Sir Bentley and Holbrook Court (18 page)

CAMP OF THE
LUCRUMS

Bentley set his course to the river. The terrain rose sharply, and he heard the falls just south of his position. When he reached the river, he followed it upstream until he came to a secluded bridge and a less traveled road that took him beneath the limbs of the Brimwood Forest and out into the open country. The sun was nearly set, and though evening would soon be upon him, there would be enough light to travel for several hours.

He found it difficult to pace himself and not expend all his energy at once as he thought of Eirwyn in the hands of evil brutes. Before too long, he was running with all he had left down the shallow valley to the cottage where he hoped to find Sir Demus. He neared the cottage and began to shout.

“Sir Demus, are you still here?”

Before he reached the cottage, Demus appeared at the door, and Bentley was greatly relieved. Demus's hand went to his sword when he saw the blood flowing down Bentley's arm. He looked behind Bentley for pursuers, but Bentley grabbed him and embraced his old friend. He took a moment to catch his breath.

“Thank the King… you are still here!”

“I would not go without you,” he replied in his broken speech. “You are my mission just as Holbrook is yours.”

Bentley hesitated for a moment but did not dare to spend the time needed to fully understand the implication of that statement. Still out of breath, he tried to convey what had transpired over the past weeks while Demus set to bandaging his arm. Bentley continued to talk as Demus helped Bentley don his armor. Though not a full suit of battle armor, it would have to do.

Demus handed Bentley's sword to him, and Bentley paused in their urgent preparation. He slid the sword from its scabbard and held the brilliant weapon before him. The King's seal was imprinted in the pommel, the same seal that signified that he was a knight whose heart belonged to the King… and now to His Son, the Prince.

Demus put his hand on Bentley's arm and met his eyes. “It is time, my brother. The Prince has called you to defend the weak and tear down the strongholds of Lucius.”

Bentley nodded as he made the final adjustments. “I must follow Eirwyn now, but there will be too many for me to rescue her alone.”

“You find Eirwyn, and I will ride to the haven at Thecia to seek help from the Knights of the Prince there. We will come to you as fast as possible.”

Bentley nodded again. It wasn't much of a plan, but there wasn't time for a better one. They hurried to the stable and prepared Silver-wood for the urgent journey ahead. Demus gave Bentley directions to where he believed the Lucrums dwelt in the Boundary Mountains. Just before Bentley mounted, Demus grabbed his arm.

“Be careful, Bentley. We are battling forces of wickedness in high places.”

“You be careful too, old friend.” Bentley mounted in haste, painfully aware that for each moment he delayed, Eirwyn would be taken farther away by the Ashen Knight and his evil men. With a final
nod to Demus, he pressed Silverwood into a full gallop and rode east toward the Boundary Mountains.

He guessed that by now he was at least two hours behind the raiders. His best chance to rescue Eirwyn would be before they arrived at the camp of the Lucrums. If that wasn't possible, all he could do was hope that Demus and his men would arrive in time.

He rode into the night until it was too dark and too dangerous to continue. Then he rolled up in the blanket from his saddlebags and slept a fitful few hours under a spreading oak. Before the upper rim of the sun had broken the horizon the next morning, Bentley was mounted and pressing onward toward the looming and majestic Boundary Mountains.

With each stride that Silverwood took, the peaks of the mountains seemed to grow. They stood like ominous giants, guarding the vast unknown beyond them. Bentley strained to see some sign that he was gaining on the Ashen Knight, but the landscape was too rugged to allow it. For all he knew, they might be right beside him, or they might have already arrived at their camp.

As Bentley drew closer to the foothills, another worry nagged at him. How could he possibly locate the camp of the Lucrums? He had only very general directions, and the mountains stretched north and south for as far as the eye could see. Bentley had no idea which direction he should journey.

“Like looking for a needle in a haystack, Silverwood. How will I ever find them?” Silverwood snorted and seemed to sympathize with his master. Time was passing quickly. It had taken Bentley all of the morning and most of the afternoon to reach the mountains. Each delay heightened his concern for Eirwyn.

Bentley rode to the top of one foothill, which was crowned with a tall, jagged rock. He tied Silverwood to a tree and took the time to climb to the top of the formation. From here, it seemed to Bentley that he could see forever. Behind him, the greenery of the trees flowed over the kingdom like a patched blanket, giving way at places to softer plains to
the south and rugged formations to the north. He could faintly make out the meandering line of the Crimson River and followed it until it disappeared in the distance. He turned and looked south, hoping for some evidence of the Lucrum habitation, but he saw no sign. He knelt down on one knee, discouraged.

“My Prince,” he whispered. “I have sworn to serve You, and I now journey to save the life of a maiden who is merciful to Your people. Help me not fail her or You.”

When he could not stand to be still any longer, he prepared to descend. He placed his foot into a rocky foothold and then froze. Just below him, on the opposite side of where he had tied Silverwood, he saw two men dragging an antlered deer. They were of similar appearance to the men who had accompanied the Ashen Knight when Eirwyn was kidnapped, but they spoke in a strange dialect that Bentley struggled to understand.

He crouched lower, hoping they would not look upward and that Silverwood would remain quiet. Bentley projected the path of their travel and noted the distinct mountain peak along that line. He waited until they were out of sight and far enough away not to hear his descent. Then he hurried to recover Silverwood and followed at a distance.

He hadn't gone far when he spotted the men lifting their game onto the back of one of their horses. Bentley continued following them into steeper terrain, where they navigated between two high ridges. Bentley began to see other signs that people had traveled this same route, and he became extremely cautious. Eventually he hung back so far he lost sight of them altogether. But by then he was no longer concerned about the location of their habitation. He was certain that the sparkling stream that flowed between the bases of these mountain ridges flowed from the mountain lake Walsch had first told him about—presumably the home of the “lake leviathan” the Ashen Knight had mentioned.

The base of the ridge they were following curved to the south. And then the mountains opened to a scene of primitive yet stunning
beauty—a circle of rugged mountains cradling a lush valley and a sparkling sapphire lake that filled over half of the open area. A waterfall ten times as large as the Crimson River falls in the Brimwood Forest spilled into the lake with a distant, thunderous concussion. Bentley had been told that this lake was bottomless, for no rushing river flowed from it, only the small stream that he had followed.

Bentley stayed to the cover of the trees and maneuvered until he could clearly see the habitation of the Lucrums on the western edge of the lake. They had carved steps and homes into the rocky cliffs of the exposed face of the mountainside. Below these, near the valley floor, there were other strangely shaped dwellings made of mud and wood. Bentley found a lofty vantage point and watched as the two Lucrums he had been following entered the peculiar mountain village. By the number of caves and huts, Bentley estimated that perhaps a thousand people lived here.

Bentley decided his best hope of getting closer to the village was to backtrack and circumnavigate the southern mountain ridge. He plotted his course, taking a mental picture of the landscape and calculating how it would look from a more southerly approach. Bentley led Silverwood back down to the base of the ridge, unsaddled him, and fed him a measure of grain. Then he hobbled him near a small stream before setting off on foot.

He began an arduous climb up and over the ridge that would allow him to come close to the village without being spotted. As he climbed, he noted that the rocky landscape on the ridges southern side was full of caverns and crevasses that would provide excellent cover should he succeed in procuring Eirwyn's escape. Finally he crawled to the top of the ridge where he could look down into the heart of the Lucrums’ village.

The closer he got, the more dreadful a place it seemed to be. Big piles of rotting garbage lined the outskirts of the settlement. The buildings appeared crude and primitive, garishly decorated with gold and silver booty from many raids. Screams and shouts punctuated the air at
regular intervals, though no one seemed to notice. The appearance of the women and children was as rough and ghastly as that of the men.

Bentley thought of Eirwyn in this place and pitied her for the fear she must be experiencing. He had no idea how he could possibly save her from whatever dreadful demise was planned. He only knew that he would give his life to do so.

Bentley soon became aware of some frenzied activity at the far end of the village. The Ashen Knight rode on horseback through the center of the village, holding a rope that drooped down and back toward a prisoner… Eirwyn. Bentley hoped she would be taken to a prison of some sort. Come evening he would devise a plan to break her free.

The Lucrums came out from their homes and began to dance about Eirwyn, chanting some strange incantation. Drums began to beat out an eerie rhythm as the Ashen Knight led her through the village. The women and children came close to Eirwyn and touched her arms, sides, and hair as if she were an artifact of great treasure and beauty. At first she recoiled from them, but there were too many, and eventually she slumped in resignation.

The Ashen Knight continued to lead her through the village and on toward the lake nearby, and Bentley began to fear the worst. It looked as though her sacrifice would happen immediately. Eirwyn passed close by Bentley's vantage point, and the look of anguish on her face made him clench his teeth in fury and frustration.

Not far from the village, at the southwest corner of the lake, a rock cliff bordered the water's edge, looming twice as tall as a man above the level of the lake. On the rim of this cliff, the Lucrums had fashioned a wooden balcony that jutted out over the edge of the lake. The balcony was two paces wide and followed the curved cliff edge for nearly forty paces. Angled supports rose up from indentations in the cliff wall to the underside of the wooden balcony. One section of the balcony widened to form a platform.

Bentley didn't understand why the balcony and platform were
there. But if the rumors of a lake leviathan were true, he suspected that the rock cliff kept the creature away from the village and the balcony was a way for the people to view the spectacle of their lake leviathan sacrifices more clearly.

The overall effect was indeed that of a bizarre watery amphitheater, with the center stage being a large flat rock twenty paces out from the edge of the water. The rock was fifteen paces across, and a tall, thick pole was planted rigidly into the center of it. Bentley could see that a long rope ran at an angle from a pulley on a raised support above the balcony platform down to a pulley at the top of the pole, then back to form a loop much like the lanyard of a flagpole. Eirwyn was taken to the balcony platform just below the support holding the shore end of the lanyard.

From his vantage point above the village, Bentley spotted another cliff that partially overhung a part of the balcony below. The top of the cliff was only the height of three men above the water at this point, though farther south it climbed to the height of the waterfalls at the far side. Trees lined the cliff right up to the very edge.

The Lucrums were so involved in their excitement that Bentley was able to reach this overhanging cliff undetected. He crawled to the edge of the cliff under the cover of the trees. Here he was directly above one section of the balcony. The balcony below him and all along the shores edge quickly filled with chanting village men.