Crimson Shadow, The - R. A. Salvatore Page 0,239

of the fierce Eriadoran army closed over them. Others, near the back of the long line, had an easier time getting out of the glen’s western end, but they found yet another unpleasant surprise awaiting them, for in the mere hour they had been out of the city, an army of dwarfs had encircled Princetown.

Not a single cyclopian got back to the city’s gates that fateful morning.

Greensparrow shifted in his seat, a smile painted on his face, trying to appear at ease and comfortable, though the high-backed and stiff, stylish Gascon chair was anything but comfortable. The Avon king had to keep up appearances, though. He was in Caspriole, in southwestern Gascony, meeting with Albert deBec Fidel, an important dignitary, one of the major feudal lords in all of Gascony.

For some reason that Greensparrow could not understand, deBec Fidel had turned the conversation to events in Eriador, which Greensparrow truly knew little about. As far as the vacationing king of Avon was aware, Belsen’Krieg was in Montfort, though the last message from one of his underling wizards, Duchess Deanna Wellworth of Mannington, had hinted at some further trouble.

“What do you mean to do?” deBec Fidel asked in his thick accent, his blunt question catching Greensparrow off his guard. Normally deBec Fidel was a subtle man, a true Gascon dignitary.

“About the rebels?” the Avon king replied incredulously, as though the question hardly seemed worth the bother of answering.

“About Eriador,” deBec Fidel clarified.

“Eriador is a duchy of Avon,” Greensparrow insisted.

“A duchy without a duke.”

Greensparrow controlled himself enough not to flinch. How had deBec Fidel learned of that? he wondered. “Duke Morkney failed me,” he admitted. “And so he will be replaced soon enough.”

“After you replace the duke of Princetown?” deBec Fidel asked slyly.

Greensparrow gave no open response, except that his features revealed clearly that he had no idea what the lord might be speaking about.

“Duke Paragor is dead,” deBec Fidel explained. “And Princetown—ah, a favorite city of mine, so beautiful in the spring—is in the hands of the northern army.”

Greensparrow wanted to ask what the man was talking about, but he realized that deBec Fidel would not have offered that information if he had not gotten it from reliable sources. Greensparrow’s own position would seem weaker indeed if he pretended that he did not also know of these startling events.

“The entire Princetown garrison was slaughtered on the field, so it is said,” deBec Fidel went on. “A complete victory, as one-sided as any I have ever heard tell of.”

Greensparrow didn’t miss the thrill, and thus, the threat, in deBec Fidel’s voice, as though the man was enjoying this supremely. An emissary from Eriador had gotten to the man, the wizard-king realized, probably promising him trade agreements and free port rights for Caspriole’s considerable fishing fleet. The alliance between Avon and Gascony was a tentative thing, a temporary truce after centuries of countless squabbles and even wars. Even now, much of Greensparrow’s army was away in lands south of Gascony, fighting beside the Gascons, but the king did not doubt that if Eriador offered a better deal concerning the rich fishing waters of the Dorsal Sea, the double-dealing Gascons would side with them.

What had started as a riot in Montfort was quickly becoming a major political problem.

Behind one of the doors of that very room, his ear pressed against the keyhole, Oliver deBurrows listened happily as deBec Fidel went on, speaking to Greensparrow of the benefits of making a truce with the rebels, of giving Eriador back to Eriador.

“They are too much trouble,” the feudal lord insisted. “So it was when Gascony ruled Avon. That is why we built the wall, to keep the savages in the savage north! It is better for all that way,” deBec Fidel finished.

Oliver’s smile nearly took in his ears. As an ambassador, a Gascon who knew the ways of the southern kingdom’s nobles, the halfling had done his job perfectly. The taking of Princetown might nudge Greensparrow in the direction of a truce, but the not-so-subtle hint that mighty Gascony might favor the rebels in this matter, indeed that the Gascons might even send aid, would surely give the wizard-king much to consider.

“Shall I have your room prepared?” Oliver heard deBec Fidel ask after a long moment of uncomfortable silence.

“No,” Greensparrow replied sharply. “I must be on my way this very day.”

“All the way back to Carlisle,” Oliver snickered under his breath. The halfling flipped an amber gemstone in his hand, agreeing with Greensparrow’s sentiments, thinking that