Regaining its balance, the one-eye tried a halfhearted chop, but Luthien brought his arm against the side of the heavy axe and pushed it out wide. Then he waded in with a series of heavy blows, left and right, left and right, and the brute staggered away.
Stubbornly the cyclopian put up its axe defensively, fending off Luthien’s pursuit, and shook its head, fast regaining its senses. A wicked grin crossed its face as soon as it realized that the man had no weapon.
Luthien didn’t see the shot, didn’t hear a whistle in the air or the crack of bone at the impact. As though it simply appeared from nowhere, the butt of an arrow was sticking out from the side of the cyclopian’s knee. With a howl, the cyclopian dropped and Luthien waded in, again easily turning out the axe. Grunting with every heavy blow, Luthien pounded the brute into the dirt.
Siobhan was beside him then, grinning as she surveyed the battleground.
“Six dead and one captured,” Luthien remarked, offering a wink and draping an arm across the shoulder of his slender companion.
Siobhan wriggled away. “Seven dead,” she corrected, indicating the ridge line, “for one came out of the mist.”
Luthien nodded his admiration.
“Four clean kills for me,” Siobhan announced, “and you must share all three of yours, and the capture.”
Luthien’s smile disappeared.
“That makes six for me,” the half-elf figured, “and but two for the legendary Crimson Shadow!” She skipped away then, quite pleased with herself.
A dumbfounded Luthien watched her as she searched through the camp. Gradually his smile returned. “Challenge accepted!” he called, confident that in the course of this campaign he would be given ample opportunity to catch up.
The captured cyclopian was ferried back along the lines to the main group, where Brind’Amour had no trouble in hypnotizing the brute and garnering valuable information. Other skirmishes along the line brought in more prisoners, who only confirmed what the first one-eye had revealed: a large force of cyclopians, mostly Praetorian Guards, was making its way into a wide valley some twenty miles or so to the south.
With that general description in hand, Brind’Amour then used his crystal ball to send his eyes far ahead. He located the force and was pleased. The Eriadorans would meet up with Bellick’s dwarvish army halfway to the one-eyes, and then the brutes would be in for a warm welcome indeed!
Luthien and Siobhan were brought forward to speak for Brind’Amour when contact with Bellick’s army was finally made. They came in sight of their allies—five thousand grim-faced dwarfs, armored in glittering mail and shining shields, and with an assortment of weapons, mostly axes and heavy hammers—on a wide and fairly open stretch of windblown stone. Bellick was there, along with their friend Shuglin.
Luthien and Siobhan could hardly catch their breath at the sight of the spectacle. Hope flooded through the young Bedwyr; with such allies as these, how could Eriador lose?
“Surely the one-eyes are in for a nasty surprise,” Siobhan whispered at his side.
“Dwarvish fighters,” Luthien replied, imitating Oliver’s thick Gascon accent. “But, oh, how bad they smell!”
He turned to offer a wink to his half-elven companion, but lost it in the face of the forlorn look Siobhan threw his way.
Luthien cleared his throat and let it go, wondering again just how much was going on between Siobhan and Oliver.
19
The Valley of Death
“Their leader is wise,” Brind’Amour remarked, surveying the rough and broken terrain to the south.
The others gathered about the old wizard offered no arguments to the observation. The cyclopians had made haste long after sunset, not setting their camp until the steep walls of the valley were behind them.
Brind’Amour sat down on a stone, rubbing his thick white beard, trying to improvise a plan of attack.
“Not so many,” the dwarf Shuglin offered. “We counted campfires, and unless they’re fifty to one about the flames, they’re not more than half our number.”
“Too many, then,” Luthien interjected.
“Bah!” snorted the battle-hungry dwarf. “We’ll run them down!”
Brind’Amour listened to it all distantly. He had no doubt that his fine force, with two-to-one odds in their favor, would overwhelm the Praetorian Guards, but how expensive might an open battle be? Eriador could not afford to lose even a quarter of its force while still in the mountains, not with so much fortified ground to cover before they ever got near Carlisle.
“If we hit them hard straight on and on both flanks,” Siobhan asked, “spreading our line thin so that they believe we are greater in number than we truly are, how might they react?”
“They will break ranks and run,” Shuglin replied without hesitation. “Ever a coward was a one-eye!”
Luthien was shaking his head; so was Bellick. Brind’Amour spoke for them. “This group is well-trained and well-led,” the old wizard answered. “They were wise enough, and disciplined enough, to get out of the valley before setting camp. They’ll not run off so readily.”
A sly sparkle came into the man’s blue eyes. “But they will fall back,” he reasoned.
“Into the valley,” Siobhan added.
“Using the valley walls to tighten our lines,” agreed Bellick, catching on to the idea.
“Into the valley,” Luthien echoed, “where groups of archers will be waiting.”
A long moment of silence passed, all the gathered leaders exchanging hopeful smiles. They knew that the cyclopians were well-disciplined, but if they could force a retreat into the vale, then make the one-eyes think they had walked into an ambush, the resulting chaos might just send them into full retreat—and fleeing enemies inflicted little damage.
“If they do not break ranks from our initial attack, then we will be dangerously thin,” Brind’Amour had to put in, just a reminder that this might not be so easy as it sounded in theory.
“We will overrun them anyway,” stern Shuglin promised, slapping a hammer across his open palm to accentuate his point. Looking at that grim expression, Brind’Amour believed the dwarf.
All that was left was to divide the forces accordingly. Luthien and Siobhan would collect most of the scouting groups, including all of the elvish Cutters, and filter south in two quiet lines, slipping past the cyclopian encampment and moving over the valley rims to take up defensible positions on the slopes. Bellick and Shuglin were charged with ordering the frontal line, nine thousand strong, more than half of them dwarfs.
Brind’Amour begged out of the detail planning, for the wizard understood that he would have to find a place to fit in. Magic would be a necessary ingredient, particularly in the initial assault, if they wanted to get the one-eyes moving. But the wizard knew that he had to be careful, for if he revealed himself too fully, any cyclopians who got out of the mountains would begin a whirlwind of talk that would stretch all the way to Carlisle.
The old wizard had just the enchantment in mind, subtle, yet devilishly effective. He just had to figure out how best to pull it off.
The two flanking lines, five hundred in each, set out that night, quiet archers moving swiftly. Luthien and Siobhan stayed together, spearheading the line that passed the cyclopian encampment on the east. They came over the rim of the valley shortly before dawn, picked their careful way down the slopes, searching out positions even as they heard the first rumbles of battle to the north.
Nearly two thousand Eriadoran soldiers flanked the charge on the right, another two thousand on the left, but it was the center of that line, the rolling thunder of five thousand grim-faced, battle-hungry dwarfs, that sent the Praetorian Guards into a frenzy. The leading groups of cyclopians were simply overwhelmed, buried under the weight of stomping boots, but as Brind’Amour had reasoned, the force was well-trained and they regrouped accordingly, ready to make a determined stand.