R. Salvatore - The Sword of Bedwyr

On the morning winds of the next dawn, the black-sailed ship, proudly flying its pennants of Montfort and Avon, its prow lifting sheets of water high into the crystalline air, charged out of Dun Varna’s harbor.

Katerin had returned to her barracks, but Luthien still watched from the wooded ridge. Long indeed would be his travels if he planned to keep his vow of revenge, he realized as the sails diminished. But he was a young man with a long memory, and up there on that ridge, watching the ship depart, Luthien vowed again that he would not forget Garth Rogar.

He would have liked to remain out of Dun Varna for many more days; he had no desire at all to face his father, for what explanation might the man offer? But Luthien was hungry and cold, and the nearest town, where he certainly would be recognized, was fully a day’s march away.

He had barely walked through the doors of House Bedwyr when two cyclopians came upon him. “Your father would see you,” one of them announced gruffly.

Luthien kept on walking, and nearly got past the two before they crossed their long halberds in his path. The young man’s hand immediately went to his hip, but he wasn’t wearing any weapons.

“Your father would see you,” the cyclopian reiterated, and he reached up with his free hand and grabbed Luthien’s upper arm hard. “He said to bring you, even if we have to drag you.”

Luthien roughly pulled away and kept his unrelenting stare on the brute. He thought of punching the cyclopian in the face, or of just pushing through the two, but the image of him being dragged into his father’s chambers by the ankles was not a pleasant one.

He was standing before Gahris soon after, in the study where Gahris kept the few books his family owned (some of the very few books on all the isle of Bedwydrin) along with his other heirlooms. The elder Bedwyr stood hunched at the hearth, feeding the already roaring fire as if a deep chill had settled into his bones, though it was not so cold this day. Mounted on the wall above him was his most-prized piece, the family sword, its perfect edge gleaming and its golden hilt lined with jewels and sculpted to resemble a dragon rampant with upraised wings serving as the formidable crosspiece. It had been cunningly forged by the dwarves of the Iron Cross in ages past, its blade of beaten metal wrapped tight about itself a thousand times so that the blade only sharpened with use. Blind-Striker , it was called, both for its balanced cut and the fact that it had taken the eye of many cyclopians in the fierce war six hundred years before.

“Where have you been?” Gahris asked calmly, quietly. He wiped his sooty hands and stood up straight, though he did not yet turn to face his son.

“I needed to be away,” Luthien replied, trying to match his father’s calm.

“To let your anger settle?”

Luthien sighed but did not bother to answer.

Gahris turned toward him. “That was wise, my son,” he said. “Anger brews rash actions—oft with the most dire of consequences.”

He seemed so calm and so logical, which bothered Luthien deeply. His friend was dead! “How could you?” he blurted, unconsciously taking a long stride forward, hands bunched into fists. “To kill . . . what were you . . .” His words fell away in a jumble, his emotions too heated to be expressed.

Through it all, the white-haired Gahris cooed softly like a dove and waved his hand in the empty air. “What would you have me do?” he asked, as though that should explain everything.

Luthien opened his hands helplessly. “Garth Rogar did not deserve his fate!” Luthien cried. “A curse on Viscount Aubrey and on his wicked companions!”

“Calm, my son,” Gahris was saying, over and over. “Ours is a world that is not always fair and just, but—”

“There is no excuse,” Luthien replied through gritted teeth.

“Not even war?” Gahris asked bluntly.

Luthien’s breath came in short, angry gasps.

“Think not of bloodied fields,” Gahris offered, “nor of spear tips shining with the blood of fallen enemies, nor turf torn under the charge of horses. Those are horrors that have not yet been reflected in your clear eyes, and may they never be! They steal the sparkle, you see,” Gahris explained, and he pointed to his own cinnamon orbs. Indeed, those eyes did seem without luster this August morning.

“And were the eyes of Bruce MacDonald so tainted?” Luthien asked somewhat sarcastically, referring to Eriador’s greatest hero.

“Filled with valor are the tales of war,” Gahris replied somberly, “but only when the horrors of war have faded from memory. Who can say what scars Bruce MacDonald wore in his heavy soul? Who alive has looked into the eyes of that man?”

Luthien thought the words absurd; Bruce MacDonald had been dead for three centuries. But then he realized that to be his father’s very point. The elder Bedwyr went on in all seriousness.

“I have heard the horses charge, have seen my own sword—” he glanced back at the fabulous weapon on the wall “—wet with blood. I have heard the stories—other’s stories—of those heroic battles in which I partook, and I can tell you, in all honesty and with arrogance aside, that they were more horror than valor, more regret than victory. Am I to bring such misery to Bedwydrin?”

Luthien’s sigh this time was more of resignation than defiance.

“Breathe out your pride with that sigh,” Galiris advised. “It is the most deadly and most dangerous of emotions. Mourn your friend, but accept that which must be. Do not follow Ethan—” He broke off suddenly, apparently rethinking that last thought, but his mention of Luthien’s older brother, a hero to the youngest Bedwyr, piqued Luthien’s attention.

“What of Ethan?” he demanded. “What part does he play in all of this? What has he done in my absence?”

Again Gahris was cooing softly and patting the air, trying to calm his son. “Ethan is fine,” he assured Luthien. “I speak only of his temperament, his foolish pride, and my own hopes that you will temper your anger with good sense. You did well in walking out of House Bedwyr, and for that you have my respect. We are given a long rein from the duke of Montfort, and longer still from the throne in Carlisle, and it would be good to keep it that way.”

“What did Ethan do?” Luthien pressed, not convinced.

“He did nothing, other than protest—loudly!” Gahris snapped back.

“And that disappoints you?”

Gahris snorted and spun back to face the fire. “He is my eldest son,” he replied, “in line to be the eorl of Bedwydrin. But what might that mean for the folk?”

It seemed to Luthien that Gahris was no longer talking to him; he was, rather, talking to himself, as if trying to justify something.

“Trouble, I say,” the old man went on, and he seemed very old indeed to Luthien at that moment. “Trouble for Ethan, for House Bedwyr, for all the island.” He spun back around suddenly, one finger pointing Luthien’s way. “Trouble for you!” he cried, and Luthien, surprised, took a step backward. “Never will stubborn Ethan come to learn his place,” Gahris went on, muttering again and turning back to the fire. “Once eorl, he would surely facilitate his own death and bring ruin upon House Bedwyr and bring watchful eyes upon all of Bedwydrin. Oh, what a fool is a proud man! Never! Never! Never!”

Gahris had worked himself into quite a state, pumping his fist into the air as he spoke, and Luthien’s first instincts were to go to him and try to calm him. Something held the young man back, though, and instead he quietly left the room. He loved his father, had respected him all of his life, but now the man’s words rang hollowly in Luthien’s ears—ears that still heard the fateful crossbow click and the pitiful wheeze of Garth Rogar’s last breath.