The Sword of Bedwyr

20 The Value of a Kiss

Oliver and Luthien waited for more than an hour, crouched among a tumble of boulders in the rocky foothills just a quarter of a mile outside Montfort’s southern wall, overlooking the narrow trail which led to the mines. Riverdancer and Threadbare, glad to be out of the city, grazed in a small meadow not far away. Oliver had explained that the slaver wagon would not leave the city until the tax calls were completed—in case Morkney found some other “volunteers” who preferred to work in the mines rather than pay their heavy tithes.

Luthien had planned to hit the wagon here, long before it got to the mine; Oliver knew better.

The young Bedwyr’s expression fell considerably when the wagon came bouncing along, escorted by a score of cyclopians riding fierce ponypigs.

“Now can we go to the Dwelf?” the weary halfling asked, but from the determined way angry Luthien stormed off to retrieve his mount, Oliver guessed the answer.

They trotted along the road a good distance behind the wagon, but sometimes catching sight of it far ahead on the rocky trail as it came out along an open ledge.

“This is not so smart a thing,” Oliver said many times, but Luthien didn’t reply. Finally, with more than three miles of trail behind them, the halfling stopped Threadbare. Luthien went on for about twenty yards, then turned Riverdancer about and looked back accusingly at his friend.

“The dwarf—” he began, but stopped immediately as Oliver threw his hand up. The halfling sat with his eyes closed, his head tilted back, and it seemed to Luthien that he was sniffing the air.

Threadbare leaped at Oliver’s command, crashed through the brush at the side of the road and disappeared. Luthien eyed Oliver incredulously for just a moment, then heard the rumble of rushing ponypigs not so far up the road.

He had no time to escape to where Oliver had gone! Head down over the horse’s thick mane, Luthien kicked Riverdancer into a dead run, back toward Montfort. A mile passed before he found a place where he could get off the road, and he and his horse skidded into a shallow gully and banged roughly off a stone wall. Luthien dropped from the saddle and grabbed Riverdancer’s bridle, trying to soothe and quiet the nervous beast.

He needn’t have worried, for the cyclopian band passed by at a full gallop, the thunder of their heavy mounts and the empty wagon bouncing behind them burying any other sounds.

After a few deep breaths, Luthien walked Riverdancer back to the road, waited a moment to make sure that all the one-eyes had passed, then galloped back the other way. He found Oliver right where he had left him.

“Is about time,” the halfling complained. “We must get to the dwarf before they bring him to the lower mines. Once he is down there . . .” Oliver didn’t bother finishing the thought, since Luthien was long past him by then.

The mine entrance was little more than an unremarkable hole in the side of a mountain, its sides propped with heavy timbers. The friends tethered their horses far to the side of the trail and crept to a vantage point behind some brush. They saw no cyclopians milling about; saw no movement at all.

“It is not well guarded,” Luthien remarked.

“Why would it be?” Oliver asked him.

Luthien shrugged and started out from their hiding place. Oliver grabbed his arm, and when he looked back, the halfling directed his gaze along the mountain wall to another opening at the right of the mine entrance.

“It could be the barracks,” the halfling whispered. “Or it could be where they keep the prisoners before they send them down.”

Luthien looked from one entrance to the other. “Which one?” he finally asked, turning back to Oliver.

Oliver held his hands out wide and finally pointed to the main mine. “Even if this dwarf, Shuglin, is not in there, that is the way they must get him down.”

Luthien moved up to the wall, Oliver right behind. He put the cowl of his crimson cape low and inched along, pausing at the entrance. The tunnel was dark, very dark, and Luthien had to pause until his eyes adjusted to the gloom. Even then, he could hardly make out the shapes within.

He lifted a fold in his cloak and Oliver scooted under, then Luthien inched his way around the corner and into the mine. They went around one bend—a side passage broke off to the right, possibly leading to tunnels within the other mine opening. Further down the passageway they were traveling, though, they saw the flicker of a torch and heard the footsteps of approaching cyclopians.

Into the side passage the friends skittered, taking up a position so they could continue to watch down the tunnel. Luthien had his bow out and assembled in an instant, while Oliver, flat on the floor, peeked around the corner.

The torchlight grew; two cyclopians rounded the next bend, talking lightly. Oliver held two fingers up in the air for Luthien to see, then kept his hand up high, ready to signal the attack.

Luthien drew back his bowstring. The light intensified, as did the sound of heavy cyclopian footsteps. Oliver’s hand snapped down and Luthien leaped by the prone halfling into the tunnel, bow bent and arrow ready to fly.

The cyclopians were barely a dozen feet away, leaping wildly in surprise.

Luthien missed.

He could hardly believe it, but as one of the cyclopians jumped and twisted in fright, its arm waving high, his arrow sliced in below the creature’s armpit, grazing it but doing no real damage.

Luthien stood staring blankly, holding his bow as if it had deceived him. On came the growling cyclopians, and if Oliver hadn’t slid out to intercept, Luthien would have surely been cut down.

Rapier and main gauche whipped in a wild dance, Oliver scoring a wicked hit in the ribs of the closest brute and nicking the second before they even realized he was there.

The wounded cyclopian, weapon arm tight against its side, clubbed at the halfling with its torch. Its companion fell back a step, then came on, throwing curses and waving a heavy club.

Oliver rolled left, back toward the tunnel. Luthien, sword drawn, dove ahead behind the halfling. The club wielder, its bulbous eye following Oliver’s movement, gawked in surprise as the young man’s sword exploded into its chest.

Oliver came up short, halfway through the roll, and fell forward instead, inside the arc of the down-swinging torch. The halfling’s rapier plunged ahead once, and then again, and the cyclopian staggered backward, eyeing little Oliver with sheer disbelief.

Then it fell dead.

Taking only the moment to put out the torch (and for Oliver to ask, “How did you miss?”), the two friends moved on more urgently now. Soon more torchlight loomed up ahead.

The tunnel ended at a ledge forty feet above the floor of a large, roughly oval chamber. Five cyclopians were in here and, to the friends’ relief, two dwarves, including one with a bushy, blue-black beard and a sleeveless leather tunic. Both were shackled at the wrists and ankles, surrounded by their cyclopian captors. The group stood near the opposite end of the chamber in front of a large hole cut into the floor. Suspended above the hole was a block and tackle, with one thick rope going to a cranking mechanism on the chamber’s floor at the side of the hole and two other ropes disappearing beneath the floor.

One cyclopian leaned over the hole, loosely holding the side rope and looking down, while another worked the crank.

Luthien crouched and nocked another arrow, but Oliver looked at him doubtfully, pointing to one side and then the other of the well-lit room. At least three tunnels came into this chamber at the floor level.

Luthien understood the halfling’s concerns. This higher region of the complex was likely for the guards, and those three tunnels, and the one Luthien and Oliver had just come down, might quickly fill with cyclopians at the first sounds of battle.

But Luthien did not miss the significance of the crank. Those two ropes supported a platform, he figured, and once Shuglin and the other dwarf went down, they would be lost to him forever.

The cyclopian leaning over the hole nodded stupidly and called down. The brute was answered by another cyclopian, and then another, not far below the rim.

The first cyclopian jerked suddenly, then fell headlong into the hole. Four other cyclopians, seeing the arrow in their companion’s back, looked across the room and up to the ledge, to see Luthien fire off another arrow, then take a rope from Oliver. The arrow skipped harmlessly off the cranking mechanism, but the cyclopian working it fell back and shrieked.

Oliver, his adhering grapnel set against the ceiling far out from the ledge, jumped onto Luthien’s back and as soon as Luthien packed his folding bow away, the two swung down, crimson and purple capes billowing behind them. Luthien angled the jump toward the crank: the most important target, he figured.

Oliver’s calculations in setting the grapnel were not far off, and Luthien let the halfling down as they came to the low point of the swing, the halfling falling the last three feet to the floor, landing in a headlong roll, one somersault after another.

Luthien continued on toward the cyclopian near the crank. The young Bedwyr kicked out, trying to knock the brute aside, but he went up too high as he passed, kicking at empty air when the cyclopian ducked. The brute’s distraction cost it dearly, though, for when it looked back down, it saw Oliver, or more specifically the tip of Oliver’s rapier, coming toward it. The fine blade pierced the cyclopian’s belly and sliced upward into its lungs, and it fell aside, gasping for breath that would not come.

Luthien, spinning in tight circles from the momentum of his kick, swung right over the shaft. As he had figured, he saw a large platform holding half a dozen yelling cyclopians fifteen feet below the rim. But the far edge of the hole was still out of reach when his momentum played out and the rope began its inevitable swing the other way—where three armed cyclopians waited.

Luthien wisely jumped free, flailing his arms wildly. He banged his shin hard against the lip of the shaft and nearly fell in. With a groan and a roll, he cleared the drop and regained his footing, drawing his sword. With a quick look, he rushed to the far side of the rim. One of the cyclopians went for the halfling; the others shoved past the dwarves and went to the corner to meet the circling Luthien.

And all of them were screaming for help, screaming that “the Crimson Shadow” was upon them!

“I see the biggest came for me,” Oliver remarked, and he wasn’t idly bantering. The brute facing him was among the largest and ugliest cyclopians Oliver had ever seen. Worse still, the cyclopian wore heavy padded armor—Oliver doubted that his rapier could even get through it—and wielded a huge double-bladed battle-ax.

Down came the weapon in an overhead chop, and Oliver darted forward, rolling right through the brute’s widespread legs. He looked back to see sparks flying as the weapon took a chunk of stone out of the floor.

Oliver dove and rolled back the other way as the cyclopian roared and swung about. Then they were facing each other squarely again, Oliver with his back to the crank and the shaft beyond.

Luthien charged in bravely, daring the odds. These two brutes were also well armored, and they wielded fine swords that accepted the heavy hits of the young Bedwyr’s first flurry and turned his blade aside.

Luthien lunged straight forward; a sword chopped his blade’s tip to the stone, while the other brute thrust ahead, forcing Luthien to twist violently to the side to avoid being impaled. He got his weapon back in line quickly and slapped the stubborn cyclopian’s sword away, then countered viciously.

But the attack was again defeated.

Oliver’s rapier jabbed into the front of the cyclopian’s armor three times in rapid succession, but the blade only bent and would not penetrate. The halfling had hoped to tire the heavy-muscled brute, but it was he who was soon panting, diving this way and that to avoid the mighty battle-ax.

He glanced all about, searching for a new tactic, a chink in the cyclopian’s armor. What he found instead was a ring of keys tagged onto the brute’s belt. Instinctively, the halfling glanced over at Luthien, and continued to watch the young man out of the corner of his eye, waiting for the right moment.

Luthien was hard-pressed but fought back valiantly, fiercely, keeping the cyclopians in place. Looking past his adversaries, he saw the two dwarves untangle themselves from the chain that hooked them together at the ankles, saw them line up, and could guess well enough what they had in mind.

Luthien’s sword snapped left and right, left and right, routines easily defeated, but demanding his opponents’ complete attention.

The charging dwarves hit the cyclopians in the back of the legs, heaving them forward.

Luthien’s sword snapped right, turning down the blade of that brute. The young Bedwyr then spun fast to the left, tucking his shoulder so that the cyclopian would not ram him and so the brute would slip behind him. And Luthien’s sword flashed left, not only defeating the attack of that stumbling cyclopian, but knocking its sword to the stone.

He heard Oliver call out his name and spun around once more, jamming an elbow into the ribs of the cyclopian behind him and knocking the unfortunate brute down the shaft. Then Luthien rushed forward out of the tumbling cyclopian’s desperate reach.

In one fluid motion, Oliver’s rapier darted at his adversary and slipped to the side, through the loop of the key ring. Out to the right went the blade, snapping the keys from the jailor’s belt, then high and back to the left, the key ring slipping free and flying through the air.

Into Luthien Bedwyr’s waiting hand.

Luthien slid down to the floor, knowing the most important shackle to be the one binding the dwarves together. He was lucky—the second key fit—and the lock clicked open, and Luthien jumped back up to meet the remaining cyclopian, its sword back in its hand.

For all the advantage the friends had apparently gained, though, none were breathing easier. Torchlight flickered from two of the side tunnels, and yells and heavy footsteps echoed down one. The soldiers on the platform below the room were not content to sit back and wait, either. A one-eyed face came above the lip, and then another to the side; the brutes were climbing the guide ropes.

The jailor roared to see its keys go flying away and on the monster came, its huge ax thrashing back and forth. Oliver twisted and darted, making no attempt to get a weapon up to block the battle-ax, knowing that either of his blades would be snapped in half or taken from his hand by the sheer force of the jailor’s blows.

The ax chopped down, and Oliver skipped left, near the crank. Up he hopped, atop the spindle and heavy rope. Then he hopped straight up again, desperately tucking his little legs under him as the ax swished across. The powerful cyclopian broke its momentum in mid-swing and curved the ax up high, over its head.

Down it came, and Oliver leaped and rolled to the right. The ax smashed onto the spindle, bit hard into the rope. The dimwitted jailor blinked in amazement as the frayed hemp unraveled and snapped, then watched helplessly as the rope’s severed end soared off toward the block and tackle, and the platform (and a dozen cyclopians) fell away!

“I do thank you,” Oliver remarked.

The jailor roared and swung about, overbalancing with the unbridled strength of the blow. The cyclopian never came close to hitting the halfling, though, for Oliver was on his merry way back toward the crank even as the ax came across the other way. Up again, Oliver poked straight out, his rapier’s tip scoring a hit into the cyclopian’s big eye.

The blinded jailor slashed wildly, this way and that, banging his ax off the stone, off the crank. Oliver tumbled and rolled, thoroughly enjoying the spectacle (as long as the ax didn’t get too near to him!), and gradually, by calling out taunts, he managed to get the jailor near the edge of the hole.

On a nod from Oliver, Shuglin barreled into the backside of the jailor, launching the brute over the side.

“Should’ve kept the ax,” the dwarf grumbled as the jailor, and the battle-ax, plummeted from sight.

One on one, Luthien had little trouble in parrying the vicious strokes of his cyclopian adversary. He let the one-eye play out the rage of its initial attack routine and gradually turned the tide against it, setting it on its heels with one cunning thrust after another.

Understanding that it could not win, the beast, with typical cyclopian bravery, turned and fled—to join its companions who were then entering the chamber from the side passages.

And so the forces faced off for several tense seconds, the cyclopian ranks swelling to a dozen or more. Oliver looked back into the shaft doubtfully, for it dropped out of sight into the gloom and he did not even have his grapnel and line. Luthien managed to get the shackles off of Shuglin, then went to work on the other dwarf, while Shuglin ran over and retrieved the sword from the first cyclopian Oliver had killed.

Still the cyclopians did not advance, and Luthien understood that they were allowing their enemies to prepare themselves only because they expected more reinforcements to enter the room.

“We must do something,” Oliver reasoned, apparently having the same grim thoughts.

Luthien slipped his sword in its scabbard and took out his bow, popping it open, pinning it, and setting an arrow in one fluid motion. The cyclopians understood then what this man with the curious stick was doing, and they fumbled all over themselves trying to get out of harm’s way.

Luthien shot one in the neck, and it went down screaming. The others screamed, too, but they did not run for cover. Rather, they charged before Luthien could set another arrow.

“That was not what I had in mind,” Oliver remarked dryly.

In the ensuing tumult, the desperate companions did not hear the twang of bowstrings, and all four of them looked on curiously as several of the charging brutes lurched weirdly and tumbled to the stone. Seeing arrows protruding from their backs, the friends and the cyclopians looked back to the room’s ledge and saw a handful of slender archers—elves, probably—their hands moving in a blur as they continued to rain death on the cyclopians.

The one-eyes scrambled and fled, many running with one or two arrows sticking from them. In response, arrows and spears came whistling out of the side passages, and though Oliver’s claims about a cyclopian’s lack of depth perception held true once more, the sheer numbers of flying bolts presented a serious problem.

“Run on!” came a cry from the ledge, a voice Luthien knew.

“Siobhan,” he said to Oliver, pulling the halfling along as he made for the wall.

Luthien grabbed Oliver’s rope and gave three quick tugs, releasing the magical grapnel from the ceiling. Siobhan’s group already had one rope down to them, and Shuglin’s companion grabbed on and began climbing swiftly, hand over hand. An arrow thunked into the dwarf’s heavily muscled shoulder, but he only grimaced and continued on his determined way.

Luthien set Oliver’s rope, heaving the grapnel onto the wall up beside the ledge, and he handed the rope over to Shuglin. The dwarf bade Oliver to grab on to his back, and up they went, Luthien shaking his head in amazement at how quickly the powerful dwarf could climb.

A spear skipped across the stone between Luthien’s legs; cyclopians came out of all three passages, the lead ones carrying large shields to protect them from the archers on the ledge.

Luthien had wanted to wait and let Shuglin and Oliver get off the rope, not knowing how much weight the small grapnel would support, but he had run out of time. He leaped up as high as he could, grabbing the rope (and tucking its end up behind him), and began pulling himself up, hand over hand, trying to steady his feet against the wall so that he could walk along.

It wasn’t as easy as the powerful dwarves made it look. Luthien made progress, but he would have surely been caught, or prodded by long spears, except that Shuglin shrugged Oliver off as soon as they made the ledge, and he and his dwarven companion took up the rope and began to methodically haul it in.

Arrows whizzed down past Luthien’s head, and even more alarmingly, arrows and spears came up from below. He felt a bang against his foot and turned his leg to see an arrow sticking from the heel of his boot.

Then rough hands grabbed his shoulders and he was hauled over the ledge, and on the group ran. They passed several dead cyclopians, including the two Luthien and Oliver had killed, and came out of the tunnel, hearing that the cyclopians had gained the ledge behind them and were once again in pursuit.

“Our horses are there!” Luthien explained to Siobhan, and she nodded and kissed him quickly, then pushed him along to catch up with Oliver. She and her Cutter companions, along with Shuglin and the other dwarf, went the other way, disappearing into the brush.

“I cannot believe they came for us,” Luthien remarked as he caught up to the halfling, Oliver with one foot already in Threadbare’s stirrup.

“You must be a good kisser,” the halfling answered. Then Threadbare leaped away, Riverdancer pounding right behind, back out onto the road.

The cyclopian horde exited the mine, howling with outrage, but all they heard was the pounding of hooves as Luthien and Oliver charged away.