Wild Monster

by Matthew Harrington

  The King was free of them and made his industrious way toward the door.

  Kasia had retreated there. In fact, he stood beyond in a hallway now filled with Men.

  "What's wrong?" Lusis looked them over and asked Kasia.

  But it was Argus Samas who pushed through. "The building… it shook."

  Lusis' eyes widened in dismay. "As in a cataclysm?" What kind of weapon did the Enemy have? And wasn't it terrifying that neither she, nor the King, had felt it?

  "No," Argus shook his head. "It quaked as if in time to a heartbeat. It has stopped, but the workers are much disturbed, and many extolled me to check on the King and the Master."

  Even as he said so, elves fluttered by, fleet and unobtrusive. All stood aside for the passage of the King. His pale fingers swept under Lusis' hand and coaxed her in beside him. He kept her with him as they walked. "Dorondir… the Lord and Glorfindel."

  "Are readied by those who serve," the spy said softly. "Lord Eithahawn?"

  "Awaits a barge for his departure," the King glanced aside at the grim face of the Master of Boats. "Avonne is with him."

  Kasia jolted back to motion. "Yes. Thank you, Elfking. Bess was minding her. Your son is nowhere as adept with children."

  "He was hard on himself as a child." The Elfking sounded worried. "I shall be at peace when he is safely away from here with that girl child."

  The Master of Boats raised a hand as if to hold back the King, which was a hopeless goal now, "Is it imminent, this debacle? Surely… surely not this urgent, and we have time to plan?"

  The Elfking's pale face averted. "What planning could be done… has been done. We are out of time, Jan Kasia."

  In her chest came a sudden sinking feeling, and Lusis realized, at last, the price for healing the King when he had fought so hard to conceal his weakness, had come due on the heads of Lake Township. The aggressor who had dogged their steps since she'd stood in the snow of Buckmaster Spur was ready, now, to strike at the heart of Elvendom in Middle Earth.

  "They aren't after me," she looked up at Dorondir, "they're after the elves."

  Dorondir's smooth knuckles bumped against the fist of her free hand like a tiny rap on a door. She opened her fingers, and, in the chaos, he briefly curled his hand in hers. He passed her nothing. She inhaled, closed her fingers tight against his, and released him. Lusis brought her fist up to her sternum.

  "You will endure, Lady Lusis," whispered the spy. "I swear it."

  She glanced at him, "See to Eithahawn. He has few defenses. I will see to myself and my King." But her head was spinning that he would dare such a thing with the King beside her. Which was the first sign, she felt, that she had created a problem for him, and for herself.

  The elves seemed suddenly everywhere. They pulled out fighting knives, swords, bows, arrows, all manner of violence. They were a quiet storm of checking the soundness of weaponry, and girding for war. The Elfking passed through archways made for Men, speaking deep, rustling Sindarin to the thronging all around him – a watercourse of beautiful sound. Lusis released the King to jog, in order to keep up. To no lesser extent, Kasia and Steed hurried to do the same.

  The Elfking stopped, abruptly, in the landing on the lower floor, "Where is the Council, Master of Boats?" Elves pooled around.

  "Collected in the shipping room. They are waiting for you. For word from you. We all are."

  His long coats fanned around him as he passed onto the main floor from the back of the building. His section heads fell in to flank him, and with them were several Elites Lusis didn't know. Along with them went a tall woman with dark blonde curls that bounced on bright silver armour. This tall beauty fell in beside the King and they began to talk in earnest.

  Lusis inhaled a few times because the new elf was so dazzling, and such an excellent complement to the King that she was his equal height, and had nearly the same flashing blue eyes as his son. So Lusis snagged the one elf she knew, for a fact, would have all the details. She pulled him close over her shoulder and asked his curving ear. "Who is that woman in armour?"

  "That is Helin," said Ewon. "Helin Ivreniell, the Crystal Flower, she is called. She leads the King's Own Raiment, yes, but she has been at the fore of a Luster, and even a Storm of elven troops before. That would mean he summoned the Raiment here. Next to nothing else moves them – they are zealots of the King, and… I suppose you should be aware that Helin is the sister of the former Queen."

  Lusis let out the breath she'd been holding. "Ai. No wonder she's so beautiful."

  The elves swirled into the tall room.

  Unable to prevent herself, Lusis glanced up at four floors of balconies, now packed with Men. Down the hall on her right, the Ranger, Elow, grimly sealed the Counting Room and all its staff behind a steel door. It was clear that the Men of Lake Township knew that something was afoot. The heartbeat within the building had been but the beginning.

  The King looked up into the lamplight of early morning. Lusis remembered that, once, Men had rained flowers down on him from on high in this place. Now they watched him, and fretted.

  The Council stood waiting. They had been woken early. Nema Aragennya paced and set her hands on her hips to stretch her long back.

  Lusis' troop was nearby, as was Eithahawn, in his dark red, with Dorondir close by him. They both looked resolute.

  She didn't miss that Icar stared at her, openly. Her troop's faces, her brothers, all responded to her as if she'd just grown fairy wings and tumbled out of a barrel of sugar. But she didn't have the wherewithal to acknowledge them when she was preoccupied with the King.

  She glanced to her right to Steed. "Don't leave Osp alone."

  "You have my word." He murmured. Osp was close beside him, and entrusted himself to Steed out of habit.

  Cardoc Wence, the Master of Lumber, had been ever loyal to the laws of a King he had, prior to the Claiming of the Land, never met. Now he stood at the fore to receive the Elfking. His eyes travelled over the Mithril crown with its graceful antlers, and then looked to Murric Vant. The fishing magnate, hereabouts, was too terrified of the King to ever speak to him. To Vant, the Elfking felt too vast, too… inhuman. The antlers would not help matters. Kuril Farna, who headed the Guild of Trade, actually gasped on sight of the otherworldly figure the King cut. This arched crown sucked up attention quite the same way the magnificence of the King's layered clothes kept Killan Wye, the Master of Textiles, wholly entranced.

  "Is there some occasion?" Cardoc asked breathlessly and opened his arms before him, as if he could hug the fabric, "Elfking… such grandeur."

  The King shifted a little. His body glided a fraction to one side and his silver gaze fell on Lusis.

  "What? Her?" Cardoc chuckled as if this was comical.

  Lusis, in her fine elf clothes, with her varnished skin, her polished waves of hair, and her buffed fingernails, stepped forward. Wye's expression began to shift, and when she pulled her elven-steel, which made the most melodious of rings, he paled and asked, "I am… deeply sorry for any insult to you, Lusis Buckmaster."

  "That is a wise choice," Kasia told Wye sharply. "She's the Lady of the Great Greenwood now."

  In the flickering lamplight, Lusis' sword flashed.

  "What does that mean?" Wence asked in the growing quietude. He seemed utterly stupefied by this development, "Has there been… betrothing? Is this happy event unfolding here, in our humble corner of the Kingdom, for the great Elvenking?" Wence was torn. He didn't know whether he should offer felicitations, or inform the Elvenking of the shape of Lusis' ears. And then his jolly nature took hold of him, "My King… can it be? Are we called together in such haste for happy news? Are nuptials in order?"

  Nema pushed her way through. "What? Wed? To her? Are you in your right mind? Fie! She's been given a grass gown and a straw bed to lie in, by the Fires. Have sense! Not to her!" Nema stood panting as she stared around her. She looked at the Elvenking. "No."

  It was Osp who made a sudden sputtering hiss, "Painted-w
oman, do you think she is some ball of yarn to roll playfully on the lawn?" His brows drew down and his next words spilled out in one of the most beautiful elven languages Lusis thought she'd ever heard. It would have been melodic, apart from the hiss underneath it, as if hot steel had touched water.

  The King looked at him, sharply. His low, harmonious Sindarin pricked the air with frost.

  Osp shrank back from it.

  Lusis found her voice and stepped between the humans and elves, "No, Master of Lumber, this gathering is not about good news. We are at a pivotal point. Adversity rides down on us, and it has been careful to disguise itself. For survival, you will hear your King." Her sword lopped air as she put it away again. Noise in the Council, indeed, in the room and on the balconies, scudded to a stop… but for frantically pacing Nema. The woman was outraged.

  "What has befallen us, Elfking?" Cardoc Wence asked. In the hush, his breathless voice floated to the upper balconies where humans huddled to listen. They remembered the Great Snakes of spring prior, and that memory was a dark cloud over the room that made the Men huddle in fear.

  "This foe… is greater than the last," said the tall Sinda. His antlered head, passionlessly bright even with fires and disaster poised above him, tipped like a water vessel as he prepared himself to deliver this city of Men. "Werewolves roving the lands along the River Running, a slow emptying of the criminal settlements further afield, and lights across the city at night. There comes," his throaty voice drew the word out as if it were elvish, "adversity… and where is Gurn Drivenn, Master of Forces?"

  Cardoc Wence turned to look through the Council… and didn't find the man. He looked back at the King, wide-eyed. "Elvenking… what does it mean?"

  Argus Samas glowered. "My Lord, I will send men."

  But this was not a question. Lusis exhaled slowly, "Or do you want me and mine to find him?"

  "I have no doubt he'll find us soon enough, Lusis-dess, with his Forces." The King said a few words aside to Helin, and she inclined herself to him and walked out of the Main Building.

  "Without the Forces, my King, we have only Rangers to fall back on," Cardoc seemed close to hyperventilation. "What calamity can we expect?"

  The King exhaled, "An army, I would think, of werewolves, goblins, orcs, and Men. I suspect they are here for the territories of the Great Greenwood, of which you are one. And as we won't leave and make domination of these lands a matter of simplicity for them… I expect they mean to rout us."

  Osp's head tipped to one side, "Will you then retreat to the West?"

  The King's chin rose, but he gave no answer.

  "They want to scare you… scare you off." Kasia sounded airless. "My King… don't-"

  In fact, Cardoc Wence staggered, and the King stepped up, extended a silvery hand, and steadied the man. In doing so, the King's colourless hair slipped over his shoulder and spun down to bounce against the man's bent back. Wence's badly dazed fire fluttered once more, but then began to burn solidly. He straightened before his King.

  "Peace," said Thranduil Oropherion, as if he had forgotten the crown in this simple act of attending one he considered to be among his people.

  Wence stood back and clapped a weather-hardened hand over his heart. He'd felt King's-fire for just an instant. The world, the great elf, all looked different to him now. "Greatest King," he breathed.

  "Evacuation is underway. The sections have been instructed," The Elfking said. "For months, the elves of Mirkwood have seen to opening the passages to Celduin – the river out of Long Lake, the River Running."

  "Passages?" Kasia set down his daughter and asked the great elf.

  "Yes," said the Elfking. "The chambers of the Mirkwood extend far, though we no longer occupy them all. They run the length of the Enchanted River, and under the Mirkwood Mounds, the Stronghold where, once, elves were born. The hollow places run South. But there are also chambers along the River Running. My elves have been clearing and preparing one of them, which has become known as The Vault of Men. Where it opens is not far from this place, Jan Kasia… or did you believe your King would leave you with no retreat? No haven?"

  Cardoc boggled at this, "They're leaving now? There are no bells of alarm through the streets."

  The King replied, "I would as soon not invite the enemy along."

  There was a stir at the dockyard-side of the Main building. Bregoln Fall's dun warhorse whinnied as it gamboled in. Its sharp sound pealed through the enclosed space. Fully dozens of arrows knocked on him even before the horse had stilled.

  Ewon's was one such bow, and he asked, "Yes?"

  "No." said the King.

  "Lusis," Bregoln turned his horse into the building and it made a few beautiful high steps inside. Men cleared out of the way, which left the King, several of his Elites, and Lusis at the fore.

  She squared herself, "There's nothing you can do about this, Bregoln. And there is business afoot. Good or fell, I don't have time for you now."

  His tan face pulled into a momentary grimace. "Is this business about you and him?" He jerked his chin at the King and scowled. "I do not choose to believe such convenient business, Lusis, much the same as I disbelieve you have any desire to become a potted elven rose. But that is not why I've come."

  The King stepped in beside Lusis. "Say on."

  "Quiet, Pretty One. Kindly let the Northern Rangers speak."

  The King's eyes widened and he pivoted slowly to Lusis. His beauteous expression was so affably displeased that it was, to Lusis' mind, priceless. His voice thrummed, unhurriedly, "Lusis-dess."

  "Bregoln," she was annoyed and stepped in by the great dun horse to look up at him. Her words were more private when she said, "Please don't provoke the Elfking."

  He bent over her, his long black hair dancing along the powerful shoulder of his horse, "He's your match? He is?"

  "You know. Word reached you."

  "That pale, sea-wave, with his dusty deceits, cunning bones, and endless Ages of breathing, is a match for you?" He pulled a face. "You are a smarter woman than that, surely."

  The problem was… she was that, indeed. "What brings you here?"

  "Lusis," his expression went grave, and the hardened years melted away to the handsome and earnest young boy she'd once known. "I wish you'd just run with me. Why couldn't you have?"

  The King's white blonde hair lashed. His lips parted in a great inhalation. "We are betrayed, Lusis. Badly betrayed. We do not have time for this presumptuous child and his wistful yearnings."

  An unfamiliar sound rose over Long Lake. Long, high, like the scream of a massive iron gate, but louder still, and, for a moment, Lusis couldn't place it. She felt her troop pool around her, Redd with one hand on her shoulder, and her two big brothers, staring wide-eyed at the doors.

  "Lus," Aric asked quietly. "Does that sound familiar to you?"

  The King turned to Kasia. "Sound the bells. Warn Men in this land."

  The sound came again, and shut down in a rattling cackle.

  "Lewegdol," said the King.

  Lusis raised her head and shouted at row on row of faces staring, huge-eyed, from balconies. "Get down into the storerooms, underground, there are dragons!"

  Now Nema paled and rushed toward the Elfking in a panic. She too was rebuffed by Ewon. "What is that?" she cried. "Please, don't go out there! No one told me about dragons!" And, in the next instant, Bess Bowman yanked her clear of the Elite elf and threw her on the floor.

  "What do you know!?" she shouted at the woman.

  "Nothing!" said the Madam. "Nothing! What is wrong with you, you stupid, cosseted girl?" Nema pulled herself to her feet and swept the traffic of the floor off her glorious blue dress.

  "Long has the family of Bowman stood with the Mirkwood, and long has the Mirkwood stood with us!" Bess pulled a maul from her back. It had a black handle as long as her forearm, and one end of the hammer was hooked into a curved dagger. "Who did not lead you to expect dragons, you traitor!"

  Lusis stopped in her
tracks and reached to steady the Madam. "Nema, what have you done?"

  "You!" Nema scrambled up and swung at Lusis, aggravated that the Ranger Chief could easily avoid her blows. "You fluttered around him, long-legged and lovely, and offered yourself to him as succor to his desolation. But I was already here for him! Why couldn't you leave us alone?"

  "Your mind is sick. He doesn't love you." Lusis was horrified at the Madam's notion. "He does not love either of us! You cannot force him to."

  "No," she trembled with rage. "I can't."

  Lusis backed away and pushed at Bregoln's horse, but it kept moving into her path.

  "Lusis!" he said to her. "You will stay in here and away from them."

  Icar ducked under the horse's belly to reach his Chief. His sword came to point at the tanned Peak's Man, "Bregoln Fall, if you fail to move this horse out of the Chief's way, I'll move it for you." His sword oriented on the tall horse's neck. "Do not make me."

  "Wait!" Steed elbowed past his friend and gestured at the horse. In response, the stallion stepped peaceably backward across the wood floor.

  "You part-elf pest!" Bregoln shouted, "You'll get her killed!"

  "Only she can do that." Steed got out of Lusis' path, let her pass him, and fell in behind her.

  Elsenord pulled a face, "Fall, she is a Buckmaster. How can you have so little faith?"

  "You are a young fool." Added Remee, and he brandished the large elven glaive that Amathon had tossed to him. "And if you seek to come between the Lady and the King, I will personally make sure you are a dead one."

  Lusis heard this behind her.

  "Go carefully," Steed called out. "Go hard." And he stepped back to where Osp stood beside Eithahawn and Dorondir.

  The Elflord, Eithahawn, lifted Avonne and handed her over to Osp. "Stay together. It is time to leave." His graceful hand indicated the Council and the Men flooding into the main floor.

  He watched the line of lean-cheeked Rangers go calmly to face dragons.

  Kasia wasn't the only Council Member to hurry out to see what had befallen Long Lake.

  The King stood on the wooden docks while his Elites released the spare barges to float into the River. Getting them back would be a lot of work later. Provided anyone survived. Elves darted out onto the ships off of the docks.