Crimson Shadow, The - R. A. Salvatore Page 0,164

Brind’Amour explained. “And a smaller group will depart tomorrow. But all the food that leaves with that second group will be tainted, and their drinking supply will be salted with water from the sea. That should give Belsen’Krieg enough good supplies to get him more than halfway to Montfort, fully committed to his march. Above all else, we must prevent him from turning back to Port Charley. Let them reach their goal, hungry and weary, and not ready for the fight, with Luthien before them and our army on their heels.”

Both Oliver and Katerin looked curiously at the wizard, reacting to that last remark.

“Yes,” Brind’Amour explained. “Port Charley will send a fair force after the cyclopians, and the one-eyes will be pecked every mile of their march, for every village between here and Montfort has joined in our cause.”

Katerin was no longer arguing with the wizard, though she wasn’t sure if he was stating fact or hope. Her instincts, her anger, continually prompted her to act, to strike out in any way she could find against the cyclopians and the foreign King Greensparrow. Already Brind’Amour had earned her trust. She realized that he, and not she, had brought Port Charley into the rebellion, before she and Oliver had even arrived. If the wizard’s claim was correct, he had also secured alliance with the other southern Eriadoran villages, and if the wizard was right about Port Charley, Eriador would soon possess a fleet of great warships that was probably nearly as large as Greensparrow’s remaining fleet in Avon.

Still, Katerin could not forget the army marching east, marching to Caer MacDonald and her beloved Luthien. Could Caer MacDonald hold?

She had to admit, to herself at least, that Brind’Amour was right as well in his argument about letting the cyclopians march upon that city. In the larger picture, if Eriador was indeed to be free, this force led by Belsen’Krieg—a mere token of what Greensparrow could ultimately hurl at them—might be among the least of their troubles.

That truth brought little comfort to Katerin O’Hale and sent a shudder along her spine.

Siobhan’s predictions were proven accurate the very next day, when villagers from the towns nearest Caer MacDonald began flocking into the city. Mostly, it was the young and the old who came in, in orderly fashion and all carrying provisions, ready to fight if necessary, to hold out against the wicked king of Avon to the last. And every group that came in spoke of their hardiest folk, who were moving to the west to meet with and hinder the approach of the cyclopian force.

Luthien didn’t have to ask to know that this was somehow Siobhan’s doing, that while he sat up on the roof, mulling over what seemed like an assured defeat, the half-elf and her stealthy cohorts were out and about, rousing the towns, telling them that the time for their independence had come.

The response from those towns was overwhelming. That day and the next, Luthien watched his garrison within the city grow from six thousand to ten thousand, and though many of the newer soldiers were elderly and could not match a powerful cyclopian in close combat, they had grown up on the Eriadoran plains hunting deer and elk, and they were skilled with their great yew bows.

So also were those younger warriors that went out in bands from the smaller villages, and Belsen’Krieg’s army found itself under assault barely two days and ten miles out from Port Charley.

The damage to the massive force was not excessive. Every once in a while a cyclopian went down, usually wounded, but sometimes killed, and flaming arrows whipped into the supply wagons, causing some excitement. More important, though, was the effect of the skirmishers on the army’s morale, for the cyclopians were being hindered and stung by an enemy that hit fast from concealment, then flittered away like a swarm of bees in a swift wind—an enemy they could not see and could not catch.

Belsen’Krieg kept them together and kept them marching straight for Montfort, promising them that once the city was overrun, they could slaughter a thousand humans for every dead cyclopian.

Oliver looked out at the heavy fog that came up that night, the third after the cyclopians had put into Port Charley, and he knew that this was no natural event. Since he had met up with Brind’Amour, the wizard had constantly complained about how weakened magic had become, but Oliver thought this enchantment wonderful, the perfect cover for this night’s