Crimson Shadow, The - R. A. Salvatore Page 0,185

know how to shelter themselves from the weather. Besides, they have a wizard among them, and from what you’ve told me of Brind’Amour, he’ll have a trick or two to defeat the storm.”

Luthien didn’t doubt that, and it was a comforting thought. “We could have swung them to the south and brought them into the city along the foothills,” the young man reasoned.

“We did not even know the extent and location of their camp until well after sunset,” Siobhan replied.

“It would only have taken a couple of hours,” Luthien was quick to answer. “Even in the storm. Most of the lower trails are sheltered, and there was little snow on them to begin with.” He breathed a deep, resigned sigh. “We could have gotten them in.”

Siobhan didn’t doubt what he was saying, but the last thing she wanted now for Luthien was added guilt. “Oliver knows the area as well as you,” she reminded Luthien. “If the folk of Port Charley wanted to get into Caer MacDonald, they would have.”

Luthien wasn’t so certain of that, but the argument was moot now, for it was well past midnight and he couldn’t do anything about the camp’s location.

“Shuglin informs me that he and his kin have some new traps ready for the cyclopians,” the half-elf said, trying to shift the subject to a more positive note. “When our enemies come on again, they’ll find the wall harder to breach, and if they’re caught out in the open for any length of time, Oliver and his force will squeeze them from behind.”

“Oliver hasn’t enough soldiers to do that.”

Siobhan shook her head and chuckled. “Our allies will strike from a distance!” she insisted. “Hit with their bows at the back of the cyclopians, and run off across the fields.”

Luthien wasn’t so certain, but again he did not wish to press the argument. He continued to stare up at the ceiling, at the flickering shadows cast by the wind-dancing flames of the hearth. Soon he felt the rhythmic breathing of the sleeping Siobhan beside him, and then he, too, drifted off to sleep.

He dreamed of his adversary, the huge and ugly cyclopian. All the tactics of the day filtered through his thoughts, all the moves the brute had executed: the first powerful probe at the city; the second assault, the feint, where many cyclopian arsonists slipped in; and the tactic when the new army appeared on the field, the sudden and organized turn of the skilled Praetorian Guard. They would have been destroyed on the field then and there, would have been squeezed and in disarray, caught defenseless. But their leader had reacted quickly and decisively, had swung about and chased the folk from Port Charley all the way back across Felling Run.

Luthien’s eyes popped open wide, though he had been asleep for only a little more than an hour. Beside him, Siobhan opened a sleepy eye, then buried her cheek against his muscular chest.

“He is not coming back,” Luthien said, his voice sounding loud above the background murmur of the wind.

Siobhan lifted her head, her long hair cascading across Luthien’s shoulder.

“The cyclopians,” Luthien explained, and he slipped out from Siobhan’s grasp and propped himself up on his elbows, staring at the red glow of the hearth. “They are not coming back!”

“What are you saying?” Siobhan asked, shaking her head and brushing her hair back from her face. She sat up, the blankets falling away.

“Their leader is too smart,” Luthien went on, speaking as much to himself as to his companion. “He knows that the arrival of the new force will cost him dearly if he goes against our walls again.”

“He has come to take back the city,” Siobhan reminded.

Luthien pointed a finger up in the air, signaling a revelation. “But with everything that has happened, and with the storm, he knows that he may lose.”

Siobhan’s expression revealed her doubts more clearly than any question ever could. Cyclopians were a stubborn, single-minded race for the most part, and both she and Luthien had heard many tales of one-eye tribes charging in against overwhelming odds and fighting to the last living cyclopian.

Luthien shook his head against her obvious reasoning. “These are Praetorian Guards,” he said. “And their leader is a cunning one. He will not come against the city tomorrow.”

“Today,” Siobhan corrected, for it was after midnight. “And how do you know?”

Luthien had an answer waiting for her. “Because I would not attack the city tomor—today,” he replied.

Siobhan looked at him long and hard, but did