“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.