Crimson Shadow, The - R. A. Salvatore Page 0,367

the city were not all cyclopian, and Luthien could see just from this one area that those archers among the Avonese ranks would have many opportunities to fire their bows at the invaders. Luthien wished that he had the luxury of proper preparation, that he and Siobhan, Bellick, and some others could sit around a fire with a map of the city’s interior and lay out organized plans. The young Bedwyr had been in enough large-scale battles to know the impossibility of that. He had pointed his forces in the right direction, but now, in the helter-skelter of pitched fighting, each warrior would have to make his own choices, each group would find new obstacles and would have to discern a way around them.

Luthien hated the prospects of this city fighting with so many miles yet to go, but the Eriadorans had gained the main gate, and this was an opportunity that simply could not be passed up. Luthien prodded Riverdancer to his right, where the curving courtyard began to slope up. Most followed in his wake, some went to the left. Still others, mostly dwarfs, went straight ahead at the next wall, hoisting ladders or throwing ropes fixed with strong grappling hooks, then pulling themselves upward, fearless, seemingly oblivious to the many one-eyes who came to defend the high wall.

Luthien didn’t have to go far to find a fight. Just around the bend, he came to a jag in the wall, behind which a score of cyclopians had dug in. Calling for Siobhan, he plunged ahead, cutting down the closest of the brutes with a mighty swing of his heavy sword. Riverdancer trampled yet another one, and then Luthien leaped the horse ahead, leaving the one-eyes behind to the throng coming hard in his wake.

Further around the bend, Luthien was able to gain a vantage point where he might look back to the inner wall directly across from the broken gates. He turned just as a dwarf went tumbling from its height, sliding off the edge of a cyclopian sword. But that brute, and others near it, were overwhelmed as a dozen other bearded warriors crashed in. The wall was taken.

An arrow zipped past Luthien’s face, and he turned to follow its course in time to see it nail another one-eye right in the chest. The brute staggered, but was pushed aside as a wedge of cyclopians charged down the gap between the walls, heading Luthien’s way.

The young Bedwyr and his cavalry unit met them and trampled them.

The central and highest area of Warchester, like all large Avonsea cities, was dominated by a tremendous cathedral, this one named the Ladydancer. Around the structure was an open plaza, which on quiet days served as a huge open marketplace. Now that plaza was swarming, the terrified populace desperate to get inside the cathedral.

But the doors were not yet open.

Deanna Wellworth, Brind’Amour, and Akrass the cyclopian stood on the balcony that opened above the cathedral’s main doors. Over and over, Brind’Amour, posing still as Duke Theredon, called for quiet, and gradually the hysterical crowd did calm—enough so that the sounds of the battle raging along the outer walls of the city could be clearly heard.

That done, the old wizard stepped back, taking a place next to Akrass, and Deanna took center stage.

“You know me,” the woman cried out to the crowd. “I am Deanna Wellworth, duchess of Mannington.”

Several calls came back, some for the opening of the Ladydancer, others asking if Deanna’s garrison would come to Warchester’s support.

“What you do not know,” Deanna went on, and her voice was superhumanly powerful, enhanced by magic, “is that I am the rightful heir to the throne of Avon.”

The people didn’t react strongly, seemed not to understand her point. Of course they knew of Deanna’s lineage, at least the older folk among them did, but what did that have to do with the present situation, the impending disaster in Warchester?

“I am the rightful queen of Avon!” Deanna shouted. She looked to Brind’Amour and nodded, and before Akrass could even begin to digest that proclamation, the one-eye was dead, Brind’Amour’s dagger deep into its back.

“I can no longer tolerate the injustices!” Deanna cried above the growing murmurs and open shouts. “I can no longer tolerate any alliance with filthy one-eyes, nor the truth of Greensparrow! You have heard the rumors of a dragon lighting on the fields south of the city. That was no Eriadoran ally, my people, but our own king, in his natural form!”

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