R. Salvatore - Luthien's Gamble

A cyclopian groaned from behind the barrier. Then another.

Shuglin and his allies looked to each other, not understanding.

Then they heard the slight twang of a bow, far down the tunnel ahead of them, and behind the barrier another one-eye screamed out.

Shuglin’s powerful legs began pumping; he verily threw himself around the corner. His allies took up the battle cry and the charge.

“Silly one-eye,” came a voice with a familiar Gascon accent from beyond the barrier. “One poke of my so fine rapier blade and you cannot see!”

A quarrel skipped off Shuglin’s shield. A man flanking him took a hit in the leg and went down.

Hearing swords ringing, the dwarf didn’t pause long enough to look for an opening. He lowered his strong shoulder and plowed into the barricade. Wood and stone shook loose. Shuglin didn’t get through, but his allies used him as a stepping-stone and the barrier was quickly breached. By the time the dwarf regained his wits and clambered over the rubble, the fight was over, without a single rebel killed or even seriously wounded.

Luthien pointed to a fork in the passage, just at the end of the lamplight. “To the left will take you to the lower levels and your enslaved kin.”

Shuglin grunted; Luthien knew where the fighting dwarf wanted to be. Shuglin had been in the mines before, but for only a short while. The dwarf had been taken prisoner in Montfort for aiding Luthien and Oliver in one of their many daring escapes. He had been sentenced to hard labor in the mines as all convicted dwarfs were, along with two of his fellows. But Oliver, Luthien, and the Cutters had rescued the three dwarfs before the cyclopians had had the chance to take them down to the lower levels.

“And where are you off to?” Shuglin wanted to know, seeing that Luthien and Oliver weren’t moving to follow him.

Luthien shrugged and smiled, and turned to leave. Oliver tipped his hat. “There are many smaller side tunnels,” the halfling explained. “Look for us when you need us most!”

With that heroic promise, Oliver scampered off after Luthien, the two of them going right at the fork, back to the narrow passage that had led them here from the guard room. They had indeed found many tunnels leading off that passage, several of which sloped steeply down. The main entrance to the lower mines, where the dwarfs were kept as slaves, was to the left at the fork, as Luthien had told Shuglin, but Luthien and Oliver figured that if they could get down lower in secret, they could rouse the enslaved dwarfs and strike at the cyclopian guards from behind.

They did make their way down and in the lower tunnels found a score of dirty, beleaguered dwarfs for every cyclopian guard. Though battered and half-starved, the tough bearded folk were more than ready to join in the cause, more than ready to fight for their freedom. Pickaxes and shovels that had been used as mining tools now served as deadly weapons as the growing force made its way along the tunnels.

Shuglin’s group, rejoined with the rest of their allies, including Katerin and the Cutters, found their reception exactly the opposite. The main entrance to the lower mines also housed the largest concentration of cyclopians. They fought a bitter battle in the last room of the upper level, and predictably, the large platform that served as an elevator to the lower level was destroyed by the cyclopians.

Using block and tackle and dozens of ropes, Shuglin and his dwarfs quickly constructed a new transport. Getting down was a different matter, and many were lost in the first assault, despite the fine work of the elvish archers. Once the lower chamber was secured, the group faced a difficult, room-to-room march, and there were at least as many well-armed cyclopians as there were rebels.

But there were as many dwarf slaves as both forces combined, and when Luthien and Oliver and their makeshift army showed up behind the cyclopian lines, the defense of the mines fell apart.

That same night, the dwarfs crawled out of the Montfort mines, many of them looking upon stars for the first time in more than a decade. Almost without exception, they fell to their knees and gave thanks, cursing King Greensparrow and singing praises to the Crimson Shadow.

Shuglin put a strong hand on Luthien’s shoulder. “Now you’ve got your army,” the blue-bearded dwarf promised grimly.

With five hundred powerful dwarfs camped about him, Luthien didn’t doubt those words for a moment.

Standing off to the side, Oliver’s expression remained doubtful. He had previously offered to Luthien that perhaps the dwarfs should run off into the mountains, and that he and Luthien and whoever else would come could ride north, into the wilder regions of Eriador, where they might blend into the landscape, so many more rogues in a land of rogues. Despite the victorious and heartwarming scene around him now, Oliver seemed to be holding to those thoughts. The pragmatic halfling understood the greater nations of the wider world, including Avon, and he could not shake the image of Greensparrow’s army flowing north and crushing the rebels. Many times in the last few weeks, Oliver had pondered whether Avon used the gallows or the guillotine.

Oliver the highwayhalfling longed for his life out on the road, an outlaw, perhaps, but not so much an outlaw that an entire army would search for him!

“We cannot flee,” Luthien said to him, recognizing the forlorn expression and understanding its source. “It is time for Montfort to fall.”

“And for Caer MacDonald to rise,” Katerin O’Hale quickly added.

The many winters had played hard on the old wizard Brind’Amour’s broad shoulders, and the crow’s-feet that creased his face were testament to his many hours of study and of worry. No less were his worries now—indeed, he suspected that Eriador, his beloved land, was in its most critical time—but his shoulders were not stooped, and anyone looking at the wizened face would likely not notice the crow’s-feet, too entranced by the sheer intensity of the old man’s deep blue eyes.

Those eyes sparkled now, as the wizard sat in the high-backed chair before his desk in a roughly circular cave, its perfectly smooth floor the only clue that this was no natural chamber. A single light, sharp like a spark of lightning, illuminated the room, emanating from a perfectly round crystal ball sitting atop the desk between a human skull and a tall, treelike candelabra.

Brind’Amour leaned back in his chair as the light began to fade and considered the images that the enchanted ball had just shown to him.

The dwarfs were free of the Montfort mines and had come into the city beside Luthien and Oliver.

The dwarfs were free!

Brind’Amour stroked his snow-white beard and brushed his hand over his white hair, which he had tied back in a thick ponytail. He could trust these images, he reminded himself, because he was looking at things as they were, not as they might be.

He had done that earlier, looked into the future. A risky business, and an exhausting one. Of all the magical enchantments a wizard might cast, prophesying was perhaps the most troublesome and dangerous, for looking into the future involved more than harnessing simple energies, such as a strike of lightning, and more than sending one’s consciousness to another real-time place, as in simple scrying. Looking into the future meant bringing together all the known elements of the present in one place, a crystal ball or a mirror, then forcing logical conclusions to each, as well as resultant new conflicts. Truly such prophesying was a test of a wizard’s intelligence and intuition.

Brind’Amour rarely dared such prophesying because, despite his curiosity, he realized that the future was not dependable. He could cast the spell over his crystal ball, huddle close, and study the fleeting images—and they were always fleeting, flickers, and partial pictures—but he could never know which were true and which were only possibilities. And of course, the mere fact that some prying wizard had glimpsed into the potential future made it more likely that the natural outcome would be altered.