“Threats you should heed well, foolish son of Gahris Bedwyr!” Aubrey retorted, and Luthien winced to think that his true identity was so well-known.
He had a moment of mixed feelings then, a moment of doubt about killing the man and the role he had unintentionally assumed.
“I speak the truth!” Aubrey shouted to the general gathering. “You cannot win but can, perhaps, bargain for your lives.”
Just a moment of doubt. It was Aubrey who had come to Isle Bedwydrin along with that wretched Avonese. It was Aubrey who had brought the woman who had called for Garth Rogar’s death in the arena, who had changed Luthien’s life so dramatically. And now it was Aubrey, the symbol of Greensparrow, the pawn of an unlawful king, who stood as the next tyrant in line to terrorize the good folk of Montfort.
“Finish the speech,” Siobhan insisted, and Luthien let fly.
The arrow streaked upward and Aubrey waved at it, discarding it as a futile attempt.
Halfway to the tower the arrow seemed to falter and slow, losing momentum. Aubrey saw it and laughed aloud, turning to share his mirth with the cyclopians standing behind him.
Brind’Amour’s enchantment grabbed the arrow in mid-flight.
Aubrey looked back to see it gaining speed, streaking unerringly for the target Luthien had selected.
The viscount’s eyes widened as he realized the sudden danger. He threw his hands up before him frantically, helplessly.
The arrow hit him with the force of a lightning stroke, hurling him back from the battlement. He felt his breastbone shatter under the weight of that blow, felt his heart explode. Somehow he staggered back to the tower’s edge and looked down at Luthien, standing atop the gallows.
The executioner.
Aubrey tried to deny the man, to deny the possibility of such a shot. It was too late; he was already dead.
He slumped in the crenellations, visible to the gathering below.
All eyes turned to Luthien; not a man spoke out, too stunned by the impossible shot. Even Oliver and Katerin had no words for their friend.
“There is no place in Caer MacDonald for the lies and threats of Greensparrow,” Luthien said to them.
The hushed moment broke. Ten thousand voices cried out in the exhilaration of freedom, and ten thousand fists punched the air defiantly.
Luthien had finished his speech.
6
Out of His Element
“We could take it down on top of them,” Shuglin offered. The dwarf continued to study the parchment spread wide on the table before him, all the while stroking his blue-black beard.
“Take it down?” Oliver asked, and he seemed as horrified as Luthien.
“Drop the building,” the dwarf explained matter-of-factly. “With all the stones tumbling down, every one of those damned one-eyes would be squashed flat.”
“This is a church!” Oliver hollered. “A cathedral!”
Shuglin seemed not to understand.
“Only God can drop a church,” the halfling insisted.
“That’s a bet I would take,” Shuglin grumbled sarcastically under his breath. The place was strongly built, but the dwarf had no doubt that by knocking out a few key stones . . .
“And if God had any intention of destroying the Ministry, he would have done so during Morkney’s evil reign,” Luthien added, his sudden interjection into the conversation taking Shuglin away from his enjoyable musings.
“By the whales, aren’t we feeling superior?” came a voice from the door, and the three turned to see Katerin enter the room in Luthien and Oliver’s apartment on Tiny Alcove, which still served as headquarters for the resistance even though great mansions and Duke Morkney’s own palace lay open for the taking. Staying on Tiny Alcove in one of the poorest sections of Montfort was Luthien’s idea, for he believed that this was a cause of the common folk, and that he, as their appointed leader, should remain among them, as one of them.
Luthien eyed Katerin carefully as she sauntered across the room. The apartment was below ground, down a narrow stair from the street, Tiny Alcove, which was, in truth, no more than an alleyway. Luthien could see the worn stairs rising behind Katerin and the guards Siobhan had posted relaxing against the wall, taking in the warm day.
Mostly, though, the young Bedwyr saw Katerin. Only Katerin. She was one to talk about feeling superior! Ever since the incident in the Dwelf, Katerin had taken on cool airs whenever she was around Luthien. She rarely met his eyes these days, seemed rather to look past him, as though he wasn’t even there.
“Of course we are,” Oliver answered with a huff. “We won.”
“Not superior,” Luthien corrected, his tone sharp—sharper than he had intended. “But I do not doubt the evil that was Morkney, and that is Greensparrow. We are not superior, but we are in the right. I have no—”
Katerin’s expression grew sour and she held up her hand to stop the lecture before it had even begun.
Luthien winced. The woman’s attitude was getting to him.
“Whatever you intend to do with the Ministry, you should do it soon,” Katerin said, suddenly grim. “We have news of a fleet sailing off the western coast, south of the Iron Cross.”
“Sailing north,” Oliver reasoned.
“So say the whispers,” Katerin replied.
Luthien was not surprised; he had known all along that Greensparrow would respond with an army. But though he understood that the war was not ended, that Greensparrow would come, the confirmation still hit him hard. Caer MacDonald wasn’t even secured yet, and there were so many other tasks before the young man, more decisions each day than he had made in his entire life. Fifteen thousand people were depending on him, looking to him to solve every problem.
“The weather-watchers believe that the warm will stay,” Katerin said, and though that sounded like good news to the winter-weary group, her tone was not light.
“The roads from Port Charley will be deep with mud for many weeks,” Luthien reasoned, thinking he understood the woman’s dismay. The snow was not so deep, but traveling in the early spring wasn’t much better than a winter caravan.
Katerin shook her head; she wasn’t thinking at all of the potential problems coming from the west. “We have dead to bury,” she said. “Thousands of dead, both man and cyclopian.”
“To the buzzards with the cyclopians!” Shuglin growled.
“They stink,” Katerin replied. “And their bloated corpses breed vermin.” She eyed Luthien squarely for the first time in several days. “You must see to the details. . . .”
She rambled on, but Luthien fell back into a chair beside the small table and drifted out of the conversation. He must see to it. He must see to it. How many times an hour did he hear those words? Oliver, Siobhan, Katerin, Shuglin, and a handful of others were a great help to him, but ultimately the last say in every decision fell upon Luthien’s increasingly weary shoulders.
“Well?” Katerin huffed, drawing him back to the present conversation. Luthien stared at her blankly.
“If we do not do it now, we may find no time later,” Oliver said in Katerin’s defense. Luthien had no idea what they were talking about.
“We believe that they are sympathetic to our cause,” Katerin added, and the way she spoke the words made Luthien believe that she had just said them a minute ago.
“What do you suggest?” the young Bedwyr bluffed.
Katerin paused and studied the young man, as though she realized that he hadn’t a clue of where the discussion had led. “Have Tasman assemble a group and go out to them,” Katerin said. “He’s knowing the farmers better than any. If there’s one among us who can make certain that food flows into Caer MacDonald, it is Tasman.”
Luthien brightened, glad to be back in on the conversation and that this was one decision he didn’t have to make alone. “See to it,” he said to Katerin.
She started to turn, but her green eyes lingered on Luthien for a long while. She seemed to be sizing him up, and . . .