R. Salvatore - Luthien's Gamble

“I thought you would be at home in such a place,” he remarked.

Katerin’s eyes darted his way. “Too much to be done,” she replied.

“But not by us,” Oliver insisted. “We have ridden a hard and long road. Take the last offered sleep, silly girl, for the road back is no shorter!”

Katerin remained uneasy, but Oliver turned down the lantern anyway. Soon Katerin was lying back on her cot, and soon after that, the gentle rhythm of the lapping waves carried her away into dreams of Hale.

A stream of light woke her, and Oliver, too: the first ray of dawn. They heard the outside commotion of people running along the wooden pier and realized that the fleet was probably in sight. Together, they jumped from their cots, Katerin rushing for the door while Oliver pulled on his boots.

The door was locked, barred from the other side.

Katerin put her shoulder against it hard, thinking it stuck.

It would not budge.

“What silliness is this?” Oliver demanded, coming up to her side.

“No silliness, my halfling hero,” came a voice from above. The two looked up to see a hatch swinging open. They had to squint against the intrusion of sudden light, but could see that the opening was barred. Gretel knelt on the deck above, looking down at them.

“You promised,” Katerin stuttered.

Gretel shook her head. “I said that we could give yer a week if we had a mind to. I didn’t say we had a mind to.”

For a moment, Katerin thought of grabbing the main gauche off of Oliver’s belt and whipping it the old harbormaster’s way.

But Gretel smiled at her, as though she read the dangerous thoughts completely. “I, too, was young, Katerin O’Hale,” the old woman said. “Young and full of the fight. I know the fire that burns in yer veins, that quickens the beat of yer heart. But no more. My love fer the sword’s been tempered by the wisdom o’ years. Sit quiet, girl, and hold faith in the world.”

“Faith in a world filled with deceit?” Katerin yelled.

“Faith that yer don’t know everything,” Gretel replied. “Faith that yer own way might not be the best way.”

“You will let the one-eyes through Port Charley?” Oliver asked bluntly.

“Two of the Avon ships have already put in,” Gretel announced. “Move them along, so we decided. In one side and out the other, and good riddance to them all!”

“You damn Caer MacDonald!” Katerin accused.

Gretel seemed pained by that for a moment. She dropped the hatch closed.

Katerin growled and threw herself at the door once more, to no avail. It held tight and they were locked in.

Soon they heard the unified footsteps and drum cadence of the first cyclopian troops marching in from the pier. They heard one brutish voice above the others, surprisingly articulate for one of the one-eyed race, but neither of them knew of Belsen’Krieg.

Belsen’Krieg the Terrible had come with nearly fifteen thousand hardened warriors to crush the rebellion and bring the head of Luthien Bedwyr back to his king in Carlisle.

Luthien walked the length of the Caer MacDonald line, the area beyond the city’s outer wall. Caer MacDonald had three separate fortifications. The tallest and thickest wall was inside the city, dividing the wealthy merchant section from the poorer areas. Next was the thick, squat fortification that surrounded the bulk of the city, and finally, fifty feet out from that, the outer defense, a bare and thin wall, half again a short man’s height, and in some places no more than piled stones.

Beyond this outer wall, the land was open, with few trees or houses. Sloping ground, good ground to defend, Luthien thought. The cyclopians would have to come in a concentrated formation—en masse, as Oliver had called it—for the city could only be attacked from the north or the west. East and south lay the mountains, cold and deep with snow, and though a few of the one-eyes might swing around that way, just to pressure the defenders, the main group would have to come uphill, across open ground.

And that ground was being made more difficult by Shuglin’s industrious dwarfs. Every one of them greeted Luthien as he walked past, but few bothered to look up, would not interrupt this most vital of jobs. Some dug trip trenches, picking through the still-frozen earth inch by inch. These were only about two feet deep and fairly narrow, and would afford little cover, but if a charging cyclopian stumbled across one, his momentum would be halted; he might even break his leg. Other dwarfs took the trip trenches one step further, lining the ridge closest to the city with sharp, barbed pickets.

Luthien grew hopeful while watching the quiet, methodical work, but, in truth, there were few dwarfs on the field. Most were over by the wall, and that was where the young Bedwyr found Shuglin.

The blue-bearded dwarf stood with a couple of friends by a small table, poring over a pile of parchments and every so often looking up toward the wall and grunting, “Uh huh,” or some other noise. Shuglin was pleased to see Luthien, though he didn’t even notice the man’s approach until Luthien dropped a hand on his shoulder.

“How does it go?” the young Bedwyr asked.

Shuglin shook his head, didn’t seem pleased. “They built this damned wall well,” he explained, though Luthien didn’t quite understand the problem. Wasn’t a well-built wall a good thing for defenders?

“Only eight feet high and not so thick,” Shuglin explained. “Won’t stop the cyclopians for long. A ponypig could knock a hole in the damned thing.”

“I thought you just said they built it well,” Luthien replied.

“The understructure, I mean,” said Shuglin. “They built the understructure well.”

Luthien shook his head. Why would that matter?

Shuglin paused and realized it would be better to start from the beginning. “We decided not to hold this wall,” he said, and pointed up Caer MacDonald’s second wall.

“Who decided?”

“My kin and me,” Shuglin answered. “We asked Siobhan and she agreed.”

Again Luthien felt that oddly out-of-control sensation, like Siobhan was tugging hard at those puppet strings. For an instant, the young man was angry at being left out of the decision, but gradually he calmed, realizing that if his trusted companions had to come to him for approval on every issue, the whole of them would be bogged down and nothing important would ever get done.

“So we’re thinking to fight from here, then retreat back to the city,” Shuglin continued.

“But if the cyclopians gain this wall, they’ll have a strong position from which to reorganize and rest up,” Luthien reasoned.

The dwarf shrugged. “That’s why we’re trying to figure out how to drop this damned wall!” he grumbled, his frustration bubbling over.

“What about that powder you put in the box?” Luthien asked after a moment’s thought. “The box I used to destroy the supplies in the Ministry.”

“Not nearly enough of the stuff!” Shuglin huffed in reply, and Luthien felt foolish for not realizing that the cunning dwarfs would have considered the powder if it was a practical option. “And hard to make,” Shuglin added. “Dangerous.”

The dwarf finally looked up from the parchments, running his stubby fingers through his bushy blue-black beard. He reminded himself then that Luthien was only trying to help, and was even more desperate about the defense of Caer MacDonald than were Shuglin’s folk.

“We’ll use some of the powder,” the dwarf elaborated, “on the toughest parts of the wall, but damn, they built it well!”

“We could knock it down now and just begin our defense from the second wall,” Luthien offered, but Shuglin began shaking his head before the young man even finished the thought.