R. Salvatore - Luthien's Gamble

The highlands had not seen as much snow this winter as normal, though still more fell here than in the southern reaches of Eriador, and the snow cover was neither complete nor very deep by the time Luthien and Oliver crossed through MacDonald’s Swath and made their way into the region. Everything was gray and brown, with even a few splotches of green, as far as their eyes could see. Melancholy and dreary, winter’s corpse, with still some time before the rebirth of spring.

The companions camped about a dozen miles east of Bronegan that night, on the very edge of the Fields of Eradoch. When they awakened the next morning, they were greeted by unusually warm temperatures and a thick fog, as the last of the snow dissipated into the air.

“It will be slow this day,” Oliver remarked.

“Not so,” Luthien replied without the slightest hesitation. “There are few obstacles,” he explained.

“How far do you mean to go?” the halfling asked him. “They have left Caer MacDonald by now, you know.”

Oliver spoke the truth, Luthien realized. Likely, Brind’Amour and Katerin, Siobhan and all the army had already marched out of the city’s gates, flowing north and west, along the same course Luthien and Oliver had taken. Until they got to MacDonald’s Swath. There, they would cross and go to the south, into Glen Albyn, while Luthien and Oliver had turned straight north, across the breadth of the swath, to Bronegan, and now, beyond that and into Eradoch.

“How far?” Oliver asked again.

“All the way to Bae Colthwyn, if we must,” Luthien replied evenly.

Oliver knew the impracticality of that answer. They were fully three days of hard riding from the cold and dark waters of Bae Colthwyn. By the time they got there and back, Brind’Amour would be at the wall, and the battle would be over. But the halfling understood and sympathized with the emotions that had prompted that response from Luthien. They had been greeted warmly in Bronegan, with many pats on the back and many toasts of free ale. Yet the promises of alliance, from the folk of Bronegan and from several other nearby communities who sent emissaries to meet with Luthien, had been tentative at best. The only way that these folk of the middle lands would line up behind the Crimson Shadow, in open defiance of King Greensparrow, was if Luthien proved to them that the whole of Eriador would fight in this war. Luthien had to go back through Bronegan on his journey south, or at least send an emissary there, and if he and Oliver had not mustered any more support, then they would ride alone all the way back to Glen Albyn.

And so they were in the highlands, to face perhaps their most critical test of the unity of Eriador. The highlanders of Eradoch were an independent group, tough and hardy. Many would call them uncivilized. They lived in tribes, clans based on heritage, and often warred amongst themselves. They were hunters, not farmers, better with the sword than the plow, for strength was the byword of the Fields of Eradoch.

That fact was not lost on the young Bedwyr, the general who had engineered the defeat of Belsen’Krieg outside of Caer MacDonald. All the highlanders, even the children, could ride, and ride well, on their powerful and shaggy steeds, and if Luthien could enlist a fraction of the thousands who roamed these fields, he would have a cavalry to outmatch the finest of Greensparrow’s Praetorian Guards. But the highlanders were a superstitious and unpredictable lot. Likely they had heard of Luthien as the Crimson Shadow, and so he and Oliver would not be riding into Eradoch unannounced. Their reception, good or bad, had probably already been decided.

The pair rode on through most of that day, Luthien trying to keep them headed northeast, toward Mennichen Dee, the one village in all the region. It was a trading town, a gathering point, and many of the highland clans would soon be making their way to the place, with excess horses and piles of furs to swap for salt and spices and glittering gemstones brought in by merchants of the other regions.

The fog didn’t lift all that day, and though the pair tried to keep their spirits high, the soggy air and the unremarkable ground (what little of it they could see) made it a long and arduous day.

“We should camp soon,” Luthien remarked, the first words either of them had spoken in some hours.

“Pity us in trying to build a fire this night,” Oliver lamented, and Luthien had no words to counter that. It would indeed be a cold and uncomfortable night, for they’d not begin a fire with the meager and soaked twigs that they might find in the highlands.

“We’ll make Mennichen Dee tomorrow,” Luthien promised. “There is always shelter available there to any traveler who comes in peace.”

“Ah, but there’s the rub,” the halfling said dramatically. “For do we come in peace?”

The ride seemed longer to Luthien, who again had no real answers for his unusually gloomy friend.

They traveled on as the sun, showing as just a lighter patch of gray, settled into the sky behind them, and very soon, Luthien felt that subtle tingle of alarm, that warrior instinct. Something just beyond his conscious senses told him to be on guard, and the adrenaline began to course through his veins.

He looked to Oliver and saw that his halfling companion, too, was riding a bit more tensely in the saddle, ready to spring away or draw his blade.

Riverdancer’s ears flattened and then came back up several times; Threadbare snorted.

They came like ghosts through the fog, gliding over the soft grass with hardly a sound, their bodies so wrapped in layers of fur and hide, and with huge horned or winged helms upon their heads, that they seemed hardly human, seemed extensions of the shaggy horses they rode, seemed the stuff of nightmares.

Both companions pulled up short, neither going for his weapon, transfixed by the spectacle of this ghostly ambush. The highlanders, huge men, every one of them dwarfing even Luthien, came in from every angle, slowly tightening the ring about the pair.

“Tell me I am dreaming,” Oliver whispered.

Luthien shook his head.

“Sometimes, perhaps, you should do only as you are told.” Oliver scolded. “Even if it is a lie!”

The highlanders stopped just far enough from the pair so that they remained indistinguishable, seeming more like monsters than men. Oliver silently applauded their tactic—they knew the ground, they knew the fog, and they certainly knew how to make an appearance.

“They want us to move first,” Luthien whispered out of the side of his mouth.

“I could fall on the ground and tremble,” the halfling offered sarcastically.

“They kill cowards,” Luthien said.

Oliver considered the honest emotions flitting through his mind at the ominous presence sitting barely a dozen yards away. “Then I am doomed,” he admitted.

Luthien snickered despite the predicament. “We knew what we were riding into,” he said at length, to remind himself and bolster his resolve.

“Greetings from Caer MacDonald,” he called in as strong a voice as he could muster. “The city that was unrightfully placed under the name of Montfort by a man who would claim kingship of all Avon and all Eriador.”

For a long while, there came no response. Then one rider moved up through the passive line, walking his black horse past the others and close enough for Luthien and Oliver to see him clearly.

The young Bedwyr’s face screwed up with curiosity, for this one appeared to be no highlander. He was large, yet he wore no furs or hide, but rather a complete suit of black-plated armor, the likes of which Luthien Bedwyr had never before seen. It was creased and jointed, with metal gauntlets fastened securely into place. Even the man’s feet were armored! His helm was flat-topped and cylindrical—Luthien noted that there were two eye slits and not one; this was no cyclopian—and he carried a huge shield, black like his armor and emblazoned with a crest that Luthien did not know: a death figure, skeletal arms spread wide, an upturned sword in one hand, a downward-pointing sword in the other. A pennant with a similar crest flew from the top of the long lance he held easily at his side. Even the man’s horse was covered in armor—head and neck and chest and flanks.