Crimson Shadow, The - R. A. Salvatore Page 0,161

completed and support could be mustered throughout the land,” she insisted.

“And what would yer have us do?”

“Deny the docks!” the woman of Hale yelled. “Drop the outer piers!”

“And then what?” Gretel wanted to know. “The brutes’d sit in the harbor, whittling sticks? Yer smarter, girl. They’d’ve gone to the north and found a beach o’ their own, and put in, and we could not have stopped them!”

“It would have bought us time,” Katerm answered without hesitation.

“We are a town o’ but three thousand,” Gretel explained. “We could not have stopped them, and if they then marched back to Port Charley . . .”

She let the words hang unfinished in the air, dramatic and ominous, but still Katerin didn’t want to hear the reasoning.

“The freedom of Eriador is all that matters,” she said through gritted teeth, green eyes flashing dangerously. She flipped her fiery hair back from her face so that Gretel could see well her unrelenting scowl.

“Gretel echoes my own words,” came a voice from just outside the door, and an old man walked into the small room. His hair and beard were snowy white, hair tied back in a ponytail, and his robes, rich and thick, were bright blue.

Oliver’s mouth drooped open, and he realized then who the man at the meeting, the man at the hearth, had been. Clever disguise!

“I do not know you,” Katerin said, as if to dismiss him, though from his clothing, and indeed his demeanor, he was obviously a man of some importance. She feared for a moment that he might be one of Greensparrow’s remaining dukes.

“Ah, but I know you, Katerin O’Hale,” the old man said. “The best friend Luthien Bedwyr ever had.”

“Oh?” said Oliver, hopping up from his cot.

Katerin looked to the halfling, and then to the old man, and saw that there was recognition between them, smiles friends might exchange. It hit her suddenly.

“Brind’Amour?” she breathed.

The old man fell into a graceful, sweeping bow. “Well met, Katerin O’Hale, and long overdue,” he said. “I am an old man,” he winked at Oliver, “and getting older every day, but still I can appreciate such beauty as yours.”

Katerin’s first instinct was to punch him. How dare he think of such an unimportant thing at this time? But she realized that there was no condescension in his tone, realized somehow that the beauty he referred to was much more than the way she looked. He seemed to her, all at once, like a father, a wise overseer of events, watching them and measuring them, like the old fisherfolk of Hale who trained the novices in the ways of the sea. Brind’Amour was akin to those old fisherfolk, but the training he offered was in the way of life. Katerin knew that instinctively, and so when she realized what he had first said in support of Gretel’s words, she found some comfort and began to hope that there was some other plan, some better plan, in motion.

“We must let the brutes through Port Charley,” Brind’Amour said to the pair, mostly to Katerin, as though he realized that she would be the hardest to convince. “We must let them, and Greensparrow, think that the revolt in Montfort—”

“Caer MacDonald,” Katerin corrected.

“No,” said Brind’Amour. “Not yet. Let them think that the revolt in Montfort is a minor thing, an isolated thing, and not desired by any outside of that one city. We must plan long term.”

“But the defenses will not be completed in time!” Katerin replied, her pleading voice almost a wail.

“Long term!” Brind’Amour said sharply. “If Eriador is indeed to be free, then this one force of cyclopians will prove the least of our troubles. Had we kept them out of the harbor, had we shown them that Eriador was in general revolt, they would have simply sent one of their ships sailing back to the south to inform Greensparrow and return with reinforcements. In the meantime, those cyclopians remaining would have overrun Port Charley and secured the defenses of this city, giving Greensparrow an open port north of the Iron Cross.

“How many warriors do you think Luthien would lose in trying to uproot fourteen thousand Praetorian Guards from Port Charley?” the old wizard asked grimly, and Katerin’s sails had no more wind. She hadn’t seen that possibility—neither had Luthien apparently—but now that Brind’Amour spoke, it seemed perfectly logical and perfectly awful.

“We are not ye enemies, Katerin O’Hale,” Gretel put in.

Katerin looked hard at her, the young woman’s expression clearly asking the question that was on her