Killing evil cyclopians was one thing, killing humans, Luthien now understood, was something altogether different.
He paced Riverdancer swiftly along the ranks, coming up to King Bellick and Shuglin as they reviewed the dwarven line.
“Good that you got back,” Bellick remarked. “It would not do for you to be standing among them Avon and cyclopian dogs when we run them down!”
“We must hold our line,” Luthien said bluntly.
The dwarf king turned about so abruptly that his wild orange beard slipped out of his broad belt.
“Until the hour of noon,” Luthien explained.
“The day is not long enough!” Bellick roared. “They will see us now, and discover our strengths and weaknesses, and alter their defenses . . .”
“There is nothing that Pipery can do,” Luthien assured the king. He saw Siobhan and several of the other Cutters approaching, along with a group of leaders of the Eriadoran army.
“They are helpless against our strength,” Luthien finished, loud enough so that the newcomers could hear.
“That is fine news,” replied Bellick. “Then let us go in and finish the task quickly, then march on to the next town.”
Luthien shook his head determinedly, and Bellick responded with an open glare.
The young Bedwyr sat up straight in his saddle, looked all about as he spoke, for he was now addressing all who would listen. “Pipery will offer little defense,” he said, “and less still if we delay through the morning.”
A chorus of groans met that proposition.
“And consider our course carefully,” Luthien went on, undaunted. “We will run through a dozen such villages before we ever see the walls of Warchester, with Carlisle still far beyond that. There are seeds of support for us; I have witnessed them with my own eyes.”
“You have spoken with men inside Pipery’s walls?” Bellick asked, not sounding pleased.
“With only one man,” Luthien confirmed. “With the priest, who fears for his town’s safety.”
“And rightly so!” came a cry from the gathering, a call that was answered and bolstered many times over.
“How long?” Siobhan asked simply, quieting the crowd.
“Give them the morning,” Luthien begged, speaking directly to Bellick once more. “They can make few adjustments to bolster their meager defenses, and we have the village surrounded that none may escape.”
“I fear to delay,” Bellick replied, but his tone was less belligerent. The dwarf king was no fool. He recognized the influence that Luthien Bedwyr held over the Eriadorans, the Cutters, and even a fair number of his own dwarfs, who remembered well that it was Luthien who had led the raid to free so many of their kin from the horrors of the Montfort mines. While Bellick wasn’t sure that he agreed with Luthien’s reasoning, he understood the dangers of openly disagreeing with the young man.
“We will lose six hours at the outset,” Luthien admitted. “But much of that time will be regained in the battle, unless I miss my guess. And even if the hours are not regained, I will ask that my folk march more swiftly beside me on the way to the next village.” Luthien rose up in his saddle again and addressed all the crowd. “I ask this of you,” he shouted. “Will you grant me this one thing?”
The response was unanimous, and Bellick realized that it would be folly to try and resist the young Bedwyr. He hated the thought of keeping his anxious dwarfs in check, and hated the thought of wasting so fine a morning. But Bellick hated more the notion of open disagreement between himself and Luthien, a potential split in an army that could afford no rifts.
He nodded to Luthien then, but in his look was the clear assumption that Luthien owed him one for this.
Luthien’s responding nod, so full of gratitude, made it clear that he would repay the favor.
“Besides,” Luthien offered with a wink to Bellick and to Siobhan as the ranks broke apart around them. “I now know where Pipery’s wall is weakest.”
As the hopeful word spread about Pipery, Solomon Keyes rushed to the wall and peered out across the open fields.
“They are standing down!” one gleeful man yelled right in the young priest’s face.
Keyes managed a smile, and was indeed grateful, but it was tempered with the knowledge that he had but a few hours to do so very much. He looked up to the sky as though he might will the sun to hold in place for a while.
Bellick, Luthien, Siobhan, and all the other commanders of the army were not idle that long morning. With Luthien’s information about the physical defenses and about the emotional turmoil within Pipery, a new battle plan was quickly drawn, analyzed, and polished, each segment run over and over until it became embedded in the thoughts of those who were charged with carrying it out.
They were back on the field before noon, ten thousand strong, speartips and swords gleaming in the light, polished shields catching the sun like flaming mirrors.
All of the cavalry was together this time, more than a hundred strong and sitting in formation directly north of the town. Luthien on shining Riverdancer centered the line, along with Siobhan. On command, all heads turned to face east of that position, where stood King Bellick dan Burso in his fabulous battle gear.
A lone rider galloped out to the town’s north gates.
“Will you yield, or will you fight us?” he asked simply of the growling cyclopians gathered there.
Predictably, a spear came soaring out at him, and just as predictably, it came nowhere near to hitting the mark. King Bellick had his answer.
As soon as the rider returned to his place in the ranks, all eyes again went to the dwarvish commander. With one strong arm, Bellick lifted his short and thick sword high into the air, and after a moment’s pause, brought it sweeping down.
The roar of the attack erupted all along the line; Luthien and his fellow cavalry kicked their mounts into a thunderous charge.
Not all the line followed, though. Only those dwarfs directly behind the cavalry began to run ahead, the charge filtering to the east, sweeping up the line like the slow break of a wave.
Luthien brought his forces to within a few running strides of Pipery’s wall, then broke left, to the east, apparently belaying the line. Out of the dust cloud on the heels of the cavalry came the leading dwarfs, straight on for Pipery, and so it went as Luthien’s group circled the city, every pounding stride opening the way for another grim-faced soldier. Luthien had named the maneuver “opening the sea gates,” and so it seemed to be, the riders moving like a blocking wall and the foot soldiers pouring in like a flood behind them.
As soon as the pattern became apparent to the defenders, it was reversed, with those infantry to the west coming on in a synchronous charge. Luthien’s cavalry by this time had swung far around to the southeastern section of the village, trading missile fire, elvish bow against cyclopian spear. None of the cavalry had been hit, though, a testament to the fact that cyclopians simply could not judge distance, and to Luthien’s hopes that few, if any, humans were among Pipery’s obviously thin line.
The young Bedwyr spotted the desired section of wall, a pile of boulders, wider than it was high. Luthien swung Riverdancer away from the village, then turned abruptly and came straight in for the target, Siobhan right beside him and the elven line slowing and widening behind the pair.
Luthien saw the cyclopian spearmen and pikemen come up to defend, waited until the last moment, then pulled hard on Riverdancer’s reins, yanking the steed up short and skittering out to the left, while Siobhan skipped out to the right.