R. Salvatore - Luthien's Gamble

The whooshing sound of a catapult behind him, from the Ministry, brought the young man from his contemplations of the fair half-elf. He lifted his gaze beyond the outer wall and saw the three black and silver masses approaching, a row of solid metal, with shields butted together perhaps sixty-five fronting each of the squares. Oliver had warned Luthien that they would do this, calling the formations “testudos,” but no words could have prepared Luthien for the splendor of this sight. One testudo was directly north of the city, a second northwest, and the third almost directly west, a three-pronged attack that would pressure the two main outer walls. At least they weren’t surrounded, Luthien thought, but of course, Caer MacDonald could not easily be surrounded, since its southern and eastern sections flowed into the towering mountains, virtually impassable at this time of year.

Any relief that Luthien might have realized with that thought was lost as the Avon march progressed. The cyclopians came like a storm cloud, slowly, deliberately. Above the din of the march and the excitement along the wall, Luthien heard the cyclopian drummers striking a rhythmic, monotonous beat.

A heartbeat, continuous, inevitable.

A ball of flaming pitch hit the field in front of the brutes—some of those in the front rank were splattered. But their shields deflected the missiles and they never slowed.

A lump of panic welled in Luthien’s throat, a sudden urge to run away, out of Caer MacDonald’s back gate and into the mountains. He hadn’t foreseen that it would be like this, so controlled and determined. He had expected the cyclopian leader to make some announcement, expected some horns to blow, followed by a roaring charge.

This was too calculated, too confident. The Praetorian Guard held tight ranks; their line hardly fluttered as the next catapult shot hit in their midst. A few were killed or wounded—some had to have been—but the mass didn’t reveal any losses in the least, just rolled on to the cadence, continuous, inevitable. To Luthien, so, too, seemed the impending fall of Caer MacDonald.

Luthien glanced all around. All was suddenly quiet on his side of the wall, and he realized that the men and women around him were entertaining similar fears. A voice in Luthien’s head told him that it was time for him to be the leader, the true leader. The rebels had hit a critical moment before the battle had even been joined.

Luthien climbed to the top of the battlement and drew Blind-Striker from its scabbard. “Caer MacDonald!” he cried. “Eriador free!”

Those waiting behind the outer wall glanced back, some confused, but some, like Siobhan, knew and appreciated what the young Bedwyr was up to.

Luthien ran along the wall to the gatehouse on the other side of Caer MacDonald’s huge front gate. He continued his cry, and it became a chant, taken up by every soldier manning the city wall.

Those on the outer wall, with the enemy fast closing into range, did not cry out, but surely they were heartened by the cheering behind them. Up came the lines of bows, arrows fitted and ready.

The cyclopian army continued its slow and steady march. Fifty feet away. Forty.

Still Siobhan and her companions held their bows bent, seeing little to shoot at along the barricade of metal shields. Another catapult lob landed in the midst of the army, far back among the ranks, and then a ballista bolt, driving down from one of the Ministry’s towers, slammed into the front line, and no shield could hold it back. It buckled the blocking metal in half and blasted through, skewering one cyclopian, and the force of the hit knocked those brutes flanking him from their feet, causing a temporary break in the line.

The archers were quick to let fly and the stinging arrows penetrated the mass, taking their toll.

Barely twenty feet away, the cyclopian square at the northwest bend in the outer wall broke ranks and charged, screaming wildly. The bow strings hummed; pikemen jabbed down from their higher perches, trying to keep the brutes from the eight-foot barrier.

Siobhan, farther to the north with her elves, called for a volley before the square facing them even broke ranks. It was a calculated gamble, and one that paid off, for at close range the powerful elfish longbows drove arrows right through the blocking shields, and the elves were quick enough to fit their next arrows so that they fired again almost immediately.

A third and fourth volley followed before the cyclopians could finish closing the twenty feet, but as devastating as the bow fire was, it hardly dented the great mass, five thousand Praetorian Guards to this square alone. The brutes did not panic, did not weep for their fallen. They swarmed the wall and clambered up it, often climbing over the backs of their own dead.

Siobhan’s elves fought brilliantly—so did the folk, mostly humans, holding the northwestern corner and the western expanse—but their line was thin, far too thin, and in a matter of moments, the wall was breached in several places.

From the inner wall came three short blasts of a horn, and all on the outer wall who were able broke ranks and fled back for the city gate.

To their credit, those dwarfs ready with the axes waited until the very last moment, gave everyone fighting along the outer wall every possible second to get away. But then they could wait no more; cyclopians were inside the line and bearing down on them and if they did not put their axes to quick work on the ropes, they would find themselves engaged in close combat instead.

One by one, the ropes snapped, each with a huge popping sound, and the stones of the outer wall groaned.

Luthien held his breath; the wall seemed to hang in place for a long, long while, perhaps held up by the sheer bulk of the force on the other side. Finally, it tumbled, breaking from the west around to the north like a great wave upon a beach.

In truth, not too many cyclopians were killed by the falling wall. It didn’t collapse, but rather fell like a tree, and many of the brutes were able to scramble back out of harm’s way. But their formation was broken by the ensuing confusion, and when Luthien’s line along the inner wall loosed their first barrage of arrows, more hit cyclopian flesh than blocking shields.

Luthien didn’t witness that devastating barrage. He and fifty others were down in the courtyard behind the main gates, mounted on the finest steeds that could be found within the city. Caer MacDonald’s inner doors were swung wide, and ropes and ladders were dropped over the wall to aid in the flight of those allies coming in from the outer wall. Archers picked their shots carefully, taking down the leading cyclopians so that as few as possible of the defenders would be caught in combat outside the city.

Out from the gates came the cavalry, led by Luthien, crimson cape and reddish hair flying wild behind him, Blind-Striker held high to the gray morning sky.

Beyond the rubble of the outer wall, Belsen’Krieg and his undercommanders regrouped quickly and sent on a new and furious charge. Luthien and his mounted allies prepared to meet it and slow it, so that those running from the outer wall could get to safety. The young Bedwyr regrouped the cavalry around him, set the line for the charge. The bulk of the cyclopians were sixty feet away, twenty feet inside the rubble of the outer wall.

Luthien’s eyes widened in amazement as the ground erupted right at the feet of the enemy force, as Shuglin and his five hundred dwarfs crawled up from their concealment, hacking and chopping their hated, one-eyed enemies with abandon.

Another volley of arrows whipped down from the wall behind Luthien; the ballista atop the Ministry blasted a huge hole in one rank of the cyclopian line.

“Eriador free!” Luthien bellowed, and out he charged, fifty horsemen alongside him, running headlong into the writhing black-and-silver mass.