Luthien's Gamble

by R. A. Salvatore

Those cyclopians across the river, particularly one huge and ugly brute atop a huge and ugly ponypig, also noticed the Crimson Shadow. Belsen’Krieg called for a crossbow.

  Siobahn and the hundred elves who took part in the raid broke free of the melee as soon as it became apparent that the cyclopians would be easily slaughtered. Taking up their bows, the elves lined the western bank, more than willing to trade missile volleys with the one-eyes. Mostly, they concentrated their fire on those brutes splashing in the river, or crawling along the remains of the bridge. Half of the elves provided cover fire as the three courageous dwarfs crawled out of the bridge’s wreckage and picked their way up the western bank.

  In short order, the bridge was clear of one-eyes, and those still alive in the suddenly red-running river had turned about and were scrambling for their own ranks.

  Luthien came up to the bank beside Siobahn, Blind-Striker in hand and dripping cyclopian blood. He looked to the half-elf—and then both fell away suddenly as a crossbow bolt cut the air between them. Turning to look across the bank, they recognized Belsen’Krieg and knew that this huge brute had been the one to shoot at them—to shoot at Luthien. It had been no random attempt.

  The elves kept up their barrage, but the cyclopian army, willing to abandon comrades for the sake of their own hides, was fast pulling back, understanding that they could not trade volleys with the likes of elves.

  Belsen’Krieg remained, statuesque atop his ponypig. The one-eyed general and Luthien stared at each other long and hard. The armies would meet in full very soon, of course, but suddenly it seemed to Luthien as if those forces, all of the men and dwarfs and elves, and all of the cyclopians, were no more than extensions of their two generals. Suddenly, the impending fight for Montfort, for Caer MacDonald, became a personal duel.

  Before Luthien could stop her, Siobahn put up her bow and let fly, her arrow streaking across the river to strike Belsen’Krieg in the broad shoulder.

  The cyclopian general hardly flinched. Without taking his unblinking stare from Luthien, the brute reached up and snapped off the arrow shaft. He nodded grimly, Luthien answered with a similar nod, and then Belsen’Krieg wheeled his ponypig and galloped away, riding through a hail of arrows, though if any hit him or his mount, it wasn’t apparent.

  Luthien stood silent on the bank, watching the monstrous brute depart. The enemy was real to him now, very real, and as awestricken and afraid as he had been when first he glimpsed the black and silver swarm that was the army of Avon, he was even more so having looked upon the powerful leader of that force.

  On the western bank, it was over in a matter of minutes, with less than four-score casualties to the raiders, mostly wounds that would heal, and more than three hundred cyclopian dead littering the snowy and muddy field.

  A complete victory for the rebels, but as the Avon army flowed away from the bridge, toward Felling Downs and Caer MacDonald beyond that, Luthien wondered how much this minor skirmish would ultimately affect the final outcome.

  • • •

  Later that morning, Oliver and Katerin and the force from Port Charley, still many miles to the west, saw the plumes of black smoke rising in the east, as Felling Downs was consumed by the fires, the rage, of the cyclopian army.

  The sight was bittersweet, for the marching force had heard from the independent bands of the ambush set at Felling Downs that the fight went well. Still, those plumes of smoke reminded them all that the war would not be without cost, and on a more practical and immediate level, that they still had a long march ahead of them and a long fight after that.

  As twilight settled in deep over Eriador, the folk from Port Charley set their last camp before the fight. Oliver rode out alone from their ranks, prodding Threadbare across the ghostly gray fields. He came up a hillock—a high ridge for this far north of the Iron Cross—and he saw the fires.

  Hundreds of fires, thousands of fires, a vast sea of cyclopians. More enemies than boastful Oliver had ever seen gathered in one place, and the halfling was sorely afraid, more for Luthien and those in Montfort than for himself, for he understood that no matter how hard they marched and how early they left, the force from Port Charley would not come on the field until the end of the next day.

  “Luthien will hold,” came a voice that startled Oliver, nearly dropping him from his mount. Brind’Amour walked up beside him.

  Oliver looked all about, but saw no mount nearby, and he understood that the old man had used a bit of wizardry to get out here.

  “Luthien will hold for the first fight,” Brind’Amour assured Oliver, as if he had read the halfling’s every thought, every worry.

  The words were of small comfort to Oliver as he continued to scan that vast encampment to the south and east.

  • • •

  Those cyclopian campfires were visible from the high towers of Caer MacDonald as well, and Luthien and Siobahn, atop the Ministry’s highest platform, marked them well and watched them for a long time in silence.

  They knew, too, that if those fires were visible to them, then Caer MacDonald’s dark walls were visible to the hungry and angry cyclopians.

  The city was quiet this night, deathly still.

  AGAINST THE WALL

  The next was not a bright dawn, the sky hazy gray with the first high clouds of yet another gathering storm. When shafts of sunlight did break through, the fields sparkled with wetness, as did the helms and shields and glistening speartips of the Avon army, forming into three huge squares, four to five thousand soldiers in each.

  Luthien watched the spectacle from atop the low gatehouse of the city’s inner wall. He and his group had crawled in just ahead of the Avon force, leaving the cyclopians to set their camp on the field, for the one-eyes had met up with more minor resistance in the foothills between Felling Downs and Montfort. No groups had actually engaged the vast army; they had just stung the one-eyes enough to keep them diverted, allowing Luthien’s band to slip far to the south and cross the river, then dash back into the protection of the city as the night had deepened around them.

  Before Luthien lay a hundred feet of empty ground, all structures and wagons having been removed by the dwarfs. The empty field ended at the lower outer wall, the base of which had been chopped and wedged, ready to drop outward, away from the city. Thick ropes pulled taut ran back into the courtyard, a third of the distance to the inner wall. These were pegged solidly into the ground, and beside each stood an ax-wielding dwarf.

  Those dwarfs would have a long wait, Luthien hoped. The first defense would come from that outer wall; its low parapets were lined shoulder-to-shoulder by archers and pikemen. Luthien spotted Siobahn among that line, her long wheat-colored tresses hanging low out of a silvery winged helmet, her great longbow in hand.

  The young Bedwyr next looked for Shuglin, but could not find the dwarf. In fact, Luthien saw none of the bearded folk, except for those twenty dwarfs ready to chop the lines and one or two in place along the outer wall. Luthien looked up and down his own line along the inner wall, but still, for some reason he did not understand, he found no dwarfs. He looked back to Siobahn instead, admiring her fierce beauty, her sheer strength of character. All those around looked to her for guidance as surely as they looked to the Crimson Shadow.

  The whooshing sound of a catapult behind him, from the Ministry, brought the young man from his contemplations of the fair half-elf. He lifted his gaze beyond the outer wall and saw the three black and silver masses approaching, a row of solid metal, with shields butted together, perhaps sixty-five fronting each of the squares. Oliver had warned Luthien that they would do this, calling the formations “testudos,” but no words could have prepared Luthien for the splendor of this sight. One testudo was directly north of the city, a second northwest, and the third almost directly west, a three-pronged attack that would pressure the two main outer walls. At least they weren’t surrounded, Luthien thought, but of course, Caer MacDonald could not easily be surrounded, since its southern and eastern sections flowed
into the towering mountains, virtually impassable at this time of year.

  Any relief that Luthien might have realized with that thought was lost as the Avon march progressed. The cyclopians came like a storm cloud, slowly, deliberately. Above the din of the march and the excitement along the wall, Luthien heard the cyclopian drummers striking a rhythmic, monotonous beat.

  A heartbeat, continuous, inevitable.

  A ball of flaming pitch hit the field in front of the brutes—some of those in the front rank were splattered. But their shields deflected the missiles and they never slowed.

  A lump of panic welled in Luthien’s throat, a sudden urge to run away, out of Caer MacDonald’s back gate and into the mountains. He hadn’t foreseen that it would be like this, so controlled and determined. He had expected the cyclopian leader to make some announcement, expected some horns to blow, followed by a roaring charge.

  This was too calculated, too confident. The Praetorian Guard held tight ranks; their line hardly fluttered as the next catapult shot hit in their midst. A few were killed or wounded—some had to have been—but the mass didn’t reveal any losses in the least, just rolled on to the cadence, continuous, inevitable. To Luthien, so, too, seemed the impending fall of Caer MacDonald.

  Luthien glanced all around. All was suddenly quiet on his side of the wall, and he realized that the men and women around him were entertaining similar fears. A voice in Luthien’s head told him that it was time for him to be the leader, the true leader. The rebels had hit a critical moment before the battle had even been joined.

  Luthien climbed to the top of the battlement and drew Blind-Striker from its scabbard. “Caer MacDonald!” he cried. “Eriador free!”

  Those waiting behind the outer wall glanced back, some confused, but some, like Siobahn, knew and appreciated what the young Bedwyr was up to.

  Luthien ran along the wall to the gatehouse on the other side of Caer MacDonald’s huge front gate. He continued his cry, and it became a chant, taken up by every soldier manning the city wall.

  Those on the outer wall, with the enemy fast closing into range, did not cry out, but surely they were heartened by the cheering behind them. Up came the lines of bows, arrows fitted and ready.

  The cyclopian army continued its slow and steady march. Fifty feet away. Forty.

  Still Siobahn and her companions held their bows bent, seeing little to shoot at along the barricade of metal shields. Another catapult lob landed in the midst of the army, far back among the ranks, and then a ballista bolt, driving down from one of the Ministry’s towers, slammed into the front line, and no shield could hold it back. It buckled the blocking metal in half and blasted through, skewering one cyclopian, and the force of the hit knocked those brutes flanking him from their feet, causing a temporary break in the line.

  The archers were quick to let fly and the stinging arrows penetrated the mass, taking their toll.

  Barely twenty feet away, the cyclopian square at the northwest bend in the outer wall broke ranks and charged, screaming wildly. The bow strings hummed; pikemen jabbed down from their higher perches, trying to keep the brutes from the eight-foot barrier.

  Siobahn, farther to the north with her elves, called for a volley before the square facing them even broke ranks. It was a calculated gamble, and one that paid off, for at close range the powerful elfish longbows drove arrows right through the blocking shields, and the elves were quick enough to fit their next arrows so that they fired again almost immediately.

  A third and fourth volley followed before the cyclopians could finish closing the twenty feet, but as devastating as the bow fire was, it hardly dented the great mass, five thousand Praetorian Guards to this square alone. The brutes did not panic, did not weep for their fallen. They swarmed the wall and clambered up it, often climbing over the backs of their own dead.

  Siobahn’s elves fought brilliantly—so did the folk, mostly humans, holding the northwestern corner and the western expanse—but their line was thin, far too thin, and in a matter of moments, the wall was breached in several places.

  From the inner wall came three short blasts of a horn, and all on the outer wall who were able broke ranks and fled back for the city gate.

  To their credit, those dwarfs ready with the axes waited until the very last moment, gave everyone fighting along the outer wall every possible second to get away. But then they could wait no more; cyclopians were inside the line and bearing down on them and if they did not put their axes to quick work on the ropes, they would find themselves engaged in close combat instead.

  One by one, the ropes snapped, each with a huge popping sound, and the stones of the outer wall groaned.

  Luthien held his breath; the wall seemed to hang in place for a long, long while, perhaps held up by the sheer bulk of the force on the other side. Finally, it tumbled, breaking from the west around to the north like a great wave upon a beach.

  In truth, not too many cyclopians were killed by the falling wall. It didn’t collapse, but rather fell like a tree, and many of the brutes were able to scramble back out of harm’s way. But their formation was broken by the ensuing confusion, and when Luthien’s line along the inner wall loosed their first barrage of arrows, more hit cyclopian flesh than blocking shields.

  Luthien didn’t witness that devastating barrage. He and fifty others were down in the courtyard behind the main gates, mounted on the finest steeds that could be found within the city. Caer MacDonald’s inner doors were swung wide, and ropes and ladders were dropped over the wall to aid in the flight of those allies coming in from the outer wall. Archers picked their shots carefully, taking down the leading cyclopians so that as few as possible of the defenders would be caught in combat outside the city.

  Out from the gates came the cavalry, led by Luthien, crimson cape and reddish hair flying wild behind him, Blind-Striker held high to the gray morning sky.

  Beyond the rubble of the outer wall, Belsen’Krieg and his undercommanders regrouped quickly and sent on a new and furious charge. Luthien and his mounted allies prepared to meet it and slow it, so that those running from the outer wall could get to safety. The young Bedwyr regrouped the cavalry around him, set the line for the charge. The bulk of the cyclopians were sixty feet away, twenty feet inside the rubble of the outer wall.

  Luthien’s eyes widened in amazement as the ground erupted right at the feet of the enemy force, as Shuglin and his five hundred dwarfs crawled up from their concealment, hacking and chopping their hated, one-eyed enemies with abandon.

  Another volley of arrows whipped down from the wall behind Luthien; the ballista atop the Ministry blasted a huge hole in one rank of the cyclopian line.

  “Eriador free!” Luthien bellowed, and out he charged, fifty horsemen alongside him, running headlong into the writhing black-and-silver mass.

  The most horrible and confusing minutes of Luthien Bedwyr’s young life ensued, amidst a tangle of bodies, the whir of arrows, the screams of the dying. Every way he turned, Luthien found another cyclopian to slash; his horse was torn out from under him and he was caught by a dwarf whom he never got the chance to thank, for they were soon separated by a throng of slashing enemies.

  Luthien got hit, several times, but he hardly noticed. He drove Blind-Striker halfway through one cyclopian, then yanked it free and slashed across, gouging the bulbous eye of another. The first one he had hit, though, was not quite dead, too enraged and confused and horrified all at once to lie down and die.

  Luthien felt the warmth of his own blood rolling down the side of his leg. He spun back and moved to finish the grievously wounded brute, but never got the chance as another wave rolled in between them, pushing them far apart. Always before, even in the scrambles in and around the Ministry, Luthien’s battles had been personal, had been face-to-face with an opponent, or side by side with a friend, until one could move along to the next fight. Not this time, though. Half the cyclopians Luthien engaged were already carrying wounds from previous encounters; most of the fr
iends he spotted were carried away by the sheer press of that murderous frenzy before he could even acknowledge them.

  With the archers who had fled the outer wall bolstering the line, the fire from the inner wall was devastating. And with Luthien’s cavalry and the dwarfs scrambling amid the cyclopian ranks, the brutes could not form up into any defensive shell.

  The momentum of the ambushing groups had played out, however, and though the cyclopian line had bent, it had not broken. The confusing battle turned into a frenzied retreat for Luthien’s group and the dwarfs, what few could manage to get away from the roiling mass of Praetorian Guards.

  They came out in bunches mostly, every one trailing blood, from weapon and from body, and not a single dwarf or rider would have made it back to the city had not the archers on the wall covered their retreat.

  Luthien thought his life was surely at its end. He killed one cyclopian, but his sword got hooked on the creature’s collarbone. Before he could extract the weapon and turn to defend himself, he got swatted on the ribs by a heavy club. Breathless and dizzy, the young Bedwyr spun and tumbled.

  The next thing he knew, he was half-running, half-carried from the throng, heading for the wall. He heard the growls of cyclopians on his heels, heard the buzz of arrows above his head, but he was distant from it somehow.

  Then he was dragged up a ladder, caught from above by several hands, and hauled over the wall. He looked back as he tumbled, and the last thing he saw before his consciousness left him was the face and blue-black beard of Shuglin as the dwarf, his dear friend, came over the wall behind him.

  • • •

  “You are needed up on the wall,” came a call in Luthien’s head, a distant plea, but a voice that he recognized. He opened bleary eyes to see Siobahn bending over him.

  “Can you rise?” she asked.

  Luthien didn’t seem to understand, but he didn’t resist as Siobahn lifted his head from the blanket and took up his arm.

  “The wall?” Luthien asked, sitting up and shaking the daze from his mind. All the memories of earlier that morning, the horror of the pitched battle, the blood and the screams, flooded back to him then, like the images of a nightmare not yet forgotten in the light of dawn.