Luthien's Gamble

by R. A. Salvatore

  “You govern Caer MacDonald,” the half-elf explained.

  “Do not leaders often sally forth from the place they lead?” Oliver remarked.

  “Not when that place is in turmoil,” the half-elf answered. “We expect a breakout from the Ministry any day.”

  “The one-eyes will be slaughtered in the open plaza,” Oliver said with all confidence, a confidence that was widespread among all the rebels.

  “And Luthien Bedwyr must be there,” Siobahn went on without hesitation. “When that fight is done, the city will be ours, wholly ours. It would not be appropriate for that important moment to pass with the leader of the rebellion halfway to Port Charley.”

  “We cannot underestimate the importance of Port Charley,” Luthien interjected, feeling a little left out of it all, as if he weren’t even in the room, or at least as though he didn’t have to be in the room. “Port Charley will prove critical to the rebellion and to Caer MacDonald. Even as we sit here bantering, Shuglin’s people work frantically to prepare the defenses of the city. If the whispers speak truly, then an army equal in size to our own force will soon march upon our gates.”

  “Equal odds favor the defense,” Katerin O’Hale remarked.

  “But these are Praetorian Guards,” Luthien emphasized. “Huge and strong, superbly trained and equipped, and no doubt the veterans of many campaigns.”

  “You doubt our own prowess?” Katerin wanted to know, her tone sharply edged with anger.

  “I want the best possible outcome,” Luthien firmly corrected. In his heart, though, he did indeed doubt the rabble army’s ability to hold against ten thousand Praetorian Guards, and so did everyone else in the room, proud Katerin included.

  “Thus, Port Charley is all-important,” Luthien went on. “They have not declared an alliance, and as you yourself have pointed out,” he said to Katerin, “they will not be easily convinced.”

  The red-haired woman leaned back in her chair and slid it out from the table, visibly backing off from the conversation.

  “We must bottle that fleet up in the harbor,” Luthien explained. “If the folk of Port Charley do not allow them to pass, they will have to sail on, and might waste many days searching for a new place to land.”

  “And every day they are at sea is another day they might encounter a storm,” Oliver said slyly.

  Luthien nodded. “And another day that they will tax their provisions and, knowing cyclopians, their patience,” he agreed. “And another day that Shuglin and his kin have to complete their traps around the outer walls of Caer MacDonald. The fleet must be kept out. We cannot fail in this.”

  “Agreed,” Siobahn replied. “But you are not the one to go.” Luthien started to respond, but she kept on talking, cutting him off. “Others are qualified to serve as emissaries, and it will not look as good as you believe to have the leader of the rebellion walking into Port Charley, to say nothing of the reaction from the cyclopians already in that town.

  “You think that you will impress them with your presence,” Siobahn went on, brutally honest, but her tone in no way condescending. “All that you will impress them with is your foolishness and innocence. Your place is here—the leaders of Port Charley will know that—and if you show up there, you will not strike them as a man wise enough for them to follow into war.”

  Luthien, slack-jawed, his shoulders slumped, looked over at Oliver for support.

  “She’s not so bad,” the halfling admitted.

  Luthien had no way to disagree, no arguments against the simple logic. Again he felt as if Siobahn, and not he, was in control, as if he were a puppet, its strings pulled by that beautiful and sly half-elf. He didn’t like the feeling, not at all, but he was glad that Siobahn was at his side, preventing him from making foolish mistakes. Luthien thought of Brind’Amour then, realizing more clearly than ever that he was out of his element and in desperate need of aid.

  “Who will go, then?” Oliver asked Siobahn, for Luthien, by his expression alone, had obviously conceded the floor to her on this matter. “Yourself? I do not think one who is half-elven will make so fine an impression.”

  Oliver meant no insult, and Siobahn, concerned only for the success of the rebellion, took none.

  “I will go,” Katerin promptly put in. All eyes turned her way, and Luthien leaned forward again on his stool, suddenly very interested and worried.

  “I know the people of Port Charley better than anyone here,” Katerin stated.

  “Have you ever been there?” Oliver asked.

  “I am from Hale, a town not so unlike Port Charley,” Katerin answered. “My people think the same way as those independent folk. We have never succumbed to the rule of Greensparrow. We have never succumbed to any rule save our own, and tolerate kings and dukes only because we do not care about them.”

  Luthien was shaking his head. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to be away from Katerin right now. And he didn’t want her riding off alone to the west. Word of the fight in Caer MacDonald had spread throughout the southland of Eriador, and none of them knew what dangers might await any emissary on the road.

  “There is another reason you cannot go,” Katerin said to Luthien. “If the men of Port Charley do not join in our alliance, they will have all the ransom they need for Greensparrow with the Crimson Shadow delivered into their hands.”

  “You doubt their honor?” Luthien asked incredulously.

  “I understand their pragmatism,” Katerin replied. “They care nothing for you, not yet.”

  Katerin’s point did not make Luthien feel any better about letting her go. She, too, would prove a fine bartering point with the king of Avon!

  “Katerin is right,” came word from an unexpected ally for the woman of Hale. “You cannot go, and she can accomplish what we need better than anyone in Caer MacDonald,” Siobahn reasoned.

  Katerin looked hard at the half-elf, suspicious of her rival’s motives. For an instant she wondered if Siobahn wanted her to go so that she would perhaps be killed or taken prisoner, but looking into the half-elf’s green eyes—sparkling, intense orbs so like her own—Katerin saw no animosity, only genuine hope and even affection.

  Luthien started to protest, but Siobahn stopped him short. “You cannot let your personal feelings block the path to the general good,” the half-elf scolded, turning to glare at the young man. “Katerin is the best choice. You know that as well as anyone.” Siobahn looked back to Katerin, smiled, and nodded, and the woman of Hale did likewise. Then Siobahn turned back to Luthien. “Do I speak truly?”

  Luthien sighed, defeated once more by simple logic. “Take Riverdancer,” he bade Katerin, referring to his own horse, a shining highland Morgan, as fine a steed as could be found in all of Eriador. “In the morning.”

  “Tonight,” Katerin corrected grimly. “The Avon fleet does not drop sail when the sun sleeps.”

  Luthien did not want her to go. He wanted to run across the room and wrap her in a tight hug, wanted to protect her from all of this, from all the evils and all the dangers in the world. But he realized that Katerin and Siobahn were right. Katerin was the best choice, and she needed no protection.

  Without another word, she turned and left the Dwelf.

  Luthien looked to Oliver. “I will return when I return,” the halfling explained with a tip of his hat, and he moved to follow Katerin.

  Luthien eyed Siobahn, expecting her to stop the halfling, dissuade him as she had Luthien.

  “Ride well,” was all the half-elf said, and Oliver tipped his hat to her as well, and then he, too, was gone.

  Those remaining in the Dwelf had many other things to discuss that night, but they sat quietly, or in small, private conversations. Suddenly a man rushed in.

  “The Ministry!” he cried.

  It was all he had to say. Luthien leaped down from his stool and practically stumbled headlong for the door. Siobahn caught him by the arm and supported him, and he paused, straightening, and eyed her directly.

  Her smil
e was infectious, and Luthien knew that, despite the fact that Oliver and Katerin were likely already on the road, he would not fight alone this night.

  • • •

  The desperate cyclopians charged out of the Ministry through the north, west, and south doors, roaring and running, trying to get across the plaza and into the shadows of the alleyways. Swarms of arrows met them from every side, and then the rebels didn’t even wait for the cyclopians to charge; they rushed out to meet them, matching desperation with sheer fury.

  Luthien and the others from the Dwelf did not go over the wall. Rather, they pounded their way through the eastern wall, where it had been breached before, up from the city’s lower section and back into the Ministry once again. As the slaughter continued in the plaza, more than a few cyclopians thought to turn and flee back into the cathedral. There was still some food remaining, after all, and they figured that if they could get back in and barricade the doors once more, there would be fewer of them left to share it.

  But Luthien’s small group met them and kept the cathedral’s main door thrown wide so that rebels, too, could get inside. Once more the hallowed floor of the great cathedral ran deep with blood. Once more a place of prayer became a place of cries, shouts of anger, and shrieks of the wounded.

  It was finished that night. Not a single cyclopian remained alive in the city of Caer MacDonald.

  PORT CHARLEY

  Port Charley was a huddled village, white-painted homes built in tight, neat rows up a series of cut steps along the foothills of the Iron Cross and overlooking the tumultuous Avon Sea. It was said that on the clearest of days the shining white and green cliffs of Baranduine, far to the west, could be seen from those highest perches, beckoning the souls of men. Port Charley was a dreamy place, and yet cheery on those rare days that the sun did shine, bouncing gaily off the white-faced houses, off the white fences outlining every yard and bordering each of the city’s tiers.

  Such was the day, bright and sunny and cheery, when Oliver and Katerin came in sight of the village. They noted that there was no snow in or about the town, just windblown rock, white and gray streaks amidst the squared and neat cottages. Splotches of green and brown dotted the landscape, and a few trees stood bare, poking high and proud between cottage and stone.

  “Too early to bloom,” Oliver remarked. He kicked Threadbare, his yellow pony, to a faster trot.

  Katerin spurred Riverdancer on, the powerful white stallion easily pacing the smaller pony.

  “I have been here in the spring,” Oliver explained. “You really should see Port Charley in the spring!” The halfling went on to describe the blossoming trees and the many flowers peeking from sheltering crevices in the stones and from the many, many windowboxes, but Katerin only half-listened, for she needed no descriptions. To her, Port Charley was Hale, on a larger scale, and the young woman remembered well the land of her youth, the wind blowing off the cold waters, the spattering of bright color, purple mostly, against the gray and white. She heard the sound of the tide, that low rumble, the growl of the earth itself, and she remembered Isle Bedwydrin and taking to the sea in a craft that seemed so glorious and huge tied up at the wharf, but so insignificant and tiny once the land became no more than a darker line on the gray horizon.

  And Katerin remembered the smell, remembered that most of all, heavy air thick with salt and brine. Heavy and healthy, primal somehow. Port Charley and Hale, these were places to be most alive, where the soul was closest to the realities of the tangible world.

  Oliver noted the dreamy, faraway look in the woman’s green eyes and went quiet.

  They came in from the northeast, down the single road that forked, going right to the dunes and the sea, and left to the lowest section of the village. Oliver started left, but Katerin knew better.

  “To the wharves,” she explained.

  “We must find the mayor,” Oliver called after her, for she did not slow.

  “The harbormaster,” Katerin corrected, for she knew that in Port Charley, as in Hale, the person who controlled the docks controlled the town as well.

  Their mounts’ hooves clattered loudly on the wooden boardwalk that snaked through the soft sandy beach to the wharves, but once they approached those docks, where water lapped loudly and many boats bumped and banged against the wooden wharf, the sound of their mounts became insignificant. Gulls squawked overhead and bells sounded often, cutting the air above the continual groan of the rolling surf. One boat glided toward the docks at half-sail, a swarm of gray and white gulls flapping noisily above it, showing that the crew had landed a fine catch this day.

  Squinting, Oliver could see that a man and a woman were at work on the deck of the boat, chopping off fish heads with huge knives and then tossing the unwanted portions into the air straight overhead, not even bothering to look up, as if they knew that no piece would ever find its way through the flock to fall back down.

  Katerin led the way up a ramp to the long boardwalk that fronted the village. Seven long spurs jutted out into the harbor, enough room for perhaps two hundred fishing boats, five times Hale’s modest fleet. An image of those small boats darting in and around massive war galleons flashed in Katerin’s mind. She hadn’t seen many ships of war, just those that occasionally docked in Dun Varna, and one that had passed her father’s boat out on the open sea off Isle Bedwydrin’s western coast; she had no idea what one of those ships could do. She could well imagine their power, though, and the image sent a shudder along her spine.

  She shook the disturbing thoughts away and looked at the harbor. She hoped it had a shallow sounding, too shallow for the great ships to put in. If they could get the enemy into smaller landing craft, the fishermen of Port Charley would make a landing very difficult indeed.

  Katerin realized that she was getting ahead of herself. Formulating battle plans by the folk who knew these waters best would come later. Right now, Katerin and Oliver merely had to convince the folk of Port Charley to stand against the invading force and keep Greensparrow’s army out in the harbor.

  Riverdancer’s hooves clomped along the boardwalk, Threadbare right behind. Katerin understood the wharf’s design, similar to the one in Hale, and so she made her way to the fourth and central pier.

  “Should we not walk the horses?” Oliver asked nervously, his gaze locked on the slits in the boardwalk, and the spectacle of the dark water far below them. The tide was out and soon Oliver and Katerin were a full thirty feet above the level of the water.

  Katerin didn’t answer, just kept her course straight for the small cottage built beside the pier. Only a couple of boats were in—it was still early in the afternoon—and a few crusty old sea dogs waddled along the various piers, turning curious glances at the strange newcomers, particularly at the foppish halfling, so colorful and out of place in the wintry village.

  An old woman, her face brown and cracked and her white hair thin, as though the incessant sea breeze had blown half of it away, came out to greet them before they reached the cottage.

  She nodded at them as they dismounted, and smiled, showing more gum than tooth: her few remaining teeth were crooked and stained. Her eyes were the lightest of blue, almost washed of color, and her limbs and fingers, like the teeth, were crooked and bent in awkward angles, with knuckles and joints like knobby bumps on her old frame.

  But she was not an unattractive sight. There was a goodness about her, a genuinely noble and honest soul, someone who had walked a straight path despite the crooked limbs.

  “Yer won’t find passage south fer another two-week,” she said in nasal tones. “And not fer north fer another two-week after that.”

  “We do not seek passage at all,” Katerin replied. “We seek the harbormaster.”

  The old woman spent a long moment regarding Katerin, studying the hard texture of her hands and the way she held herself straight despite the stiff breeze. Then she extended her arm warmly. “Yer found her,” she said. “Gretel Sweeney.”

  “Katerin O’Hale
,” the young woman replied, and her mention of the port town to the north brought a smile and a nod of recognition from Gretel. The old harbormaster recognized a fellow seagoer when she saw one. She didn’t know what to make of Oliver, though, until she thought back across the years. Gretel had been Port Charley’s harbormaster for nearly two decades, and she made it a point of watching every foreign ship dock and unload. Of course she did not remember everyone who passed through her village, but Oliver was one who was hard to forget.

  “Gascon,” she said, shifting her arm toward the halfling.

  Oliver took the offered hand and brought it to his lips. “Oliver deBurrows,” he introduced himself, and when he let go of Gretel’s hand, he dipped into a sweeping bow, his hat brushing the wooden decking.

  “Gascon,” Gretel said again to Katerin with a wink and a nod.

  Katerin got right to the point. “You have heard of the fighting in Montfort?” she asked.

  Gretel’s almost white eyes twinkled with comprehension. “Strange to make a Gascon an emissary,” she said.

  “Oliver is a friend,” Katerin explained. “A friend to me and a friend to Luthien Bedwyr.”

  “Then it’s true,” the old woman said. “The son of Bedwydrin’s eorl.” She shook her head, her expression sour. “To be sure, he’s a long way from home,” she remarked, as Katerin and Oliver looked to each other, each trying to gauge Gretel’s reaction. “As are yerselves!”

  “Trying to make that home whole again,” Katerin was quick to respond.

  Gretel didn’t seem impressed. “I’ve got tea a’brewing,” she said, turning toward the cottage. “Ye’ve got much to tell me, and no doubt to offer me, so we may as well be comfortable during the talking.”

  Oliver and Katerin continued to look at each other as Gretel disappeared into the cottage.

  “This will not be easy,” Oliver remarked.

  Katerin slowly shook her head. She had known that the folk of Port Charley wouldn’t be impressed with any rebellion. The place was so much like Hale. Why should they rebel, after all, when they were already free? The fisherfolk of Port Charley answered to no one but the sea, and with that as their overlord, Luthien and his fight in Montfort, and indeed, even King Greensparrow himself, did not seem so important.