Tired of waiting for something to happen, Boult turned his attention to his captors. The more humanoid yuan-ti, with their fancy golden anklets, seemed to be arguing with the legless slitherers about the steep path that started at the head of the waterfall and traversed the slope down into the basin. It would be a challenging walk for anyone with feet, and Boult couldn’t imagine the wide-bodied, heavily armored warriors making it along the narrow path.
As the argument between the Jumpers and the Slitherers intensified, a spear suddenly appeared above their heads. Although it was aimed in his general direction, Boult stared at it quizzically as it seemed to drift lazily across the gray sky. There was nothing threatening about it, just a pointy stick with a single blue feather and a metal tip. It hit one of the Slitherers, clattering uselessly against its armor and falling to the dirt.
Before anyone reacted to the spear, a much larger volley of darts whistled through the air. The cluster of tiny barbs soared out of the trees and hit the serpentfolk-but not Boult and his crewmates-with surprising accuracy. Even before all of the darts had found their targets, something short and wide barreled out of the underbrush, sprinting toward them at top speed and bellowing in a surprisingly loud and uncomfortably high-pitched manner.
Boult was the first one to register that it was a dwarf-a hairy, squat, overly confident dwarf. Despite the spear, the darts, and the dwarf running pell-mell in their direction, the serpentfolk seemed unconcerned, as if none of these things were worth a reaction. One of the Slitherers reached up to brush off the clump of darts that bristled across its back, but there was no collective effort to address the pending dwarven assault.
Boult was also the first one to register the words the dwarf was screaming, and when he did, he raised his eyebrows in surprise.
“What’s he saying?” Harp mumbled around his gag.
Boult would have been happy to tell him, but the gag was pressed against his tongue, the noisy dwarf was nearly upon them, and one of the serpentfolk finally drew its sword.
“What’s he saying?” Harp mumbled again, louder that time, as he tried to enunciate around the cloth in his mouth.
Knowing what was about to happen made Boult laugh. There was a good chance he would regret what he was about to do, but when such an opportunity presented itself, there wasn’t anything to do but take the plunge-literally. With a mighty leap, Boult sprang into the fast-flowing water just as the screaming dwarf reached them and pushed them into the river from behind.
Being bound together with the same rope, the men were dragged into the current behind Boult. As the water closed over his head, he glimpsed Harp smacking face-first into the waves, a look of shock on his features. The rapids carried them to the edge, Boult’s head bobbing above the waterline. Their situation was going to propel Harp out of his inaction or it was going to kill them; either way it was better than where they’d been just moments before. Besides, Boult had a feeling it was going to be the ride of his life.
Harp’s head popped out of the water near Boult just as they reached the edge. He was screaming something at Boult through his water-soaked gag, and it sounded like some unkind things about Boult’s mother. Boult gave him a wicked grin, and the world dropped away beneath them. It was an odd sensation, plummeting through the air surrounded only by an insubstantial film of water. Then he slammed into the lake, thankfully feet first.
That part was less fun. The impact took his breath away. All four crewmates hit at roughly the same spot in the lake, so body parts got tangled up, and Boult couldn’t get his legs under him to kick for the surface. For a fleeting moment, Boult thought he was drowning. And then someone grabbed the back of his shirt and hauled him up to the sunlight. When they broke the surface of the water, the noisy dwarf who had jumped over the waterfall with them was whooping up a storm.
“That’s the best idea you’ve ever had, Majida!” the dwarf yelled in Dwarvish. “I want to go again!”
An older, female dwarf was waiting at the edge of the lake. She waded into the water and helped drag Boult and the others out. The male dwarf began sawing through their ropes with a dagger while she loosened their gags.
“Damn, Boult,” Harp said, coughing up water. “Next time you want to kill me, just stab me in the heart, all right?”
“Kitto?” Boult asked. “Verran? You all right?”
The boys nodded. Verran was white-faced and shaky- and he looked a little angry. But Kitto looked amused, almost exhilarated, and Boult had the impression he’d go for another jump as well.
“It’s not over yet,” the female dwarf said in Common, pointing at the top of the waterfall. The Slitherers had disappeared from sight, but two of the bandy-legged Jumpers leaped off the edge, moving easily between the slippery rocks that stuck out from the cliff-face. The water drenched the leather of their armor and rolled off their scales, but the hooked talons on their feet steadied them until they located the next rock. As they leaped down the waterfall, they moved like overgrown frogs hopping between lily pads, which might have been amusing except Boult was still attached to the other men, and none of them had any weapons to defend themselves from the serpentfolk.
“Keep cutting,” Majida ordered.
“What are you going to do?” Zo asked.
“Just keep cutting,” she told him. Then she steadied herself and began chanting under her breath. The Jumpers had made it halfway down the falls, but the rocks were smaller there and the flow of the water was stronger, which forced them to slow their descent. Boult saw movement on one side of the bank as vines undulated like snakes under a charmer’s spell. When the first Jumper leaped to a lower rock, a vine lashed out and looped around its ankle. When it sprang from the rock, the vine yanked it backward and threw it off balance. Unable to adjust its body, it smashed headfirst against the boulders. The Jumper’s body hung limply on the edge of the rock before slipping headlong into the churning water.
The other Jumper paused as its dead companion was swept down the waterfall, almost as if it were in shock that the dwarves had managed to take out one of its kin. Having seen how ineffectual the darts and spears were against the Slitherers when they were at the top of the waterfall, Boult suspected that the yuan-ti considered the dwarves more of an annoyance than a threat. Hissing angrily, the Jumper glowered down at Majida, who glared back defiantly.
The Jumper leaped into the air, deftly avoiding another vine that cracked against the rock near its leg. In a flash of speed, it bounded to a higher rock and out of reach of Majida’s writhing vines. The Jumper coiled its body low and used its powerful legs to vault across the wide expanse to a muddy path on the side of the falls. Sprinting down the slope, the yuan-ti moved with startling speed. Just before it reached flat ground, it hurled itself into the air at Majida with its fangs and claws bared. Since Boult’s hands were still bound, he had the inclination to close his eyes. He couldn’t help Majida, and he’d rather not see the dwarf get her heart ripped out by the furious Jumper.
But Majida didn’t flinch at the sight of the creature soaring through the air. Just as it was about to crash into her, she reached down and yanked a spear off the ground. The Jumper couldn’t change the direction of its flight and rammed into the spear. It punctured its throat and slid out the back of its neck. The creature’s weight knocked Majida flat on her back and its blood splattered across her face and clothes. The dead Jumper slid down the spear and landed on her.
“Majida!” Zo said as he finished cutting through the soggy ropes. “Use a spell next time!”
“Force was called for,” Majida said nonchalantly, shoving the Jumper off to one side.