As they paced toward her, Kassandra’s mind whirred. “Have you only one ear as well as one eye, Cyclops? I said I came to face you, not your thugs.”
The Cyclops’s lips twitched, then he flicked a finger to direct his four men. “Tear her legs so she can never walk again, then drag her aboard and I will take her head once I have finished drowning this old sot.”
As he half turned back toward Barnabas, she plucked the obsidian eye from her purse and lifted it up to catch the sun. “Look what I found in your home.”
The Cyclops swung back to face her, his good eye growing moonlike. He rumbled with an evil, low laugh. “Oh, you will pay dearly for that…” He and his remaining six men dropped down from the boat, stalking out around her like a noose. Ten men and the Cyclops? Bravery and folly oft ride in company, Nikolaos hissed. Fight wisely, never overcommit.
A rough bleating sounded behind her, and the next step of the plan was born. She turned to the goat cropping on grass behind her. “Perhaps I should stow the eye for safekeeping?” she suggested, motioning toward the goat’s rear, lifting its tail.
The Cyclops froze, aghast. “You would not dare!”
Kassandra smiled by way of reply, popping the eye in her mouth to moisten it, then shoving it deep into the goat’s anus. The goat’s head rose with a startled bleat, confused, before she slapped its rump, causing it to bolt between two of the Cyclops’s men, off up the bay and over the horizon.
The Cyclops howled. “Catch the damned goat, get my eye,” he screamed. Three set off after the creature.
Three fewer bastards to deal with, she thought.
The Cyclops and the remaining seven now crouched like hunting cats, facing Kassandra. “A bag of silver to the one who rips open her throat,” he drawled.
She took the guard ax stolen from the Cyclops’s den in one hand and the Leonidas spear in the other, watching, waiting for the first to move. The meanest-looking of the thugs, bald with heavy gold earrings and a leather kilt, wriggled a little. When he lurched forward, she threw up spear and ax in an X to block, but the blow sent her staggering back toward those behind. She pivoted midstride to meet the expected attack from that direction, only to see the streaking shadow of Ikaros, swooping down to claw at the eyes of the brute behind her, saving her from his wicked-looking sickle. She swung to face her next attacker, parrying then chopping the ax into his shoulder, cleaving deep and bringing a gout of black blood. The foe fell away and she saw the next coming for her. She bent her body around his sword thrust and jabbed the Leonidas spear into his face. He fell with an animal moan, his head ruptured like a melon. Two more lunged at her now. One scored her breastbone with a swipe of his spear, and the other nearly crushed her head with a heavy iron mace. Too many… and the Cyclops himself was weighing up his moment to strike the killing blow. A Spartan must have the eyes of a hunter, see everything, not just that which lies before them, Nikolaos berated her. From the edges of her vision, she saw something on the Adrestia’s decks: the ship’s spar and the rope holding it in place—one end knotted by the rail. As the two oncoming thugs screamed, she ducked, avoiding their twin strikes, and tugged the ax from the cloven chest of the first she had killed. Rising, she hurled the ax toward the ship. She did not wait to see if her aim had been good, turning to block another attack. The next thing she heard was the thunk of the ax biting through rope and into timber, the groan of wood, the roar of the Cyclops charging at her, his heavy blade tensed and ready to slice across her belly. Then the shadow of something passed overhead. The spar—freed—pivoted around on the mast, the rope flailing past overhead. Kassandra leapt up to grab the brine-wet rope and clung on for dear life, just as the Cyclops’s blade cut through the space she had been occupying. The rope dragged her through the air, and she kicked out at the Cyclops, smashing his nose in with her heel, then swept around like a stone in a sling, shooting free of the ring of thugs and toward the ship. She let go of the rope and slammed against the vessel’s rail then levered herself onto the deck. She ran to Barnabas and sliced through his bonds, then those of the nearest crewmen. They leapt up, panicked.
“Be ready,” she berated the crew, turning toward the stern and the shore. She heard the Cyclops’s breathy rage, seeing the ropes tossed up from the shore snagging on bolts and timbers then tensing as the brute and his thugs climbed. The crew tossed hooks and poles to and fro, then rushed to the stern rail to batter at the climbing men, knocking some off like limpets. But the Cyclops was too strong. He reached the rail, slashed up and ripped open the neck of one crew member, who toppled into the shallows. He and three thugs managed to reboard. When the one-eyed giant lunged toward Kassandra, the fretting, unarmed Barnabas staggered into his path, and the Cyclops tensed his blade, ready to slice the man out of the way. Kassandra grabbed a fishing pole—affixed with a spike on the end—and launched it across the deck at the giant. The makeshift javelin hammered into the Cyclops’s chest, threw him backward and pinned him to the mast. The brute’s good eye flared in anger and disbelief, before a gout of dark blood leapt from his mouth, followed by a rattling breath. Finally, he slumped into death.
The few thugs still fighting now backed away, gawping, all confidence gone. They leapt from the boat and sped up the bay.
“The Cyclops of Kephallonia is… dead?” one crewman stammered.
“The island is free from his terror,” croaked another.
Barnabas, still soaking and somewhat bedraggled, came before Kassandra, stared at her, then fell to one knee like a dropped cloak. He gazed up at her in awe and veneration. Just then, Ikaros swooped in and landed on her shoulder. “Daughter of Ares?”
“Kassandra,” she replied, waving him up then casting an eye over the strewn bodies and the clay pot. “I had heard of some grudge between the Cyclops and the triearchos of this boat. I didn’t realize how severe it was.”
Barnabas rose with a deep sigh. “What happened with the Cyclops was a misunderstanding, shall we say. I was in Sami recently enjoying a meal in the dockside tavern there. When I say a meal, I mean a bucketful of wine. I grew rather merry and decided to tell the locals a tale of a past voyage, about a thing I saw out in the islands—while I was hideously drunk, admittedly… but I did see it: a horrifying creature, ugly beyond description. I mentioned the words ‘one-eyed monster’ and our friend back there rises, kicking over his table. He thinks I’m talking about him, you see, and chases me from the place. We were lucky to escape the Sami docks before he could catch us. But it seems he watched for my next landing, because as soon as we put into shore here, he and his men pounced.”
“Yes, the Cyclops tends… tended to take that kind of thing personally.” Kassandra half smiled.
Barnabas’s sun-darkened face slackened in relief as he beheld the Cyclops’s body and then the clay pot. “After spending most of my life at sea, it would have been absolutely shameful to drown in a pot. I owe you my life. We all do. Yet I can never repay you but with my loyalty.”
“The use of your ship for a time would be payment enough,” she said.
“A journey?” he asked. “I will take you anywhere, Misthios. To the edge of the world, if needs be.”
The Adrestia left Kleptous Bay behind and sailed around the island to the harbor of Sami. There it remained at anchor for a time while Barnabas’s men gathered provender and supplies for the journey that lay ahead, the crew trooping back and forth across the gangplank with sacks laden on their shoulders. Kassandra rested one elbow on the ship’s rail, her mind already at sea, the babble of the docks, the screeching of gulls and the clack of cups from the nearby taverns incessant around her.