Crimson Shadow, The - R. A. Salvatore Page 0,110

to see him!”

“Who?”

“Your people!” Oliver cried, and with a burst of strength, the halfling shoved Morkney over the battlement. The lasso slipped up from the duke’s shoulders and caught tight about his neck as he tumbled, his skinny, naked form coming to a jerking stop along the side of the tower a hundred feet above the ground.

But the poor people of Montfort, under this one’s evil thumb for many years, surely recognized him.

They did, indeed.

Out of the north transept came the victorious mob from the cathedral, taking their riot to the streets, sweeping up many onlookers in their wake.

“What have we done?” the stunned young Bedwyr asked, staring down helplessly at the brutal fight.

Oliver shrugged. “Who can say? All I know is that the pickings should be better with that skinny duke out of the way,” he answered, always pragmatic and always opportunistic.

Luthien just shook his head, wondering once more what he had stumbled into. Wondering how all of this had come to pass.

“Luthien?” he heard from across the tower top, and he spun about to see Siobhan, leaning heavily on the battlement, her gray robe in tatters.

But smiling.

EPILOGUE

THE SNOW LAY THICK along the quiet streets of Montfort, nearly every street lined with the red stains of spilled blood. Luthien sat atop the roof of a tall building in the lower section, looking out over the city and the lands to the north.

The people of Montfort were in full revolt, and he, the Crimson Shadow, unwittingly had been named their leader. So many had died, and Luthien’s heart was often heavy. But he gathered strength from those who savagely fought on for their freedom, from those brave people who had lived so long under tyranny and now would not go back to that condition, even at the price of their lives.

And, to Luthien’s amazement, they were winning. A powerful and well-armed cyclopian force still controlled the city’s inner section beyond the dividing wall, protecting the wealthy merchants who had prospered under Duke Morkney. Rumors said that Viscount Aubrey had taken command of the force.

Luthien remembered the man well; he hoped the rumors were true.

The fighting had been furious in the first weeks following the duke’s death, with hundreds of men, women, and cyclopians dying every day. Winter had settled in quickly, slowing the fighting, forcing many to think merely of keeping from freezing or starving. At first, the cold seemed to favor the merchants and cyclopians in their better quarters within the city’s higher section, but as time went on, Luthien’s people began to find the advantage. They controlled the outer wall; they controlled any goods coming into the city.

And Siobhan’s group, along with a number of ferocious dwarves, continued to wreak havoc. Even now, plans were being laid for a full-scale raid upon the mines to free the rest of Shuglin’s enslaved people.

But Luthien could not shake his many doubts. Were his actions truly valuable, or was he walking a fool’s parade? How many would die because he had chosen this course, because at that fateful moment in the Ministry, the Crimson Shadow had been revealed and the people had rallied behind him? And even with their astonishing initial victories, what hope could the future hold for the beleaguered people of Montfort? The winter would be a brutal one, it seemed, and the spring would likely bring an army from Avon, King Greensparrow’s forces coming to reclaim the city.

And punish the revolutionaries.

Luthien sighed deeply, noticing another rider galloping out from Montfort’s northern gate, riding north to spread the news and enlist help—in the form of supplies, at least, from nearby villages. There was word of some minor fighting in Port Charley to the east, but Luthien took little heart in it.

“I knew you would be up here,” came a voice from behind, and Luthien turned to see Oliver climbing up onto the roof. “Surveying your kingdom?”

Luthien’s scowl showed that he did not think that to be funny.

“Ah, well,” the halfling conceded, “I only came to tell you that you have a visitor.”

Luthien cocked a curious eyebrow as a woman climbed over the roof’s edge. Her eyes were green as Siobhan’s, the young Bedwyr realized, somehow surprised by that fact, but her hair was red, fiery red. She stood tall and proud, holding something wrapped in a blanket before her, locking stares with her old friend.

“Katerin,” Luthien whispered, hardly able to get words out of his suddenly dry mouth.

Katerin walked across the roof to stand before the man and handed