R. Salvatore - The Sword of Bedwyr

Luthien went tumbling across the tower top, and Siobhan once more disappeared from sight, this time to roll all the way to the bottom and land hard on the lower landing, where she lay, groaning and helpless.

Luthien shook his head, trying to remember where he was. By the time he managed to look back across the tower, he saw Praehotec standing tall, laughing wickedly at him.

“You believe that your puny weapons can defeat Praehotec?” the beast bellowed. It reached right into the garish wound in its belly and, laughing all the while, extracted Luthien’s slime-covered blade. “I am Praehotec, who has lived for centuries untold!”

Luthien had no more energy to battle the monster. He was defeated; he knew that, and knew, too, that if Greensparrow had indeed made such allies as Praehotec, as Brind’Amour had claimed, and as Morkney had apparently proven true, then a shadow might indeed soon cover all of Eriador.

Luthien struggled to his knees. He wanted to die with dignity, at least. He put one foot under him, but paused and stared hard at the monster.

“No!” Praehotec growled. The demon wasn’t looking at Luthien; it was looking up into the empty air. “The kill is rightfully mine! His flesh is my food!”

“No,” came Duke Morkney’s voice in reply. “The sweet kill is mine!”

Praehotec’s serpentine face trembled, then bulged weirdly, reverting to the face of Duke Morkney. Then it returned to Praehotec, briefly, then back to Duke Morkney.

The struggle continued, and Luthien knew that the opportunity to strike would not last long. He staggered forward a bit, trying to find some weapon, trying to find the strength to attack.

When he glanced back across the tower top, he saw not Praehotec but Duke Morkney’s skinny and naked body, the duke bending low to retrieve his fallen robe.

“You should be dead already,” Morkney said, noticing that Luthien was struggling to stand. “Stubborn fool! Take pride in the fact that you fended off the likes of Praehotec for several minutes. Take pride and lie down and die.”

Luthien almost took the advice. He had never been so weary and wounded, and he did not imagine that death was very far away. Head down, he noticed something then, something that forced him to stand straight once more and forced him to remember the losses he had suffered.

Oliver’s rapier.

To Duke Morkney’s mocking laughter, the young Bedwyr stepped over and picked up the small and slender blade, then stood very still to find his balance and stubbornly rose up tall. He staggered across the tower top, toward his foe.

Morkney was still naked and still laughing as Luthien staggered near, rapier aimed for the duke’s breast.

“Do you believe that I am not capable of defeating you?” the duke asked incredulously. “Do you think that I need Praehotec, or any other demon, to destroy a mere swordsman? I sent the demon away only because I wanted your death to come from my own hands.” With a superior growl, Morkney lifted his bony hands, fingers clawed like an animal, and began to chant.

Luthien’s back arched suddenly and he froze in place, eyes wide with shock and sudden agony. Tingling energy swept through him, back to front and right out of his chest. It seemed to him, to his ultimate horror, that his own life energy was being sucked out of him, stolen by the evil wizard!

“No,” he tried to protest, but he knew then that he was no match for the powers of the wicked duke.

Like a true parasite, Morkney continued to feed, taking perverse pleasure in it all, laughing wickedly, as evil a being as the demon he had summoned.

“How could you ever have believed that you could win against me?” the duke asked. “Do you not know who I am? Do you now understand the powers of Greensparrow’s brotherhood?”

Again came the mocking laughter; the dying Luthien couldn’t even speak out in protest. His heart beat furiously; he feared it would explode.

Suddenly, a looped rope spun over the duke’s head, drawing tight about his shoulders. Morkney’s eyes widened as he regarded it, and he followed its length to the side to see Oliver deBurrows, crawling over the battlement.

The halfling shrugged and smiled apologetically, even waved to the duke. Morkney growled, thinking to turn his wrath on this one, thinking that he was through with the impudent young human.

The instant he was free, Luthien jerked straight, and the motion brought the deadly rapier shooting forward, its tip plunging into the startled duke’s breast.

They stood face to face for a long moment, Morkney staring incredulously at this curious young man, at this young man who had just killed him. The duke chuckled again, for some reason, then slumped dead into Luthien’s arms.

Down below, in the nave, the gargoyles turned to stone and crashed to the floor, and the skeletons and rotting corpses lay back down in their eternal sleep.

Oliver looked far below to the now huge crowd and the large force of Praetorian Guards coming into the plaza beside the Ministry.

“Put him over the side!” the quick-thinking halfling called to Luthien.

Luthien turned curiously at Oliver, who was now scrambling all the way over the battlement and back to the tower’s top.

“Put him over the side!” the halfling said again. “Let them see him hanging by his skinny neck!”

The notion horrified Luthien.

Oliver ran up to his friend and pushed Luthien away from the dead duke. “Do you not understand?” Oliver asked. “They need to see him!”

“Who?”

“Your people!” Oliver cried, and with a burst of strength, the halfling shoved Morkney over the battlement. The lasso slipped up from the duke’s shoulders and caught tight about his neck as he tumbled, his skinny, naked form coming to a jerking stop along the side of the tower a hundred feet above the ground.

But the poor people of Montfort, under this one’s evil thumb for many years, surely recognized him.

They did, indeed.

Out of the north transept came the victorious mob from the cathedral, taking their riot to the streets, sweeping up many onlookers in their wake.

“What have we done?” the stunned young Bedwyr asked, staring down helplessly at the brutal fight.

Oliver shrugged. “Who can say? All I know is that the pickings should be better with that skinny duke out of the way,” he answered, always pragmatic and always opportunistic.

Luthien just shook his head, wondering once more what he had stumbled into. Wondering how all of this had come to pass.

“Luthien?” he heard from across the tower top, and he spun about to see Siobhan, leaning heavily on the battlement, her gray robe in tatters.

But smiling.

The snow lay thick along the quiet streets of Montfort, nearly every street lined with the red stains of spilled blood. Luthien sat atop the roof of a tall building in the lower section, looking out over the city and the lands to the north.

The people of Montfort were in full revolt, and he, the Crimson Shadow, unwittingly had been named their leader. So many had died, and Luthien’s heart was often heavy. But he gathered strength from those who savagely fought on for their freedom, from those brave people who had lived so long under tyranny and now would not go back to that condition, even at the price of their lives.

And, to Luthien’s amazement, they were winning. A powerful and well-armed cyclopian force still controlled the city’s inner section beyond the dividing wall, protecting the wealthy merchants who had prospered under Duke Morkney. Rumors said that Viscount Aubrey had taken command of the force.

Luthien remembered the man well; he hoped the rumors were true.

The fighting had been furious in the first weeks following the duke’s death, with hundreds of men, women, and cyclopians dying every day. Winter had settled in quickly, slowing the fighting, forcing many to think merely of keeping from freezing or starving. At first, the cold seemed to favor the merchants and cyclopians in their better quarters within the city’s higher section, but as time went on, Luthien’s people began to find the advantage. They controlled the outer wall; they controlled any goods coming into the city.