Crimson Shadow - The Sword Of Bedwyr Part 18

Luthien's expression turned sour as he regarded his loyal companion.

The woman prodded slightly with the sword, forcing Luthien to swallow.

"My name is Luthien," he admitted.

"State your business," she demanded through gritted teeth.

"I saw you in the market," the young man stammered.

"He came for you," Oliver put in. "I tried to tell him better. I tried!"

The woman's features softened as she regarded Luthien, and a note of recognition came into her eyes. Gradually, she eased her sword away. "You came for me?"

"I saw him hit you," Luthien tried to explain. "I mean ... I could not... why would you allow him to do that?"

"I am a slave," the woman replied sarcastically. "Half-elven. Less than human." Despite her bravado, a certain tinge of anger and frustration became evident in her tone as she spoke.

"We are standing in the street," the male elf reminded them, and he motioned for Oliver to get back into the alley. To the halfling's relief, the thief put up his sword and the other one eased her bowstring back and removed the arrow.

The half-elf bade Luthien to follow, but hesitated as he walked by, looking curiously at the shadowy image he had left behind on the wall. Smiling with a new perspective, she followed Luthien into the alley.

"You are all half-elven," Oliver remarked when he had the moment to study the three.

"I am full Fairborn," the woman with the bow answered. She looked at the male, an unmistakable connection between them. "But I do not desert my elven brethren."

"The Cutters," Oliver remarked offhandedly, and all three of the elven thieves snapped their surprised looks upon him.

"A notorious thieving band," Oliver explained calmly to Luthien, who obviously had no idea of what was going on. "By reputation, they are all of the Fairborn."

"You have heard of us, halfling," the woman with Luthien said.

"Who in Montfort has not?" Oliver replied, and that seemed to please the three.

"We are not all elves," the half-elven woman answered, looking back over her shoulder at Luthien, a look that truly melted his heart.

"Siobhan!" the male said sternly.

"Do you not know who we have captured?" the woman asked easily, still looking at Luthien.

"I am Oliver deBurrows," the halfling cut in, thinking that his reputation had preceded him. To Oliver's disappointment, though, none of the three even seemed to take note that he had spoken.

"You have left a curious shadow behind," Siobhan remarked to Luthien. "Out in the street. A crimson shadow."

Luthien looked back that way, then turned to Siobhan and shrugged apologetically.

"The Crimson Shadow," the male half-elf remarked, sounding sincerely impressed. He slid his sword completely away then, nearly laughing aloud.

"And Oliver deBurrows!" the halfling insisted.

"Of course," the male said offhandedly, never taking his gaze from Luthien.

"Your work is known to us," Siobhan remarked, her smile coy. Luthien's heart fluttered so badly he thought it would surely stop. "Indeed," she continued, looking to her friends for confirmation, "your work is known throughout Montfort. Truly you have put the merchants on their heels, to the delight of many."

Luthien was sure that he was blus.h.i.+ng a deeper red than the hue of his cape. "Oliver helps," he stuttered.

"Do tell," the deflated halfling muttered under his breath.

"I would have thought you a much older man," Siobhan went on. "Or a longer-living elf, perhaps."

Luthien eyed her curiously. He remembered Brind'Amour's words that the cape had belonged to a thief of high renown, and it seemed that Siobhan had heard of the cape's previous owner, as well. Luthien smiled as he wondered what mischief the first Crimson Shadow might have caused in Montfort.

"It grows late," remarked the elven woman from further down the alley. "We must go, and you," she said to Siobhan, "must get back inside your master's house."

Siobhan nodded. "We are not all of the Fairborn," she said again to Luthien.

"Is that an invitation?" Oliver asked.

Siobhan looked to her companions, and they, after a moment, nodded in reply. "Consider it so," Siobhan said, looking back directly at Luthien, making him think, in the secret hopes of his heart, that the invitation was more than to join the thieving band.

"For you and for the esteemed Oliver deBurrows," she added, her tone revealing that extending the invitation to Oliver, however kindly phrased, had come more as an afterthought.

Luthien looked over her shoulder to Oliver, and the halfling gave a slight shake of his head.

"Consider it," Siobhan said to Luthien. "There are many advantages to being well connected." She flashed her heart-melting smile one last time, as if confirming to the stricken Luthien that she had more than a thieving agreement in mind. Then, with a nod to her departing companions, she started across the street toward her impromptu rope.

Luthien never blinked as he watched her graceful movements, and Oliver just shook his head and sighed.

Chapter 19.

IN HALLOWED HALLS.

Feigning interest, Duke Morkney leaned forward in his wooden chair, his skinny elbows poking out of his voluminous red robe, hands set on his huge desk. Across from him, several merchants spoke all at once, the only common words in their rambling being "theft" and "Crimson Shadow."

Duke Morkney had heard it all before from these same men many times over the last few weeks, and he was truly growing tired of it.

"And worst of all," one merchant cried above the tumult, quieting the others, "I cannot get that d.a.m.ned shadow stain off of my window! What am I to reply to the snickers of all who see it? It is a brand, I say!"

"Hear, hear!" several others agreed.

Morkney raised one k.n.o.bby hand and thinned his lips, trying to bite back his laughter. "He is a thief, no more," the duke a.s.sured them. "We have lived with thieves far too long to let the arrival of a new one-one that conveniently leaves his mark-bother us so."

"You do not understand!" one merchant pleaded, but his face paled and he went silent immediately when Morkney's withered face and bloodshot amber eyes turned upon him, the duke scowling fiercely.

"The commoners may help this one," another merchant warned, trying to deflect the vicious duke's ire.

"Help him what?" Morkney replied skeptically. "Steal a few baubles? By your own admission, this thief seems no more active than many of the others who have been robbing you of late. Or is it just that his calling card, this shadowy image, stings your overblown pride?"

"The dwarf in the square ..." the man began.

"Will be punished accordingly," Morkney finished for him. He caught the gaze of a merchant at the side of his desk and winked. "We can never have too many dwarvish workers, now can we?" he asked slyly, and that seemed to appease the group somewhat.

"Go back to your shops," Morkney said to them all, leaning back and waving his bony arms emphatically. "King Greensparrow has hinted that our production is not where it should be-that, I say, is a more pressing problem than some petty thief, or some ridiculous shadows that you say you cannot remove."

"He slipped through our trap," one of the merchants tried to explain, drawing nods from three of the others who had been in on the ambush at the Avenue of the Artisans.

"Then set another trap, if that is what needs be done!" Morkney snapped at him, the duke's flas.h.i.+ng amber eyes forcing the four cohorts back a step.

Grumbling, the merchant contingent left the duke's office.

"Crimson Shadow, indeed," the old wizard muttered, shuffling through the parchments to find the latest word from Greensparrow. Morkney had been among that ancient brotherhood of wizards, had been alive when the original Crimson Shadow had struck fear into the hearts of merchants across Eriador, even into Princetown and other cities of northern Avon. Much had been learned of the man back in those long-past days, though he had never been caught.

And now he was back? Morkney thought the notion completely absurd. The Crimson Shadow was a man-a long-dead man by now. More likely, some petty thief had stumbled across the legendary thief's magical cape. The calling card might be the same, but that did not make the man the same.

"A petty thief," Morkney muttered, and he snickered aloud, thinking of the tortures this new Crimson Shadow would surely endure when the merchants finally caught up to him.

"I work alone," Oliver insisted.

Luthien stared at him blankly.

"Alone with you!" Oliver clarified in a huffy tone. The halfling stood tall (relatively speaking) in his best going-out clothes, his plumed chapeau capping the spectacle of Oliver deBurrows, swashbuckler. "It is very different being a part of a guild," he went on, his face sour. "Sometimes you must give more than half of your take-and you may only go where they tell you to go. I do not like being told where to go!"

Luthien didn't have any practical arguments to offer; he wasn't certain that he wanted to join the Cutters anyway, not on any practical level. But Luthien did know that he wanted to see more of Siobhan, and if joining the thieving band was the means to that end, then the young Bedwyr was willing to make the sacrifice.

"I know what you are thinking," Oliver said in accusatory tones.

Luthien sighed deeply. "There is more to life, Oliver, than thievery," he tried to explain. "And more than material gain. I'll not argue that joining with Siobhan and her friends may lessen our take and our freedom, but it might bring us a measure of security. You saw the trap the merchants set for us."

"That is exactly why you cannot join any band," Oliver snapped at him.

Luthien didn't understand.

"Why would you so disappoint your admirers?" Oliver asked.

"Admirers?"

"You have heard them," the halfling replied. "Always they talk of the Crimson Shadow, and always their mouths turn up at the edges when they speak the name. Except for the merchant-types, of course, and that makes it all the sweeter."

Luthien shook his head blankly. "I will still wear the cape," he stammered. "The mark ..."

"You will steal the mystery," Oliver explained. "All of Montfort will know that you have joined with the Cutters, and thus you will lower your budding reputation to the standards of that band. No, I say! You must remain an independent rogue, acting on your own terms and of your own accord. We will fool these silly merchant-types until they grow too wary, then we will move on-the Crimson Shadow will simply disappear from the streets of Montfort. The legend will grow."

"And then?"

Oliver shrugged as if that did not matter. "We will find another town-Princetown in Avon, perhaps. And then we will return to Montfort in a few years and let the legend grow anew. You have done something marvelous here, though you are not old enough to understand it," the halfling said. It seemed to Luthien that this was about as profound and intense as he had ever heard Oliver. "But you, the Crimson Shadow, the one who has fooled the silly merchant-types and stolen their goods from under their fat noses, have given to the people who live on the lower side of Montfort's wall something they have not had in many, many years."

"And that is?" Luthien asked, and all the sarcasm had left his voice by this point.

"Hope," Oliver answered. "You have given hope to them. Now, I am going to the market. Are you coming?"

Luthien nodded, but stood in the room for several minutes after Oliver had departed, deep in thought. There was a measure of truth in what the halfling had said, Luthien realized. By some trick of fate, a chance gift after a chance meeting with an eccentric wizard, and that after a chance meeting with an even more eccentric halfling, he, Luthien Bedwyr, had found himself carrying on a legend he had never heard of. He had been thrust into the forefront of the common cause of those who had been left out of King Greensparrow's designs for wealth.

"A peasant hero?" remarked the young man who was not a peasant at all. The furious irony, the layers of pure coincidence, nearly overwhelmed Luthien, and though he was truly confused by it all, an unmistakable spring was evident in his step as he ran out to catch up with Oliver.

The day was cold and gray-typical for the season-and the market was not so crowded. Most of the worthy goods had been bought or stolen and no new caravans had come in, or would for many months.

It didn't take long for Luthien and Oliver to wish that more people were at the plaza. The two, particularly Oliver, were quite a sight, and more than a few cyclopians, including one who wore a thick bandage around his bruised skull, took note of the pair.

They stopped at a kiosk and bought some biscuits for lunch, chatting easily with the proprietor about the weather and the crowd and anything else that came to mind.

"You should not be out here," came a whisper when the proprietor shuffled away to see to another customer.

Luthien and Oliver looked at each other, and then at a slender figure, cloaked and hooded, standing beside the kiosk. He turned to face them more squarely and peeked up from under the low hood, and they recognized the male half-elf they had met the previous night.

"Do they know?" Oliver asked quietly.

"They suspect," the half-elf answered. "They'll not openly accuse you, of course, not with witnesses about."

"Of course," Oliver replied. Luthien continued to stare off noncommittally, not wanting to give away the secret conversation and not understanding much of what the half-elf and Oliver were talking about. If the brutish cyclopians suspected him and Oliver, then why didn't they simply walk over and arrest them? Luthien had been in Montfort long enough to know that the law here required little evidence to haul someone away-gangs of Praetorian Guards were commonplace in the area near to Tiny Alcove and usually left with at least one unfortunate rogue in tow.

"There is news," the half-elf continued.

"Do tell," Oliver started to say, but he quieted and looked away as a group of cyclopians ambled past.

"Not now," came the half-elf's whisper as soon as the cyclopians had moved off a short distance. "Siobhan will be behind the Dwelf at the rise of the moon."

"We will be there," Oliver a.s.sured him.

"Just him," came the reply, and Oliver looked over at Luthien. When Oliver turned his curious glance back the half-elf's way, he found that the thief had moved along.

With a sigh, the halfling turned back again, toward Luthien and the open plaza, and then he understood the half-elf's sudden departure. The cyclopian group was returning, this time showing more interest in the pair.

"My papa halfling, he always say," Oliver whispered to Luthien, "a smart thief can make his way, a smarter thief can get away." He started off, taking Luthien's arm, but was forced to stop as the cyclopians rushed in suddenly, encircling the pair.

"Cold day," one of them remarked.

"Buying the last things for winter?" asked another.

Oliver started to respond, but bit back his retort as Luthien broke in suddenly, looking at the cyclopian directly.

"That we are," he replied. "Montfort's winter is colder for some than for others."

The cyclopian didn't seem to understand that remark-Oliver wasn't sure that he did, either. Though Oliver didn't know it, his last remarks at the apartment had put a spark into the young Bedwyr, had touched a chord in Luthien's heart. He was feeling quite puffed at this moment-feeling the part of the Crimson Shadow, the silent speaker for the underprivileged, the purveyor of coats for cold children, the thorn in the rich man's side.