R. Salvatore - Luthien's Gamble

Katerin led the way up a ramp to the long boardwalk that fronted the village. Seven long spurs jutted out into the harbor, enough room for perhaps two hundred fishing boats, five times Hale’s modest fleet. An image of those small boats darting in and around massive war galleons flashed in Katerin’s mind. She hadn’t seen many ships of war, just those that occasionally docked in Dun Varna, and one that had passed her father’s boat out on the open sea off Isle Bedwydrin’s western coast; she had no idea what one of those ships could do. She could well imagine their power, though, and the image sent a shudder along her spine.

She shook the disturbing thoughts away and looked at the harbor. She hoped it had a shallow sounding, too shallow for the great ships to put in. If they could get the enemy into smaller landing craft, the fishermen of Port Charley would make a landing very difficult indeed.

Katerin realized that she was getting ahead of herself. Formulating battle plans by the folk who knew these waters best would come later. Right now, Katerin and Oliver merely had to convince the folk of Port Charley to stand against the invading force and keep Greensparrow’s army out in the harbor.

Riverdancer’s hooves clomped along the boardwalk, Threadbare right behind. Katerin understood the wharf’s design, similar to the one in Hale, and so she made her way to the fourth and central pier.

“Should we not walk the horses?” Oliver asked nervously, his gaze locked on the slits in the boardwalk, and the spectacle of the dark water far below them. The tide was out and soon Oliver and Katerin were a full thirty feet above the level of the water.

Katerin didn’t answer, just kept her course straight for the small cottage built beside the pier. Only a couple of boats were in—it was still early in the afternoon—and a few crusty old sea dogs waddled along the various piers, turning curious glances at the strange newcomers, particularly at the foppish halfling, so colorful and out of place in the wintry village.

An old woman, her face brown and cracked and her white hair thin, as though the incessant sea breeze had blown half of it away, came out to greet them before they reached the cottage.

She nodded at them as they dismounted, and smiled, showing more gum than tooth: her few remaining teeth were crooked and stained. Her eyes were the lightest of blue, almost washed of color, and her limbs and fingers, like the teeth, were crooked and bent in awkward angles, with knuckles and joints like knobby bumps on her old frame.

But she was not an unattractive sight. There was a goodness about her, a genuinely noble and honest soul, someone who had walked a straight path despite the crooked limbs.

“Yer won’t find passage south fer another two-week,” she said in nasal tones. “And not fer north fer another two-week after that.”

“We do not seek passage at all,” Katerin replied. “We seek the harbormaster.”

The old woman spent a long moment regarding Katerin, studying the hard texture of her hands and the way she held herself straight despite the stiff breeze. Then she extended her arm warmly. “Yer found her,” she said. “Gretel Sweeney.”

“Katerin O’Hale,” the young woman replied, and her mention of the port town to the north brought a smile and a nod of recognition from Gretel. The old harbormaster recognized a fellow seagoer when she saw one. She didn’t know what to make of Oliver, though, until she thought back across the years. Gretel had been Port Charley’s harbormaster for nearly two decades, and she made it a point of watching every foreign ship dock and unload. Of course she did not remember everyone who passed through her village, but Oliver was one who was hard to forget.

“Gascon,” she said, shifting her arm toward the halfling.

Oliver took the offered hand and brought it to his lips. “Oliver deBurrows,” he introduced himself, and when he let go of Gretel’s hand, he dipped into a sweeping bow, his hat brushing the wooden decking.

“Gascon,” Gretel said again to Katerin with a wink and a nod.

Katerin got right to the point. “You have heard of the fighting in Montfort?” she asked.

Gretel’s almost white eyes twinkled with comprehension. “Strange to make a Gascon an emissary,” she said.

“Oliver is a friend,” Katerin explained. “A friend to me and a friend to Luthien Bedwyr.”

“Then it’s true,” the old woman said. “The son of Bedwydrin’s eorl.” She shook her head, her expression sour. “To be sure, he’s a long way from home,” she remarked, as Katerin and Oliver looked to each other, each trying to gauge Gretel’s reaction. “As are yerselves!”

“Trying to make that home whole again,” Katerin was quick to respond.

Gretel didn’t seem impressed. “I’ve got tea a’brewing,” she said, turning toward the cottage. “Ye’ve got much to tell me, and no doubt to offer me, so we may as well be comfortable during the talking.”

Oliver and Katerin continued to look at each other as Gretel disappeared into the cottage.

“This will not be easy,” Oliver remarked.

Katerin slowly shook her head. She had known that the folk of Port Charley wouldn’t be impressed with any rebellion. The place was so much like Hale. Why should they rebel, after all, when they were already free? The fisherfolk of Port Charley answered to no one but the sea, and with that as their overlord, Luthien and his fight in Montfort, and indeed, even King Greensparrow himself, did not seem so important.

A young boy bounded out of the cottage, running down the boardwalk and toward the town as the two friends tied up their mounts.

“Gretel is calling in some friends,” Katerin explained.

Oliver’s hand immediately and instinctively went to the hilt of his rapier, but he pulled it away at once, remembering the noble look in Gretel’s eye and feeling foolish for entertaining such a fear even for a moment.

“Tea?” Katerin asked resignedly. She was thinking of the task before her, of convincing Gretel and her compatriots of the importance of the rebellion, of asking these people to risk their lives in a fight they likely cared nothing at all about. Suddenly she felt very tired.

Oliver led the way into the cottage.

Gretel would hear nothing of the troubles in Montfort, which Katerin insisted on calling Caer MacDonald, and nothing of the old legends come to life until the others arrived.

“Old fisherfolk,” the harbormaster explained. “Too old for the boats and so we of Port Charley use their wisdom. They know the sea.”

“Our troubles do not concern only the sea,” Oliver politely reminded the woman.

“But the sea be our only concern,” Gretel said, a stinging retort that reminded Oliver and especially Katerin of just how difficult this mountain would prove to climb.

Gretel wanted to talk about Hale; she knew some of the northern village’s older fisherfolk, had met them at sea during the salmon runs many years before, when she was young and captained her own boat. Though she was an impatient sort, a woman of action and not idle talk (especially not with cyclopian ships sailing fast for Eriador’s coast!), Katerin obliged, and even found that she enjoyed Gretel’s stories of the mighty Avon Sea.

Oliver rested during that time, sipping his tea and taking in the smells and sounds of the seaside cottage. The other old sea dogs began arriving presently, one or two at a time, until Gretel’s small cottage was quite filled with brown, wrinkled bodies, all smelling of salt and fish. The halfling thought he recognized one of the men, but couldn’t quite place him, his suspicions only heightened when the fellow looked Oliver’s way and gave a wink. Perhaps this had been one of the crew on the boat that had taken Oliver into Port Charley several years before, or one of the others at the boardinghouse where Oliver had stayed until he had grown bored of the port and departed for Montfort.