Crimson Shadow, The - R. A. Salvatore Page 0,177

nightmare not yet forgotten in the light of dawn.

“We held,” Siobhan informed him, prodding him on, forcing him to his feet. She took hold of him as he stood, steadying him. “We scattered them and stung them. Their dead litter the field.”

Luthien liked the words, but there was something in Siobhan’s words, an edge of anxiety, that told him she was trying to convince herself more than him. He wasn’t surprised when she continued.

“But they have re-formed their lines and are advancing,” the half-elf explained. “Your wounds are not so bad, and your presence is needed at the wall.” Even as she spoke, she was dragging him along, and Luthien felt like an ornament, a figurehead, symbol of the revolution. At that moment, he didn’t doubt that if he had died, Siobhan wouldn’t tell anybody; she’d just prop him up against the wall, tie Blind-Striker to his upraised hand, and shove a dwarf under his cape to call out glorious cheers.

When Luthien got up to the wall, though, he began to appreciate the cold edge of Siobhan’s actions. The field before Caer MacDonald, all the way to the rubble of the outer wall, was covered in bodies and red-soaked with blood, huge puddles of blood that couldn’t find its way into the frozen ground. Every so often, someone from the wall would hurl something down to the field and the air would throb with beating wings as countless carrion birds lifted off into the gray sky—a sky that had grown darker as the day progressed.

It was such a surreal, unbelievable scene of carnage that Luthien could hardly sort it out. Most of the dead were cyclopians, all silver and black and red with blood, but among them were the corpses of many men and women, a few elves, and many, many of Shuglin’s bearded folk.

That’s what Luthien saw most of all: the dead dwarfs. The brave dwarfs who had sprung up in the midst of the marching army, causing chaos and destruction, though they knew they would pay dearly for their actions. It seemed to the young Bedwyr as if all of them were out there broken and torn, sacrificed not to save Caer MacDonald but only to ward off the first cyclopian charge.

His face ashen, breathing hard, Luthien looked at Siobhan. “How many?” he asked.

“More than three hundred,” she replied grimly. “Two hundred of them dwarfs.” Siobhan stood straighter suddenly, squared her shoulders and her delicate jaw. “But five times that number of cyclopians lay dead,” she estimated, and it seemed to Luthien that there were at least that many bodies covering the field.

Luthien looked away, back to the field, then beyond the field and the rubble, to the swarming black-and-silver mass, the Avon army coming on once more. He took note of a lighter patch of gray in the sky and figured that it was not yet noon, yet here they came again, to repeat the scene of carnage, to cover the dead with a second layer.

“All in one morning,” the young man whispered.

Luthien examined his line. There would be no falling outer wall this time, no ambush by Shuglin’s people. This time, the cyclopians would march right to the inner wall, and if they overcame its defenders, if they got into the city, Caer MacDonald would be lost.

Would be lost, and the rebellion would be at its end, and Eriador would not be free. Luthien did not consider the personal implications of it all, did not even think that he might die in the next hours, or wonder about the consequences to himself if he did not die and the city was lost. Now, up on this wall, the situation was larger than that; there was too much more at stake.

Strength flowed through Luthien’s battered limbs; he hoisted his sword high into the air, commanding the attention of all those nearby.

“Eriador free!” came the cheer. “Caer MacDonald!”

Next to Luthien, Siobhan nodded approvingly. She half-expected the young Bedwyr to pass out from his wounds and knew that he would find this next battle difficult indeed. But he had accomplished what she needed of him, and if he was among the dead after this attack, she would cultivate the legend; she would have every remaining soldier defending Caer MacDonald add the name of Luthien Bedwyr to the cheer.

Those thoughts were for another time, the half-elf told herself. The catapults fired, the ballistae twanged, and the squared cyclopian groups—two now, not three as in the first attack—plodded on. Upon the