The Dragon King

23 To Know Your Enemies

Luthien and Bellick went to Brind’Amour’s tent together in the cool darkness before the dawn. The pair were full of enthusiasm, ready for battle once more. A lantern burned low on the pole just outside the entrance, but inside the tent was dark. The pair entered anyway, thinking to rouse Brind’Amour. The dawn attack was the customary course, after all, giving the armies all the day for fighting.

Little light followed them in, but enough for them to discern that the wizard was not inside.

“Must be out and about already, readying the plans,” Bellick remarked, but Luthien wasn’t so sure. Something was out of place, he realized instinctively.

Luthien moved to the wizard’s bed and confirmed his suspicions that it hadn’t been slept on the previous night. That was curious enough, but Luthien held a nagging suspicion that there was something more out of place. He glanced all about, but saw nothing apparent. All the furniture was in order, the table in the middle of the room, the stool beside it, the crystal ball atop it. Brind’Amour’s small desk sat against the tent side opposite the bed, covered in parchments, maps mostly, and by several bags filled with all sorts of strange potions and spell components.

“Come along,” Bellick called from the tent flap. “We’ve got to find the old one and get the line formed up.”

Luthien nodded and moved slowly to follow, looking back over his shoulder, certain that something was wrong. He got outside the tent, under the meager light of the low-burning lantern, Bellick several strides ahead of him.

“The crystal ball,” Luthien said suddenly, turning the dwarf about.

“What?”

“The crystal ball,” the young Bedwyr repeated, confident that he had hit on something important. “Brind’Amour’s crystal ball!”

“It was in there to be sure,” said Bellick. “Right in plain sight on the table.”

“He never leaves it so,” said Luthien, moving swiftly back into the tent. He heard Bellick groan and grumble, but the dwarf did follow, coming in just as Luthien settled on the stool, peering intently into the ball.

“Should you be looking into that?” Bellick asked. Like most of his race, Bellick was always a bit cautious where magic was concerned.

“I do not understand why it isn’t covered,” Luthien answered. “Brind’Amour . . .”

Luthien’s words fell away as an image, a familiar, cheery old face, thick with a tremendous white beard, suddenly appeared within the ball. “Ah, good,” said the illusionary Brind’Amour, “it is morning then, and you are preparing to take Pipery. All speed, my friends. I doubt not the outcome. I do not know how long I will be gone, and I go only with the knowledge that Eriador’s forces are secure. Righteous speed!”

The image faded away as abruptly as it had appeared. Luthien looked back to Bellick, just a stocky silhouette framed by the open tent flap.

“So the wizard’s gone,” the dwarf said. “On good business, I do not doubt.”

“Brind’Amour would not leave if it wasn’t urgent,” Luthien agreed.

“The Huegoths, probably,” reasoned Bellick, and the thought that there might be trouble involving Ethan put a sour turn in Luthien’s stomach. Or perhaps the trouble was from the other way, from the west, where Oliver and Katerin sailed. Luthien looked again to the empty crystal ball. He reminded himself many times over that Brind’Amour’s demeanor had been cheerful, not dour.

“No matter,” the dwarf king went on. “We ever were an army led by two!”

Luthien understood that Bellick had just assumed control of all the forces, and he really couldn’t argue with the dwarf, who surely outranked him. There was an issue, though, which Luthien had wanted to discuss with Brind’Amour before the assault began. At the end of the previous war with Avon, when he had wanted to press on to Carlisle, Luthien had held the conviction that victory would be possible because many of the folk of Avon might see the truth of the situation, might realize that the army of Eriador wasn’t really their enemy. Luthien had come to agree that his expectations were likely overblown, but still, he couldn’t accept the notion that all of Avon’s folk, men and women much like the Eriadorans, would desire war against Eriador.

Bellick grunted and turned to go.

“Can you muster the lines yourself?” Luthien asked. The dwarf wheeled about, and though he couldn’t see the details of Bellick’s face, Luthien could sense his surprise.

“You’re going to look for Brind’Amour?” Bellick asked incredulously.

“No, but I had hoped to secure King Brind’Amour’s permission to go into Pipery, before the dawn, before the battle,” Luthien replied.

Bellick glanced over his shoulder, then stepped into the tent, obviously concerned.

“To scout out their defenses,” Luthien explained immediately. “With the crimson cape, I can get in and out, and not a cyclopian will be the wiser.”

Bellick stood staring at the young Bedwyr for a long while. “That is not why you wish to go,” the dwarf reasoned, for he had heard Luthien talking about the folk of Avon as potential allies many times in the last few weeks.

Luthien sighed. “We may have friends within Pipery’s walls,” he admitted.

Bellick offered no response.

“I came to ask permission of King Brind’Amour,” Luthien said, standing straight. “But King Brind’Amour is not to be found.”

“Thus you will go as is your pleasure,” said Bellick.

“Thus I ask permission to go from King Bellick dan Burso, who rightfully leads the army,” Luthien corrected, and the show of loyalty did much for Bellick as the dwarf stood straighter.

“You may be disappointed,” Bellick warned.

Luthien shrugged. “At the least, I will scout out their defenses,” he replied.

“And at the most?”

“Justice for the Avon populace,” Luthien replied without hesitation.

“Go, and quickly,” Bellick bade him. “We’ve less than two hours to the dawn, and I plan to eat my noontime meal in Pipery!”

Luthien didn’t really know what he would do as he used the cover of darkness and his magical cape to slip silently over Pipery’s wall, which was little more than a collection of ramshackle pilings.

He picked his way from darkened house to house, amazed at how few cyclopians were up and about. By all reports, and by his last encounter on the field, Luthien believed that the small village’s garrison had swelled in number with the addition of those Praetorian Guards fleeing the rout in the mountains. But where were they?

The riddle was solved as Luthien crossed the town’s main road, deep gouges cut into it from the passage of a huge caravan. Heading south, Luthien noted by the tracks, and not more than two days before. Across the road, the young Bedwyr came upon the town’s stables, two buildings connected by long fences. The doors of the barn were thrown wide, but no nickers or whinnies came from within, and the corral was empty, save for a few horse carcasses that had been butchered for meat.

Luthien took a deep and steadying breath, not thrilled by the reality of war’s dark threat. He wondered what other hardships the folk of Pipery, unwitting pawns in Greensparrow’s grand game, might have suffered these last few days.

He composed himself immediately, reminding himself that he could not afford to waste even a second of time. He trotted from shadow to shadow along the side of the main road, then paused when he came to a fork, east and southwest. Directly across from him, Luthien spied the first light he had seen since entering the village, a candle burning in the window of a large structure, which appeared to be the town’s chapel.

With a hopeful nod, Luthien darted across the road to the building’s side. He considered the Ministry in Caer MacDonald, a place of spirituality, but also the chosen headquarters for Greensparrow’s wretched Duke Morkney. Might that be the pattern even in the smaller villages? Within this chapel, might there be an eorl, or a baron, loyal to the king of Avon and holding Pipery under his iron-fisted rule?

A quick glance to the eastern sky reminded Luthien once again that he had little time to ponder. He slipped up to a side door, peeked in through a small window set in its middle, then, seeing no obvious enemies nearby, slowly turned the handle.

It wasn’t even locked, and Luthien eased it open, fully aware that he might find the bulk of the cyclopian garrison within.

To his surprise, and relief, the place seemed empty. He quietly closed the door behind him. He had come in to a small side room, the personal quarters of the place’s priest or caretaker, perhaps. The one other door lay open to the main prayer area. Luthien adjusted his shielding cape to ensure that he was fully covered, then moved up to the door jamb, peering around the corner.

A solitary figure was in the place, kneeling on a bench at the front of the chapel, facing away from Luthien. The man’s white robe revealed him as a priest.

Luthien nodded and padded in softly, moving from bench to bench and stopping often, blending with the wall in case the man turned back. As he neared the front of the chapel, he quietly slipped Blind-Striker from its sheath, but held it low, under the cape.

He could hear the priest then, whispering prayers for the safety of Pipery. Most telling of all was when the man asked God to “keep little Pipery out of the struggles of kings.”

Luthien pulled off his hood. “Pipery lays on the road to Carlisle,” he said suddenly.

The priest nearly toppled, and scrambled furiously to stand facing the intruder, eyes wide, jaw slack. Luthien noted the bruises on the man’s face, the split lip and the puffy eyes. Given the number of cyclopians who had come through the town recently, it wasn’t hard for the young Bedwyr to guess where those had come from.

“Whether it is friend or enemy to Eriador is Pipery’s own choice,” Luthien finished.

“Who are you?”

“An emissary from King Brind’Amour of Eriador,” Luthien replied. “Come to offer hope where there should be none.”

The man eyed Luthien carefully. “The Crimson Shadow,” he whispered.

Luthien nodded, then held up a calm and steady hand when the priest blanched white.

“I have not come to kill you or anyone else,” Luthien explained. “Only to see the mood of Pipery.”

“And to discover our weaknesses,” the priest dared to say.

Luthien chuckled. “I have five thousand battle-hungry dwarfs on the field, and a like number of men,” he explained. “I have seen your wall and what is left of your garrison.”

“Most of the cyclopians fled,” the priest confirmed, his gaze going to the floor.

“What is your name?”

The man looked up, squaring his shoulders defiantly. “Solomon Keyes,” he replied.

“Father Keyes?”

“Not yet,” the priest admitted. “Brother Keyes.”

“A man of the church or of the crown?”

“How do you know they are not one and the same?” Keyes answered cryptically.

Luthien smiled warmly and pushed aside his cape, revealing his bared sword, which he promptly replaced in its scabbard. “They are not,” he replied.

Solomon Keyes offered no argument.

Luthien was pleased thus far with the conversation; he had the distinct feeling that Keyes did not equate God with Greensparrow. “Cyclopians?” he asked, motioning toward the priest’s bruised face.

Keyes lowered his gaze once more.

“Praetorian Guards, likely,” Luthien went on. “Come from the mountains, where we routed them. They passed through in a rush, stealing and slaughtering your horses, taking everything of value that we Eriadorans would not find it, and ordering the folk of Pipery, and probably the village cyclopian militia as well, to defend to the last.”

Keyes looked up, his soft features tightening, eyes sharp on the perceptive young Bedwyr.

“That is the way it happened,” Luthien said finally.

“Do you expect a denial?” Keyes asked. “I am no stranger to the brutish ways of cyclopians, and was not surprised.”

“They are your allies,” Luthien said, his tone edging on accusation.

“They are my king’s army,” Keyes corrected.

“That speaks ill of your king,” Luthien was quick to respond. Both men went silent, letting the moment of tension pass. It would do neither of them any good to get things worked up here, for both of them were fast coming to the conclusion that something positive might come from this unexpected meeting.

“It was not only the Praetorian Guards of the Iron Cross,” Keyes admitted, “but even many of our own militia. Even old Allaberksis, who has been in Pipery since the earliest—”

“Old?” Luthien interrupted. Aged cyclopians were a rarity.

“The oldest one-eye ever I have seen,” said Keyes, and the sharpness of his voice told Luthien that this Allaberksis was likely in on the beating he had received.

“Old and withered,” Luthien added. “Running south with a small band of Praetorian Guards.”

Keyes expression told him that he had hit the mark.

“Alas for Allaberksis,” Luthien said evenly. “He could not outrun my horse.”

“He is dead?”

Luthien nodded.

“And what of his purse?” Keyes asked indignantly. “Common grain money for the villagers, money rightly earned and needed—”

Luthien held up his hand. “It will be returned,” he promised. “After.”

“After Pipery is sacked!” Keyes cried.

“That needn’t happen,” Luthien said calmly, defeating the priest’s outburst before it ever truly began.

Another long silence followed, as Keyes waited for the explanation of that most intriguing statement, and Luthien considered how he might broach the subject. He guessed that Keyes held quite a bit of influence over the village; the chapel was well-maintained and the villagers had trusted him, after all, with their precious grain money.

“We of Eriador and DunDarrow have not come to conquer,” Luthien began.

“You have crossed the border in force!”

“In defense,” Luthien explained. “Though a truce was signed between our kings, Avon’s war with Eriador did not end. All along the Iron Cross, our villages were being destroyed.”

“Cyclopian raiders,” Keyes reasoned.

“Working for Greensparrow,” Luthien replied.

“You do not know this.”

“Did you not see Praetorian Guards coming out of the mountains?” Luthien countered. “Had they just gone into the Iron Cross, in defense against our march, or had they been there all along, prodding Eriador to war?”

Keyes didn’t answer, and honestly didn’t know the answer, though no Praetorian Guard caravans had been reported heading north in the few weeks before the onset of war.

“Greensparrow prodded us to march south,” Luthien insisted. “He forced the war upon us if we truly desired our freedom.”

Keyes squared his shoulders. His expression showed that he believed Luthien, or at least that he didn’t consider the words a complete lie, but his stance became defiant anyway. “I am loyal to Avon,” he informed the young Bedwyr.

“But Greensparrow is not,” Luthien answered without hesitation. “Nor is he loyal to our common God. He allies with demons, I say, for I have battled with more than one of the hellish fiends myself, have felt their evil auras, have seen such a creature occupy the body of one of Greensparrow’s henchmen dukes!”

Keyes winced; he had heard the rumors of diabolical allies, Luthien realized, and could not dispute the claims.

“How am I to know that you are not murderous invaders?” Keyes asked.

Luthien drew out his sword, looked from its gleaming blade to the blanching priest. “Why are you not already dead?” he asked.

The young Bedwyr was quick to replace the sword, not wanting to cause any more discomfort to the beleaguered man. “Pipery’s fate is its own to decide,” he said. He looked to the eastern windows then, and saw that the sky was beginning to brighten. “I do not demand your alliance or your fealty to my king, and on my word, your village will not be destroyed and your money will be returned. But if you oppose us, we will kill you, do not doubt. Eriador has come for war, and so we shall wage it with any who hold loyalty to evil King Greensparrow!”

With that, Luthien bowed and swept away.

“What am I to do?” Keyes called, and Luthien stopped and turned to face him from across the room.

“How am I to prevent my people from defending their own homes?” he asked.

“There is no defense,” Luthien said grimly, and turned once more.

“Nor is there time!” Keyes pleaded. “Dawn is almost upon us!”

Luthien stopped at the doorway to the side room. “I can delay them,” he promised, though he doubted his own words. “I can buy you the hours until noon. The chapel offers sanctuary, to all but one-eyes.”

“Go then to your army,” Keyes said in a tone that assured Luthien that the man would at least try.

More people, more cyclopians, were out and about as Luthien left the chapel, forcing him to alter his course several times. He made the wall before the dawn, though, and in the increasing light could see just how truly hopeless was Pipery’s position. The wall was in bad disrepair—in many places it was no more than piled stones. Even at its strongest points, the wall loomed no higher than eight feet, and was not thick enough to slow the battering charge of Bellick’s stone-crushing dwarfs.

“Do well, Solomon Keyes,” Luthien prayed as he crossed out of the village, running fast across the open fields. For the sympathetic young Bedwyr, the image of the coming carnage was not acceptable.

A calm had settled over the fields between the Eriadoran encampment and Pipery, both sides waiting for the attack they knew would come this day.

And what a fine day it was! Too fine for battle, Luthien lamented. The sun dawned bright, the wind blew crisp and clean, and all the birds and animals were out in full, chirping and leaping.

Riverdancer, too, was in high spirits, snorting and pawing the ground when Luthien approached with his saddle. The white stallion leaped away as soon as Luthien had mounted.

Luthien could not ignore the nausea churning in his stomach. He always felt anxious before battle, but this time it was not the same. In every fight previous, Luthien had charged in with the knowledge that his was the just cause, and in the wider picture of Eriador’s freedom, he considered the invasion of Avon a necessary and righteous thing. That did little to comfort him, though, when he thought of Pipery sacked, of men like Solomon Keyes lying soaked in their own blood.

Killing evil cyclopians was one thing, killing humans, Luthien now understood, was something altogether different.

He paced Riverdancer swiftly along the ranks, coming up to King Bellick and Shuglin as they reviewed the dwarven line.

“Good that you got back,” Bellick remarked. “It would not do for you to be standing among them Avon and cyclopian dogs when we run them down!”

“We must hold our line,” Luthien said bluntly.

The dwarf king turned about so abruptly that his wild orange beard slipped out of his broad belt.

“Until the hour of noon,” Luthien explained.

“The day is not long enough!” Bellick roared. “They will see us now, and discover our strengths and weaknesses, and alter their defenses . . .”

“There is nothing that Pipery can do,” Luthien assured the king. He saw Siobhan and several of the other Cutters approaching, along with a group of leaders of the Eriadoran army.

“They are helpless against our strength,” Luthien finished, loud enough so that the newcomers could hear.

“That is fine news,” replied Bellick. “Then let us go in and finish the task quickly, then march on to the next town.”

Luthien shook his head determinedly, and Bellick responded with an open glare.

The young Bedwyr sat up straight in his saddle, looked all about as he spoke, for he was now addressing all who would listen. “Pipery will offer little defense,” he said, “and less still if we delay through the morning.”

A chorus of groans met that proposition.

“And consider our course carefully,” Luthien went on, undaunted. “We will run through a dozen such villages before we ever see the walls of Warchester, with Carlisle still far beyond that. There are seeds of support for us; I have witnessed them with my own eyes.”

“You have spoken with men inside Pipery’s walls?” Bellick asked, not sounding pleased.

“With only one man,” Luthien confirmed. “With the priest, who fears for his town’s safety.”

“And rightly so!” came a cry from the gathering, a call that was answered and bolstered many times over.

“How long?” Siobhan asked simply, quieting the crowd.

“Give them the morning,” Luthien begged, speaking directly to Bellick once more. “They can make few adjustments to bolster their meager defenses, and we have the village surrounded that none may escape.”

“I fear to delay,” Bellick replied, but his tone was less belligerent. The dwarf king was no fool. He recognized the influence that Luthien Bedwyr held over the Eriadorans, the Cutters, and even a fair number of his own dwarfs, who remembered well that it was Luthien who had led the raid to free so many of their kin from the horrors of the Montfort mines. While Bellick wasn’t sure that he agreed with Luthien’s reasoning, he understood the dangers of openly disagreeing with the young man.

“We will lose six hours at the outset,” Luthien admitted. “But much of that time will be regained in the battle, unless I miss my guess. And even if the hours are not regained, I will ask that my folk march more swiftly beside me on the way to the next village.” Luthien rose up in his saddle again and addressed all the crowd. “I ask this of you,” he shouted. “Will you grant me this one thing?”

The response was unanimous, and Bellick realized that it would be folly to try and resist the young Bedwyr. He hated the thought of keeping his anxious dwarfs in check, and hated the thought of wasting so fine a morning. But Bellick hated more the notion of open disagreement between himself and Luthien, a potential split in an army that could afford no rifts.

He nodded to Luthien then, but in his look was the clear assumption that Luthien owed him one for this.

Luthien’s responding nod, so full of gratitude, made it clear that he would repay the favor.

“Besides,” Luthien offered with a wink to Bellick and to Siobhan as the ranks broke apart around them. “I now know where Pipery’s wall is weakest.”

As the hopeful word spread about Pipery, Solomon Keyes rushed to the wall and peered out across the open fields.

“They are standing down!” one gleeful man yelled right in the young priest’s face.

Keyes managed a smile, and was indeed grateful, but it was tempered with the knowledge that he had but a few hours to do so very much. He looked up to the sky as though he might will the sun to hold in place for a while.

Bellick, Luthien, Siobhan, and all the other commanders of the army were not idle that long morning. With Luthien’s information about the physical defenses and about the emotional turmoil within Pipery, a new battle plan was quickly drawn, analyzed, and polished, each segment run over and over until it became embedded in the thoughts of those who were charged with carrying it out.

They were back on the field before noon, ten thousand strong, speartips and swords gleaming in the light, polished shields catching the sun like flaming mirrors.

All of the cavalry was together this time, more than a hundred strong and sitting in formation directly north of the town. Luthien on shining Riverdancer centered the line, along with Siobhan. On command, all heads turned to face east of that position, where stood King Bellick dan Burso in his fabulous battle gear.

A lone rider galloped out to the town’s north gates.

“Will you yield, or will you fight us?” he asked simply of the growling cyclopians gathered there.

Predictably, a spear came soaring out at him, and just as predictably, it came nowhere near to hitting the mark. King Bellick had his answer.

As soon as the rider returned to his place in the ranks, all eyes again went to the dwarvish commander. With one strong arm, Bellick lifted his short and thick sword high into the air, and after a moment’s pause, brought it sweeping down.

The roar of the attack erupted all along the line; Luthien and his fellow cavalry kicked their mounts into a thunderous charge.

Not all the line followed, though. Only those dwarfs directly behind the cavalry began to run ahead, the charge filtering to the east, sweeping up the line like the slow break of a wave.

Luthien brought his forces to within a few running strides of Pipery’s wall, then broke left, to the east, apparently belaying the line. Out of the dust cloud on the heels of the cavalry came the leading dwarfs, straight on for Pipery, and so it went as Luthien’s group circled the city, every pounding stride opening the way for another grim-faced soldier. Luthien had named the maneuver “opening the sea gates,” and so it seemed to be, the riders moving like a blocking wall and the foot soldiers pouring in like a flood behind them.

As soon as the pattern became apparent to the defenders, it was reversed, with those infantry to the west coming on in a synchronous charge. Luthien’s cavalry by this time had swung far around to the southeastern section of the village, trading missile fire, elvish bow against cyclopian spear. None of the cavalry had been hit, though, a testament to the fact that cyclopians simply could not judge distance, and to Luthien’s hopes that few, if any, humans were among Pipery’s obviously thin line.

The young Bedwyr spotted the desired section of wall, a pile of boulders, wider than it was high. Luthien swung Riverdancer away from the village, then turned abruptly and came straight in for the target, Siobhan right beside him and the elven line slowing and widening behind the pair.

Luthien saw the cyclopian spearmen and pikemen come up to defend, waited until the last moment, then pulled hard on Riverdancer’s reins, yanking the steed up short and skittering out to the left, while Siobhan skipped out to the right.

Opening the way for the elvish volley. Dozens of stinging arrows rushed in, most skipping off the stones, several hitting the mark. The defenders fell away, either dead, wounded, or simply in fear, and Luthien and Siobhan called out to their kinfolk and kicked their mounts into the charge once more.

Luthien tightened his legs and posted hard, heels low, the balls of his feet pressed in tight to the stirrups. He bent low and coaxed Riverdancer on, aiming the mount straight for the center of the boulder pile. Up sprang the mighty horse, easily clearing the four-foot obstacle, bringing Luthien into Pipery.

Siobhan came in right beside him, and they turned together, thundering down the road. Luthien spied two fleeing cyclopians and ran them down, Riverdancer crushing one of them, Blind-Striker cutting down the other. The young Bedwyr turned about to Siobhan, grinning as he started to call out his new total. He stopped short, though, for he found Siobhan similarly running down a pair of one-eyes.

Cyclopians huddled in terror at the base of that low wall as the riders streamed over it, twenty, fifty, ninety, coming into Pipery. None of them paused at the wall, and at last the brutes managed to stand up, thinking they had been spared, thinking to go out over the wall and run away.

Before they got atop the first stones, Pipery’s barrier seemed to heighten by several feet as the human wall of Eriadoran foot soldiers greeted the cyclopians.

Chaos hit the streets of Pipery, riders rushing every which way, cyclopians trying to form into defensive groups, only to find, more often than not, that half of their number were dead before they ever joined in the formation. There were some pockets of stiff resistance, though, particularly in the north, where Luthien, Siobhan, and three-score other riders charged off in support.

Trapped between such forces, the cyclopian defenses quickly evaporated, each brute thinking to save itself. One by one, the one-eyes were slain.

It was Luthien himself who finally threw wide Pipery’s north gate, and King Bellick dan Burso who stood right outside, ready to greet him. Luthien jumped back astride Riverdancer, then held out his hand to help the short dwarf climb up behind him. The fighting was fast diminishing, more a matter of chasing down single brutes than any real battles, and so Luthien and the dwarf trotted off to survey the battle scene.

“Not much of a defense,” the dwarf king snorted, seeing how truly thin the line had been. Cyclopian bodies—almost exclusively cyclopian, Luthien noted hopefully—were strewn about in a long line, but in most places were no more than one or two deep.

“Where are they all?” the dwarf asked. “Did more of the folk get out than we figured?”

Luthien didn’t think that to be the case, and he was pretty sure that he could guess where the rest of Pipery’s defenders had gone. He called his cavalry into formation behind him and trotted south along the main road, to the fork facing the town’s chapel.

When all the soldiers came into place around that structure and finally quieted, they could hear the soft singing of many voices emanating from within.

Bellick slid down then to put his dwarfs and the Eriadoran foot soldiers in place, and to manage the prisoner groups being escorted into the area. Luthien, meanwhile, took a slow circuit of the chapel, calming his battle-hungry companions on all sides. The dwarf king was waiting for him when he came back around to the fork in the road, and Bellick was not surprised by the plan Luthien had devised.

“You have guessed right thus far,” the dwarf remarked, not of the mind to overrule the young Bedwyr.

Luthien slid down from Riverdancer, handing the reins to a nearby soldier. He dusted himself off and strode directly for the chapel’s main door, motioning and calling orders as he went.

Without hesitation, without bothering to knock, Luthien entered to find several hundred sets of eyes staring back to regard him, expressions showing too great a mix of emotions for the young man to possibly sort through. He scanned the gathering, finally settling his gaze on Solomon Keyes, who stood at the pulpit at the front of the chapel.

“It is done,” the young Bedwyr announced. “Pipery is free.”

A woman jumped up from the edge of a pew and charged at Luthien, but several arms caught her before she had gone two steps, pulling her screaming back into the throng.

“Many had kin out there,” Keyes explained evenly.

Luthien glanced back over his shoulder and nodded and a long line of human prisoners walked into the chapel, breaking away, running to their relieved families.

“There may be others,” Luthien explained. “We have not sorted it all out as of yet.”

“What penalty?” Keyes started to ask.

“No penalty,” Luthien replied without the slightest hesitation. “They were defending their homes and their kin, so they believed.” He paused, letting the surprised murmurs quiet. “We are not your enemy,” he declared. “This much I have told you before.”

As one, the crowd swung about to regard Keyes, who stood nodding.

“Pipery is free,” Luthien went on. “And out of the war. Your gates are open, north and south, and you shall not hinder our passage, or the continuing line that shall come down from Eriador. Nor shall you deny any boats we put on the river from safe travel past your docks.”

The murmurs began again, and were quickly silenced by Luthien’s booming voice. “But we ask nothing of you,” he explained. “What you give to us, you give of your own free will.”

“Thieves!” one man yelled, leaping to his feet and pushing to the center of the open aisle. “Thieves and murderers!” he proclaimed, slowly stalking toward Luthien.

He stopped short when Bellick dan Burso entered, to stand at Luthien’s side. “We are not your enemies,” the dwarf king declared, and the blood spattered upon him could not diminish the splendor of his crafted armor, nor the dust covering him steal the flames of his fiery beard. But the sympathy that was in his heart could not diminish the intensity of his stern gaze.

Bellick let that gaze linger all about the room, then settled it on Luthien, who nodded for the dwarf to continue. “We are not your enemies unless you make of us your enemies,” Bellick promised grimly. “Then know that Pipery will be sacked, burned to the ground!”

Not a person in the room doubted the imposing dwarf’s promise.

Bellick pulled two large pouches from a cord on his back. “Your grain money,” he explained, tossing them to the floor at the feet of the deflated rabble-rouser. “Taken from cyclopians fleeing Pipery. Taken from your King Greensparrow’s cyclopians as they left Pipery to its doom. Decide then who are your enemies and who are your allies.”

“Or decide nothing,” Luthien added. “And remain neutral. We ask nothing of you, save that your swords are not again lifted against us.”

He looked down at Bellick, and the dwarf up at him. “We will tend our wounded,” Bellick announced, “and clear our dead from the field, that they do not lie beside the rotting cyclopians. And then we shall leave.” The dwarf and Luthien turned to go, but were stopped by the call of Solomon Keyes.

“You may bring your wounded in here,” the priest offered, “and I shall prepare your dead for burial, as I prepare the human dead of Pipery.”

Luthien turned to him, somewhat surprised.

“My God and your God,” Keyes asked, “are they not one and the same?”

Luthien nodded, managed a thin smile, and walked from the chapel.