The Crimson Shadow

by R. A. Salvatore

  “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 di
d 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.