From somewhere far away, the young Bedwyr heard a voice-Siobhan"s voice.
"You ugly b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" the half-elf growled, and she let fly another arrow.
Praehotec saw it coming, all the way up to the instant it drove into the beast"s reptilian eye.
Siobhan! Luthien realized, and instinctively the young Bedwyr braced himself and thrust his sword up above his head.
Praehotec came down hard, impaling itself to the sword"s crosspiece. The demon began to thrash, but then stopped and looked down curiously at Luthien.
And Luthien looked curiously at his sword, its pommel pulsing with the beating of the beast"s great heart.
With a roar that split stone and a violent shudder that snapped the blade at the hilt, Praehotec flung itself back against the parapet.
Siobhan hit it with another arrow, but it didn"t matter. The demon thrashed about; red and green blood and guts poured down the creature.
Luthien stood tall before it, fought away his dizziness and pain and looked into the eyes of the monster he thought defeated.
He recognized the simmering fires a moment too late, tried to dodge as lines of red energy again came from the demon, joining in a single line and blasting out.
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 la.s.so 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 pa.s.s.
"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.
EPILOGUE.
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.
And Siobhan"s group, along with a number of ferocious dwarves, continued to wreak havoc. Even now, plans were being laid for a full-scale raid upon the mines to free the rest of Shuglin"s enslaved people.
But Luthien could not shake his many doubts. Were his actions truly valuable, or was he walking a fool"s parade? How many would die because he had chosen this course, because at that fateful moment in the Ministry, the Crimson Shadow had been revealed and the people had rallied behind him? And even with their astonishing initial victories, what hope could the future hold for the beleaguered people of Montfort? The winter would be a brutal one, it seemed, and the spring would likely bring an army from Avon, King Greensparrow"s forces coming to reclaim the city.
And punish the revolutionaries.
Luthien sighed deeply, noticing another rider galloping out from Montfort"s northern gate, riding north to spread the news and enlist help-in the form of supplies, at least, from nearby villages. There was word of some minor fighting in Port Charley to the east, but Luthien took little heart in it.
"I knew you would be up here," came a voice from behind, and Luthien turned to see Oliver climbing up onto the roof. "Surveying your kingdom?"
Luthien"s scowl showed that he did not think that to be funny.
"Ah, well," the halfling conceded, "I only came to tell you that you have a visitor."
Luthien c.o.c.ked a curious eyebrow as a woman climbed over the roof"s edge. Her eyes were green as Siobhan"s, the young Bedwyr realized, somehow surprised by that fact, but her hair was red, fiery red. She stood tall and proud, holding something wrapped in a blanket before her, locking stares with her old friend.
"Katerin," Luthien whispered, hardly able to get words out of his suddenly dry mouth.
Katerin walked across the roof to stand before the man and handed him the item.
Luthien took it gingerly, not understanding.
His eyes went wide when he slipped off the blanket and saw Blind-Striker, his family"s treasured sword.
"From Gahris, your father and the rightful eorl of Bedwydrin," Katerin O"Hale explained, her tone stern and determined.
Luthien looked searchingly into her green eyes, wondering what had happened.
"Avonese is in chains," Katerin said. "And there is not a living cyclopian on Isle Bedwydrin."
Luthien found breath hard to come by. Gahris had followed his lead, had taken up the war! The young man glanced all about, from the smiling Katerin, to the smiling Oliver, to the snow-covered rooftops of the quiet city.
He was faced with a decision then, Luthien knew, but this time, unlike the many events that had led him to this fateful point, he was making it consciously.
"Go out, Oliver," the young man said. "Go out and tell the people to take heart. Tell them that their war, the war for their freedom, has begun." Luthien again locked stares with the proud woman from Hale.
"Go out, Oliver," he said again. "Tell them that they are not alone."