threadbare knelt down so that little Oliver could climb up into the saddle. With one last look to Siobhan, Oliver entered the tunnel, and with one last look to Luthien, Katerin followed.

And so it began, that same day, the gathering clouds, moving into their respective positions east of the Five Sentinels, along Malpuissant’s Wall, outside of Caer MacDonald’s southern gate, and along the docks of Port Charley.

The proper declarations had been sent; the invasion of Avon began.

 

 

FRONT-RUNNERS

Of all the paths to be taken by Eriador’s forces, the one looming before Luthien’s group was by far the most uncertain. In the east and the west, the army moved by sea, along routes often traveled and well-defined. From Malpuissant’s Wall, the Riders of Eradoch and Proctor Byllewyn’s militia swept across open, easy terrain. But within the hour of departing Caer MacDonald’s southern gate, the forerunners of Luthien’s group, including Luthien, Siobhan, and the other Cutters, were picking their careful way among boulder tumbles and treacherous trails, often with a sheer cliff on one side, rising high and perfectly straight, and a drop, just as sheer, on the other.

The force, nearly six thousand strong, could not move as a whole in the narrow and difficult terrain, but rather, as a plodding mass flanked by a series of coordinated patrols. Organization was critical here; if the scouting patrols were not thorough, if they missed even one unremarkable trail in the crisscrossing mountains, disaster could come swiftly. The main group, nearly a third of the soldiers with their king among them, all of the supply carts and horses, including Luthien’s shining stallion, Riverdancer, would be vulnerable indeed to ambush. Most of the soldiers were more concerned with getting their supplies and horses through the impossible trails and with building impromptu bridges and shoring up the crumbling trails than with watching for enemies. Most of them carried shovels and hammers, not swords, and if some of the cyclopian enemies, particularly the highly trained Praetorian Guards, managed to slip through the front groups unopposed, the march of the entire force might be suddenly stalled.

It was Luthien’s job to make sure that didn’t happen. He had dispersed the remaining four thousand into groups of varying sizes. Five hundred spearheaded the main group’s march, marking the trails Brind’Amour would follow; five hundred others followed the plodding force, leaving open no back door. In the rougher terrain off the main trail, things were less structured. Patrol groups ranged from single scouts (mostly reclusive men who had lived for many years in these parts of the Iron Cross) to supporting groups of a hundred warriors, sweeping designated areas, improvising as they learned each section of these rarely traveled mountains. Luthien and Siobhan moved together, along with a dozen elven Cutters. Sometimes the pair were in sight of all their twelve companions, other times they felt so completely alone in the vast and majestic mountains.

“I will feel all the better when we have met with Bellick’s folk,” Luthien remarked as they traveled along one open area, picking their way across the curving sides of great slabs of stone. Looking above him, a hundred feet higher on the face of the mountain, Luthien saw two elves emerge from a small copse of trees, nimbly running along the steep stone. He marveled at their grace and wished, as he stumbled for the hundredth time, that he had a bit of the elvish blood in him!

Siobhan, following the young Bedwyr’s steps, didn’t disagree, but her response was halfhearted at best, and made Luthien turn about to regard her. She, too, stopped, matching his stare.

The nearly two hundred elves accompanying Caer MacDonald’s army had made no secret of their trepidations concerning the route that might come before them when they linked with the dwarvish army. King Bellick had explained that his dwarfs were hard at work in trying to open tunnels to get the force more easily through the Iron Cross. While elves and dwarfs got along well, the Fairborn had little desire to stalk through deep and dark tunnels. That simply was not their nature.

Siobhan had argued that point during the final preparations—successfully, Luthien had thought. Even if Bellick’s folk could open a tunnel, it was decided that only the main group, laden as they were with carts and supplies, would go underground, while the rest continued their overland sweep to the south. So it confused Luthien now, for just a moment, that Siobhan appeared so glum.

“Oliver?” the young Bedwyr reasoned.

Siobhan didn’t answer, just motioned with her delicate chin that Luthien should move along. He complied, satisfied that he had hit the mark. He knew the pain that he was feeling at his separation from Katerin, especially since he understood that his love was sailing into great danger. Might it be that Siobhan was feeling much the same about her separation from Oliver?

The notion brought a giggle to Luthien’s lips. He cleared his throat, even faked a stumble to help cover the laughter, not wanting to deride the half-elf.

Siobhan understood the ruse, though, understood that Luthien’s giggle was a fair indication of what she might expect from others. She took it stoically and continued on without a word.

Shadows came fast and deep with the setting sun, and though the month of August was not yet gone, the night air was much cooler, a chilling reminder to all the soldiers that they could not afford to get bogged down in the mountains, or get chased back into the Iron Cross once they broke free into the northern fields of Avon.

Luthien and Siobhan made contact with the other Cutters in their area, determining how they might set a perimeter to ensure that every passable trail in this region was well watched. Just a few hundred yards behind their line, a group of nearly seventy warriors was setting camp.

Siobhan found a hollow for her and Luthien, surrounded by high stones on three sides and partially capped by an earthen overhang. Within it they were sheltered from the wind. Luthien even dared to set a small fire in one deep nook, knowing that any light which spilled out of the deep hollow would be meager indeed.

It was a bit awkward for the young Bedwyr—and for his companion, too, he realized—to be so alone together on this quiet summer’s eve. They had been lovers, passionate lovers, and there remained an undeniable attraction between them.

Luthien sat against the wall near to the opening, pulling his crimson cape tight about him to shield him from the nipping wind. He tried to lock his gaze on the dark line of the trail below, but kept glancing back at beautiful Siobhan as she reclined near to the glowing logs. He remembered some of the times he and Siobhan had shared in Caer MacDonald, back when the city had been called Montfort, when Morkney had been duke and life had been simpler. A smile widened on Luthien’s face as he thought of his initial meeting with Siobhan. He had gone to rescue her, thinking her a poor, battered slave girl, only to find out that she was one of the leaders of the most notorious thieving band in all of Montfort! The mere recollection of his image of Siobhan as a helpless creature made Luthien feel the fool; never in his life had he met a person less in need of rescuing!

She was his friend now, as dear to him as anyone could ever be.

Just his friend.

“They’ll not come out this late,” Siobhan remarked, drawing him from his thoughts.

Luthien agreed. “The mountain trails are too dangerous at night, unless the one-eyes carried such a blaze of torches that would alert all the soldiers of Eriador. We can consider our watch at its end.”

Siobhan nodded and turned away.

Sitting against that cold stone, Luthien Bedwyr realized how fortunate he truly was. Katerin knew that he and Siobhan would travel together, and yet she had gone out to Port Charley willingly, saddened to be separated from Luthien, but with not a word to him concerning his relationship with his traveling companion. Katerin trusted him fully, and Luthien understood in his heart that her trust was not misplaced. Feelings for Siobhan remained strong within him; he could not deny her beauty, or that his love for her had, in many ways, been real. But Siobhan was a friend, a dear and trusted companion, and nothing more. For Katerin O’Hale was the only woman for Luthien Bedwyr.

He knew that, felt that, without any regrets, and Katerin knew him well enough to trust him completely.

Indeed, sitting there that night, with only the occasional crackle from the fire and the groaning of the wind through the stones, with the beauty of the stars and Siobhan to keep him company, Luthien Bedwyr fully appreciated the good fortune that had come into his life. With warm thoughts of his Katerin filling his mind, he drifted off to sleep.

Siobhan was not as comfortable. She kept a quiet watch over Luthien and when she was certain that he was asleep, she drew out a folded parchment from a pocket. Still watching Luthien, the half-elf eased it open and leaned near to the fire, that she might read it once more.

 

To my dearest half-elven-type Siobhan,

From this halfling so gallant and true,

The wind blows of war, thus I must be gone,

The fairest rose no more in my view.

 

But fear not, for not miles nor sea,

Not mountains nor rivers nor one-eyes,

Can block our thoughts, me for you, you for me,

Or blanket our hearts with disguise.

 

With summer-type breezes tickling my hairy chin,

Upon my palm rested to gaze at your beauty.

Would that I were not so needed now

Alas for hero-bound duty!

 

I go, but not for long!

Oliver

 

The half-elf closed the letter carefully and replaced it in her pocket. “Foolish Oliver,” she whispered with a shake of her head, wondering what she was getting herself into. She took up a stick and prodded the embers, managing to stir forth a small flicker of fire from the nearly consumed logs.

What might Oliver be thinking, she wondered, and she sighed deeply, realizing that the halfling’s amorous advances might make her seem quite ridiculous. Oliver carried a well-earned reputation as a charmer among the scullery maids and other less-worldly women, but those who better understood the ways of the wide world, who recognized the truth of the halfling’s boasts and stolen finery, saw that side of Oliver as more than a bit of a joke. His fractured poems, like the one in the letter, could make quite an impression on a young girl, or a woman locked in drudgery, who did not read the works of the accomplished bards, but Siobhan was no tittering schoolgirl. She saw the halfling clearly.

Why, then, did she miss Oliver so damned much?

The half-elf looked across the way to Luthien and managed a chuckle at his mounting snores. The flame was gone now, the fire nothing more than a pile of orange-glowing embers, but its heat was considerable, and comfortable, and so Siobhan settled back and, with a final look to make sure the trail remained clear, let sleep overtake her.

A sleep filled with thoughts of a certain highwayhalfling.

 

 

The next day was dreary and cold, threatening rain. A heavy fog enshrouded the mountains, rising up from the river valleys to meet with the low-hanging clouds so that all the world seemed gray. Sound was muffled almost as much as sight, and it took Luthien and Siobhan some time to locate those Cutters camped nearby.

One of the elves suggested a delay, waiting until the fog had lifted, but Luthien couldn’t agree to that.

“The ships are sailing,” he reminded. “And the riders have gone out from Malpuissant’s Wall. Even as we sit here talking they are likely closing in on Princetown.”

There came no further arguments, and so the group carefully plotted their lines of probing forays, and split apart, with two elves waiting at the spot on the main trail for the lead runners of the rear supporting force.

Luthien and Siobhan moved steadily, their fellow scouts lost to them almost as soon as they had set out. They felt alone, so very alone, and yet, they knew they were not. They were deep into the Iron Cross now, many miles further than they had been on the occasion of Luthien’s capture of Duke Resmore. The other scouting bands were near, they knew, and so, likely, were cyclopians.

It wasn’t long before the pair’s fears were confirmed. Luthien led the way up a rocky bluff, creeping to its ridge and peering over.

Below him, down a short and steep decline, in a clearing edged by rocks, lay a cyclopian camp. A handful of the brutes milled about the blackened remains of the previous night’s fire, gathering together their supplies. One of them polished a huge sword, another sharpened the tip of its heavy spear, while a pair of the brutes off to the side pulled on their heavily padded silver and black uniforms—regalia that Luthien and Siobhan knew all too well.

“Praetorian Guards,” the young Bedwyr whispered when Siobhan, bow in hand, was in place beside him. “A pity it wasn’t this easy when we sought proof of Greensparrow’s involvement. Better than facing a wizard!”

“Praetorian Guards in the neutral mountains proves nothing,” Siobhan reasoned. She went silent, crouching a bit lower as one of the brutes moved toward her and Luthien, carrying a bucket of dirty water. Oblivious to the pair, the one-eye splashed the water against the rocks at the bottom of the decline and turned back to camp.

Luthien nodded, conceding the point to Siobhan, then eyed the half-elf slyly. “But now we are formally at war,” he remarked, “and an enemy is before us.”

Siobhan scrutinized the camp carefully. “Seven of them, at least,” she replied. “And we are but two.” She looked all about, and Luthien did as well, but none of their allies were apparent.

Their gazes eventually met, melting into a communal smile and shrug. “Kill them quick,” was all the advice that Siobhan offered.

Luthien drew out Blind-Striker and studied the moves of the brutes. One was near the fire, collecting warm embers in a pouch, but the others were all about the perimeter of the stony clearing, appearing as no more than gray shadows in the fog.

“Soon to be six,” the young Bedwyr promised, and over the ridge he went, slipping fast and silent down the decline.

A brute to the right yelled out, and Luthien broke into a full charge. He bore down on the cyclopian; it came up and drew out a sword to meet the charge.

An arrow whistled right over the young Bedwyr’s shoulder, startling him, forcing him to lurch to the left. The stunned cyclopian threw up its arms wildly, dodged and yelled, and caught the arrow deep in its shoulder. Worse for the brute, Luthien deftly followed the momentum of his reaction. The young Bedwyr went down to one knee in a complete spin and came across, both hands clinging tightly to Blind-Striker. The fine sword gashed the brute in the side of the ribs and tore across its chest, opening a wide wound.

It fell away dying, but Luthien hardly noticed. He put his feet under him and rushed out to the side, a few running steps to the right, lifting his sword high to defeat the chopping axe of yet another cyclopian. Luthien quickly shifted his blade diagonally, pushing the brute’s weapon out wide, then punched straight ahead, slamming Blind-Striker’s crafted hilt into the one-eye’s face. The fabulous crosspiece, sharp-edged sculptures of dragon wings, cut a deep gash along the side of the brute’s single eye, and the cyclopian retreated a couple of staggering steps, red blood washing away its vision.

Luthien had no time to follow, for yet another one-eye came in hard, forcing him to pivot fast and half-turn to the left, swiping down desperately with his sword to pick off a thrusting spear.

 

 

Siobhan, another arrow set and ready, followed Luthien’s rush to the right, thinking to lead him in with a killing shot. She caught movement out of the corner of her eye, though, and halted her swinging bow, leaving it locked steady in the wake of her companion. A cyclopian had circled out of the rocks and now bore down on Luthien from behind.

It crossed into view and the half-elf let fly, knowing she had to be perfect, knowing that she had but one shot to save her friend.

The arrow plunged deep into the brute’s head, dropping it straight to the ground without so much as a grunt.

Her arms moving in perfect harmony, Siobhan put up another arrow and let fly, this time grazing the chest of the staggered brute Luthien had punched in the face. It fell back another few steps, buying Luthien precious time.

But Siobhan’s aid was at an abrupt end. She wheeled back across the encampment to the left, taking a bead on a pair of cyclopians crossing the clearing for the rocky climb to her position. Off flew the arrow, slamming one in the belly and doubling it over.

Siobhan barely had time to grin, watching its companion dive desperately behind the cover of some rocks, when she realized that another brute had slipped out of the mist and was standing right over her, its axe up high.

“Eight,” the half-elf lamented.

 

 

The speartip rushed ahead in three rapid thrusts, but Luthien managed to parry and dodge, shifting his hips out of harm’s way each time. He had his back to Siobhan now, but guessed that she could not help him as yet another one-eye came rushing in at his back.

Luthien measured the footsteps and twirled aside at the very last moment, barely avoiding being skewered. The off-balance brute lurched past, nearly taking out its companion.

The young Bedwyr put his feet back under him quickly and charged in, hoping to score some hits amidst the confusion, but these were Praetorian Guards, well-trained veterans. While its stumbling companion regained its footing the other brute stepped in front, spear whipping across to pick off Luthien’s series of attacks.

Luthien kept up the barrage, then cut hard down and to the side, defeating a spear thrust from the second one-eye. He rushed back to the left, forcing the first to retreat, then pivoted back, swinging his sword about.

The thrusting spear slipped past him, in front of him, and Luthien went right around the other way in a complete circle, going down low, trying to come in under the one-eye’s defenses.

In response, the cyclopian thrust its speartip straight to the ground and ran out behind the blocking weapon.

Luthien rolled right under the defense, using his sword to keep the brute’s weapon-arm extended. The other cyclopian was fast returning and so the young Bedwyr struck out hard and fast with his free hand, crunching the brute’s nose.

Then Luthien had to leap back and break, squaring up once more against the pair. On they came, showing more respect this time, offering measured attack routines that Luthien could easily defeat, but keeping up their common defense, keeping the young Bedwyr at bay.

Gradually the cyclopians increased their tempo, working in unison, giving Luthien no opportunities and inevitably putting him back on his heels.

 

 

Purely on instinct, Siobhan tossed her bow into the air and caught it in both hands down low on one end. She snapped it out like a snake, stepping into the swing and smacking the brute across the face, staggering it backward. Again without thinking, the lightning-fast half-elf tossed her bow once more, catching it in one hand while her other went to her quiver and pulled out an arrow.

Before the axe-wielding cyclopian could even take a step forward to get near to her, she pulled back and let fly, point-blank.

The brute fell away into the fog.

Siobhan wheeled back to see the other cyclopian out from behind the rocks and in full charge. Behind it came its companion, holding its belly still, and crawling in a futile attempt to keep up.

No time for another arrow, Siobhan realized, so she dropped the bow and rushed ahead, drawing her short and slender sword as she went. She came to the lip of the ridge and leaped high and far, over the slashing sword of her adversary. She stuck her own sword down as she flew past, scoring a hit on the one-eye’s shoulder, but since she was sailing past, there was little force behind the strike and the cyclopian was not badly wounded.

Siobhan hit the ground running, skipping gingerly down the treacherous slope. So fast had she moved that the crawling one-eye never realized the danger, and Siobhan finished it with a single stroke to the back of its neck as she skittered past.

The other brute came on in a fast, but respectful, pursuit, following Siobhan as she ran out of the clearing to the left, away from Luthien’s continuing battle.

 

 

Luthien realized that he had to do something dramatic, and quickly, for the third one-eye, dazed and bloody, but not down, would soon join in. He launched Blind-Striker into a series of cunning and vicious thrusts and slashes, all parried, but Luthien used the momentum to break contact and run ahead toward the back end of the small clearing. He scrambled up the side of a waist-high boulder, then leaped out far to the side, narrowly avoiding the lumbering thrust of one pursuing brute. Luthien came down at the one-eye’s side, facing away and with open ground before him. He threw himself backward—exactly the opposite of what the turning cyclopian expected. The brute didn’t question the luck, though, and swung its spear about, thinking to skewer the man.

Then it understood the ruse, for Luthien snapped in a counter-clockwise spin as the spear thrust harmlessly past. Down the young Bedwyr went and across came Blind-Striker, scoring a wicked hit on the cyclopian’s hip. The brute leaped out to the side, sprawling across the same boulder Luthien had climbed, and rolling off its side, thinking that the wicked sword would soon come in for the killing blow.

But Luthien couldn’t follow the attack, for the second one-eye was back in, forcing the young Bedwyr into a defensive posture once more.

 

 

None in all of Avonsea could navigate without their sight as well as the Fairborn, who spent so many dark nights dancing among the trees. Thus, the thick mists aided Siobhan as she outdistanced the pursuing cyclopian. She took a roundabout route, smiling grimly as she came upon the body of the cyclopian she had shot point-blank, her bow on the ground just a few feet away.

The half-elf heard the grunts of the out-of-breath one-eye closing. She skittered to the bow and scooped it up and when the brute came out of the fog, it saw its doom.

The cyclopian lifted its thick arms defensively, calling out for mercy, and if the fight had been over, if Luthien had not been in desperate straits just a few yards away, Siobhan might have held her shot. Not now, though; not with the certainty that if she took her attention away from this “prisoner,” the one-eye would waste no time in tackling her and choking the life out of her.

The arrow zipped between the upraised arms, bounced off the cyclopian’s heavy breastplate, and ricocheted at an upward angle, driving through the brute’s throat. The cyclopian stood for a moment longer, waving its arms stupidly, but gradually it sank to its knees, its dying words no more than indecipherable gurgles.

Siobhan immediately turned her attention to Luthien, engaged with two, soon to be three, cyclopians. She considered dropping her bow and drawing out her sword once more, charging to his side, but she feared she didn’t have the time.

“Down!” she yelled, praying that her friend would understand.

Luthien, not sure, but without any real options, threw himself into a backward roll. He was barely halfway down when the arrow sliced the air over his head, right in front of his face, thudding solidly into the chest of one cyclopian. The brute ran backward a few steps, weirdly, flapping its arms like a dying chicken before falling into the dirt.

The other cyclopian, following Luthien’s move, made the mistake of taking note of its faltering companion. That instant of hesitation gave the young Bedwyr all the room he needed. As he came around in his roll, he tucked his feet under him and reversed direction, staying low, his leading sword crossing under the defenses of the distracted brute. Blind-Striker dove into the one-eye’s belly, running at an upward angle, through the brute’s diaphragm and into its lungs.

The cyclopian tumbled backward and Luthien couldn’t help but follow, coming to rest atop the dead brute.

An arrow just to the side alerted the young Bedwyr that the one remaining cyclopian had rejoined the fight. Siobhan had missed, he noted with some concern, but fortunately the arrow had come close enough to force the cyclopian into a desperate, off-balance dodge. Luthien tugged hard on Blind-Striker, but to no avail, for the blade was truly stuck. With a frustrated growl, Luthien scrambled out from the tangle bare-handed.

Regaining its balance, the one-eye tried a halfhearted chop, but Luthien brought his arm against the side of the heavy axe and pushed it out wide. Then he waded in with a series of heavy blows, left and right, left and right, and the brute staggered away.

Stubbornly the cyclopian put up its axe defensively, fending off Luthien’s pursuit, and shook its head, fast regaining its senses. A wicked grin crossed its face as soon as it realized that the man had no weapon.

Luthien didn’t see the shot, didn’t hear a whistle in the air or the crack of bone at the impact. As though it simply appeared from nowhere, the butt of an arrow was sticking out from the side of the cyclopian’s knee. With a howl, the cyclopian dropped and Luthien waded in, again easily turning out the axe. Grunting with every heavy blow, Luthien pounded the brute into the dirt.

Siobhan was beside him then, grinning as she surveyed the battleground.

“Six dead and one captured,” Luthien remarked, offering a wink and draping an arm across the shoulder of his slender companion.

Siobhan wriggled away. “Seven dead,” she corrected, indicating the ridge line, “for one came out of the mist.”

Luthien nodded his admiration.

“Four clean kills for me,” Siobhan announced, “and you must share all three of yours, and the capture.”

Luthien’s smile disappeared.

“That makes six for me,” the half-elf figured, “and but two for the legendary Crimson Shadow!” She skipped away then, quite pleased with herself.

A dumbfounded Luthien watched her as she searched through the camp. Gradually his smile returned. “Challenge accepted!” he called, confident that in the course of this campaign he would be given ample opportunity to catch up.

The captured cyclopian was ferried back along the lines to the main group, where Brind’Amour had no trouble in hypnotizing the brute and garnering valuable information. Other skirmishes along the line brought in more prisoners, who only confirmed what the first one-eye had revealed: a large force of cyclopians, mostly Praetorian Guards, was making its way into a wide valley some twenty miles or so to the south.

With that general description in hand, Brind’Amour then used his crystal ball to send his eyes far ahead. He located the force and was pleased. The Eriadorans would meet up with Bellick’s dwarvish army halfway to the one-eyes, and then the brutes would be in for a warm welcome indeed!

Luthien and Siobhan were brought forward to speak for Brind’Amour when contact with Bellick’s army was finally made. They came in sight of their allies—five thousand grim-faced dwarfs, armored in glittering mail and shining shields, and with an assortment of weapons, mostly axes and heavy hammers—on a wide and fairly open stretch of wind-blown stone. Bellick was there, along with their friend Shuglin.

Luthien and Siobhan could hardly catch their breath at the sight of the spectacle. Hope flooded through the young Bedwyr; with such allies as these, how could Eriador lose?

“Surely the one-eyes are in for a nasty surprise,” Siobhan whispered at his side.

“Dwarvish fighters,” Luthien replied, imitating Oliver’s thick Gascon accent. “But, oh, how bad they smell!”

He turned to offer a wink to his half-elven companion, but lost it in the face of the forlorn look Siobhan threw his way.

Luthien cleared his throat and let it go, wondering again just how much was going on between Siobhan and Oliver.

 

 

THE VALLEY OF DEATH

Their leader is wise,” Brind’Amour remarked, surveying the rough and broken terrain to the south.

The others gathered about the old wizard offered no arguments to the observation. The cyclopians had made haste long after sunset, not setting their camp until the steep walls of the valley were behind them.

Brind’Amour sat down on a stone, rubbing his thick white beard, trying to improvise a plan of attack.

“Not so many,” the dwarf Shuglin offered. “We counted campfires, and unless they’re fifty to one about the flames, they’re not more than half our number.”

“Too many, then,” Luthien interjected.

“Bah!” snorted the battle-hungry dwarf. “We’ll run them down!”

Brind’Amour listened to it all distantly. He had no doubt that his fine force, with two-to-one odds in their favor, would overwhelm the Praetorian Guards, but how expensive might an open battle be? Eriador could not afford to lose even a quarter of its force while still in the mountains, not with so much fortified ground to cover before they ever got near Carlisle.

“If we hit them hard straight on and on both flanks,” Siobhan asked, “spreading our line thin so that they believe we are greater in number than we truly are, how might they react?”

“They will break ranks and run,” Shuglin replied without hesitation. “Ever a coward was a one-eye!”

Luthien was shaking his head; so was Bellick. Brind’Amour spoke for them. “This group is well-trained and well-led,” the old wizard answered. “They were wise enough, and disciplined enough, to get out of the valley before setting camp. They’ll not run off so readily.”

A sly sparkle came into the man’s blue eyes. “But they will fall back,” he reasoned.

“Into the valley,” Siobhan added.

“Using the valley walls to tighten our lines,” agreed Bellick, catching on to the idea.

“Into the valley,” Luthien echoed, “where groups of archers will be waiting.”

A long moment of silence passed, all the gathered leaders exchanging hopeful smiles. They knew that the cyclopians were well-disciplined, but if they could force a retreat into the vale, then make the one-eyes think they had walked into an ambush, the resulting chaos might just send them into full retreat—and fleeing enemies inflicted little damage.

“If they do not break ranks from our initial attack, then we will be dangerously thin,” Brind’Amour had to put in, just a reminder that this might not be so easy as it sounded in theory.

“We will overrun them anyway,” stern Shuglin promised, slapping a hammer across his open palm to accentuate his point. Looking at that grim expression, Brind’Amour believed the dwarf.

All that was left was to divide the forces accordingly. Luthien and Siobhan would collect most of the scouting groups, including all of the elvish Cutters, and filter south in two quiet lines, slipping past the cyclopian encampment and moving over the valley rims to take up defensible positions on the slopes. Bellick and Shuglin were charged with ordering the frontal line, nine thousand strong, more than half of them dwarfs.

Brind’Amour begged out of the detail planning, for the wizard understood that he would have to find a place to fit in. Magic would be a necessary ingredient, particularly in the initial assault, if they wanted to get the one-eyes moving. But the wizard knew that he had to be careful, for if he revealed himself too fully, any cyclopians who got out of the mountains would begin a whirlwind of talk that would stretch all the way to Carlisle.

The old wizard had just the enchantment in mind, subtle, yet devilishly effective. He just had to figure out how best to pull it off.

The two flanking lines, five hundred in each, set out that night, quiet archers moving swiftly. Luthien and Siobhan stayed together, spearheading the line that passed the cyclopian encampment on the east. They came over the rim of the valley shortly before dawn, picked their careful way down the slopes, searching out positions even as they heard the first rumbles of battle to the north.

 

 

Nearly two thousand Eriadoran soldiers flanked the charge on the right, another two thousand on the left, but it was the center of that line, the rolling thunder of five thousand grim-faced, battle-hungry dwarfs, that sent the Praetorian Guards into a frenzy. The leading groups of cyclopians were simply overwhelmed, buried under the weight of stomping boots, but as Brind’Amour had reasoned, the force was well-trained and they regrouped accordingly, ready to make a determined stand.

Then Brind’Amour went to work. The cyclopians recognized that they were outnumbered, but apparently had the notion to stand and fight. Holding two mugs filled with clear water, the wizard swept one arm out to the left, and one to the right, chanting all the while and dancing slightly, moving his feet in prescribed fashion.

The water flew out of the mugs and seemed to dissipate in mid-air, but in truth, it merely spread so thin as to be nearly invisible.

The curtain widened as Brind’Amour injected more of his magical energy, encompassing all of the dwarvish and Eriadoran line. In the dust and tumult, the enchanted liquid took shape as an indistinguishable mirror, effectively doubling the image of the charging force.

The cyclopian leaders were not fools. They had no specific head count, of course, but it quickly became clear to them that this raging army outnumbered them three or four to one, and they would simply be overrun. As expected, as hoped for, the call went through the cyclopian ranks to break and retreat to the narrower ground of the valley to the south.

Those cyclopians who did not turn and run fast enough found themselves quickly engaged with fierce dwarfs, usually two or three at a time.

But the bulk of the Praetorian Guard force did get out, heads bent and running swiftly. Orders continued to filter from group commander to group commander, efficiently, just the way Brind’Amour and his cohorts had expected. As the one-eyes came to the steep-walled entrance of the valley, the plan shaped out in full. Two-thirds of the cyclopian force would form a delaying line across the valley mouth, slowing their furious enemies, while the rest of the one-eyes scrambled up the slopes, east and west, finding high, defensible ground that would put the Eriadorans and their dwarvish allies at a sore disadvantage.

From their concealed perches, Luthien, Siobhan, and a thousand other archers waited patiently, letting the one-eyes charge in, letting the delaying line stretch out, and letting those others begin their ascent.

A fierce battle began almost immediately at the valley mouth, as the three groups of the Eriadoran charge converged. Still the furious dwarfs led the way, pounding the much larger cyclopians fearlessly. A dwarf fell dead for every one-eye, but the sheer weight of the line forced the Praetorian Guards slowly backward.

A one-eyed general stood on the slopes not so far below Luthien, barking out orders, calling for his soldiers to bolster a rocky outcropping that would serve as their first blocking point on this, the eastern wall.

Luthien unfolded his bow and pinned it; the general would be his first kill of the day.

“Eriador free!” he shouted, the signal, and off flew his arrow, unerringly, taking the cyclopian in the back and launching the brute into a headlong dive down the side of the valley. All around Luthien, and all along the higher ground across the way, the Eriadoran archers popped up from their concealment, letting fly a rain of deadly arrows on the surprised cyclopians.

“Eriador free!” Luthien cried again, scrambling up from behind a stone ridge, drawing out his sword and leaping down to the next lower footing. Siobhan, letting fly her second arrow, and killing her second cyclopian, started to yell out to him, to ask him where he was going, but she let it go, actually finding it within her to laugh aloud at her excited companion.

The arrow volley continued; in several spots, cyclopians and Eriadorans came into close melee. The Eriadorans held the higher ground, though, and with the archery support, most of those skirmishes ended with several cyclopians dead and the rest leaping fast to get away.

But the valley floor was no better a place for the surprised one-eyes. The delaying line held for a short while, but as it was pushed inevitably back by the dwarfs and Eriadorans pouring into the valley, all semblance of order broke down, into a melting pot of sheer chaos. Clouds of dust rose from the floor, rocks tumbled away from the valley walls thunderously, and cries of victory and of agony echoed from stone to stone.

Siobhan soon found herself out of targets, her vision limited by the thick dust, and the cyclopians falling back down the valley wall. She took up her bow and scrambled over the ridge, picking her way carefully down and calling for Luthien.

She spotted a group of cyclopians stubbornly coming up, just a few yards to the side and a dozen or so yards below her. Immediately, her bow came up and she drew out an arrow, but she hesitated for just a moment, looking ahead of the one-eyes in a desperate attempt to find Luthien. Surely they were moving along the same path he had descended; surely they had come upon him, or soon would!

The leading one-eye, a huge, three-hundred pound, muscular brute, put a hand on an outcropping and threw up a leg, then heaved itself to stand atop the high stone. The cyclopian overbalanced forward, and screamed out, and Siobhan understood its frenzy as, out of the hollow below that ridge, came the blade of a familiar sword. Blind-Striker went right through the brute, tearing out its back, and Luthien came up fast, retracting the sword and shoulder-blocking the cyclopian right back over the outcropping.

It fell atop the next in line, and that one, in turn, tumbled atop the third.

Up came the young Bedwyr, dropping his bloody sword to the stone and taking up his bow. One, two, three, went his arrows, each scoring a hit, each nudging on the falling tumble.

“Damn you,” Siobhan muttered, and she managed to get one arrow away, nailing one of the cyclopians who had moved out of the line. Then the half-elf watched, amazed and inspired, as Luthien took up his sword once more, called out for “Eriador free!” and leaped down from the outcropping, quickly catching the bouncing jumble of one-eyes and hacking away with abandon.

Siobhan quickly surmised that her reckless young friend had that situation well under control, so she moved off, looking for more targets. Not an easy proposition, the half-elf discovered when she was only fifty feet above the valley floor, for the rout was on in full. Both lines had broken apart, but Bellick’s skilled dwarvish warriors formed into tight battle groups, most resembling wedges, that sliced any attempted cyclopian formations apart. Cyclopian stragglers, separated from their ranks, were immediately overwhelmed by the supporting Eriadorans, buried under a barrage of hacking swords and axes, stuck by spears from several directions at once, or simply tackled and crushed under the weight of the rolling army.

 

 

At the valley mouth, Brind’Amour watched it all with satisfaction. He had done well—they all had—for now those cyclopians who managed to escape the ambush would flee all the way back to Avon with word of an invading army twice its actual size.

Several times as large, the wizard mused, for he knew that panicking, retreating soldiers had a way of making the enemy even greater than it truly was, even greater than a simple wizard’s trick had made it appear!

The wizard spotted one skirmish, on the lower slopes of the western valley wall, where a handful of cyclopians had taken cover within a protective ring of huge stones. A group of elves were trying to get at them, but the ground favored the one-eyes.

Brind’Amour began to chant once more, lifted his arms out to the side and, as his words brought forth the magical energy, swept his arms together, clapping his hands.

The stones of the cyclopians’ defensive ring rolled together suddenly, squeezing the brutes, crushing a couple, and leaving the rest out in the open.

The elves were on them immediately, slender swords darting through the desperate defenses of the scrambling brutes, laying them low in a matter of seconds. One of the elves stood tall on the closed stones, shaking his head. He looked to the east, saw Brind’Amour standing quietly, and saluted the old wizard.

Then he and his fellows ran off, for there remained more cyclopians yet to kill.

Brind’Amour sighed and walked into the valley, reciting an old religious verse that he knew from his younger days those centuries before, when he had used his magics to help construct the fabulous Ministry cathedral.

“The Valley of Death,” the verse was called, and barely a few feet in, the wizard began to step across the corpses of cyclopians, dwarfs, and humans.

A fitting title.

 

 

Luthien ran along a narrow ledge higher up the valley wall, looking for some alternate route, or some wider spot, for a group of fleeing cyclopians were close behind. The one-eyes didn’t know that he was there, but they would figure it out soon enough. Luthien glanced left, up the steep wall, a climb he could not even attempt. Then he looked right, down toward the valley floor, hoping to see Siobhan or some other friendly archer taking a bead on those trotting behind him. All that he saw was a thick dust cloud; he would find no allies that way.

The path wound on, narrow and dangerous.

Luthien didn’t know how many cyclopians were back there, but there were several, at least, and he had no desire to fight against unfavorable odds up here, with so little ground for maneuvering. He resigned himself to do just that, though, and he considered his resources and how he might strike hard and fast to better even the odds. A bow shot might kill the first in line—if he was lucky enough, that falling one might take the second with it, or at least slow the others so that Luthien could let fly a couple of more arrows. But what if he missed, or if his first shot didn’t drop the leading cyclopian, but only slowed the brute?

Luthien went around another bend, resolved to use his sword alone, and not his bow. He would turn and make his stand, he decided. As he came around, he saw that the ledge widened in this one area, a depression in the cliff wall several feet deep.

With a sigh of relief, Luthien skipped to the back wall, pulled the hood of his magical cape over his head and stood very still. Only seconds later, he could hear the closing cyclopians, lumbering on and talking of climbing to the valley rim and escaping.

The one-eyes came around the bend; peeking out from under the hood, Luthien counted as they passed. The seventh, and last, came into view as the first moved on past the wider area.

The notion flitted through Luthien’s mind that he had been wise to run ahead, and not to stop and fight this desperate crew. That wise thought was abruptly washed away, though, as the daring young Bedwyr realized that the back end of this cyclopian line might make for easy targets. Hardly conscious of the move, Luthien rushed out from the wall, shouldering the trailing cyclopian right over the ledge. Luthien stopped, facing the drop, then pivoted a complete turn, coming around hard with Blind-Striker to smash the next cyclopian across the hip as the startled brute spun about to register the attack.

Luthien dug in hard, clenched tightly on his blade with both hands, and forced that second brute over the ledge as well. The third, already on the narrower path, howled and turned about, sword at the ready. Luthien rushed right up to it, keeping it out of the wider area so that its friends could not flank him. Two of those one-eyes, thinking they had been caught from behind by the nasty Eriadorans, only increased their pace, running off as fast as they could manage along the narrow ledge. The other two stopped and turned, calling to their battling companion.

Luthien worked his blade furiously, not letting the cyclopian off its heels for a moment. “I have them!” the man yelled, looking over his shoulder as though expecting reinforcements.

His cavalier attitude and his dress told the brute fighting him much. “The Crimson Shadow!” the foolish cyclopian yelled out. That was all its companions needed to hear. With typical cyclopian loyalty, they bid their engaged friend farewell and ran off.

Terror drove the cyclopian fighting Luthien to daring, reckless attack routines. It dropped one foot back, retreating half a step, then came forward in a rush, lowering its shoulder, hoping that the bold tactic would catch its opponent off his guard.

It didn’t. Luthien merely dropped back a step and slipped to the side, around the wall into the wider area. Blind-Striker slid easily through the cyclopian’s ribs as it stumbled past.

Luthien was fast to withdraw the blade, jumping back to defensive posture. The cyclopian stood perfectly still, groaning, trying to turn about to face the swordsman squarely. It finally managed to do so, just in time to see the bottoms of Luthien’s feet as the young man leaped out and double-kicked, blasting the wounded brute from the ledge.

Luthien was up in an instant. “The Crimson Shadow, true enough,” he called to the tumbling cyclopian. He took a breath and ran off along the narrow path in pursuit of the four who had fled. Confident that they would not stop to wait for the pursuit, Luthien slid Blind-Striker back into its scabbard and pulled his folding bow from his back, extending and pinning it as he ran.

The frightened cyclopians were reckless on the treacherous path and Luthien gained little ground. He did get one shot, though, and made the most of it, nailing the trailing one-eye in the back of the calf as it rounded one bend. It stumbled out of sight, but Luthien knew it could not escape. Out came his sword and on he charged, slowing to a determined stalk as he neared that bend.

He found the brute leaning heavily against the wall, crouching low, holding a sword in one hand and its bleeding calf with the other. Its companion, a dozen feet further along the ledge, waited anxiously.

Luthien casually strode forward and whacked at the injured one-eye. It picked off the straightforward attack, but nearly toppled for the weight of the blow. Its companion howled and started forward, but Luthien put an end to that, sent the one-eye running off, merely by shifting Blind-Striker to his left hand, then reaching back with his right to pull the bow off his shoulder.

“Your friend has fled,” he said to the injured cyclopian. “I’ll accept your surrender.”

The brute lowered its sword and started to straighten, then came ahead suddenly in a rush, thrusting boldly.

In a single movement, Luthien brought the tip of his bow straight across, right to left, then turned the bow tip up and swept it back across, taking the thrusting sword out wide. Out came Blind-Striker to stick the off-balance brute through the heart. It fell heavily against the wall and slowly sank to the ground, its lifeless eye staring coldly at Luthien.

The young Bedwyr looked ahead and could tell that the narrow ledge didn’t go on much further, spilling out into wider terrain. There was no way that he could get to the fleeing cyclopians before they reached that area. With a sigh, Luthien looked back to the valley floor, then scanned the route that would get him back there. A noise quickly turned him back to the ledge, though, where, to his surprise, two of the fleeing brutes were running back toward him with all speed!

And they were both looking more over their shoulder than ahead.

Luthien skittered back from the last kill and held tight to the wall, again using the magical camouflage of his magnificent cape. Peeking out from under the cowl, he saw the trailing cyclopian stumble, then, an instant later, go down on its face.

The remaining brute put its head down and howled in terror, running full out, skipping past the companion it had deserted, lying dead against the wall.

Out jumped Luthien; the one-eye broke stride for just an instant, then rambled ahead.

Both hands clenching tight to Blind-Striker, Luthien thrust out and dropped his back leg out from under him, falling low as the pierced cyclopian came right over him, turning a somersault and sliding back from the bloodied blade as it passed. It slammed down on its back onto the ledge, too dazed to rise in time, for Luthien came up and about, his blade diving into cyclopian flesh to finish the task.

It was no surprise to Luthien when his unseen ally came running along the ledge, bow in hand.

“I scored eight kills this day,” Siobhan announced proudly.

“Then you have fallen behind,” an exhausted Luthien informed her, holding aloft his dripping sword. “Fourteen, and that makes it sixteen to fourteen in my favor.”

The half-elf eyed the young man sternly. “’Tis a long way to Carlisle,” she said grimly.

The friends shared a smile.

 

 

“They are in full retreat,” Shuglin informed the two kings, Bellick and Brind’Amour, when he found them among a group of Eriadorans and dwarfs near the middle of the long valley.

“In no formation,” another dwarf added. “Running like the cowards they are!”

“A true rout, then,” reasoned Bellick, and there was no disagreement. Losses to the joined human and dwarvish armies were amazingly light, but all reports indicated that the cyclopian dead would number near two thousand.

The dwarf king turned to Brind’Amour. “We must pursue with all speed,” Bellick said. “Catch them while they are disorganized, and before they can find defensible ground.”

The old wizard thought it over for a long while. There were many considerations here, not the least of which being the fact that the vast bulk of their supplies were still a couple of miles north of the valley. Bellick’s reasoning made sense, though, for if they allowed the terror of the rout to dissipate, the Praetorian Guards would fast regroup, and would not likely be caught so unawares again.

“I follow your word in this,” Bellick assured Brind’Amour, the dwarf recognizing the wizard’s turmoil. “Yet I beg of you to allow my dwarfs to complete what they have begun!”

Every dwarf in the area cheered out at those words, and Brind’Amour realized that holding the eager warriors of DunDarrow back now would cause simmering feelings that his army could ill-afford at that time. “Go with your forces,” he said to Bellick. “But not so far. Keep the one-eyes running. My soldiers will collect our wounded and our supplies, and set our camp there.” Brind’Amour pointed to the southern end of the valley. “Return to us this night, that we might resume our joined march in the morning.”

Bellick nodded, smiling widely beneath the bright hair of his orange beard. He reached up to clap Brind’Amour on the shoulder as he walked past, as he walked into a gathering mob of his eager subjects.

“All the way to Carlisle,” began the chant, starting low and growing to a roar.

 

 

VISIONS

Luthien commanded the main group of Eriadoran soldiers that day, setting the camp, tending the wounded, burying the dead. Though he doubted that the cyclopians would regroup and come back at them, he preferred to err on the side of caution. Scouts were sent up over the rim of the valley; archers were put in place on the valley walls, overlooking the encampment.

Brind’Amour spent the remainder of the day in his tent, alone, though soldiers venturing near to the tent often heard the wizard speaking in whispered tones. He emerged after sunset, to find Luthien and Siobhan organizing the nighttime perimeter. Many of Bellick’s dwarfs, including Shuglin, had returned, all with tales of further punishment inflicted on their fleeing enemy.

“It all goes well,” Brind’Amour remarked to Luthien and Siobhan when the three found a rare quiet moment.

Luthien eyed the wizard curiously, suspecting that Brind’Amour had spent the day in magical contact with the other arms of the invasion, a fact the wizard confirmed a moment later.

“Proctor Byllewyn and his force have swept down from the wall and encircled Princetown,” the wizard said, “and the beleaguered folk, still without a garrison from the last war, and still without a wizard-duke to lead them, are close to surrender. This very night, the proxy mayor of Princetown meets with Proctor Byllewyn and Kayryn Kulthwain to discuss the terms.”

Luthien and Siobhan exchanged satisfied nods; that was just what they had been hoping for. Princetown could have become a major obstacle to the eastern ground forces. If they had been held up for even a few days, they would have had no chance of getting to Carlisle on time.

“The eastern fleet has made the shores of Dulsen-Berra,” Brind’Amour went on, “third of the Five Sentinels.”

“Losses?” Siobhan asked.

“None to speak of,” the wizard replied. “It seems that more of the independent islanders have joined our cause than have taken up arms against us.”

“To the dismay of the Huegoths, no doubt,” Siobhan quipped.

Luthien glared at her, not willing to hear such pessimism, but the half-elf remained steadfast. “Slaves must be replaced,” she said matter-of-factly.

She was echoing Oliver, the young Bedwyr realized. Oliver deBurrows, my moral conscience, Luthien mused, and he shuddered at the thought.

“Not so,” Brind’Amour answered to Siobhan’s concerns. “The Huegoths remain far offshore, shadowing our vessels, and hopefully beyond the notice of Greensparrow. They have not joined in any of the limited action thus far, and have registered no complaints with Captain Leary.”

The news was welcome, if surprising. Even Luthien, holding faith in the truce, had not expected the Huegoths to behave so well for this long.

“Your brother knows the truth, of course,” Brind’Amour went on. “He understands our desires to keep the brutal Isenlanders away from innocents. But Ethan has assured King Asmund that the distant course determined for the longships is only to keep Greensparrow oblivious to Eriador’s newest allies.”

“Asmund believes him?” Luthien asked, somewhat skeptical.

“The Huegoths are behaving,” Brind’Amour replied, and nothing more needed to be said.

“What of the western fleet?” Siobhan asked, and her concerns were clear in her voice, though she tried to hide them. That brought a sly smile from Luthien as he tried to imagine the half-elf and Oliver side by side. That vision was lost before it ever took form, though, for the mere mention of their fleet in the west sent Luthien’s thoughts to Katerin. Luthien promptly reminded himself of his duty and squared his shoulders, but he could not dismiss his fears for his love. Never would Luthien demand that Katerin stay out of battle, not when the cause was this important, but he wished that she was by his side at least, that he might know every minute that she was all right. It struck Luthien then that perhaps Brind’Amour had arranged for Katerin to go far from him purposefully. And perhaps it was a good thing, the young Bedwyr had to admit. How well would he fight, how willing would he be to commit his forces to a daring battle, if he knew that Katerin was among those soldiers? She was as capable a warrior as anyone Luthien had ever known, and needed no looking after, yet with his heart so stung how could Luthien not hover over her?

“All the forces have come down from the northeastern reaches and from the three islands,” Brind’Amour informed them. “They have gathered in full and will sail out from Port Charley in the morning, when the tide is high.”

Better for both of them to be apart at this time, Luthien admitted, but that did little to calm his fears.

“All is in place, a most splendid start to the campaign!” Brind’Amour said cheerfully, his white teeth beaming from his hairy face.

With that proclamation, the meeting ended. As he and Siobhan walked away, Luthien noticed the expression on the half-elf’s face and understood that she was harboring the same anxiety for her distant friend as he. No doubt, though, Siobhan was more tentative in her thoughts about Oliver. Luthien didn’t mention their common worries; what would be the point?

“All the way to Carlisle,” he said suddenly, imitating the dwarfish chant.

Siobhan looked at him, surprised, and then grateful for the reminder of the business at hand. “I will go out to the east,” she announced, “and see that the watch line is secured.”

“And I, to the west,” Luthien said, and with a shared nod they split up.

Both were grateful for the privacy.

 

 

Brind’Amour’s smile disappeared as soon as he entered his tent. Things had indeed begun full of hope and excitement, with early victories easily won. Their rout of the Praetorian Guards in the mountains exceeded even their highest expectations, as did the behavior of their Huegoth allies. But the wizard was experienced enough to temper his jubilation. Neither of the Eriadoran fleets had yet encountered Avon warships, and though Princetown was on the verge of surrender (if it hadn’t already surrendered), the northern Avon city was never expected to be a factor. Eriador had already conquered Princetown, after all, before the last truce, and there was no garrison in place there, nor any of Greensparrow’s wizard cohorts.

Early victories, easily won, but that had been an assumption before the invasion had ever started. It would be a foolish thing indeed for the Eriadorans and their allies to grow overly confident now that those expected victories had been realized.

Because, the wizard knew, the road ahead grew ever darker.

Brind’Amour’s own central forces would soon be pressing down the Dunkery River, into the heartland of Avon, on their march to Warchester.

“Warchester,” Brind’Amour said aloud. Aptly named, he knew, for he had been to the city often in times long past. The place was more a fortress than a city, with walls as high as those of Carlisle itself.

That run down the banks of the Dunkery would make this one battle with the Praetorian Guards seem as no more than a minor skirmish, for when they met organized resistance, Brind’Amour’s army would likely be sorely outnumbered. Even if they struggled through, even if Warchester was taken, the weary Eriadorans would have another two hundred miles of hostile ground to cross before they ever reached the high walls of fortified Carlisle.

And the prospects for the western Eriadoran fleet seemed equally grim. Would the forty galleons and their fishing boat escorts survive their trek through the narrow Straits of Mann, right between the powers of Mannington and Eornfast? Baranduine had figured little into the preparations for war, but in truth, the wild green island to the west possessed a flotilla stronger than Eriador’s, if all of Eriador’s warships had been gathered together.

Even worse, by Brind’Amour’s calculations, loomed the magical disadvantage. He was alone, and his type of magic, the powers gained through use of the natural elements—the fiery sun and the wind, the strength of a storm or a tree—had passed its zenith centuries before. Brind’Amour had battled Duke Paragor and Paragor’s familiar demon, and had barely survived the encounter. How would he fare against Greensparrow’s other allies, fresh with their hellish powers? And how would he fare against Greensparrow, who was as old as he, who had remained awake through the centuries, garnering his powers?

Indeed it seemed a desperate war to Brind’Amour, but he realized that, in truth, he had been given little choice. As he had openly proclaimed in Caer MacDonald, as long as Greensparrow sat in place on Avon’s throne, there could be no peace. With Dukes Morkney and Paragor dead, Resmore broken in a dungeon in Caer MacDonald, and with Princetown still reeling and helpless from the last war, now was the time, perhaps the last true chance for Eriador to shake the lurking specter of King Greensparrow.

Brind’Amour sat on his cot and rubbed his tired eyes. He thought he was seeing things a moment later, when a great bird turned its wings perpendicular to the ground and slipped silently through the folds of his tent flap.

An owl?

The bird fluttered to a perch on the lantern holder, set halfway up the center tent pole. It eyed Brind’Amour directly, knowingly, and he understood that this was no chance meeting.

“Well, what are you about?” the wizard asked, wondering if his nemesis Greensparrow had personally come a’calling.

The owl turned its head slightly and Brind’Amour’s next comment was lost by the image he saw in the owl’s huge eyes. Not a reflection, but an image of a tower of stone, high and narrow and flat, set within the rugged mountains. A singular pillar of windblown rock.

Brind’Amour.

The call was distant, far removed, a whisper on the night breeze.

“What are you about?” the old wizard asked the bird again, this time breathlessly.

The owl swooped off the perch and out the flap, silent in flight.

Brind’Amour rubbed his eyes again and looked about his tent, wondering if it had been no more than a dream. He looked to his crystal ball, thinking that perhaps he might find some answers, but he shook his head. He had spent hours contacting his generals, east and west, and was too exhausted to consider sending his thoughts into the ball once again.

He lay back on his cot and soon fell into a deep slumber.

When he awoke the next morning, he was convinced that the incident with the bird had been no more than the dreaming delusions of a weary old man.

 

 

THE SEEDS OF REVOLT

How good it felt to Luthien: the wind in his face, the rush of ground beneath Riverdancer’s pounding hooves! They were coming out of the mountains, back onto terrain where Luthien could ride his precious Morgan Highlander.

Riverdancer, after so many miles of plodding along painful, rocky ground, seemed to enjoy the jaunt even more than his rider. Luthien constantly had to hold the powerful white stallion back, else he would have easily outdistanced the other riders coming down from the foothills beside him, mostly Siobhan and the other Cutters.

As usual, they were the lead group, the spearhead for the Eriadoran army, and the single cavalry unit. Because of the difficult mountain terrain, only two hundred horses had been brought along, and more than a third of them could not now be ridden because of problems they had developed during the difficult trek, mostly with their hooves.

Riverdancer was fine, though, ready and eager to run on. Luthien tightened up on the reins, easing the horse into a steady, solid trot as they came to one last sloping expanse. Siobhan, astride a tall and slender chestnut, caught up to him then, and wasted no time in pointing out the smoke from a village not far distant to the south. Beside it wound a great silvery snake, the Dunkery River.

“It is called Pipery, according to Brind’Amour’s map,” Luthien informed her. “The northernmost of a series of mill towns set along the Dunkery.”

“Our next target,” Siobhan said grimly. She looked to both sides, to the hundred or so riders sweeping down beside her, then turned to Luthien. “Are we to split into smaller forces, or remain as one group?”

Luthien considered the options for just a moment. He had thought to break the unit into several scouting groups, but with Pipery in sight, the line for the army seemed obvious. “Together,” he said at length. “We’ll go south, then cut back northeast, to meet the Dunkery where it comes out of the foothills. Then south again along the river, scouting the path all the way to the town.”

Siobhan peered into the rolling southland, confirming the course, and nodded her agreement. “The cyclopians will not wait for us to get to the town,” she reasoned.

The thought did not seem to bother Luthien in the least.

The group moved south for a couple of miles, coming directly to the west of Pipery. In the shade of a pine grove, they gave their mounts a much-needed break, with Luthien dispatching several riders to scout out the area, particularly the trail back to the northeast, which they would soon be riding.

Those scouts moving directly east, toward the village, returned after only a few minutes, reporting that a group of two to three hundred cyclopians, including two-score cavalry riding fierce ponypigs, were fast approaching.

“We could outrun them back to the mountains,” the scout reminded.

“We could outrun them all the way to Pipery,” an eager Siobhan suggested.

Luthien’s thoughts were moving somewhere in the middle of the two propositions. His group was outnumbered, but held a tremendous advantage of maneuverability. Ponypigs, resembling warthogs the size of large ponies, were brutal opponents, with strong kicking legs and nasty tusks, and cyclopians could ride them well, but they were not as swift as horses.

“We cannot afford to lose any riders,” Luthien said to Siobhan, “but if this is part of Pipery’s militia, then better to sting them out in the open than to let them get back behind the village’s fortifications.”

“No doubt they think us an advance scouting unit,” Siobhan replied, “with little heart for battle.”

“Let us teach them differently,” Luthien said determinedly.

The young Bedwyr sent nearly half of his force to the north then, on a long roundabout, while he and Siobhan led the remaining riders straight on toward the approaching cyclopians. He spread them out in a line across a ridge when the enemy force was in sight, letting the one-eyes take a full measure, while he took the measure of them.

The scouts’ information was right on the mark. The cavalry groups seemed roughly equal in strength, by Luthien’s design. What the cyclopians didn’t know was that they were facing a force of mostly Fairborn, with a well-earned reputation for riding and for archery.

Luthien scanned the green fields to the north, but his other forces were not yet in sight. He had to hope that they had not encountered resistance, else his entire plan might fall apart.

“With the cavalry in front,” Siobhan remarked, referring to the fast-forming cyclopian ranks, riders on ponypigs forming a line in front of the foot soldiers. The half-elf smiled as she spoke, for this was exactly what Luthien had predicted.

Time to go, the young Bedwyr realized, and he drew out Blind-Striker, raising the sword high into the sky. Out came more than fifty blades in response, all lifted high.

A few quiet seconds slipped by, the very air tingling with anticipation.

Luthien jabbed Blind-Striker toward the sky before him and the charge from the ridge was on.

The cyclopians howled in response and the thunder of surging horses was more than matched by the thunder of charging ponypigs.

The elvish swords and Blind-Striker unexpectedly came down, the skilled Eriadoran riders deftly slipping them back into their sheaths. The close-melee weapons had been but a ruse, a teasing challenge to the savage cyclopians, for the Eriadorans never intended to battle in close combat. On Luthien’s command, up came the bows.

A cyclopian’s eye was a large and bulbous thing, and wider still seemed the eyes of the charging Praetorian Guards when they realized the ruse and understood that they would be under heavy assault before they ever got near their enemy.

Luthien Bedwyr felt like a rank amateur over the next few moments. He got his bow up and fired off a shot, barely missing, but though he was a fine horseman and a fine archer, by the time he got his second arrow in place, most of the Fairborn riding beside him had already let fly three, or even four.

And the majority of those had hit their mark.

Chaos hit the cyclopian ranks as ponypigs stumbled and fell, or reared in agony. Stinging arrows zipped through, felling rider and mount, dismantling the order of the cyclopian charge. Some one-eyes continued on; others turned about and fled.

And then a new rumble came over the field as the remaining Eriadoran riders swept down from the north, firing bows at the cyclopian foot soldiers as they charged.

Luthien drew out Blind-Striker again as he neared the leading cyclopian riders. He angled Riverdancer for a close pass on one, but an arrow beat him to the mark, taking down the one-eye cleanly. Luthien easily veered past the now-walking ponypig, crossing behind yet another cyclopian. The one-eye turned in its seat, trying to get its blocking sword out behind, but Luthien smacked the blade aside and stuck the brute in the kidney as he passed.

With a groan, the cyclopian slumped forward, leaning heavily on the ponypig’s muscled neck.

Luthien spotted another target and charged on, his crimson cape flying out wildly behind him. The cyclopian, like most of its companions, had other ideas, though, and turned about and fled.

Luthien coaxed Riverdancer into a full gallop and ran the brute down, hacking his sword across the back of the one-eye’s thick neck. He moved away quickly, not wanting to get tangled up in the ponypig as its rider slipped to the ground.

Many of the cyclopian foot soldiers turned to flee as well, but others formed up into a square, heavy shields blocking every side, long pikes ready to prod at any horsemen who ventured too near. That square marched double-time, right back the way they had come, toward Pipery.

The Eriadorans continued to nip at the one-eyes, particularly interested in running down any cyclopian rider who strayed too far from the main group, but when those Fairborn scouts watching the roads further to the east announced that a second force was coming from Pipery to reinforce the first, Luthien knew that the time had come to break off and await the approach of the larger Eriadoran army.

He eyed the field, satisfied, as he and his riders crossed back to the west. A couple of horses had been downed, with three riders injured, but only one seriously. The cyclopians had not gotten off so easily. More than a dozen ponypigs lay dead, or quickly dying, on the grass, and another twenty wandered riderless. Less than a quarter of the two-score cyclopian cavalry had escaped unscathed, with nearly half lying dead on the field, along with a handful of the foot soldiers.

More important than the actual numbers, Luthien’s group had met the enemy again, on the enemy’s home ground this time, and had sent them running in full flight. Luthien would continue with the scouting mission now, but he held few doubts that the larger Eriadoran army would roll through this part of their course. The road to Pipery, at least, would be an easy march.

 

 

Brother Solomon Keyes knelt in prayer, hands clasped, head bowed, in the small chapel of Pipery. A far cry from the tremendous cathedrals of the larger cities of Avonsea, the place had but two rooms: a common meeting room, and Solomon Keyes’s private living area. It was a square, stone, unremarkable place; the pews were no more than single-board benches, the altar merely a table donated after the death of one of Pipery’s more well-to-do widows. Still, to many in the humble village, that chapel was as much a source of pride as the great cathedrals were to the inhabitants of Princetown or Carlisle. Despite the fact that Greensparrow’s cyclopian tax collectors, including one particularly nasty old one-eye named Allaberksis, utilized the chapel as a meeting house, Solomon Keyes had worked hard to preserve the sanctity of the place.

He hoped, he prayed, that his efforts would be rewarded now, that the invading army rumored to be fast approaching would spare the goodly folks of his small community. Keyes was only in his mid-twenties. He had lived practically all of his life under the court of King Greensparrow, and thus he, and most of the people of Pipery, had never before met an Eriadoran. They had heard the stories of the savage northlanders, though, of how Eriadorans had been known to eat the children of conquered villages right before parents’ eyes. Keyes had also heard of the wicked dwarfs—the “headbashers,” they were called in Avon—for their reputed propensity for using their boots to cave in the heads of enemy dead and wounded. And he had heard of the elves, the Fairborn, the “devil’s-spawn,” disguising their horns as ears, running naked under the stars in unholy tribute to the evil gods.

And Keyes had heard whispered tales of the Crimson Shadow, and that one, most of all, had the people of his village trembling with terror. The Crimson Shadow, the murderer who came silently in the night, like Death itself.

Solomon Keyes was wise enough to understand that many of the rumors he had heard of his king’s hated foes were likely untrue or, at least, exaggerations. Still, it was widely reported that somewhere around ten thousand of these enemies were nearing Pipery, whose militia, including the few Praetorian Guards who had come down from the mountains, numbered no more than three hundred. Whatever monster this force of combined enemies might truly be, Pipery was in dire trouble.

Keyes was rocked from his contemplations as the chapel door burst open and a handful of one-eyes stormed in. Praetorian Guards, the priest realized immediately, and not Pipery’s regular militia.

“All is in place for the hospital,” the priest said quietly, looking down to the floor.

“We have come for tithes,” replied Allaberksis, coming in on the heels of the burly guards. The group never slowed, crossing the room and kicking aside benches.

Solomon Keyes looked up incredulously, staring at the withered old cyclopian, the oldest and most wrinkled one-eye anyone in these parts had ever known. Its eye was bloodshot and grayish in hue, its general luster long gone. There was a particular sparkle in the eye of Allaberksis now, though, one that Solomon Keyes recognized as pure greed.

“I have bandages,” Keyes pleaded after a stunned pause. “Of what use is money?”

One of the Praetorian Guards stepped right up and shoved the priest to the floor.

“There is a box at the back of the altar,” instructed Allaberksis. “And you,” he said to another of the brutes, “check the fool priest’s private room.”

“That is the common grain money!” Keyes roared in protest, leaping to his feet. He was met by another of the brutes and pounded down, then kicked several times as he squirmed on the floor.

Solomon Keyes realized the truth of the intruders. This group, like so many of the Praetorian Guards who had come down from the Iron Cross, was planning to flee to the south, probably on wretched Allaberksis’s orders.

Keyes could not fight them, and so he lay very still, praying again for guidance. He breathed a profound sigh when the group swept back out of the chapel.

That relief was short-lived, though, for it didn’t take the priest long to understand the implications of Allaberksis’s actions.

Pipery was being deserted as a sacrifice. King Greensparrow’s elite soldiers did not consider the small village worth saving.

 

 

The Eriadoran army camped within sight of Pipery, swinging lines far to the east and west, even launching cavalry patrols across the ground south of the village to make sure that very few one-eyes escaped. Brind’Amour had no intention of allowing Greensparrow’s disorganized northern army to run all the way back to Carlisle, or to Warchester, perhaps, where they might regroup behind the protection of the city’s high walls.

On one such expedition, Luthien’s swift cavalry group had come upon a curious band of Praetorian Guards, led by the oldest one-eye the young Bedwyr had ever seen. The cyclopians were summarily routed, and in picking through their bodies, Luthien had found a purse clearly marked as contributions for the town’s common good.

The young Bedwyr thought that significant, and was beginning to discern a possibility here, a hope for an easier march. He said nothing about it on his return to the camp, though, wanting to sort things out more fully before presenting his suspicions to Brind’Amour, who, for some reason that Luthien couldn’t discern, seemed more than a bit distracted this evening.

“You fear the coming battle?” Luthien asked, prodding his old friend, as the pair walked across the central area of the large camp.

Brind’Amour scoffed at that notion. “If I feared Pipery, I never would have come south, knowing that Warchester and Carlisle lay ahead!” the wizard replied. He stopped by a water trough then and bent low to splash his face. He paused before his hand touched the water, and stood very still, for in that trough, Brind’Amour saw a curious scene, a now-familiar narrow and tall, flat-topped pillar of stone.

Brind’Amour.

The call floated in on the wind. Brind’Amour glanced all about, looking for the rocks that might have made such a reflection in the water, but no such tower loomed anywhere near.

“What is it?” Luthien asked, concerned. He, too, glanced all about, though he had no idea what he might be looking for.

Brind’Amour waved his hand in the empty air, all the answer Luthien would get from him at that time. The wizard considered the call, the subtle and personal call, considered the owl and now the trough, and suddenly thought that he had sorted out the answer.

And hoped that he did, for if his guess was correct, these curious events might well alter the course of the coming battle.

“Keep a good eye to the perimeter,” the old wizard instructed as he briskly walked away from Luthien.

Luthien called after him, but it was useless; Brind’Amour would not even slow his swift pace.

Back in his tent, the wizard wasted no time in taking out his crystal ball. The image of the strange rock formation was clear in his mind, and after nearly an hour of exhausting divining, he managed to replicate it in the crystal ball. Then Brind’Amour let the conjured image become a true scene and he slowly altered the perspective within the ball, searching out landmarks near the tower that might guide him. Soon he was convinced that the formation was in the Iron Cross, not so far to the north and west, closer to the coast, surely.

The wizard released the image from the ball and relaxed. He considered his course carefully, realizing that this might well be a trap. Perhaps it was one of his peers from that long-past age, awake again and ready to join in with Eriador’s just cause. Perhaps it was Greensparrow, luring him to his doom that Eriador continue without a king, and without a wizard to counter the magics of the dukes and duchess and king of Avon.

“Now is not the time for caution,” Brind’Amour said aloud, bolstering his resolve. “Now is not the time for cowards!”

Brind’Amour considered again the desperation of this war, the complete gamble that had been accepted by all the brave folk of Eriador with the prize of true freedom dangling before them.

The old wizard knew what he must do.

 

 

TRAPPING THE TRAPPERS

Brind’Amour slipped quietly from his tent later that night. The moon had already set and the stars were crisp, in those spots where they showed through the broken canopy of rushing black clouds. The wizard, energized by thoughts of the crucial task before him, walked spryly across the encampment, past the rows of sleeping soldiers, beyond the rolling thunder of several thousand snoring dwarfs, and beyond the perimeter line, enacting a minor spell so that even the acute senses of the Fairborn sentries could not detect him. Brind’Amour had neither the time nor the desire to answer questions now.

He walked another half mile, coming to an area of stony ground, a small clearing sheltered by thick rows of maple, elm, birch, and pine. He noted that many of the leaves of the deciduous trees were already beginning to turn a light brown; autumn was fast approaching.

With a deep, steadying breath, Brind’Amour brought the enchantment—no minor spell this time—into mind. Then he began to dance, slowly, each step perfectly placed, each twirl symbolic of what he was to become. Soon his arms remained out wide as he spun more quickly, dipping and rising through each turn, his arms waving now gracefully—too gracefully for a human, it seemed.

The darkness seemed to lift then, from Brind’Amour’s perspective, as the wizard’s eyes became suddenly sensitive; the landscape became distinct and surreal. He heard a mouse rustle through the grass, perhaps twenty feet away, heard the cricket songs as loudly as if they were resounding through the massive pipes of the Ministry’s choir organ.

He felt a series of pinlike pricks along both his arms, and looked there to see his voluminous robes melting away into overlapping lines of soft feathers. The stings were gone in an instant, as the rest of the wizard’s body began its change, as the feathers became a natural part of his new anatomy.

The ground went away in a rush as the great owl flew away, soft-feathered wings beating the air without a whisper of sound.

Brind’Amour knew freedom then, true freedom. How he loved this transformation! Particularly at night, when all the human world was asleep, when it seemed as no more than a wonderful dream.

Hardly registering the move, the wizard turned sidelong, wing tips perpendicular to the ground, as he sliced between a pair of close trees. He rose as he came out the other side, working his wings hard, then felt the warm air on his belly as he crossed near the first real mountains of the Iron Cross. Wings widespread, the wizard rose slowly into the night air, tingling from the mixture of currents and air temperatures. He soared through the night-blanketed range, weaving through valleys and riding the warm updrafts. Into the northwest he flew, to where the mountains were more rugged, impassable by foot, but merely a majestic wave for an owl to ride.

He flew for an hour, easily, wonderfully, then came into a region of sheer drops and broken, windblown pillars. He knew this region, had seen it clearly in his crystal ball.

Now the wizard slowed and took care to move closer to the sheltering cliffs. The landscape was exactly as he had viewed it in the crystal ball, and so he was not surprised when he turned around one bend, lifted up to clear a high jag, and came in sight of the singular, flat-topped rock pillar. It resembled the limbless trunk of an old, gnarled tree, except that its angles, twists, and turns through all of its five hundred feet were sharper and more distinct, seeming unnatural, as though some tremendous force had pulled it right up from the ground.

Brind’Amour flew past the pillar at about half its height, preferring to make his first run in view of the plateau from the other direction. Up he rose, in a gradual bank, coming about much higher, almost level with the pillar’s flat top.

He saw a single figure atop the stone, sitting near the center of the roughly fifty-foot-diameter plateau. The person was huddled under robes, the hood pulled low, facing the glowing embers of a dying fire.

Brind’Amour passed barely thirty feet above the huddled figure, but the person made no move, took no note.

Asleep? the old wizard mused. And why not? Brind’Amour told himself. What would someone in a place so very inaccessible have to fear?

This time, the wizard’s bank was sharper, nearly a spinning mid-air pivot. Brind’Amour came in even lower, not sure of whether he would make another scouting pass.

No time for such caution, he decided, and so he mustered his courage and swooped to the stone, landing across the fire from the figure, halfway between the huddled person and the plateau’s edge.

“Well done, King Brind’Amour,” said a familiar female voice even as the wizard began the transformation back into his human form. The figure looked up and pulled back the tremendous hood of her robes. “I knew that you would be resourceful enough to find me.”

Brind’Amour’s heart sank at the sight of Duchess Deanna Wellworth. He was not truly surprised, for he had been fairly certain that none of his wizard companions from that time long past had survived. Still, the fact that he had flown so willingly into such a ruse, and the reality that he was indeed alone, weighed heavily on his shoulders.

“My greetings,” Deanna said casually, and her tone gave Brind’Amour pause. Also, he realized, she had referred to him as “King Brind’Amour.” The old wizard didn’t know what to make of it. He glanced all about, thinking that he should resume his owl form and rush away on the winds.

No, he decided. He would trust in his powers and let this meeting play out. It had to come to this, after all; perhaps it would be better to be done with it before too many lives were lost.

“And the greetings of Duke Ashannon McLenny of Eornfast in Baranduine,” Deanna went on. “And those of Duke Mystigal of Evenshorn, and Duke Theredon Rees of Warchester.” As she spoke each name, the appropriate man stepped into view, as though walking from behind a curtain of night sky.

Brind’Amour felt a fool. Why hadn’t he seen them through such a simple magical disguise? Of course, he could not have enacted such divining magics in owl form, but he should have flown to a nearby ledge and resumed his human shape, then scanned the plateau top more carefully before coming down. His eagerness, his desire to believe that one of his ancient brothers had returned to his side, had caused him to err.

The three dukes were evenly spaced about the plateau top. Brind’Amour scanned them now, seeking the weakest link where he might escape. Deanna Wellworth surprised him, though, and her three companions as well, when she lifted a round beaker of blue liquid before her, spoke a single word and threw it down. It smashed into the fire, which erupted into a burst of white, then went low, blowing a thick wave of fog from its sizzling embers. The wave rolled out in all directions, right past the four startled men. When it reached the edge of the plateau, it swirled upward, turning back over the stone.

Then the fog was no more, replaced by a blue-glowing canopy, a bubble of energy, that encompassed the plateau. All the plateau was bathed in the eerie light.

Brind’Amour was truly impressed; he realized that Deanna must have spent days, perhaps even weeks, in designing such a spell. He wasn’t sure of the nature of the globe, but he guessed that it was some sort of a barrier, anti-magic or anti-flesh, designed to prevent him from leaving. Whether it would prove effective might be a different thing altogether, though, for the wizard was confident that he could counter anything one of Greensparrow’s cohorts could enact.

But how much time did he have?

“You resort to treachery?” Brind’Amour scoffed, his tone showing his clear disdain. “How far the honor of wizards has fallen. Common thieves, is that what you have become?”

“Of course your ancient and holy brotherhood would never have done such a thing,” Theredon Rees of Warchester replied sarcastically.

“Never,” Brind’Amour answered in even tones. The old king stared long and hard at the upstart wizard. Theredon was a stocky, muscular man, nearing middle age. His hair was thick and black and curly, his dark eyes full of intensity. In truth, the man seemed more a warrior than a wizard, in appearance and likely in temperament, something Brind’Amour figured he might be able to turn against Theredon.

He shifted his gaze to Mystigal—Mystigal! What pretensions of power had caused this one to change his name? And of course he had changed his name, for no child in the age following the demise of the brotherhood would have been given the name of Mystigal! He was older than Theredon, slender and cultured, with hawkish and hollow features, worn away by the overuse of magic. A “reacher” Brind’Amour discerned, remembering an old term his brotherhood had used to describe those wizards who aspired to greater powers than their intelligence allowed. Any attacks from this one would likely be grandiose in nature, seeming mighty, but with little real power to support them.

The duke of Baranduine appeared as the most comfortable, and thus likely to be the most difficult of the three men. Ashannon McLenny was a handsome man, his eyes well-balanced with emotion, eager and calm. A clear thinker; perhaps this one would have been a candidate for the brotherhood in ages past. Brind’Amour let his measuring gaze linger on Ashannon for a while, then shifted it to regard Deanna. Brind’Amour knew her well enough to respect her. Deanna was a complete package: cultured, intelligent, beautiful, dangerous, and the wizard held no doubts that this one would have aspired to, and achieved, magical prowess in that time long past. She might prove to be the most formidable of all, and it was no coincidence that Brind’Amour’s attack plans for Eriador had purposely avoided sending forces against Deanna’s city of Mannington.

During those few moments he spent in scanning his adversaries, Brind’Amour whispered under his breath, enacting minor magical defenses. A coil of wire appeared in one hand and gradually unrolled beneath his sleeve, then under his robes until its tip poked forth beside his boot, securing itself against the stone. Next the wizard quietly gathered all the moisture from the air near to him, called it in but didn’t concentrate it. Not yet. Brind’Amour set up a conditional spell to finish what he had started, and he had to hope that his magic would be quick enough to the conditional call.

“And where is Greensparrow?” Brind’Amour asked suddenly, when he noted that the others, particularly Theredon and Mystigal, were exchanging nods, as if preparing their first assault.

Theredon snorted derisively. “Why would we need our king to pluck such a thorn as the pretender king of Eriador the wasteland?”

“So said Paragor,” Brind’Amour calmly replied. That set cocky Theredon back on his heels a bit.

“We are four!” snarled Mystigal, bolstering Theredon, and himself, with the proclamation.

Now Brind’Amour called up a spell to shift his vision subtly that it might record magical energies. The strength of Deanna’s globe surprised him once more when he realized the tightness of its magical weaving, but the other thing that surprised the wizard was that there apparently were no other magical curtains behind which other enemies might hide. No Greensparrow and, curiously, no demons.

He caught a sly look in Deanna Wellworth’s eyes then that he did not quite understand. “There is no escape,” she said, and then added, as if reading his mind, “No magic, not even a creature magically summoned, can pass through the blue barrier. You are without escape and without allies.”

As if to accentuate Deanna’s point, a horrid figure pressed its insectlike face against the top of the bubble then, leering down at the gathering on the plateau.

Brind’Amour recognized the thing as a demon, and he scratched his beard curiously, considering that the fiend was on the outside.

“Deanna!” cried Mystigal suddenly.

Brind’Amour looked from the fiend to the hawkish wizard. “Friend of yours?” he asked, a smile widening on his face.

Both Mystigal and Theredon squirmed a bit, an indication to Brind’Amour that the two suspected that their lead conspirator had erred, bringing up the shield before their allies, their true connections to power, had joined with them.

“Demon of Hell,” Deanna answered Brind’Amour. “My fellows have come to greatly rely on such evil fiends.”

We are not friends of King Greensparrow, nor can we any longer accept the truth of our ill-begotten powers, came a telepathic message in Brind’Amour’s mind. He looked to Ashannon, the duke of Eornfast, recognizing the man as the sender, and then he understood that Deanna had not erred! Indeed the woman had used treachery, but her prey was not as Brind’Amour had first assumed.

A second fiend, two-headed and lizardlike, arrived beside the first, and both pressed and clawed wildly, but futilely, at the resilient bubble shield.

“Their mistake,” Brind’Amour answered Deanna grimly.

Mystigal looked up to the dome, his expression showing deep concern. “What is this?” he demanded of Deanna, who now stood swaying, shoulders slumped and head down, as though her casting of the powerful globe had drained her.

The end of the question was snuffed out under the sizzling roar of Theredon’s blue-streaking lightning bolt, the most common attack form offered by any wizard.

And one Brind’Amour had fully anticipated. The old wizard threw out his arm toward Theredon as the bolt began, felt the tingle in his fingers as his defensive magics countered the spell, catching Theredon’s bolt on the edge of the conjured coil and running it down under Brind’Amour’s robes to the stone beneath his feet. Brind’Amour felt all the hairs on his body dancing from the shock; his heart fluttered several times before its beat evened out. But in truth, the bolt wasn’t very powerful, more show than substance.

“A tickle, nothing more,” Brind’Amour said to Theredon. The old wizard looked up to the dome. “It would seem that the duchess of Mannington’s spell is quite complete. You cannot access the powers of your fiend, or else your fiend is not so powerful!

“Yet I am of the old school, the true school,” Brind’Amour went on, striding determinedly toward Theredon. He gave a few sidelong glances at Ashannon and Deanna, wondering what they might do next. “I need no diabolical allies!”

“Deanna!” Theredon growled, skipping quickly to the side, trying to keep as much ground between himself and dangerous Brind’Amour as possible.

The old wizard stopped and closed his eyes, chanting softly.

“Deanna!” screamed a terrified Theredon, knowing to his horror that Brind’Amour was about to hit him with something.

No energy came forth when Brind’Amour opened his eyes, but the old wizard’s sly grin brought no comfort to Theredon. The muscular man backed to the far end of the globe. He saw his demon ally, both its grotesque heads pressed against the unyielding bubble. Theredon put his hands up to it, tried to touch it, to gather its power, but after only a few futile seconds, the frustrated wizard began pounding on the magical shield.

Brind’Amour took a step toward Theredon, shimmered and disappeared, then came back into view suddenly right behind the muscular wizard. The king of Eriador grabbed Theredon by the shoulder and roughly spun him about, then, before the younger and stronger man could even cry out, clasped a hand over Theredon’s face. Crackling red sparks instantly erupted from Brind’Amour’s fingers, lashing at his foe. Theredon cried out and reached up with trembling hands, clawing at Brind’Amour’s arm.

Theredon’s two-headed demon flew off, then returned at full speed, slamming the bubble with tremendous force, but merely bouncing away.

Behind him, above the screams of the demon and of Theredon, Brind’Amour could hear Mystigal chanting, and a moment later a ball of fire exploded in the air right between Brind’Amour and Theredon.

Fire, the single condition set upon Brind’Amour’s waiting spell, was among the most predictable of wizardly attacks. At the instant the fireball blew, all the moisture Brind’Amour had gathered rushed out from him, blanketing him in a protective seal. When the flames of the not-so-powerful fireball disappeared, the old wizard was hardly singed, though wisps of smoke rose up from several places on poor Theredon’s body, melting into the misty vapors that now engulfed the pair.

Brind’Amour looked back over his shoulder to see Deanna and Ashannon converging on poor Mystigal. The older, hawkish man scrambled away, crying out repeatedly to Deanna.

From the corner of his eye, Brind’Amour caught the movement as the buglike demon rushed at the bubble, then dove low, apparently boring right into the stone. A moment later, the ground under Deanna’s feet heaved and the woman stumbled to the side, allowing Mystigal some running room. Theredon’s frantic demon followed suit, and soon the floor of the plateau was rumbling and dancing, great rolling waves keeping all five within the globe struggling to hold their balance.

But Deanna’s spell was well-constructed, the protective shield complete, even under their feet, and the demons could do little real mischief.

Theredon was on his knees by this point, grabbing weakly at Brind’Amour’s arm, offering little resistance to the much more powerful, true wizard. Knowing that he had this one fully under control, Brind’Amour turned his sights on Mystigal, who was still calling out frantically to Deanna to come to her senses, and working hard to keep away from her and Ashannon.

Brind’Amour began another chant and lifted his free hand in Mystigal’s direction.

Deanna and Ashannon worked in unison now, shifting so that they soon had the man cornered, then slowly closing in, Ashannon on the hawkish man’s right, Deanna on his left.

The ground heaved under Ashannon’s feet, knocking him toward Deanna, and Mystigal, with a shriek, ran out to the right, behind the stumbling duke. He only got a couple of steps, though, before Brind’Amour completed his spell and snapped his fingers. As though he was fastened to an overstretched cord, Mystigal rushed forward suddenly, his feet barely scraping the ground. He went right between Deanna and Ashannon, knocking them to the stone, and continued his impromptu flight all the way across the plateau, coming face-first into Brind’Amour’s waiting grasp.

Red sparks came from that hand, too, and Brind’Amour wasted no time in bending the weakling man over backward, forcing him right to his knees.

Deanna and Ashannon collected themselves and eyed the spectacle of Brind’Amour’s bared power from a safe distance. Ashannon motioned questioningly toward the trio, but Deanna shook her head and would not approach.

The old wizard tilted his head back and closed his eyes, concentrating fully on the release of power. Theredon’s hands were tight about one arm, but the muscular man’s grip seemed not so strong anymore. Mystigal offered no resistance whatsoever, just flailed his arms helplessly as the red sparks bit at his skull.

Brind’Amour attuned himself to his opponents’ magic, that inner area of wizardly power. He felt the line of power there, the connection to the frenzied fiends. He felt the line bending, bending, and then, in Mystigal first, it snapped apart.

With a resounding whining buzz, the insect demon was hurled back to Hell and the ground under Deanna’s bubble was quieter. As though he gained some resolve from that, Theredon growled and forced himself back to his feet.

Brind’Amour let go of Mystigal, who fell over backward to the stone, and put his full concentration on the stronger Theredon. The two held the pose for a long while, but then Theredon’s core of power, like Mystigal’s, snapped apart. Brind’Amour released him and he stood, precariously balanced, staring at the old wizard incredulously. Then, with all his strength, physical and magical, torn from his body, Theredon fell to the ground, facedown.

The stone beneath the old wizard’s feet was quiet suddenly, as the two-headed demon joined its buglike companion in banishment, their ties to the world cleanly severed.

Brind’Amour spun about, facing the duke and duchess, not sure what any of this was about. He tried to look threatening, but in truth feared that either Ashannon or Deanna, or both, would come at him now, for he had little strength remaining with which to combat them.

The two looked to each other, then began a cautious approach, Deanna’s hands held high and open, unthreatening.

On the ground, Mystigal groaned. Theredon lay very still.

“He will not awaken,” Brind’Amour said firmly. “I have torn his magic from him, destroyed the minor wizard that he was!” Brind’Amour tried to sound threatening, but Deanna only nodded, as though she had expected that all along.

“We are not your enemy,” she said, reading the old wizard’s tone and body language. “Our common enemy is Greensparrow, and he, it would seem, has lost two more of his wizard-dukes.”

With a sizzle and a puff, the blue-swirling globe vanished.

“Good spell,” Brind’Amour congratulated.

“Years in perfecting,” replied Deanna, “in preparation for the day that I knew would come.”

Brind’Amour looked at her curiously. “Yet you performed the powerful magic without aid of your demon,” he remarked suspiciously.

“I have no demon,” she answered evenly.

“Nor do I,” added Ashannon.

Brind’Amour eyed the duke of Eornfast skeptically, sensing that the man was not so certain of, or comfortable with, his position as was Deanna.

“I prefer the older ways,” said Deanna. “The ways of the brotherhood.”

Brind’Amour found that he believed her, though he could not have done much if he didn’t. He was too tired to either attack the pair or flee the plateau. Deanna, too, seemed exhausted. She walked over slowly, bending low to inspect the pair of fallen dukes.

“Theredon is dead,” she announced without emotion as she looked back to Ashannon, “but Mystigal lives.”

Ashannon nodded, walked to the edge of the plateau, and leaped off into the night sky. Brind’Amour caught the flutter as the man transformed into some great nightbird, and then was gone.

Brind’Amour looked to Deanna. “Talkative fellow,” he said.

“Duke McLenny knows that he has sacrificed much for this day,” she replied. “Too much, perhaps, and so you must be content in the knowledge that he did not join with Theredon and Mystigal against you.”

“But neither did he join with me,” Brind’Amour pointed out.

Deanna didn’t answer, just walked back to the center of the plateau and dropped some liquid on the dying fire. Immediately the flames roared back to life, bathing Deanna in their warm, orange glow.

“Bring Mystigal near to the warmth,” she instructed Brind’Amour. “He does not deserve a cold death in such a remote, nameless place.”

Those were the last words she spoke that night. She sat watching the fire for a long while, not even seeming to notice Brind’Amour, who, after laying Mystigal beside the flames, sat directly across from her.

The old wizard didn’t press the point. He understood Deanna’s dilemma here, understood that the young woman had just cast off the beliefs that had sustained her for most of her life.

 

 

TO KNOW YOUR ENEMIES

Luthien and Bellick went to Brind’Amour’s tent together in the cool darkness before the dawn. The pair were full of enthusiasm, ready for battle once more. A lantern burned low on the pole just outside the entrance, but inside the tent was dark. The pair entered anyway, thinking to rouse Brind’Amour. The dawn attack was the customary course, after all, giving the armies all the day for fighting.

Little light followed them in, but enough for them to discern that the wizard was not inside.

“Must be out and about already, readying the plans,” Bellick remarked, but Luthien wasn’t so sure. Something was out of place, he realized instinctively.

Luthien moved to the wizard’s bed and confirmed his suspicions that it hadn’t been slept on the previous night. That was curious enough, but Luthien held a nagging suspicion that there was something more out of place. He glanced all about, but saw nothing apparent. All the furniture was in order, the table in the middle of the room, the stool beside it, the crystal ball atop it. Brind’Amour’s small desk sat against the tent side opposite the bed, covered in parchments, maps mostly, and by several bags filled with all sorts of strange potions and spell components.

“Come along,” Bellick called from the tent flap. “We’ve got to find the old one and get the line formed up.”

Luthien nodded and moved slowly to follow, looking back over his shoulder, certain that something was wrong. He got outside the tent, under the meager light of the low-burning lantern, Bellick several strides ahead of him.

“The crystal ball,” Luthien said suddenly, turning the dwarf about.

“What?”

“The crystal ball,” the young Bedwyr repeated, confident that he had hit on something important. “Brind’Amour’s crystal ball!”

“It was in there to be sure,” said Bellick. “Right in plain sight on the table.”

“He never leaves it so,” said Luthien, moving swiftly back into the tent. He heard Bellick groan and grumble, but the dwarf did follow, coming in just as Luthien settled on the stool, peering intently into the ball.

“Should you be looking into that?” Bellick asked. Like most of his race, Bellick was always a bit cautious where magic was concerned.

“I do not understand why it isn’t covered,” Luthien answered. “Brind’Amour . . .”

Luthien’s words fell away as an image, a familiar, cheery old face, thick with a tremendous white beard, suddenly appeared within the ball. “Ah, good,” said the illusionary Brind’Amour, “it is morning then, and you are preparing to take Pipery. All speed, my friends. I doubt not the outcome. I do not know how long I will be gone, and I go only with the knowledge that Eriador’s forces are secure. Righteous speed!”

The image faded away as abruptly as it had appeared. Luthien looked back to Bellick, just a stocky silhouette framed by the open tent flap.

“So the wizard’s gone,” the dwarf said. “On good business, I do not doubt.”

“Brind’Amour would not leave if it wasn’t urgent,” Luthien agreed.

“The Huegoths, probably,” reasoned Bellick, and the thought that there might be trouble involving Ethan put a sour turn in Luthien’s stomach. Or perhaps the trouble was from the other way, from the west, where Oliver and Katerin sailed. Luthien looked again to the empty crystal ball. He reminded himself many times over that Brind’Amour’s demeanor had been cheerful, not dour.

“No matter,” the dwarf king went on. “We ever were an army led by two!”

Luthien understood that Bellick had just assumed control of all the forces, and he really couldn’t argue with the dwarf, who surely outranked him. There was an issue, though, which Luthien had wanted to discuss with Brind’Amour before the assault began. At the end of the previous war with Avon, when he had wanted to press on to Carlisle, Luthien had held the conviction that victory would be possible because many of the folk of Avon might see the truth of the situation, might realize that the army of Eriador wasn’t really their enemy. Luthien had come to agree that his expectations were likely overblown, but still, he couldn’t accept the notion that all of Avon’s folk, men and women much like the Eriadorans, would desire war against Eriador.

Bellick grunted and turned to go.

“Can you muster the lines yourself?” Luthien asked. The dwarf wheeled about, and though he couldn’t see the details of Bellick’s face, Luthien could sense his surprise.

“You’re going to look for Brind’Amour?” Bellick asked incredulously.

“No, but I had hoped to secure King Brind’Amour’s permission to go into Pipery, before the dawn, before the battle,” Luthien replied.

Bellick glanced over his shoulder, then stepped into the tent, obviously concerned.

“To scout out their defenses,” Luthien explained immediately. “With the crimson cape, I can get in and out, and not a cyclopian will be the wiser.”

Bellick stood staring at the young Bedwyr for a long while. “That is not why you wish to go,” the dwarf reasoned, for he had heard Luthien talking about the folk of Avon as potential allies many times in the last few weeks.

Luthien sighed. “We may have friends within Pipery’s walls,” he admitted.

Bellick offered no response.

“I came to ask permission of King Brind’Amour,” Luthien said, standing straight. “But King Brind’Amour is not to be found.”

“Thus you will go as is your pleasure,” said Bellick.

“Thus I ask permission to go from King Bellick dan Burso, who rightfully leads the army,” Luthien corrected, and the show of loyalty did much for Bellick as the dwarf stood straighter.

“You may be disappointed,” Bellick warned.

Luthien shrugged. “At the least, I will scout out their defenses,” he replied.

“And at the most?”

“Justice for the Avon populace,” Luthien replied without hesitation.

“Go, and quickly,” Bellick bade him. “We’ve less than two hours to the dawn, and I plan to eat my noontime meal in Pipery!”

 

 

Luthien didn’t really know what he would do as he used the cover of darkness and his magical cape to slip silently over Pipery’s wall, which was little more than a collection of ramshackle pilings.

He picked his way from darkened house to house, amazed at how few cyclopians were up and about. By all reports, and by his last encounter on the field, Luthien believed that the small village’s garrison had swelled in number with the addition of those Praetorian Guards fleeing the rout in the mountains. But where were they?

The riddle was solved as Luthien crossed the town’s main road, deep gouges cut into it from the passage of a huge caravan. Heading south, Luthien noted by the tracks, and not more than two days before. Across the road, the young Bedwyr came upon the town’s stables, two buildings connected by long fences. The doors of the barn were thrown wide, but no nickers or whinnies came from within, and the corral was empty, save for a few horse carcasses that had been butchered for meat.

Luthien took a deep and steadying breath, not thrilled by the reality of war’s dark threat. He wondered what other hardships the folk of Pipery, unwitting pawns in Greensparrow’s grand game, might have suffered these last few days.

He composed himself immediately, reminding himself that he could not afford to waste even a second of time. He trotted from shadow to shadow along the side of the main road, then paused when he came to a fork, east and southwest. Directly across from him, Luthien spied the first light he had seen since entering the village, a candle burning in the window of a large structure, which appeared to be the town’s chapel.

With a hopeful nod, Luthien darted across the road to the building’s side. He considered the Ministry in Caer MacDonald, a place of spirituality, but also the chosen headquarters for Greensparrow’s wretched Duke Morkney. Might that be the pattern even in the smaller villages? Within this chapel, might there be an eorl, or a baron, loyal to the king of Avon and holding Pipery under his iron-fisted rule?

A quick glance to the eastern sky reminded Luthien once again that he had little time to ponder. He slipped up to a side door, peeked in through a small window set in its middle, then, seeing no obvious enemies nearby, slowly turned the handle.

It wasn’t even locked, and Luthien eased it open, fully aware that he might find the bulk of the cyclopian garrison within.

To his surprise, and relief, the place seemed empty. He quietly closed the door behind him. He had come in to a small side room, the personal quarters of the place’s priest or caretaker, perhaps. The one other door lay open to the main prayer area. Luthien adjusted his shielding cape to ensure that he was fully covered, then moved up to the door jamb, peering around the corner.

A solitary figure was in the place, kneeling on a bench at the front of the chapel, facing away from Luthien. The man’s white robe revealed him as a priest.

Luthien nodded and padded in softly, moving from bench to bench and stopping often, blending with the wall in case the man turned back. As he neared the front of the chapel, he quietly slipped Blind-Striker from its sheath, but held it low, under the cape.

He could hear the priest then, whispering prayers for the safety of Pipery. Most telling of all was when the man asked God to “keep little Pipery out of the struggles of kings.”

Luthien pulled off his hood. “Pipery lays on the road to Carlisle,” he said suddenly.

The priest nearly toppled, and scrambled furiously to stand facing the intruder, eyes wide, jaw slack. Luthien noted the bruises on the man’s face, the split lip and the puffy eyes. Given the number of cyclopians who had come through the town recently, it wasn’t hard for the young Bedwyr to guess where those had come from.

“Whether it is friend or enemy to Eriador is Pipery’s own choice,” Luthien finished.

“Who are you?”

“An emissary from King Brind’Amour of Eriador,” Luthien replied. “Come to offer hope where there should be none.”

The man eyed Luthien carefully. “The Crimson Shadow,” he whispered.

Luthien nodded, then held up a calm and steady hand when the priest blanched white.

“I have not come to kill you or anyone else,” Luthien explained. “Only to see the mood of Pipery.”

“And to discover our weaknesses,” the priest dared to say.

Luthien chuckled. “I have five thousand battle-hungry dwarfs on the field, and a like number of men,” he explained. “I have seen your wall and what is left of your garrison.”

“Most of the cyclopians fled,” the priest confirmed, his gaze going to the floor.

“What is your name?”

The man looked up, squaring his shoulders defiantly. “Solomon Keyes,” he replied.

“Father Keyes?”

“Not yet,” the priest admitted. “Brother Keyes.”

“A man of the church or of the crown?”

“How do you know they are not one and the same?” Keyes answered cryptically.

Luthien smiled warmly and pushed aside his cape, revealing his bared sword, which he promptly replaced in its scabbard. “They are not,” he replied.

Solomon Keyes offered no argument.

Luthien was pleased thus far with the conversation; he had the distinct feeling that Keyes did not equate God with Greensparrow. “Cyclopians?” he asked, motioning toward the priest’s bruised face.

Keyes lowered his gaze once more.

“Praetorian Guards, likely,” Luthien went on. “Come from the mountains, where we routed them. They passed through in a rush, stealing and slaughtering your horses, taking everything of value that we Eriadorans would not find it, and ordering the folk of Pipery, and probably the village cyclopian militia as well, to defend to the last.”

Keyes looked up, his soft features tightening, eyes sharp on the perceptive young Bedwyr.

“That is the way it happened,” Luthien said finally.

“Do you expect a denial?” Keyes asked. “I am no stranger to the brutish ways of cyclopians, and was not surprised.”

“They are your allies,” Luthien said, his tone edging on accusation.

“They are my king’s army,” Keyes corrected.

“That speaks ill of your king,” Luthien was quick to respond. Both men went silent, letting the moment of tension pass. It would do neither of them any good to get things worked up here, for both of them were fast coming to the conclusion that something positive might come from this unexpected meeting.

“It was not only the Praetorian Guards of the Iron Cross,” Keyes admitted, “but even many of our own militia. Even old Allaberksis, who has been in Pipery since the earliest—”

“Old?” Luthien interrupted. Aged cyclopians were a rarity.

“The oldest one-eye ever I have seen,” said Keyes, and the sharpness of his voice told Luthien that this Allaberksis was likely in on the beating he had received.

“Old and withered,” Luthien added. “Running south with a small band of Praetorian Guards.”

Keyes expression told him that he had hit the mark.

“Alas for Allaberksis,” Luthien said evenly. “He could not outrun my horse.”

“He is dead?”

Luthien nodded.

“And what of his purse?” Keyes asked indignantly. “Common grain money for the villagers, money rightly earned and needed—”

Luthien held up his hand. “It will be returned,” he promised. “After.”

“After Pipery is sacked!” Keyes cried.

“That needn’t happen,” Luthien said calmly, defeating the priest’s outburst before it ever truly began.

Another long silence followed, as Keyes waited for the explanation of that most intriguing statement, and Luthien considered how he might broach the subject. He guessed that Keyes held quite a bit of influence over the village; the chapel was well-maintained and the villagers had trusted him, after all, with their precious grain money.

“We of Eriador and DunDarrow have not come to conquer,” Luthien began.

“You have crossed the border in force!”

“In defense,” Luthien explained. “Though a truce was signed between our kings, Avon’s war with Eriador did not end. All along the Iron Cross, our villages were being destroyed.”

“Cyclopian raiders,” Keyes reasoned.

“Working for Greensparrow,” Luthien replied.

“You do not know this.”

“Did you not see Praetorian Guards coming out of the mountains?” Luthien countered. “Had they just gone into the Iron Cross, in defense against our march, or had they been there all along, prodding Eriador to war?”

Keyes didn’t answer, and honestly didn’t know the answer, though no Praetorian Guard caravans had been reported heading north in the few weeks before the onset of war.

“Greensparrow prodded us to march south,” Luthien insisted. “He forced the war upon us if we truly desired our freedom.”

Keyes squared his shoulders. His expression showed that he believed Luthien, or at least that he didn’t consider the words a complete lie, but his stance became defiant anyway. “I am loyal to Avon,” he informed the young Bedwyr.

“But Greensparrow is not,” Luthien answered without hesitation. “Nor is he loyal to our common God. He allies with demons, I say, for I have battled with more than one of the hellish fiends myself, have felt their evil auras, have seen such a creature occupy the body of one of Greensparrow’s henchmen dukes!”

Keyes winced; he had heard the rumors of diabolical allies, Luthien realized, and could not dispute the claims.

“How am I to know that you are not murderous invaders?” Keyes asked.

Luthien drew out his sword, looked from its gleaming blade to the blanching priest. “Why are you not already dead?” he asked.

The young Bedwyr was quick to replace the sword, not wanting to cause any more discomfort to the beleaguered man. “Pipery’s fate is its own to decide,” he said. He looked to the eastern windows then, and saw that the sky was beginning to brighten. “I do not demand your alliance or your fealty to my king, and on my word, your village will not be destroyed and your money will be returned. But if you oppose us, we will kill you, do not doubt. Eriador has come for war, and so we shall wage it with any who hold loyalty to evil King Greensparrow!”

With that, Luthien bowed and swept away.

“What am I to do?” Keyes called, and Luthien stopped and turned to face him from across the room.

“How am I to prevent my people from defending their own homes?” he asked.

“There is no defense,” Luthien said grimly, and turned once more.

“Nor is there time!” Keyes pleaded. “Dawn is almost upon us!”

Luthien stopped at the doorway to the side room. “I can delay them,” he promised, though he doubted his own words. “I can buy you the hours until noon. The chapel offers sanctuary, to all but one-eyes.”

“Go then to your army,” Keyes said in a tone that assured Luthien that the man would at least try.

More people, more cyclopians, were out and about as Luthien left the chapel, forcing him to alter his course several times. He made the wall before the dawn, though, and in the increasing light could see just how truly hopeless was Pipery’s position. The wall was in bad disrepair—in many places it was no more than piled stones. Even at its strongest points, the wall loomed no higher than eight feet, and was not thick enough to slow the battering charge of Bellick’s stone-crushing dwarfs.

“Do well, Solomon Keyes,” Luthien prayed as he crossed out of the village, running fast across the open fields. For the sympathetic young Bedwyr, the image of the coming carnage was not acceptable.

A calm had settled over the fields between the Eriadoran encampment and Pipery, both sides waiting for the attack they knew would come this day.

And what a fine day it was! Too fine for battle, Luthien lamented. The sun dawned bright, the wind blew crisp and clean, and all the birds and animals were out in full, chirping and leaping.

Riverdancer, too, was in high spirits, snorting and pawing the ground when Luthien approached with his saddle. The white stallion leaped away as soon as Luthien had mounted.

Luthien could not ignore the nausea churning in his stomach. He always felt anxious before battle, but this time it was not the same. In every fight previous, Luthien had charged in with the knowledge that his was the just cause, and in the wider picture of Eriador’s freedom, he considered the invasion of Avon a necessary and righteous thing. That did little to comfort him, though, when he thought of Pipery sacked, of men like Solomon Keyes lying soaked in their own blood.

Killing evil cyclopians was one thing, killing humans, Luthien now understood, was something altogether different.

He paced Riverdancer swiftly along the ranks, coming up to King Bellick and Shuglin as they reviewed the dwarven line.

“Good that you got back,” Bellick remarked. “It would not do for you to be standing among them Avon and cyclopian dogs when we run them down!”

“We must hold our line,” Luthien said bluntly.

The dwarf king turned about so abruptly that his wild orange beard slipped out of his broad belt.

“Until the hour of noon,” Luthien explained.

“The day is not long enough!” Bellick roared. “They will see us now, and discover our strengths and weaknesses, and alter their defenses . . .”

“There is nothing that Pipery can do,” Luthien assured the king. He saw Siobhan and several of the other Cutters approaching, along with a group of leaders of the Eriadoran army.

“They are helpless against our strength,” Luthien finished, loud enough so that the newcomers could hear.

“That is fine news,” replied Bellick. “Then let us go in and finish the task quickly, then march on to the next town.”

Luthien shook his head determinedly, and Bellick responded with an open glare.

The young Bedwyr sat up straight in his saddle, looked all about as he spoke, for he was now addressing all who would listen. “Pipery will offer little defense,” he said, “and less still if we delay through the morning.”

A chorus of groans met that proposition.

“And consider our course carefully,” Luthien went on, undaunted. “We will run through a dozen such villages before we ever see the walls of Warchester, with Carlisle still far beyond that. There are seeds of support for us; I have witnessed them with my own eyes.”

“You have spoken with men inside Pipery’s walls?” Bellick asked, not sounding pleased.

“With only one man,” Luthien confirmed. “With the priest, who fears for his town’s safety.”

“And rightly so!” came a cry from the gathering, a call that was answered and bolstered many times over.

“How long?” Siobhan asked simply, quieting the crowd.

“Give them the morning,” Luthien begged, speaking directly to Bellick once more. “They can make few adjustments to bolster their meager defenses, and we have the village surrounded that none may escape.”

“I fear to delay,” Bellick replied, but his tone was less belligerent. The dwarf king was no fool. He recognized the influence that Luthien Bedwyr held over the Eriadorans, the Cutters, and even a fair number of his own dwarfs, who remembered well that it was Luthien who had led the raid to free so many of their kin from the horrors of the Montfort Mines. While Bellick wasn’t sure that he agreed with Luthien’s reasoning, he understood the dangers of openly disagreeing with the young man.

“We will lose six hours at the outset,” Luthien admitted. “But much of that time will be regained in the battle, unless I miss my guess. And even if the hours are not regained, I will ask that my folk march more swiftly beside me on the way to the next village.” Luthien rose up in his saddle again and addressed all the crowd. “I ask this of you,” he shouted. “Will you grant me this one thing?”

The response was unanimous, and Bellick realized that it would be folly to try and resist the young Bedwyr. He hated the thought of keeping his anxious dwarfs in check, and hated the thought of wasting so fine a morning. But Bellick hated more the notion of open disagreement between himself and Luthien, a potential split in an army that could afford no rifts.

He nodded to Luthien then, but in his look was the clear assumption that Luthien owed him one for this.

Luthien’s responding nod, so full of gratitude, made it clear that he would repay the favor.

“Besides,” Luthien offered with a wink to Bellick and to Siobhan as the ranks broke apart around them. “I now know where Pipery’s wall is weakest.”

 

 

As the hopeful word spread about Pipery, Solomon Keyes rushed to the wall and peered out across the open fields.

“They are standing down!” one gleeful man yelled right in the young priest’s face.

Keyes managed a smile, and was indeed grateful, but it was tempered with the knowledge that he had but a few hours to do so very much. He looked up to the sky as though he might will the sun to hold in place for a while.

 

 

Bellick, Luthien, Siobhan, and all the other commanders of the army were not idle that long morning. With Luthien’s information about the physical defenses and about the emotional turmoil within Pipery, a new battle plan was quickly drawn, analyzed, and polished, each segment run over and over until it became embedded in the thoughts of those who were charged with carrying it out.

They were back on the field before noon, ten thousand strong, speartips and swords gleaming in the light, polished shields catching the sun like flaming mirrors.

All of the cavalry was together this time, more than a hundred strong and sitting in formation directly north of the town. Luthien on shining Riverdancer centered the line, along with Siobhan. On command, all heads turned to face east of that position, where stood King Bellick dan Burso in his fabulous battle gear.

A lone rider galloped out to the town’s north gates.

“Will you yield, or will you fight us?” he asked simply of the growling cyclopians gathered there.

Predictably, a spear came soaring out at him, and just as predictably, it came nowhere near to hitting the mark. King Bellick had his answer.

As soon as the rider returned to his place in the ranks, all eyes again went to the dwarvish commander. With one strong arm, Bellick lifted his short and thick sword high into the air, and after a moment’s pause, brought it sweeping down.

The roar of the attack erupted all along the line; Luthien and his fellow cavalry kicked their mounts into a thunderous charge.

Not all the line followed, though. Only those dwarfs directly behind the cavalry began to run ahead, the charge filtering to the east, sweeping up the line like the slow break of a wave.

Luthien brought his forces to within a few running strides of Pipery’s wall, then broke left, to the east, apparently belaying the line. Out of the dust cloud on the heels of the cavalry came the leading dwarfs, straight on for Pipery, and so it went as Luthien’s group circled the city, every pounding stride opening the way for another grim-faced soldier. Luthien had named the maneuver “opening the sea gates,” and so it seemed to be, the riders moving like a blocking wall and the foot soldiers pouring in like a flood behind them.

As soon as the pattern became apparent to the defenders, it was reversed, with those infantry to the west coming on in a synchronous charge. Luthien’s cavalry by this time had swung far around to the southeastern section of the village, trading missile fire, elvish bow against cyclopian spear. None of the cavalry had been hit, though, a testament to the fact that cyclopians simply could not judge distance, and to Luthien’s hopes that few, if any, humans were among Pipery’s obviously thin line.

The young Bedwyr spotted the desired section of wall, a pile of boulders, wider than it was high. Luthien swung Riverdancer away from the village, then turned abruptly and came straight in for the target, Siobhan right beside him and the elven line slowing and widening behind the pair.

Luthien saw the cyclopian spearmen and pikemen come up to defend, waited until the last moment, then pulled hard on Riverdancer’s reins, yanking the steed up short and skittering out to the left, while Siobhan skipped out to the right.

Opening the way for the elvish volley. Dozens of stinging arrows rushed in, most skipping off the stones, several hitting the mark. The defenders fell away, either dead, wounded, or simply in fear, and Luthien and Siobhan called out to their kinfolk and kicked their mounts into the charge once more.

Luthien tightened his legs and posted hard, heels low, the balls of his feet pressed in tight to the stirrups. He bent low and coaxed Riverdancer on, aiming the mount straight for the center of the boulder pile. Up sprang the mighty horse, easily clearing the four- foot obstacle, bringing Luthien into Pipery.

Siobhan came in right beside him, and they turned together, thundering down the road. Luthien spied two fleeing cyclopians and ran them down, Riverdancer crushing one of them, Blind-Striker cutting down the other. The young Bedwyr turned about to Siobhan, grinning as he started to call out his new total. He stopped short, though, for he found Siobhan similarly running down a pair of one-eyes.

Cyclopians huddled in terror at the base of that low wall as the riders streamed over it, twenty, fifty, ninety, coming into Pipery. None of them paused at the wall, and at last the brutes managed to stand up, thinking they had been spared, thinking to go out over the wall and run away.

Before they got atop the first stones, Pipery’s barrier seemed to heighten by several feet as the human wall of Eriadoran foot soldiers greeted the cyclopians.

Chaos hit the streets of Pipery, riders rushing every which way, cyclopians trying to form into defensive groups, only to find, more often than not, that half of their number were dead before they ever joined in the formation. There were some pockets of stiff resistance, though, particularly in the north, where Luthien, Siobhan, and three-score other riders charged off in support.

Trapped between such forces, the cyclopian defenses quickly evaporated, each brute thinking to save itself. One by one, the one-eyes were slain.

It was Luthien himself who finally threw wide Pipery’s north gate, and King Bellick dan Burso who stood right outside, ready to greet him. Luthien jumped back astride Riverdancer, then held out his hand to help the short dwarf climb up behind him. The fighting was fast diminishing, more a matter of chasing down single brutes than any real battles, and so Luthien and the dwarf trotted off to survey the battle scene.

“Not much of a defense,” the dwarf king snorted, seeing how truly thin the line had been. Cyclopian bodies—almost exclusively cyclopian, Luthien noted hopefully—were strewn about in a long line, but in most places were no more than one or two deep.

“Where are they all?” the dwarf asked. “Did more of the folk get out than we figured?”

Luthien didn’t think that to be the case, and he was pretty sure that he could guess where the rest of Pipery’s defenders had gone. He called his cavalry into formation behind him and trotted south along the main road, to the fork facing the town’s chapel.

When all the soldiers came into place around that structure and finally quieted, they could hear the soft singing of many voices emanating from within.

Bellick slid down then to put his dwarfs and the Eriadoran foot soldiers in place, and to manage the prisoner groups being escorted into the area. Luthien, meanwhile, took a slow circuit of the chapel, calming his battle-hungry companions on all sides. The dwarf king was waiting for him when he came back around to the fork in the road, and Bellick was not surprised by the plan Luthien had devised.

“You have guessed right thus far,” the dwarf remarked, not of the mind to overrule the young Bedwyr.

Luthien slid down from Riverdancer, handing the reins to a nearby soldier. He dusted himself off and strode directly for the chapel’s main door, motioning and calling orders as he went.

Without hesitation, without bothering to knock, Luthien entered to find several hundred sets of eyes staring back to regard him, expressions showing too great a mix of emotions for the young man to possibly sort through. He scanned the gathering, finally settling his gaze on Solomon Keyes, who stood at the pulpit at the front of the chapel.

“It is done,” the young Bedwyr announced. “Pipery is free.”

A woman jumped up from the edge of a pew and charged at Luthien, but several arms caught her before she had gone two steps, pulling her screaming back into the throng.

“Many had kin out there,” Keyes explained evenly.

Luthien glanced back over his shoulder and nodded and a long line of human prisoners walked into the chapel, breaking away, running to their relieved families.

“There may be others,” Luthien explained. “We have not sorted it all out as of yet.”

“What penalty?” Keyes started to ask.

“No penalty,” Luthien replied without the slightest hesitation. “They were defending their homes and their kin, so they believed.” He paused, letting the surprised murmurs quiet. “We are not your enemy,” he declared. “This much I have told you before.”

As one, the crowd swung about to regard Keyes, who stood nodding.

“Pipery is free,” Luthien went on. “And out of the war. Your gates are open, north and south, and you shall not hinder our passage, or the continuing line that shall come down from Eriador. Nor shall you deny any boats we put on the river from safe travel past your docks.”

The murmurs began again, and were quickly silenced by Luthien’s booming voice. “But we ask nothing of you,” he explained. “What you give to us, you give of your own free will.”

“Thieves!” one man yelled, leaping to his feet and pushing to the center of the open aisle. “Thieves and murderers!” he proclaimed, slowly stalking toward Luthien.

He stopped short when Bellick dan Burso entered, to stand at Luthien’s side. “We are not your enemies,” the dwarf king declared, and the blood spattered upon him could not diminish the splendor of his crafted armor, nor the dust covering him steal the flames of his fiery beard. But the sympathy that was in his heart could not diminish the intensity of his stern gaze.

Bellick let that gaze linger all about the room, then settled it on Luthien, who nodded for the dwarf to continue. “We are not your enemies unless you make of us your enemies,” Bellick promised grimly. “Then know that Pipery will be sacked, burned to the ground!”

Not a person in the room doubted the imposing dwarf’s promise.

Bellick pulled two large pouches from a cord on his back. “Your grain money,” he explained, tossing them to the floor at the feet of the deflated rabble-rouser. “Taken from cyclopians fleeing Pipery. Taken from your King Greensparrow’s cyclopians as they left Pipery to its doom. Decide then who are your enemies and who are your allies.”

“Or decide nothing,” Luthien added. “And remain neutral. We ask nothing of you, save that your swords are not again lifted against us.”

He looked down at Bellick, and the dwarf up at him. “We will tend our wounded,” Bellick announced, “and clear our dead from the field, that they do not lie beside the rotting cyclopians. And then we shall leave.” The dwarf and Luthien turned to go, but were stopped by the call of Solomon Keyes.

“You may bring your wounded in here,” the priest offered, “and I shall prepare your dead for burial, as I prepare the human dead of Pipery.”

Luthien turned to him, somewhat surprised.

“My God and your God,” Keyes asked, “are they not one and the same?”

Luthien nodded, managed a thin smile, and walked from the chapel.

 

 

FOR THE CAUSE OF JUSTICE

Bellick dan Burso was not ignorant of the many angry and suspicious gazes that settled over him as he walked with an entourage of bodyguards through Pipery’s narrow streets. Luthien held illusions of friendship with all the common folk of Avon, and one day that might come to pass, but Bellick knew better than to hope for such allies so soon after battle. Aside from the cyclopians who had been slaughtered, more than a few of Pipery’s human soldiers had been killed as well, and a fair number of families in the village now had a dead relative because of the invading Eriadorans.

Such a greeting rarely led to friendship.

Still, there were others in the town who managed a smile and a nod as the honorable dwarf king passed, and when Bellick arrived at the front steps to the chapel house, he found his own soldiers, set in place to guard over the Eriadoran and dwarvish wounded, relaxing on the stairs, enjoying food and drink with a handful of Pipery’s citizens. The dwarven soldiers fumbled all over themselves, trying to get up, but the king waved his hand absently. No need for formalities now, not with the army preparing once more for a long and arduous march.

Bellick walked into the chapel, leaving his escorts on the front steps with the others. As the dwarf expected, he found Luthien inside, crouched near one of the pews, talking quietly with a wounded man.

“Brandon of Felling Downs,” Luthien explained when Bellick joined them.

The dwarf nodded deferentially, taking note that the man had lost an arm. He seemed comfortable enough, though, on the pew, which had been converted into three end-to-end beds.

Bellick looked all around. “Which are ours and which of Pipery?” he asked.

“All mixed together,” said Luthien.

The dwarf turned a sly look on the young Bedwyr. “Your doing?”

“I’ll take a bit of the credit,” Luthien replied. “But it was Solomon Keyes who assigned the cots.”

Bellick snorted and started away. “Partners in crime,” he said quietly.

Three rows down, Bellick came upon a pew of four beds, all holding dwarfs. One lay out straight, but the other three were sitting, throwing dice and chatting easily. Their smiles came wide indeed when Bellick addressed them; one even shoved the sleeping dwarf.

“Let him rest,” Bellick bade them, then to the others, “We’re putting out this day, south along the river. Any of you fit to join in?”

All four moved to rise, but Bellick could see that none were ready for the road. “Keep your seats,” the dwarf king instructed. He told the healthiest of the bunch that he was in charge. “We’ll be running supplies through here,” he explained. “Keep them watched, and come along when the four of you are ready.

“When you are ready!” Bellick reiterated more forcefully, noting the hopeful expressions that came over his eager warriors. “And not a moment before!”

Bellick moved on then, inspecting each cot, stopping to say a short prayer over those most seriously wounded, offering encouraging words to the others. He had just completed his rounds, telling Luthien not to tarry too long, when he was met at the chapel door by Solomon Keyes.

The young priest wiped his dirty hands and held one out to the dwarf king.

Bellick took it, but turned it over instead of shaking it, taking note of the mud on the fingers. “You’ve been burying the dead,” the dwarf stated.

“I have set others to the task,” Keyes replied. “I have been offering final prayers, consecrating the sites.”

“What of the one-eyes?” the dwarf asked, a hint of a challenge in his gruff voice. “Have you any prayers for them?”

“We built a communal pyre,” Keyes replied indignantly, “and burned them. And I did pray for their souls.”

Bellick’s bushy eyebrows rose.

“I prayed that they would learn the error of their ways in the afterlife, and that they would find redemption.”

“You’re fond of them, are you?”

Now it was Keyes who gave a very dwarvish snort. “I hold no fondness for the ways of cyclopians,” he replied. “But that does not mean that I hate the individual one-eyes.”

“Perhaps some things are worth hating,” offered Luthien, coming to join the pair.

“Perhaps I have no hate in my heart,” Keyes replied easily.

“They beat you up good,” Bellick reminded him. Keyes merely shrugged.

Luthien studied the man for a long moment and found that he was a bit jealous. He admired Keyes, not only for finding the courage to trust in the Eriadorans, but for holding such a generous heart.

“You are marching this day?” Keyes asked Bellick. “Surely your soldiers are weary from the fight, and the sun will set in a mere two hours.”

“We’ve got no time to be tired,” Bellick replied. “The road ahead is long, and every moment we waste gives Greensparrow more time to set his defenses.”

“I will be ready to go in twenty minutes,” said Keyes unexpectedly. Both Luthien and Bellick stared at him wide-eyed.

“You shall encounter many villages lining the road to Warchester,” the priest explained. “Many in Pipery have kinfolk there. We do not want them killed.”

“I thought you were to help with the wounded,” said Luthien.

“I have enough people, trusted people, set in place to care for the wounded here,” Keyes replied. “I, and a select handful of others, see our place in the march with King Bellick.” He looked to the south. “I will save more lives out there than in here.”

It took Bellick a few minutes to sort out the unexpected news, but the dwarf soon agreed. If Keyes could help weaken the defenses of the other villages half as much as he had done in Pipery, the road to Warchester would be swift and without great cost.

Luthien’s elation was even greater, for he saw not only the tactical advantage of having such emissaries, but the moral one as well. With the Pipery spokesmen along, the number of deaths on both sides was sure to be reduced.

The young Bedwyr’s optimism was guarded, though. He didn’t really know how much influence Keyes might command away from Pipery. He also realized that no matter how swift and easy the march, it would stall at Warchester, a great and fortified city, its defenses complete with its own wizard-duke.

Where, Luthien wondered again, was Brind’Amour?

 

 

Though she was completely drained by using the powerful spell she had spent so long in perfecting, Deanna Wellworth did not sleep for the rest of that night on the plateau. She sat beside the fire, which Brind’Amour enhanced with some minor magics, though he, too, was obviously exhausted. Deanna cradled Mystigal’s head on her lap, watching Brind’Amour as he gradually drifted off to sleep.

What had she begun? Deanna had set events into motion that were now above her control; had gone against her king and mentor in a conspiracy that could not be hidden and could not be reversed. Even if she killed Brind’Amour this night—and the thought crossed her mind more than once—she would not be able to hide the truth from Greensparrow. Because of her, three more of Greensparrow’s dukes were gone: one dead, the other two, Mystigal and Resmore, broken.

Deanna tried not to focus too tightly on the events of this night. In truth, it was but a logical continuation of the course she had started upon when she had used Taknapotin against Resmore in the mountains. Greensparrow would make contact with the banished demon, if he hadn’t already, and he would learn the truth of Deanna Wellworth, and of Ashannon McLenny. In those courageous earlier decisions, Deanna’s course had been set, and this night was as much about her own survival as it was about helping Brind’Amour.

The old wizard awakened soon after the first slanting rays of dawn touched his face.

“He will live, I believe,” Deanna said, indicating Mystigal, who was still unconscious.

“But his magic is no more,” Brind’Amour replied, ending with a profound yawn. “The cord of magic within him has snapped.”

“As with Duke Resmore?”

Brind’Amour chuckled, amazed at how perceptive this Deanna could be. His smile did not last very long, though, as he considered what he feared might be potential trouble. “What of the duke of Eornfast?” he asked bluntly.

“His business here was finished, and so he left,” Deanna answered simply.

There was much more to it than that, Brind’Amour believed—and feared. Ashannon’s demeanor had been aloof, almost icy. The duke of Eornfast had apparently gone along with Deanna’s ploy, but was it because he agreed with her decision, or did he simply have no choice? Or even worse, Brind’Amour had to fear, did he have ulterior motives?

The old wizard’s doubt showed clearly on his wrinkled face.

“Trust in Ashannon McLenny,” Deanna begged. “He is a difficult one at times, but he holds no love for any who might claim rulership over his beloved Baranduine, be it Greensparrow or Brind’Amour.”

“I never made such a claim,” Brind’Amour was quick to respond.

“But shall you if your war goes well?”

Brind’Amour had to work hard to try and see things from Deanna’s desperate point of view, in order to avoid insult at the remark. “Never have I claimed rulership over Avon!” he insisted. “Nor has any of Eriador at any time. When Bruce MacDonald ruled Eriador united, and had a disorganized Avon at his bidding, he never claimed anything but friendship to his kin from Baranduine.”

“It is irrelevant anyway,” Deanna said quietly. “All that matters is what Ashannon believes.”

“And what does he believe?”

Deanna shrugged. “He agreed to banish his demon,” she said with confidence, “and he has done so. And this was as much his plan as it was mine own. He has been a friend for many years.”

“But would it not be in his interest to see Greensparrow weakened?” Brind’Amour reasoned. “The more difficult the war for Avon’s king, the more easily Baranduine might slip from his grasp.”

Again Deanna only shrugged. “We will have our answers soon enough,” she said. “Now I must get back to Mannington to make my report to Greensparrow.”

Brind’Amour looked skeptically at Mystigal, wondering what Deanna might be thinking to do with the broken wizard.

“I should like it if you would accompany me,” Deanna said.

Brind’Amour’s surprise was genuine.

“There is much we need to discuss,” the duchess went on.

“Planning for the time after Greensparrow?”

Deanna chuckled. “We have much to do before we can ever hope for that,” she replied. “For now, there are things you must know, and proof I must offer of my integrity in this matter.”

Brind’Amour didn’t disagree. For all he knew, this entire situation was some sort of an elaborate ruse designed to entice him into the confidence of conspirators who cared nothing for Eriador. He gave a long look to the towering mountains, wondering what progress Luthien and Bellick had made, wondering if Pipery had yet fallen.

Then he rose and stretched, and he and Deanna worked together, joining their strength to open a magical tunnel to the south.

Just a short while later, Mystigal was resting comfortably on a bed in Deanna’s private quarters, while Deanna took Brind’Amour to meet the living proof that she had turned against Greensparrow.

Selna seemed more than a little surprised to see her lady and the bushy-bearded man who accompanied her, and her jaw dropped low when Deanna introduced the stranger as the king of Eriador.

“Greensparrow was the savior of Avon,” Deanna explained to Brind’Amour. “So it has been said for more than twenty years.”

“Do not do this, my Lady,” Selna begged, but when she looked into Deanna’s eyes, she saw no compassion there.

“Tell King Brind’Amour the truth, dear Selna,” Deanna said, her voice dripping with threat. “Else I will have to make you admit things as I did before.”

Brind’Amour did not miss the blanch that came over the older woman. He put a hand on Deanna’s shoulder. “Pray tell me, dear Lady Wellworth, what was it that you did to this handmaid?”

“When I banished Taknapotin, my demon, I knew that one of Greensparrow’s informants had been removed from my court,” Deanna explained. “But only one. Thus did I visit dear Selna here.”

“It is not delicate to use magic in such a way,” Brind’Amour remarked, recalling his own magical exertions over Duke Resmore.

“Not pleasant,” Deanna agreed. She looked directly at Selna. “But I shall do it again, as often as necessary.”

Selna was trembling visibly. “It was Greensparrow,” she blurted suddenly. “He killed them; he killed them all! That night! Oh, my Lady, why do you keep forcing me to remember that horrible night?”

“Greensparrow murdered my entire family,” Deanna said, her voice strangely devoid of emotion.

“All but one,” Brind’Amour remarked.

“I was kept alive only because Greensparrow feared that he would not be accepted as king,” Deanna explained. She looked to Selna, motioning for the woman to elaborate.

“Though she was but a child, Greensparrow meant to put Deanna on the throne if necessary,” the handmaid admitted, lowering her gaze, for she could not look Deanna in the eye. “He would control her every action, of course, and then, when she came of age, he would marry her.”

Brind’Amour was indeed surprised that the plan to conquer Avon had been so very devious, and had worked out so perfectly neatly. Again the wizard thought of that past time and the decision for the brotherhood to disband and go to their deserved rest.

“It never came to that, of course,” Deanna added, “for the people of Avon exalted in Greensparrow. They begged him to hold their kingdom together.”

“Then why was Deanna allowed to live?” Brind’Amour asked, directing his question to Selna. He saw something here between the woman and Deanna, something that Deanna, in her outrage upon learning the truth, might be overlooking.

“Ashannon McLenny of Eornfast,” Deanna answered sternly. “He took personal interest in me, even willingly entered Greensparrow’s court as a duke and accepted a demonic familiar, like all of Greensparrow’s wizard-dukes—save Cresis the cyclopian of Carlisle, who is too stupid to deal with such fiendish creatures. Ashannon was a wizard in his own right, and a friend of my father’s. While he abhorred the thought of dealing with Greensparrow, he had learned that Baranduine would be Greensparrow’s next target, and he had not the forces to resist.”

Everything was falling into place for Brind’Amour now. He understood the cool demeanor of Ashannon McLenny, the fire of Deanna, and something else, a player here whom Deanna did not fully appreciate.

“And how did Ashannon McLenny learn of the coming invasion?” the wizard asked.

Deanna shrugged—then gasped in surprise when Selna answered, “I told him.”

Deanna’s shocked expression made the older woman squirm. “I betrayed my dear Avon,” she admitted openly. “But I had to, my Lady! Oh, I feared Greensparrow, and what he might do to you. I knew that I had to protect you until the events became a thing of the past, until you were no more a threat to Greensparrow.”

Brind’Amour’s snicker stopped the woman short, and turned both sets of eyes upon him. “No threat, indeed!” the wizard laughed.

Deanna managed a smile at that, but Selna, torn beyond reason, did not. Brind’Amour understood Selna fully now; she was the ultimate peacemaker, the wrinkle-smoother, and that could be a dangerous thing to her allies in times of political intrigue. Selna had betrayed Greensparrow to Ashannon, and would now betray Deanna to Greensparrow if given the opportunity, because in her heart she only wanted things nice and neat, peaceful and orderly. Selna would do whatever she thought best to end conflicts and intrigue, but while that was admirable, the success of such a course depended upon the mercy of kings, a trait Brind’Amour knew to be scarce indeed among the noble-born. In short, Selna was a fool, an unwitting lackey, though her heart was not black with ambition. In looking at Deanna, and measuring her stern demeanor toward the woman, it occurred to Brind’Amour that Selna had probably already spied upon Deanna for Greensparrow on other occasions, and that Deanna knew about it. Thus, Selna was no more a threat, Brind’Amour realized, not with Deanna so near and so watchful.

“My biggest fear in waging war was the balance of magical power,” Brind’Amour said openly after he and Deanna left Selna’s room, with Deanna pointedly locking the door from the outside and casting a minor enchantment to prevent any divining by other wizards into the room.

“Treat her with mercy,” Brind’Amour advised.

“I will keep her safe and secure,” Deanna replied, emphasizing the last. “When all of this is over, I will give back to her her life, though it will be one far removed from my court.”

“Now only two of Greensparrow’s wizards remain,” Brind’Amour said, satisfied at that, “and one, at least, is on my side, while the other, I would hope, shall remain neutral.”

“On your side?” Deanna asked. “That I never said.”

“Then you are at least against Greensparrow,” the old wizard reasoned.

“I am the rightful queen of Avon,” the woman said bluntly. “Why would I not oppose the man who has stolen my throne?”

Brind’Amour nodded and scratched at his huge beard, trying to figure out exactly how much value Deanna Wellworth would prove to be.

“And do not think that the balance of magical strength has shifted so greatly,” the duchess warned. “Mystigal, Resmore, and Theredon were minor spellcasters, conduits for their demon familiars rather than great powers in themselves, and neither I nor Ashannon hold much power anymore, now that our familiars have been banished.”

Brind’Amour considered the barrier Deanna had enacted on the plateau and thought that she might be underestimating herself, but he held the thought private. “Still,” he said, “I would rather battle Greensparrow alone than with his wizards allied beside him.”

“Our powers were great because of our relationships with our familiars,” Deanna explained. “If we achieved a higher symbiosis with them, even our lives could be extended.”

“As Greensparrow’s was obviously extended.” Brind’Amour realized where Deanna’s reasoning led. Brind’Amour was alive in this time because he had chosen the magical stasis, but Greensparrow had remained awake through the centuries. By now, the man should have died of old age, something even a wizard could not fully escape.

“So Greensparrow and his familiar are very close,” Brind’Amour went on, prompting Deanna to finish her point. “A demon, perhaps a demon lord?”

“So we once thought,” Deanna answered grimly. “But no, Greensparrow’s familiar is not a demon, but another of the magical beasts of the world.”

Brind’Amour scratched his beard again and seemed not to understand.

“He went into the Saltwash those centuries ago to find his power,” Deanna explained. “And so he did find it, with a beast of the highest order.”

Brind’Amour nearly swooned. He knew what creature had long ago dominated the Saltwash, and had thought that his brotherhood had destroyed, or at least had imprisoned the beasts, as he had sealed the dragon Balthazar deep in a mountain cave.

“A dragon,” he said, all color leaving his face.

Deanna nodded grimly. “And now Greensparrow and the dragon are one.”

 

 

“Cyclopians,” Luthien muttered grimly, seeing the slaughtered horses strewn about the fields. A single farmhouse, no more than a shell, stood on a hill in the distance, a plume of black smoke rising from it.

Luthien was walking Riverdancer, alongside Bellick, Shuglin, and Solomon Keyes. He reached up and stroked the horse’s neck, as if offering sympathy to Riverdancer for the scene of carnage all about them.

“It might be that they’re making our task all the easier,” Shuglin remarked.

“The folk of Dunkery Valley have never held love for the one-eyes,” Solomon Keyes explained. “We tolerated them because we were given little choice in the matter.”

“You are not so different from everyone else in Avonsea, then,” Luthien said.

Further ahead on the road, the line parted to let a pair of riders, Siobhan and another of the Cutters, gallop through. They pulled up in front of Bellick and Luthien.

“A village not so different from Pipery,” Siobhan reported. “Four miles ahead.”

“Alanshire,” Solomon Keyes put in.

“How strong a wall?” Bellick asked Siobhan, but again it was Keyes who spoke up.

“No wall,” he said. “The buildings in the central area of town are close together. It would not be a difficult task for the folk to pile crates and stones to connect them.”

Siobhan nodded her agreement with the assessment.

“And how many soldiers?” Bellick asked.

“I can get in there and find out,” Keyes answered. He looked back over his shoulder and motioned to the other men of Pipery who had come along.

Bellick regarded Luthien, and the dwarf’s expression showed that he was suspicious of letting the priest go ahead of them.

“I can enter at dusk,” the young Bedwyr said in answer.

“And I will be there to meet you,” said Keyes. “With a full report of what we might expect from Alanshire.”

“Some would call you a traitor,” Bellick remarked.

Keyes looked at him directly, and did not back down in the least. “I only care that as few men are killed as possible,” he stated flatly.

The Pipery contingent rode off, four men and a woman sharing three horses. Bellick and the others went about the task of spreading the Eriadoran line to encompass the village. The dwarf king’s instincts told him to attack that same day, but after the situation in Pipery, he deferred to Luthien and to Keyes. If the night’s wait would make the fighting easier, then the time would not be wasted.

Luthien rode out at dusk, taking Shuglin with him at Bellick’s insistence. The dwarf king didn’t fully trust Keyes, and said so openly, and he decided that if the priest had arranged a trap for Luthien, sturdy Shuglin would prove to be a valuable companion. Besides, the crimson cape was large enough that it could camouflage the dwarf as well as Luthien.

The pair reached the outskirts of Alanshire with ease, moving along the more open streets beyond the blockaded center; Luthien was certain that they could have made it this far even without the shielding cape. Now Shuglin came out from under it, and Luthien dared to pull back the hood. Soon after, the pair came upon Keyes and another man, an older, gray-haired gentleman with perfect posture and the sober dress of a old-school merchant.

“Alan O’Dunkery,” Keyes introduced him, “mayor of Alanshire.”

“It is a family name,” the man said curtly, answering the obvious question before Luthien or Shuglin could ask it.

“The firstborn sons are all named Alan,” Keyes added.

The gravity in the priest’s tone seemed to escape Shuglin, but it was not lost on Luthien. This town was named after Alan’s family; it was even possible that the whole river valley had been named for the family O’Dunkery, and not the other way around. This was an important man even beyond the borders of his small village, Luthien realized, and the fact that Keyes had convinced him to come out and meet Luthien gave the young Bedwyr hope.

“Brother Keyes has given me assurances that Alanshire will not be sacked, nor pillaged, and that none of our men will be killed or pressed into service,” Alan O’Dunkery said sternly, hardly a tone of surrender.

“We’ll not fight any who do not lift weapons against us,” Luthien replied.

“Except cyclopians,” Shuglin grunted. Luthien turned a sharp gaze on the dwarf, but Shuglin would not back down. “We’re not leaving one-eyes on the road behind us,” he said with a determined growl.

Luthien allowed the pragmatic dwarf the final word on that.

“You’ll find few behind you,” Alan said calmly. “Most have fled to the south.”

“Taking much of Alanshire’s livestock and supplies with them,” Keyes pointedly added, reminding Shuglin that there were potential allies here, or at least noncombatants.

“How many cyclopians remain?” Luthien asked bluntly, the first information he had requested. This was a delicate moment, Luthien knew, for if Alan O’Dunkery told him outright, the man would be giving away information that would help the Eriadorans. “And if they are to make a stand at the wall, warn well any of your men or women who desire to stand beside them. Our fighters will not distinguish, human or one-eye, in the press of battle.”

Alan was shaking his head before Luthien finished. “All the cyclopians that remain are in that building,” he said, pointing to a tall, square structure that anchored the southeastern corner of the inner village. “In hiding, I would suppose, but in any case we will not allow them to come out.”

Shuglin nearly choked on that revelation.

The Eriadoran army entered Alanshire the next day. There was no fanfare, no warm greetings from the populace, so many people who had lost so much in the cyclopian exodus. But neither was there any resistance. Bellick set up his line around the cyclopian stronghold and made only a single offer to the one-eyes: that he would accept their surrender.

The cyclopians responded with force, hurling spears and brutish threats from every window. With Alan O’Dunkery’s permission, the Fairborn archers set the structure ablaze, and the one-eyes were summarily cut down as they came haphazardly charging out of the various exits.

Alan O’Dunkery and Solomon Keyes met with Luthien, Siobhan, and King Bellick that same day to discuss the next town in line, the influential woman who ran it, and the general mood of the place.

For the people of northern Avon, the purpose of this war was simply to escape with as little loss as possible. Greensparrow had erred badly, Luthien believed, by not sending his army north to meet the invaders. These people felt deserted and helpless, and it was not realistic for the king of Avon to believe that they would offer any resistance to so overwhelming an invading force.

The march to Warchester rolled along.

 

 

“Mystigal and Theredon?” Greensparrow asked angrily. “Both of them are dead?”

“Do not underestimate the power that Brind’Amour brought to the plateau,” Deanna Wellworth replied. “Strong was the ancient brotherhood.”

The skinny, foppish king leaned back on his throne, scratching at his hairless cheek and chin. “You are sure that he is destroyed?”

“I am not sure,” Deanna replied. “It is possible that the wizard’s spirit escaped, though his body was charred to ashes. I cannot understand the tricks of those ancient wizards, and have seen enough of Brind’Amour to respect him greatly. But I suspect that we will hear no more of him in the near future. I am confident, my King, that the army of Eriador is without a leader.”

The news should have been welcomed in Carlisle, but Greensparrow scowled ominously. Brind’Amour ducked low behind a tapestry, fearful that the Avon king would somehow see through the fog of Deanna’s divining mirror and through his own invisibility spell. The duchess of Mannington was equally nervous, the old wizard knew, judging by the amount of time she had spent in front of that mirror composing herself before mustering the courage to call to her king. When Deanna finally did cast the divination, it was in a trembling voice that only gradually steadied as she repeated the summons.

“It is possible that I will get to Resmore and free him,” Deanna went on, trying to keep the king’s thoughts full of information and empty of prying questions.

It didn’t work. “Where is Ashannon McLenny?” Greensparrow snapped.

“Gone back to Baranduine to organize against the Eriadoran fleet,” Deanna answered without hesitation.

Greensparrow’s dark eyes flickered, telling Deanna that he would be quick to check on that.

“The dwarfs and men of Eriador have crossed through the northernmost villages,” Deanna reported truthfully, information that Greensparrow undoubtedly already possessed. “Their path is for Warchester, I believe. I will go there personally, in Theredon’s stead, and make our stand.”

No response.

“What aid will Carlisle send to me?” Deanna asked. “Cresis and the Praetorian Guards?”

Greensparrow snorted. “You have not heard?” he asked. “A second army makes its way southwest from Princetown. Even now they approach the gap between Deverwood and the Iron Cross.”

Behind the tapestry, Brind’Amour quietly sighed in relief.

“I will need Carlisle’s garrison to deal with them,” Greensparrow finished. “Warchester’s forces, along with your own, should prove ample to destroy whatever has come south through the mountains.

“And I must keep my eyes to the river south of Carlisle,” the king admitted. “The Eriadoran fleet in the west will be bottled in the straits and destroyed, without doubt, but another fleet has turned south of the Five Sentinels.”

“And you have no ships left to stop them?” Deanna dared to ask, though she made sure that no trace of hope entered her voice.

Greensparrow scoffed. “I have thrice their number laying in wait,” he said, “led by my finest sea captains. Still, if one or two of the rebels should slip through my galleons, I must be ready for them. Thus you are on your own, Duchess Wellworth,” he said imperiously, signaling that the conversation was nearing its end. “Turn them back, or better, destroy them all. It will be far better if there are no organized defenders awaiting our triumphant return to Caer Mac—to Montfort!”

Greensparrow waved his hands and the image in the mirror clouded over and dissipated into nothingness. The glass quickly cleared and Deanna sat staring at her own reflection.

“So far, so good,” Brind’Amour said hopefully, coming visible as he stepped out from behind the tapestry.

Deanna shook her head. “He will find a path to Taknapotin, who was my familiar demon,” she explained. “Or he will make contact with the fiends of Mystigal or Theredon. We’ll not hide the truth for long, I fear.”

Brind’Amour nodded, unable to disagree, but he did walk over and put a comforting hand on Deanna’s shoulder. “Long enough,” he said. “You did well, Duchess, to deflect his curiosity, keeping him busy enough with the truth to have no time to unwind the lies. By the time Greensparrow understands that I live on, and that he has no remaining wizard allies in his cause, it will be too late.”

“Even if he discerns such information this very night?” Deanna asked grimly.

Brind’Amour had no reply. The army was fast approaching Warchester, the fleet was sailing hard into the Straits of Mann. Mannington’s many warships were already out at sea and Deanna could not possibly recall them without alerting Greensparrow to the truth. Even if Greensparrow learned the truth, even if all of Avon and a hundred dragons rose against the invaders, there was no turning back.