Luthien left Dun Varna on the northern road soon after upon his favorite mount, Riverdancer. The steed was a Mor-gan Highlander, a short-legged, thickly muscled white stallion that could plow through the soft turf of Eriador's perpetually wet ground as well as any beast alive. The High-lander horses had been bred with long, shaggy coats to ward off the chill winds and drizzle. On many Highlanders, this hair was perpetually prickly and snarled, but Riverdancer's coat was smooth as fine silk and glistened with every move-ment, like the sparkles of a dancing river on a sunny spring day.
Riverdancer carried a heavy load this day, laden with the supplies Luthien would need for the road and, displayed more openly, with fishing gear, including heavy pole-nets. It was not an unusual thing for the young Bedwyr to go off in this fashion, especially considering there had been little training in the arena since the Garth Rogar incident.
Cer-tainly few in Dun Varna would expect Luthien to go right back to his fighting.
Few took notice of him as he walked his way through the dirt and cobblestone avenues. He did slow and speak with one man, a captain of a fishing boat, just to ask him what was running north of the bay and whether the sea was calm enough for the pole-nets or if he should try a long line. It was all very cordial, very normal. Just the way Luthien wanted it to be.
When he had gone beyond the bluffs, though, out of sight of the stone- and-thatch houses, he broke Riverdancer into a run. Five miles out of town, he veered down toward the shore to one of this favored fishing spots. There he left his gear, net and pole, and one of his wet boots lying on the stones right near the water. Better to give them as many rid-dles as possible, he thought, though he cringed when he con-sidered his father's pain if Gahris truly thought he had been swept out into the fierce Dorsal.
It couldn't be helped, Luthien decided. Back on River-dancer, he picked his way carefully among the stones, trying to leave as little visible trail as possible--he sighed deeply when the horse lifted its tail and dropped some obvious signs of passage.
Away from the shore, Luthien turned to the west, riding toward Hale, and then swung back to the south. By early af-ternoon, he was passing Dun Varna again, several miles in-land and far out of sight. He wondered what commotion his actions had brought. What had Gahris and especially Avonese thought when they had gone into the study and found the dead cyclopian?
Had Gahris noticed the bloodied sword on the wall?
Certainly by this time somebody had gone north in search of Luthien.
Perhaps they had even found his gear and boot, though he doubted that word had gotten back to his father.
Again, the young Bedwyr decided that it couldn't be helped. He had followed the course his heart demanded. In truth, Luthien had only defended himself against the armed cyclopian. He could have stayed in House Bedwyr and been exonerated: even after all that Ethan had told him, Luthien did not believe that his father would turn against him. And so it was not actually fear of the law that sent Luthien away. He only realized that now, passing his home for what might be the very last time. Ethan had brought doubts to him, deep-rooted doubts that made Luthien question
the worth of his very existence. What was the truth of the kingdom and the king? And was he truly free, as he had always believed?
Only the road could give him his answers.
The Diamondgate ferry was normally a three-day ride from Dun Varna, but Luthien thought he could make it in two if he pushed Riverdancer hard.
The horse responded ea-gerly, happy for the run, as they charged down the island's central lowlands, and Luthien was far from Dun Varna when he broke for camp. It rained hard that first night. Luthien huddled under his blanket near a fire that was more hiss and spit than flame. He hardly felt the chill and the wetness, though, too consumed by the questions that rolled over and over in his thoughts. He remembered the salty smell of sweet Katerin and the look in her green eyes when they had made love.
He should have told her, perhaps.
He did fall asleep sometime not long before the dawn, but he was up early anyway, greeted by a glistening sunny day.
It was a marvelous day, and Luthien felt delight in every bit of it as he mounted Riverdancer and started off once more. Not a cloud showed itself in the blue sky--a rare occurrence, indeed, on Bedwydrin!--and a sense of euphoria came over Luthien, a sense of being more alive than he had ever been. It was more than the sun, he knew, and the birds and animals skittering about on one of the last truly won-drous days before the gloomy fall and chill winter. Luthien had rarely been out of Dun Varna all his life, and then al-ways with the knowledge that he would not be gone for long.
Now the wide road lay before him leading eventually to the mainland, to Avon, even to Gascony and all the way to Duree if he could catch up with his brother. The world seemed so much bigger and scarier, suddenly, and excite-ment welled up in the young man, pushing away his grief for Garth Rogar and his fears for his father. He wished that Ka-terin was there beside him, riding hard for freedom and ex-citement.
He was more than two-thirds of the way to the ferry by midday, Riverdancer running easily, as though he would never tire. The road veered back toward the southeast, pass-ing through a small wooded region and across the field just out the wood's southern end. There Luthien came upon a narrow log bridge crossing a strong-running river, with an-other small forest on the other side.
At the same time, a merchant wagon came out of the trees and upon the bridge from the other end. Its cyclopian driver certainly saw Luthien and could have stopped short of the bridge, allowing the horseman to scramble across and out of the way, but with typical cyclopian bravado and discourtesy, the brute moved the wagon onto the logs.
"Turn about!" the one-eye growled, as its team came face-to-face with Riverdancer.
"You could have stopped," Luthien protested. "I was onto the bridge before you and could have gotten off the bridge more quickly than you!"
He noted that the cyclopian was not too well-armed and wearing no special insignia. This brute was a private guard, not Praetorian, and any passengers in the coach were surely merchants, not noblemen. Still, Luthien had every intention of turning about--it was easier to turn a single horse, after all, than a team and wagon.
A fat-jowled face, blotchy and pimpled, popped out of the coach's window.
"Run the fool down if he does not move!" the merchant ordered brusquely, and he disappeared back into the privacy of his coach.
Luthien almost proclaimed himself to be the son of the eorl of Bedwydrin, almost drew weapon and ordered the cy-clopian to back the wagon all the way to the ferry. Instead he wisely swallowed his pride, reminding himself that it would not be the smartest move to identify himself at this time. He was a simple fisherman or farmer, nothing more.
"Well, do you move, or do I put you into the water?" the cyclopian asked, and it gave a short snap of the reins just to jostle its two-horse team and move them a step closer to Riverdancer. All three horses snorted uncomfortably.
Several possible scenarios rushed through Luthien's thoughts, most of them ending rather unpleasantly for the cy-clopian and its ugly master.
Pragmatism held, however, and Luthien, never taking his stare off the one-eyed driver, urged Riverdancer into a slow backward walk, off the bridge, and moved aside.
The wagon rambled past, stopping long enough for the fat merchant to stick his head out and declare, "If I had more time, I would stop and teach you some manners, you dirty little boy!" He gave a wave of his soft, plump hand and the cyclopian driver cracked a whip, sending the team into a charge.
It took many deep breaths and a count of fifty for Luthien to accept that insult. He shook his head, then, and laughed aloud, reclaiming a welcome sense of euphoria. What did it count for, after all? He knew who he was, and why he had al-lowed himself to be faced down, and that was all that truly mattered.
Riverdancer trotted across the bridge and along the road, which looped back to the north to avoid a steep hillock, and Luthien quickly put the incident out of his mind. Until a few minutes later, that is, when he looked back across the river from higher ground down at the merchant's coach moving parallel to him and only a couple of hundred feet away. The wagon had stopped again, and this time the cyclopian driver faced the most curious-looking individual Luthien Bedwyr had ever seen.
He was obviously a halfling, a somewhat rare sight this far north in Eriador, riding a yellow mount that looked more like a donkey than a pony, with an almost hairless tail sticking straight out behind the beast. The halfling's dress was more remarkable than his mount, though, for though his clothes appeared a bit threadbare, he seemed to Luthien the pinnacle of fashion. A purple velvet cape, which flowed back from his shoulders out from under his long and curly brown locks, was opened in front to reveal a blue sleeveless doublet, showing the puffy white sleeves of his silken undertunic, tied tightly at the wrists. A brocade baldric laced in gold and tas-seled all the way crossed his chest, right to left, ending in more tassels, bells and a loop on which to hang his rapier, which was now being held in readiness in one of his green- gauntleted hands.
His breeches, like his cape, were purple velvet, and were met halfway up the halfling's shin by green hose, topped with silk and tied by ribbons at the back of his calf. A huge hat completed the picture, its wide brim curled up on one side and a large orange feather poking out behind.
Luthien couldn't make out all of his features, but he saw that the halfling wore a neatly trimmed mustache and goatee.
He had never heard of a halfling with face hair and had never imagined one dressed in that manner, or sitting on a donkey, or pony, or whatever that thing was, and robbing a merchant wagon at rapier point. He pulled
Riverdancer down the bank, slipping in behind the cover of some low brush, and watched the show.
"Out of the way, I tell you, or I'll trample you down!" growled the burly cyclopian driver.
The halfling laughed at him, bringing a smile to Luthien's lips as well.
"Do you not know who I am?" the little one asked incredulously, and his thick brogue told Luthien that he was not from Bedwydrin, or from anywhere in Eriador. From the halfling's lips, "you" sounded more like "yee-oo" and "not" became a two-syllable word: "nau-te."
"I am Oliver deBurrows," the halfling proclaimed, "high-wayman. You are caught fairly and defeated without a fight. I will your lives give to you, but your co-ins and jew-wels I claim as my own!"
A Gascon, Luthien decided, for he had heard many jokes about the people of Gascony in which the teller imitated a similar accent.
"What is it?" demanded the impatient merchant, popping his fat-jowled head out of the coach. "What is it?" he asked in a different tone when he looked upon Oliver deBurrows, highwayman.
"An inconvenience, my lord," the cyclopian answered, staring dangerously at Oliver. "Nothing more."
"See to it, then!" cried the merchant.
The cyclopian continued to stare over its shoulder as the merchant pulled his head into the coach. When the brute did turn back, it came about suddenly and viciously, producing from nowhere, it seemed, a huge sword and cutting it in a wicked chop at the halfling's head. Luthien sucked in his breath, thinking this extraordinary Oliver deBurrows about to die, but quicker than he believed possible, the halfling's left hand came out, holding a large-bladed dagger with a pro-tective, basket hilt--a main gauche, the weapon was called.
Oliver snapped the main gauche in a circular movement, catching the sword firmly in its hilt. He continued the fast ro-tation, twisting the sword, and then with a sudden jerk, sent the weapon flying from the cyclopian's hand to land sticking point-first into the turf a dozen feet away.
Oliver's rapier darted forward, its tip catching the top of the cyclopian's leather tunic. The blade bent dangerously, just an inch below the brute's exposed neck.
"Rodent," growled the impudent cyclopian.
The highwayman laughed again. "My papa halfling, he al-ways say, that a halfling's pride is inversely proportional to his height," Oliver replied.
"And I assure you," the halfling continued after a dramatic pause, "I am very short!"
For once, the cyclopian driver seemed to have no reply. It probably didn't even understand what the halfling had just said, Luthien realized, squatting in the brush, trying hard not to burst out in laughter.
"How far do you think my so fine blade will bend?" Oliver asked with a short chuckle. "Now, I have won the day and your precious co-ins and jew- wels."
To Oliver's surprise, though, the single cyclopian guard became six, as soldiers burst out of the coach door and rolled from every conceivable nook in the large wagon, two even coming out from underneath. The highwayman considered the new odds, eased the pressure on his bending rapier, and gave a new finish to his previous thought.
"I could be wrong."