Crimson Shadow, The - R. A. Salvatore Page 0,120

get to them.

“This is a better spot,” Oliver decided sarcastically. “At least our friends will get to see us die.”

“Not now, Oliver,” Luthien said grimly.

“At least we have no spears falling at our heads,” the halfling continued. “It will probably take the dim-witted one-eyes an hour or more to figure out which side of the tower we are now on.”

“Not now, Oliver,” Luthien said again, trying to concentrate on their predicament, trying to find a way out.

He couldn’t see even a remote possibility. After a few frustrating moments, he considered just letting go of the rope and getting the inevitable over with.

A spear plummeted past, and the pair looked up to see a group of brutes grinning down at them.

“You could be wrong,” Luthien offered before Oliver could say it.

“Three tugs will free the grapnel,” Oliver reasoned, for that indeed was the only way to release the enchanted device once it had been set. “If I was quick enough—and always I am—I might reset it many feet below.”

Luthien stared at him with blank amazement. Even the boastful Oliver had to admit that his plan wasn’t a plan at all, that if he pulled free the grapnel, he and Luthien, and the wounded man as well, would be darker spots on a dark street, two hundred feet below.

Oliver said no more, and neither did Luthien, for there was nothing more to say. It seemed as though the legend that was the Crimson Shadow would not have a happy ending.

Brind’Amour’s grapnel was a marvelous thing. The puckered ball could stick to any wall, no matter how sheer. It was stuck now sidelong, the eye-loop straight out to the side and the weighted rope hanging down.

Luthien and Oliver felt a sudden jerk as their weight finally made the ball half-turn on the wall and straighten out, shifting so that it was in line above the hanging rope. Then, suddenly and unexpectedly, the pair found themselves descending, the ball sliding along the icy surface.

Luthien cried out. So did Oliver, but the halfling kept the presence of mind to jab at the stone with his main gauche. The dagger’s tip bit into the ice, threw tiny flecks all about, drawing a fine line as the descent continued.

Up above they heard cyclopian curses, and another spear would have taken Oliver had he not thrust his main gauche above his head, knocking it away. Down below, they heard cries of “Catch them!”

Luthien kicked at the wall, tried to scratch at the ice with his boot heels, anything to maintain some control along the sliding descent. He couldn’t tell how high he was, how far he had to go. Every so often, the puckered ball came to a spot that was not so thick with ice and the momentum of the slide was lessened. But not completely stopped. Down went the friends, sometimes fast and sometimes slow, screaming all the way. Luthien noted the secret door forty feet to the side and an instant later he felt hands reaching up to grab his legs, heard groans all about him as comrades cushioned the fall and the ground rushed up to swallow him.

Then he was down, in a tumble, and Oliver was above him, the halfling’s fall padded by Luthien’s broad chest.

Oliver leaped up and snapped his fingers. “I told you I have been in worse places,” he said, and three tugs freed his enchanted grapnel.

A moment later, thunderous pounding began at the closed drawbridge, the cyclopians outraged that they had lost their prize. Blocks split apart and fell outward, the brutes using one of the many statues within the cathedral as a battering ram.

Luthien was helped to his feet; the wounded man was scooped up and carried away.

“Time to go,” said Katerin O’Hale, standing at the stunned young Bedwyr’s side, propping him by the elbow.

Luthien looked at her, and at Siobhan standing beside her, and let them pull him away.

In the blink of a cyclopian eye, the Eriadorans disappeared into the streets of Montfort’s lower section, and the cyclopians, standing helplessly as they finally breached the wall, didn’t dare to follow.

Some distance away, Oliver pulled up short and bade his companions to wait. They all looked back, following the halfling’s gaze up the side of the Ministry’s tower. The ice-covered eastern wall shone brilliantly in the morning light, and the image the halfling had spotted was unmistakable, and so fitting.

Two hundred feet up the wall loomed a red silhouette, a crimson shadow. Luthien’s wondrous cape had worked another