Riverdancer seemed truly glad to be back out on the open road. The shaggy white stallion, coat glistening in the typical morning drizzle, strode powerfully under Luthien. Riverdancer wanted to run, but Luthien kept him in check. The ter-rain here was more broken than back in the northern fields. They were approaching the foothills of the Iron Cross, and even though they would have the better part of a day's ride to get into Montfort and the rockier mountains, the ground here was strewn with boulders.
"I wish that he had put us closer to the city," Luthien re-marked, anxious to see the place. "Though I think Riverdancer could use the run."
He patted the horse's muscled flank as he spoke and eased the reins a bit, allowing Riverdancer to spring ahead. Oliver and Threadbare were up be-side them again in a moment.
"The wizard, he put us as close as he could," Oliver replied. He noticed Luthien's quizzical look, not unexpected since Oliver was beginning to understand just how sheltered the young Bedwyr truly was. Oliver remembered Brind'Amour's plea to him to watch over Luthien, and he nodded. "Whoever it is that keeps the wizard up in his secret cave is likely in Montfort," he explained.
Luthien thought about it for a moment. "Morkney," he reasoned.
Brind'Amour had mentioned that Greensparrow's dukes had been corrupted by demonic powers, as had the king, so the reasoning seemed logical enough.
"Or one of his captains," Oliver agreed.
"Then I should not complain," Luthien said. "Brind' Amour proved a fine friend, and I forgive him his lie about the dragon cave in full--he did come to us in our time of need, after all."
Oliver shrugged in halfhearted agreement. "If he had come sooner, then we might have enjoyed the spoils of a dragon's treasure," the halfling said, and he sighed profoundly at that thought.
"We got our gifts," Luthien replied and patted his saddle-bags. He chuckled as he said it, for a cape and folding bow, in truth, did not seem like much of a reward for invading a dragon's lair. But Oliver did not share the young man's mirth, and Luthien was surprised when he looked upon the halfling's cherubic face to see a most serious expression there.
"Do not underestimate that which you have been given," the halfling said solemnly.
"I have never seen such a bow," Luthien began.
"Not the bow," Oliver interjected. "It is valuable enough, do not doubt.
But that which I speak of, that which was the greatest gift, was the crimson cape."
Luthien looked at him doubtfully, then looked at his sad-dlebags as though he expected the cape to slip out and rise up in defense of itself.
Truly it was a beautiful cape, its crimson coloring so rich that it invited the eye into its depths and shimmered in the slightest light as though it was alive.
"You do not know, do you?" Oliver asked, and Luthien's expression went from doubtful to curious.
"Did you notice anything so very strange about the dragon's reaction toward you when we were in the treasure cave?" Oliver asked slyly. "And about my own reaction when you met me on the hasty flanking maneuver?"
Hasty flanking maneuver? Luthien pondered for just an in-stant, but then he realized that to be Oliver's way of saying "desperate retreat."
Indeed, Luthien had given some thought to the matter of the halfling's question. In the treasure cave, the dragon had ignored him--even seemed as if it hadn't no-ticed that Oliver had a companion.
"A dragon's eyes, they are finer than an eagle's," Oliver remarked.
"He never noticed me," Luthien said, knowing that to be the answer Oliver was looking for, though Luthien didn't think as much of that fact as Oliver obviously did.
"Because of the cape," Oliver explained. Luthien was shaking his head before the expected response even came forth.
"But it is true!" Oliver told him. "I, too, did not see you, and almost ran over you."
"You were intent on the dragon behind you," Luthien ra-tionalized. "And Balthazar was intent on you, especially since your pockets were so stuffed with his treasures!"
"But I did not see you even before we found the dragon," Oliver protested. Now Luthien looked at him with more con-cern.
"When I first found the staff, I turned about and called down to you," Oliver went on. "I thought you had left or gone behind one of the piles, and only when you pulled back your hood was I able to see you."
"A trick of the light," Luthien replied, but now it was Oliver who was shaking his head.
"The cape is red, but the floor behind you was gray stone and gold co- ins."
Luthien looked back at the saddlebags once more and rubbed his hand across his stubbly chin.
"I have heard of such items," Oliver said. "You will find the cape a handy tool in the streets of Montfort."
"It is the tool of a thief," Luthien said disdainfully.
"And you are a thief," Oliver reminded him.
Luthien held his next thoughts silent. Was he a thief? And if not, what exactly was he, and why was he riding along the road into Montfort beside Oliver deBurrows? The young Bedwyr laughed aloud, preferring that reaction to having to face up to his course thus far. Events had taken him, not the other way around; if Oliver deBurrows called him a thief, then who was he to argue?
Montfort came into sight around the next bend, nestled among the rocky cliffs and outcroppings of the northern slopes of the Iron Cross. The companions saw many build-ings set in straight rows along the slopes of the foothills and spreading down into the valley, but most of all, they saw the Ministry.
It seemed more a part of the majestic mountains than a man-made creation, as though the hand of God had squared and shaped the stone. Two square- topped towers, each rising more than a hundred feet into the air, flanked the front of the building, and a much taller spire was centered on the back. Huge, arching buttresses lined the sides from the peaked roof to the rows of smaller steeples, accepting the tremendous weight of the stone and channeling it to the ground. Stone gargoyles leaned out from every side of these smaller towers to leer at passersby, and great colored windows depicted a myriad of scenes and free-flowing designs.
Even from this distance, Luthien was overwhelmed by it all, but his spirits never lifted from the ground as he recalled Brind'Amour's lament about the present purpose of the cathedrals. Again the young Bedwyr felt
the foundation of his life shifting underneath him, and he almost expected the ground to crack open and drop him into a horrific abyss.
Like most towns near to the wild Iron Cross, Montfort was surrounded by two walls both manned by many grim-faced cyclopians. Two came down to the gate to meet Oliver and Luthien. At first, they seemed suspicious and clutched their weapons tightly, particularly when they glanced upon the outrageous halfling. Luthien expected to be turned away, at the very least, and honestly wouldn't have been surprised if the crossbowmen atop the wall opened fire.
One of the cyclopians moved toward Riverdancer's sad-dlebags, and Luthien held his breath.
"You have no cause!" Oliver protested firmly.
Luthien glanced at the halfling in disbelief. Certainly he and Oliver might find some trouble if the cyclopian found the folded bow, but that trouble could not compare to the potential repercussions of Oliver's boldness.
The other cyclopian eyed the halfling dangerously and took a step toward him, and was met by Oliver's hand thrust-ing forward the wizard-forged passes. The cyclopian opened the parchment and looked at it carefully.
(Luthien knew that the brute couldn't read it, though, particularly since the pass was upside down at the time.) Still, the cyclopian's expres-sion brightened considerably, and it called its companion to its side.
This cyclopian was smarter, even turned the parchment right-side up after a moment's thought. But the cyclopian's expression, like that of its companion, was soon beaming. The brute looked up to the wall and waved the crossbowmen away, and seemed almost thrilled to let the two riders enter Montfort--the two cyclopians even bowed low as Luthien and Oliver rode past them!
"Oh, this wizard-type, he is very good!" Oliver laughed when they had put the gate behind them. "Very good!"
Luthien did not reply, too entranced by the sheer enormity of Montfort.
The largest city the young Bedwyr had ever been in was Dun Varna, and he saw now that Dun Varna could fit into Montfort twenty times over.
"How many people?" he numbly asked Oliver.
"Twenty thousand, perhaps," the halfling replied, and from his tone, Luthien gathered that Oliver was not so im-pressed.
Twenty thousand people! All of Isle Bedwydrin, a place of five thousand square miles, boasted barely more than a quar-ter of that. The sheer enormity of Montfort, and the way people were jammed in so tightly together, stunned the young man, and made him more than a little uncomfortable.
"You will get used to it," Oliver assured him, apparently sensing his confusion.
From this vantage point, Luthien noticed an inner wall, an-chored at one point by the Ministry, ringing the higher sec-tion of the city. Montfort, flanked by many mines rich in various ores, was a prosperous place, but Luthien could see now that, unlike the communities of Bedwydrin, where the wealth was pretty much evenly divided, Montfort was more like two separate cities. The lower areas consisted of many markets and modest houses and tenements, many no more than shacks. As they walked their mounts along the cobble-stone streets, Luthien saw children at play with makeshift toys, swinging broken branches like swords or tying sticks together to roughly resemble a doll. The merchants and craftsmen he saw were a hard-working lot, their backs bent under the weight of toil, their
hands sooty and calloused. They were friendly enough, though, and seemingly content, tossing a wave or a smile at the two rather unusual visitors.
Luthien didn't have to go up through the inner wall to imagine the types of people he would meet within its con-fines. Grand houses peeked over the wall, some with spires soaring up into the sky. He thought of Aubrey and Avonese, and suddenly he had no desire to go up into the higher sec-tion at all. What he did notice, though, and it touched him as more than a little curious, was that more guards walked the inner wall than both of the outer walls combined.
The young Bedwyr didn't understand it at that time, but what he was getting was his second taste of a society sharply divided by its economic classes.
Oliver led the way into the shadow of a cliff, Montfort's southeastern section, and to a stable. He knew the hands well there, it seemed to Luthien, and tossed the stablemaster an ample pouch of coins. With no bartering and no exchange of instructions, just a friendly greeting and small conversation, Oliver handed over Threadbare's reins and bade Luthien do the same with Riverdancer. Luthien knew how much Oliver cared for his exceptional, if ugly, pony, and so he held no reservations.
Oliver had obviously boarded the pony here be-fore to his complete satisfaction.
"On to the Dwelf," the halfling announced when they de-parted, Luthien carrying the saddlebags over one shoulder.
"The Dwelf?"
Oliver didn't bother to explain. He led on to a seedier sec-tion of town, where the eyes of the waifs in the streets showed a hard edge, and where every door seemed to belong to a tavern, a pawn shop, or a brothel. When Oliver turned toward one of these doors, Luthien understood it to be their destination, and in looking at the sign over the place, he un-derstood the name Oliver had given to it. The painting on the sign depicted a sturdy, muscular dwarf and a Fairborn elf, leaning back to butt, each smiling widely and hoisting drinks--a mug of ale for the dwarf and a goblet, probably of wine, for the elf. "the dwelf, fine drink and talk for dwarf and elf," the words proclaimed, and underneath them someone had scribbled, "Cyclopians enter at your own risk!"
"Why the Dwelf?" Luthien asked, stopping Oliver short of the door.
Oliver nodded down the street. "What do you see at the other taverns?" he asked.
Luthien didn't understand the point of the question. All the places seemed equally busy. He was about to respond when he realized Oliver's intent: all the patrons at the doors to the other bars were either human or cyclopian.
"But you are neither dwarf nor elf," Luthien reasoned. "Nor am I."
"The Dwelf caters to men as well and, mostly, to all who are not men," Oliver explained.
Again, Luthien had a hard time comprehending that point. While there were few Fairborn and even fewer dwarves on Bedwydrin, they were in no way segregated from the general community. A tavern was a tavern, period.
But Oliver seemed determined, and the halfling certainly knew his way around Montfort better than Luthien, so the young Bedwyr offered no further protests and willingly fol-lowed Oliver into the tavern.
He nearly choked as he entered, overwhelmed by a variety of smells, ale and wine and exotic weeds the most prominent among them. Smoke hung thick
in the air, making the crowd seem even more ominous to Luthien. He and Oliver picked their way through clusters of tables, most surrounded by groups of huddled men, or huddled dwarves, or huddled elves--there didn't seem to be much mingling between the races. Five cyclopians, silver-and- black uniforms showing them to be Praetorian Guards, sat at one table, laughing loudly and casually tossing out insults to anyone near to them, openly daring someone to make trouble.
All in all, it seemed to Luthien as if the whole place was on the verge of an explosion. He was glad he had his sword with him, and he clutched the saddlebags protectively as he bumped and squeezed his way to the main bar.
Luthien began to better appreciate the allure of this place to some of the nonhumans when he saw that many of the bar stools were higher than normal, with steps leading up to them. Oliver perched himself comfortably on one, easily able to rest his elbows on the polished bar.
"So they have not yet hung you, eh, Tasman," the halfling remarked. The barkeep, a rough-looking, though slender character, turned around and shook his head as he looked upon Oliver, who returned the look with a huge smile and a tip of his great hat.
"Oliver deBurrows," Tasman said, moving over and wip-ing the bar in front of the halfling. "Back in Montfort so soon? I had thought your previous antics would have kept you away through the winter at least."
"You are forgetting my obvious charms," the halfling replied, none too worriedly.
"And you're forgetting the many enemies you left be-hind," Tasman retorted. He reached under the bar and pro-duced a bottle of dark liquor and Oliver nodded. "Let's hope that they've also forgotten you," the barkeep said, pouring Oliver a drink.
"If not, then pity them," Oliver replied, lifting his glass as though the words were a toast. "For they will surely feel the sting of my rapier blade!"
Tasman didn't seem to take well to the halfling's cavalier attitude. He shook his head again and stood a glass in front of Luthien, who had retrieved a normal-sized stool to put next to Oliver's.
Luthien put his hand over the mouth of the glass before Tasman could begin to pour. "Just some water, if you please," the young man said politely.
Tasman's steel gray eyes widened. "Water?" he echoed, and Luthien flushed.
"That is what they call light ale on Bedwydrin," Oliver lied, saving his friend some embarrassment.
"Ah," Tasman agreed, though he didn't seem to believe a word of it. He replaced the glass with a flagon topped by the foam of strong ale.
Luthien eyed it, and eyed Oliver, and thought the better of protesting.
"I... we, will be in need of a room," Oliver said. "Have you any?"
"Your own," Tasman replied sourly.
Oliver smiled widely--he had liked his old place. He reached into a pocket and counted out the appropriate amount of silver coins, then started to hand them over.
"Though I suspect it will need a bit of cleaning up," Tas-man added, reaching for the coins, which Oliver promptly re-tracted.
"The price is the same," Tasman assured him sharply.
"But the work--" Oliver began to protest.
"Is needed because of your own antics!" Tasman finished.
Oliver considered the words for a moment, then nodded as though he really couldn't argue the logic. With a shrug, he extended his arm once more and Tasman reached for the payment.
"Throw in a very fine drink for me and my friend," Oliver said, not letting go.
"Done, and you're drinking them," Tasman agreed. He took the money and moved off to the side.
When Oliver looked back to Luthien, he found the young man eyeing him suspiciously. The halfling let out a profound sigh.
"I was here before," he explained.
"I figured that much," Luthien replied.
Oliver sighed deeply again. "I came here in the late spring on a boat from Gascony," Oliver began. He went on to tell of a "misunderstanding" with some of the locals and explained that he had gone north just a few weeks before in search of honest work. All the while, Tasman stood off to the side, wiping glasses and smirking as he listened to the halfling, but Luthien, who had seen firsthand the reason Oliver, the highwayhalfling, had gone north, didn't need Tasman's doubting expression to tell him that Oliver was omitting some very important details and filling in the holes with products of his own imagination.
Luthien didn't mind much, though, for he could guess most of the truth-- mainly that Oliver had probably been run out of town by some very angry merchants and had willingly gone north following the caravans. As he came to know the halfling, the mystery of Oliver deBurrows was fast diminish-ing, and he was confident that he would soon be able to piece together a very accurate account of Oliver's last passage through Montfort. No need to press the issue now.
Not that Luthien could have anyway, for Oliver's tale ended abruptly as a shapely woman walked by. Her breasts were rather large and only partially covered by a low-cut, ruffled dress. She returned the halfling's smile warmly.
"You will excuse me," Oliver said to Luthien, never tak-ing his eyes from the woman, "but I must find a place wherein to warm my chilly lips." Off the high stool he slid, and he hit the ground running, cornering the woman a few feet down the bar and climbing back up onto a stool in front of her so that he would be eye-to-eye with her.
Eye-to-chest would have been a better description, a fact that seemed to bother Oliver not at all. "Dear lady," he said dramatically, "my proud heart prompts my dry tongue to speak. Surely you are the most beautiful rose, with the largest..." Oliver paused, looking for the words and uncon-sciously holding his palms out in front of his own chest as he spoke. "Thorns," he said, poetically polite, "with which to pierce my halfling heart."
Tasman chuckled at that one, and Luthien thought the whole scene perfectly ridiculous. Luthien was amazed, though, to find that the woman, nearly twice Oliver's size, seemed sincerely flattered and interested.
"Any woman for that one," Tasman explained, and Luthien noticed sincere admiration in the gruff barkeep's voice. He looked at the man skeptically, to which Tasman only replied, "The challenge, you see."
Luthien did not "see," did not understand at all as he turned back to observe Oliver and the woman talking com-fortably. The young Bedwyr had never looked at women in such an objectified way. He thought of Katerin O'Hale and imagined her turning Oliver upside down by his ankles and
bouncing his head off the ground a few times for good mea-sure if he had ever approached her in such a bold manner.
But this woman seemed to be enjoying the attention, how-ever shallow, however edged by ulterior motives. Never had Luthien felt so out of place in all his young life. He contin-ued to think of Katerin and all his friends. He wished that he was back in Dun Varna (and not for the first or the last time), beside his friends and his brother--the brother that Luthien was resigning himself to believe he would never see again. He wished that Viscount Aubrey had never come to his world and changed everything.
Luthien turned back to the bar, staring at nothing in partic-ular, and drank down the ale in a single swig. Sensing his discomfort, Tasman, who was not a bad sort, filled the flagon once more and slid it in front of Luthien, then walked away before the man could either decline the drink or offer pay-ment.
Luthien accepted the gift with an appreciative nod. He swung about on the stool, looking back at the crowd: the thugs and rogues, the cyclopians, itching for a fight, and the sturdy dwarfs, who appeared to be more than ready to give them one. Luthien didn't even realize his own movements as his hand slipped to the pommel of his sword.
He felt a slight touch on that arm, and jerked alert to find that a woman had come over and was half sitting, half stand-ing on the stool Oliver had vacated.
"Just into Montfort?" she asked.
Luthien gulped and nodded. Looking at her, he could only think of a cheaper version of Avonese. She was heavily painted and perfumed, her dress cut alluringly low in the front.
"With lots of money, I would bet," she purred, rubbing Luthien's arm, and then the young man began to catch on. He felt suddenly trapped, but he had no idea of how he might get out of this without looking like a fool and insulting the woman.
A yell cut through the din of the crowd, then, silencing all and turning their heads to the side. Luthien didn't even have to look to know that Oliver was somehow involved.
Luthien leaped from his seat and rushed past the lady be-fore she could even turn back to him. He pushed his way through the mob to find Oliver standing tall (for a halfling) before a huge rogue with a dirty face and threadbare cloth-ing, an alley-fighter sporting a metal plate across his knuck-les. A couple of friends flanked the man, urging him on. The woman Oliver had been wooing also stood behind the man, inspecting her fingernails and seeming insulted by the whole incident.
"The lady cannot make up her own mind?" Oliver asked casually. Luthien was surprised that the halfling's rapier and main gauche were still tucked securely in their sheaths; if this large and muscular human leaped at him, what defense could the little halfling offer?
"She's mine," the big man declared, and he spat a wad of some chewing weed to the floor between Oliver's widespread feet. Oliver looked down at the mess, then back at the man.
"You do know that if you had hit my shoe, you would have to clean it," Oliver remarked.
Luthien rubbed a hand across his face, stunned by the halfling's stupidity, stunned that Oliver, outnumbered at least three to one, and outweighed at least ten to one, would invite such a lopsided fight.
"You speak as if she was your horse," Oliver went on calmly. To Luthien's amazement, the halfling then spoke past the man to the woman who had been the subject of the whole argument. "Surely you deserve better than this oaf, dear lady," the halfling said, sweeping off his hat as he spoke.
On came the growling man, predictably, but Oliver moved first, stepping into rather than sidestepping the charge and snapping his head forward and down, a head butt that caught the bullish man right between the pumping thighs and stopped him dead in his tracks.
He straightened, his eyes crossed, and he reached down over his flattened crotch with two trembling hands.
"Not thinking of any ladies now, are you?" Oliver taunted.
The man groaned and toppled over, and Oliver slipped to the side. One of the man's companions was there to take his place, though, with dagger drawn. The weapon started forward, only to be intercepted right over Oliver's head by Luthien's sword and thrown out wide. Luthien's free hand struck fast, a straightforward punch that splattered the man's nose and launched him toward the floor.
"Ow!" Luthien cried, flapping his bruised knuckles.
"Have you met my friend?" Oliver asked the downed man.
The remaining thug came forward, also holding a dagger, and Luthien stopped his flapping and readied his sword, thinking that another fight was upon him. Oliver leaped out, instead, drawing rapier and main gauche.
The crowd backed away; Luthien noticed the Praetorian Guards looking on with more than a passing interest. If Oliver killed or seriously wounded the man, Luthien real-ized, he would likely be arrested on the spot.
A gasp arose as the man lunged with the dagger, but Oliver easily dodged, moved aside, and slapped the man on the rump with the side of his rapier.
Again the stubborn thug came on, and again Oliver parried and slapped.
The man Luthien had hit was starting to get up again, and Luthien was about to jump in to meet him, but the woman, charmed by Oliver's attention, was there first. She neatly re-moved one shoe, holding it up protectively in front of her, seeming the lady all the while. Then her visage turned sud-denly savage and she launched a barrage of barefooted kicks on the man's face so viciously that he fell back to the ground, squirming and ducking.
That brought cheers from the onlookers.
Oliver continued to toy with the thug for a few passes, then went into a wild routine, his blades dancing every which way, crossing hypnotically and humming as they cut the air. A step and a thrust brought the main gauche against the man's dagger, and a twist of Oliver's wrist sent the weapon spinning free.
Oliver jumped back and lowered his weapons, looking from the stunned thug to the fallen dagger.
"Enough of this!" the halfling shouted suddenly, quieting the whispering and gasping crowd.
"You are thinking that you can get to the weapon," Oliver said to the man, locking stares with him. "Perhaps you are correct." The halfling tapped the brim of his hat with his rapier. "But I warn you, sir, the next time I disarm you, you may take the word as a literal description!"
The man looked at the dagger one last time, then rushed away into the crowd, bringing howls of laughter. Oliver bowed gracefully after the performance and replaced his weapons, gingerly stepping by the original rogue, who was still prone and groaning, clutching at his groin.
Many of the dispersing group, particularly the dwarves, chose a path that took them close enough so that they could pat the daring and debonair halfling on the back--salutes that Oliver accepted with a sincere smile.
"Back five minutes and already there's trouble!" Tasman remarked when the halfling and Luthien returned to their seats at the bar. It didn't seem to Luthien, however, that the man was really complaining.
"But sir," Oliver replied, seeming truly wounded, "there was the reputation of a lady to consider."
"Yeah," Tasman agreed. "A lady with large ... thorns."
"Oh!" the halfling cried dramatically. "You do so wound me!"
Oliver was laughing again when he returned his gaze to Luthien, sitting open-mouthed and amazed by it all.
"You will learn," Oliver remarked.
Luthien wasn't sure if that was a promise or a threat.