Luthien's Gamble Read online

  Nothing was apparent, except one tiny window far below. To make matters worse, Oliver and Luthien were coming down the northern side of the Ministry. The courtyard below was on the wrong side of the dividing wall and was fast-filling with cyclopians, looking and pointing up.

  “I have been in worse places,” Oliver said flippantly as the struggling Luthien joined him, the poor wounded man slipping in and out of consciousness and groaning with every bounce.

  Luthien braced himself, putting one foot on Morkney’s frozen shoulder. He turned so that he could clench the rope with the same hand that held the unconscious man, and tugged his other hand free.

  “There was the time that you and I hung over the lake,” Oliver went on. “A so huge turtle below us, a dragon to our left, and an angry wizard to our right . . .”

  Oliver’s story trailed off in a sympathetic “Ooh,” when Luthien held up his hand to show that the rope had cut right through his gauntlet and into his skin as well. He would have been bleeding, except that what little blood had come out had already darkened and solidified on his palm.

  Cyclopians gained the tower top just then and hung over the edge, leering down at Luthien and Oliver.

  “We have nowhere to go!” the frustrated Oliver cried suddenly.

  Luthien considered the apparent truth of the words. “Throw your grapnel around to the east,” he instructed.

  Oliver understood the wisdom—around the eastern corner would put them back on the right side of Montfort’s dividing wall—but still, the command seemed foolish. Even if they swung around that way, they would be hanging more than two hundred feet above the street, with no practical way to get down.

  Oliver shook his head, and both friends looked up to see a spear hanging down from the tower’s lip, then rapidly dropping their way.

  Luthien drew out Blind-Striker (and nearly tumbled away for the effort) and lifted the solid blade just in time to deflect the missile.

  Cyclopians howled, both above and below the companions, and Luthien knew that the parry was purely lucky and that sooner or later one of those dropped spears would skewer him.

  He looked back to Oliver, meaning to scold him and reiterate his command, and found that the halfling had already taken out the curious grapnel and was stringing out the length of rope. Oliver braced himself and flung the thing with all his strength, out to the northwest. As the rope slipped through his fingers, Oliver deftly applied enough pressure and brought himself around toward the east, turning the angle of the flying ball.

  A final twist slapped Oliver’s hand against the icy wall to the east, and the smooth-flying ball disappeared around the bend.

  Neither companion dared to breathe, imagining the ball striking sidelong against the eastern wall.

  The rope didn’t fall.

  Oliver tugged gingerly, testing the set. They had no way of knowing how firmly the grapnel had caught, or if turning its angle as they swung around would free it up and drop them to their deaths.

  Another spear fell past them, nearly taking the tip from Luthien’s nose.

  “Are you coming?” the halfling asked, holding the rope up so that Luthien could grab on.

  Luthien took it and hugged it closely, securing himself and the unconscious man, and looping the rope below one foot. He took a deep breath—Oliver did, too.

  “You have never been in a worse place,” Luthien insisted.

  Oliver opened his mouth to reply, but only a scream came out as Luthien slipped off the frozen duke, his weight taking the surprised halfling along for the ride.

  An instant later, a better-aimed cyclopian spear buried itself deeply into the top of Duke Morkney’s frozen head.

  The trio slid along and down the icy-smooth tower wall, flying wide as they swung around the abrupt corner, and crashed back hard, sliding to a jerking stop forty feet below the enchanted grapnel.

  They found no footing, and looked down, way down, to yet another gathering below, this one of their allies. Even as they watched, the last of the Cutters came out of the secret eastern door, using a rope to descend the twenty feet to the ground, past the drawbridge, which had been closed and secured. There was no way for those allies to help them, no way for Katerin, or even the agile elves, to scale the icy tower and get to them.

  “This is a better spot,” Oliver decided sarcastically. “At least our friends will get to see us die.”

  “Not now, Oliver,” Luthien said grimly.

  “At least we have no spears falling at our heads,” the halfling continued. “It will probably take the dim-witted one-eyes an hour or more to figure out which side of the tower we are now on.”

  “Not now, Oliver,” Luthien said again, trying to concentrate on their predicament, trying to find a way out.

  He couldn’t see even a remote possibility. After a few frustrating moments, he considered just letting go of the rope and getting the inevitable over with.

  A spear plummeted past, and the pair looked up to see a group of brutes grinning down at them.

  “You could be wrong,” Luthien offered before Oliver could say it.

  “Three tugs will free the grapnel,” Oliver reasoned, for that indeed was the only way to release the enchanted device once it had been set. “If I was quick enough—and always I am—I might reset it many feet below.”

  Luthien stared at him with blank amazement. Even the boastful Oliver had to admit that his plan wasn’t a plan at all, that if he pulled free the grapnel, he and Luthien, and the wounded man as well, would be darker spots on a dark street, two hundred feet below.

  Oliver said no more, and neither did Luthien, for there was nothing more to say. It seemed as though the legend that was the Crimson Shadow would not have a happy ending.

  Brind’Amour’s grapnel was a marvelous thing. The puckered ball could stick to any wall, no matter how sheer. It was stuck now sidelong, the eye-loop straight out to the side and the weighted rope hanging down.

  Luthien and Oliver felt a sudden jerk as their weight finally made the ball half-turn on the wall and straighten out, shifting so that it was in line above the hanging rope. Then, suddenly and unexpectedly, the pair found themselves descending, the ball sliding along the icy surface.

  Luthien cried out. So did Oliver, but the halfling kept the presence of mind to jab at the stone with his main gauche. The dagger’s tip bit into the ice, threw tiny flecks all about, drawing a fine line as the descent continued.

  Up above they heard cyclopian curses, and another spear would have taken Oliver had he not thrust his main gauche above his head, knocking it away. Down below, they heard cries of “Catch them!”

  Luthien kicked at the wall, tried to scratch at the ice with his boot heels, anything to maintain some control along the sliding descent. He couldn’t tell how high he was, how far he had to go. Every so often, the puckered ball came to a spot that was not so thick with ice and the momentum of the slide was lessened. But not completely stopped. Down went the friends, sometimes fast and sometimes slow, screaming all the way. Luthien noted the secret door forty feet to the side and an instant later he felt hands reaching up to grab his legs, heard groans all about him as comrades cushioned the fall and the ground rushed up to swallow him.

  Then he was down, in a tumble, and Oliver was above him, the halfling’s fall padded by Luthien’s broad chest.

  Oliver leaped up and snapped his fingers. “I told you I have been in worse places,” he said, and three tugs freed his enchanted grapnel.

  A moment later, thunderous pounding began at the closed drawbridge, the cyclopians outraged that they had lost their prize. Blocks split apart and fell outward, the brutes using one of the many statues within the cathedral as a battering ram.

  Luthien was helped to his feet; the wounded man was scooped up and carried away.

  “Time to go,” said Katerin O’Hale, standing at the stunned young Bedwyr’s side, propping him by the elbow.

  Luthien looked at her, and at Siobahn standing beside her, and let them
pull him away.

  In the blink of a cyclopian eye, the Eriadorans disappeared into the streets of Montfort’s lower section, and the cyclopians, standing helplessly as they finally breached the wall, didn’t dare to follow.

  Some distance away, Oliver pulled up short and bade his companions to wait. They all looked back, following the halfling’s gaze up the side of the Ministry’s tower. The ice-covered eastern wall shone brilliantly in the morning light, and the image the halfling had spotted was unmistakable, and so fitting.

  Two hundred feet up the wall loomed a red silhouette, a crimson shadow. Luthien’s wondrous cape had worked another aspect of its magic, leaving its tell-tale image emblazoned on the stones, a fitting message from the Crimson Shadow to the common folk of Montfort.

  TO THE BITTER END

  You should not be up here,” Oliver remarked, his frosty breath filling the air before him. He grabbed the edge of the flat roof and pulled himself over, then hopped up to his feet and clapped his hands hard to get the blood flowing in them.

  Across the way, Luthien didn’t reply, other than to nod in the direction of the Ministry. Oliver walked up beside his friend and noted the intensity in Luthien’s striking cinnamon-colored eyes. The halfling followed that gaze to the southwest, toward the massive structure that dominated the Montfort skyline. He could see the body of Duke Morkney still frozen against the cathedral wall, the spear still stuck in the dead man’s head. The rope around his neck, however, now angled out from the building, its end pushed away from the buttress where it had been tied.

  “They cut the rope,” the halfling howled, thinking the garish scene perfectly outrageous. “But still the dead duke stays!” Indeed the cyclopians had cut the rope free from the tower top, hoping to dislodge Morkney. Farther down the tower side, though, the rope remained frozen and so the cyclopians had done nothing more than create what looked like a ghastly antenna, sticking up from Morkney’s head as if he were some giant bug.

  Luthien jutted his chin upward, toward the top of the tower, and shifting his gaze, Oliver saw cyclopians bumbling about up there, cursing and pushing each other. Just below the lip, the tower glistened with wetness and some of the ice had broken away. The halfling realized what was happening a moment later when the cyclopians hoisted a huge, steaming cauldron and tipped it over the edge. Boiling water ran down the side of the tower.

  One of the cyclopians slipped, then roared in pain and whirled away, and the hot cauldron toppled down behind the water. It spun along its descent, but stayed close to the wall, and slammed into the butt of the spear that was embedded in Morkney’s head. On bounced the cauldron, bending the spear out with it, and the soldiers on the roof winced as Morkney’s head jerked forward violently, nearly torn from his torso. The spear did come free, and it and the cauldron fell to the courtyard below, to the terrified screams of scrambling cyclopians and the derisive hoots from the many common Eriadorans watching the spectacle from the city’s lower section.

  The pushing atop the tower became an open fight and the offending cyclopian, still clutching the hand he had burned on the cauldron, was heaved over the battlement. His was the only scream from that side of the dividing wall, but the hoots from the lower section came louder than ever.

  “Oh, I do like how they bury their dead!” Oliver remarked.

  Luthien didn’t share the halfling’s mirth. The Ministry had been lost to Aubrey, and it was Luthien’s decision to let the viscount keep it, at least for the time being. The cost of taking the building back, if they could indeed roust the cyclopians from the place, would not be worth the many lives that would be lost.

  Still, Luthien had to wonder about the wisdom of that decision. Not because he needed the cathedral for strategic purposes—the huge building could be defended, but the open courtyards surrounding it made it useless as a base of offensive operations—but because of its symbolic ramifications. The Ministry, that gigantic, imposing temple of God, the largest and greatest structure in all of Eriador, belonged to the common folk who had built it, not to the ugly one-eyes and the unlawful Avon king. The soul of Montfort, of all of Eriador, was epitomized by that cathedral; every village, no matter how small or how remote, boasted at least one family member who had helped to build the Ministry.

  The next cauldron of boiling water was dumped over the side then, and this time, the cauldron itself was not dropped. The hot liquid made it all the way down to the duke, and the rope, freed of its icy grasp, rolled over and hung down. A few seconds later, the upper half of Morkney’s frozen torso came free of the wall and the corpse bent out at the waist.

  The two friends couldn’t see much on the top of the tower, of course, but after a long period when no cyclopians appeared near the edge, Luthien and Oliver surmised that the brutes had run out of hot water.

  “Is a long way to climb with a full cauldron,” the halfling snickered, remembering the winding stair, a difficult walk even without the cold and the ice.

  “Aubrey believes that it is worth the effort,” Luthien said, and his grim tone tipped Oliver off to his friend’s distress.

  Oliver stroked the frozen hairs of his neatly trimmed goatee and looked back to the tower.

  “We could take the Ministry back,” he offered, guessing the source of Luthien’s mood.

  Luthien shook his head. “Not worth the losses.”

  “We are winning this fight,” Oliver said. “The merchant types are caught in their homes and not so many cyclopians remain.” He looked at the wall and imagined the scene in the northern courtyard. “And one less than a moment ago,” he said with a snort.

  Luthien didn’t disagree. The Eriadorans were close to taking back their city—Caer MacDonald, it had been called— from Greensparrow’s lackeys. But how long would they hold it? Already there were reports of an army coming from Avon to put down the resistance, and while those were unconfirmed and possibly no more than the manifestation of fears, Luthien couldn’t deny the possibility. King Greensparrow would not tolerate an uprising, would not easily let go of Eriador, though he had never truly conquered the land.

  Luthien thought of the plague that had ravaged Eriador some twenty years before, in the very year that he had been born. His mother had died in that plague, and so many others as well, nearly a third of the Eriadoran populace. The proud folk could no longer continue their war with Greensparrow’s armies—forces comprised mostly of cyclopians—and so they had surrendered.

  And then another plague had come over Eriador: a blackening of the spirit. Luthien had seen it in his own father, a man with little fight left in him. He knew it in men like Aubrey, Eriadorans who had accepted Greensparrow with all their heart, who profited from the misery of the commonfolk.

  So what exactly had he and Oliver started that day in the Ministry when he had killed Morkney? He thought of that battle now, of how Morkney had given over his body to a demon, further confirmation of the wickedness that was Greensparrow and his cronies. The mere thought of the evil beast, Praehotec by name, sent shudders coursing through Luthien, for he would not have won that fight, would not have plunged Oliver’s rapier through the duke’s skinny chest, had not Morkney erred and released the demon to its hellish home, the human thinking to kill the battered Luthien on his own.

  Looking back over the events of these last few weeks, the blind luck and the subtle twists of fate, Luthien had to wonder, and to worry—for how many innocent people, caught up in the frenzy of the fast-spreading legend of the Crimson Shadow, would be punished by the evil king? Would another plague, like the one that had broken the hearts and will of Eriador when Greensparrow first became king of Avon, sweep over the land? Or would Greensparrow’s cyclopian army simply march into Montfort and kill everyone who was not loyal to the throne?

  And it would go beyond Montfort, Luthien knew. Katerin had come from Isle Bedwydrin, his home, bearing his father’s sword and news that the uprising was general on the island, as well. Gahris, Luthien’s father, had apparently found his heart, the
pride that was Eriador of old, in the news of his son’s exploits. The eorl of Bedwydrin had declared that no cyclopian on Isle Bedwydrin would remain alive. Avonese, once Aubrey’s consort and passed on by Aubrey to become the wife of Gahris, was in chains.

  The thought of that pompous and painted whore brought bile into Luthien’s throat. In truth, Avonese had begun all of this, back in Bedwydrin. Luthien had unwittingly accepted her kerchief, a symbol that he would champion her in the fighting arena. When he had defeated his friend, Garth Rogar, the wicked Avonese had called for the vanquished man’s death.

  And so Garth Rogar had died, murdered by a cyclopian that Luthien later slew. While the ancient rules gave Avonese the right to make such a demand, simple morality most definitely did not.

  Avonese, in pointing her thumb down, in demanding the death of Garth Rogar, had set Luthien on his path. How ironic now that Aubrey, the man who had brought the whore to Bedwydrin, was Luthien’s mortal enemy in the struggle for Montfort.

  Luthien wanted Aubrey’s head and meant to get it, but he feared that his own, and those of many friends, would roll once King Greensparrow retaliated.

  “So why are you sad, my friend?” Oliver asked, his patience worn thin by the stinging breeze. No more cyclopians had appeared atop the tower, and Oliver figured that it would take them an hour at least to descend, fill another cauldron, and haul the thing up. The comfort-loving halfling had no intention of waiting an hour in the freezing winter wind.

  Luthien stood up and rubbed his hands and his arms briskly. “Come,” he said, to Oliver’s relief. “I am to meet Siobahn at the Dwelf. Her scouts have returned with word from the east and the west.”

  Oliver hopped into line behind Luthien, but his step quickly slowed. The scouts had returned?

  The worldly Oliver thought he knew then what was bothering Luthien.