Then Brind’Amour went to work. The cyclopians recognized that they were outnumbered, but apparently had the notion to stand and fight. Holding two mugs filled with clear water, the wizard swept one arm out to the left, and one to the right, chanting all the while and dancing slightly, moving his feet in prescribed fashion.
The water flew out of the mugs and seemed to dissipate in mid-air, but in truth, it merely spread so thin as to be nearly invisible.
The curtain widened as Brind’Amour injected more of his magical energy, encompassing all of the dwarvish and Eriadoran line. In the dust and tumult, the enchanted liquid took shape as an indistinguishable mirror, effectively doubling the image of the charging force.
The cyclopian leaders were not fools. They had no specific head count, of course, but it quickly became clear to them that this raging army outnumbered them three or four to one, and they would simply be overrun. As expected, as hoped for, the call went through the cyclopian ranks to break and retreat to the narrower ground of the valley to the south.
Those cyclopians who did not turn and run fast enough found themselves quickly engaged with fierce dwarfs, usually two or three at a time.
But the bulk of the Praetorian Guard force did get out, heads bent and running swiftly. Orders continued to filter from group commander to group commander, efficiently, just the way Brind’Amour and his cohorts had expected. As the one-eyes came to the steep-walled entrance of the valley, the plan shaped out in full. Two-thirds of the cyclopian force would form a delaying line across the valley mouth, slowing their furious enemies, while the rest of the one-eyes scrambled up the slopes, east and west, finding high, defensible ground that would put the Eriadorans and their dwarvish allies at a sore disadvantage.
From their concealed perches, Luthien, Siobhan, and a thousand other archers waited patiently, letting the one-eyes charge in, letting the delaying line stretch out, and letting those others begin their ascent.
A fierce battle began almost immediately at the valley mouth, as the three groups of the Eriadoran charge converged. Still the furious dwarfs led the way, pounding the much larger cyclopians fearlessly. A dwarf fell dead for every one-eye, but the sheer weight of the line forced the Praetorian Guards slowly backward.
A one-eyed general stood on the slopes not so far below Luthien, barking out orders, calling for his soldiers to bolster a rocky outcropping that would serve as their first blocking point on this, the eastern wall.
Luthien unfolded his bow and pinned it; the general would be his first kill of the day.
“Eriador free!” he shouted, the signal, and off flew his arrow, unerringly, taking the cyclopian in the back and launching the brute into a headlong dive down the side of the valley. All around Luthien, and all along the higher ground across the way, the Eriadoran archers popped up from their concealment, letting fly a rain of deadly arrows on the surprised cyclopians.
“Eriador free!” Luthien cried again, scrambling up from behind a stone ridge, drawing out his sword and leaping down to the next lower footing. Siobhan, letting fly her second arrow, and killing her second cyclopian, started to yell out to him, to ask him where he was going, but she let it go, actually finding it within her to laugh aloud at her excited companion.
The arrow volley continued; in several spots, cyclopians and Eriadorans came into close melee. The Eriadorans held the higher ground, though, and with the archery support, most of those skirmishes ended with several cyclopians dead and the rest leaping fast to get away.
But the valley floor was no better a place for the surprised one-eyes. The delaying line held for a short while, but as it was pushed inevitably back by the dwarfs and Eriadorans pouring into the valley, all semblance of order broke down into a melting pot of sheer chaos. Clouds of dust rose from the floor, rocks tumbled away from the valley walls thunderously, and cries of victory and of agony echoed from stone to stone.
Siobhan soon found herself out of targets, her vision limited by the thick dust, and the cyclopians falling back down the valley wall. She took up her bow and scrambled over the ridge, picking her way carefully down and calling for Luthien.
She spotted a group of cyclopians stubbornly coming up, just a few yards to the side and a dozen or so yards below her. Immediately, her bow came up and she drew out an arrow, but she hesitated for just a moment, looking ahead of the one-eyes in a desperate attempt to find Luthien. Surely they were moving along the same path he had descended; surely they had come upon him, or soon would!
The leading one-eye, a huge, three-hundred pound, muscular brute, put a hand on an outcropping and threw up a leg, then heaved itself to stand atop the high stone. The cyclopian overbalanced forward, and screamed out, and Siobhan understood its frenzy as, out of the hollow below that ridge, came the blade of a familiar sword. Blind-Striker went right through the brute, tearing out its back, and Luthien came up fast, retracting the sword and shoulder-blocking the cyclopian right back over the outcropping.
It fell atop the next in line, and that one, in turn, tumbled atop the third.
Up came the young Bedwyr, dropping his bloody sword to the stone and taking up his bow. One, two, three, went his arrows, each scoring a hit, each nudging on the falling tumble.
“Damn you,” Siobhan muttered, and she managed to get one arrow away, nailing one of the cyclopians who had moved out of the line. Then the half-elf watched, amazed and inspired, as Luthien took up his sword once more, called out for “Eriador free!” and leaped down from the outcropping, quickly catching the bouncing jumble of one-eyes and hacking away with abandon.
Siobhan quickly surmised that her reckless young friend had that situation well under control, so she moved off, looking for more targets. Not an easy proposition, the half-elf discovered when she was only fifty feet above the valley floor, for the rout was on in full. Both lines had broken apart, but Bellick’s skilled dwarvish warriors formed into tight battle groups, most resembling wedges, that sliced any attempted cyclopian formations apart. Cyclopian stragglers, separated from their ranks, were immediately overwhelmed by the supporting Eriadorans, buried under a barrage of hacking swords and axes, stuck by spears from several directions at once, or simply tackled and crushed under the weight of the rolling army.
At the valley mouth, Brind’Amour watched it all with satisfaction. He had done well—they all had—for now those cyclopians who managed to escape the ambush would flee all the way back to Avon with word of an invading army twice its actual size.
Several times as large, the wizard mused, for he knew that panicking, retreating soldiers had a way of making the enemy even greater than it truly was, even greater than a simple wizard’s trick had made it appear!
The wizard spotted one skirmish, on the lower slopes of the western valley wall, where a handful of cyclopians had taken cover within a protective ring of huge stones. A group of elves were trying to get at them, but the ground favored the one-eyes.
Brind’Amour began to chant once more, lifted his arms out to the side and, as his words brought forth the magical energy, swept his arms together, clapping his hands.
The stones of the cyclopians’ defensive ring rolled together suddenly, squeezing the brutes, crushing a couple, and leaving the rest out in the open.
The elves were on them immediately, slender swords darting through the desperate defenses of the scrambling brutes, laying them low in a matter of seconds. One of the elves stood tall on the closed stones, shaking his head. He looked to the east, saw Brind’Amour standing quietly, and saluted the old wizard.