“Have you met my horse?” Oliver asked politely.
The cyclopian roared and tried to rise, but a hoof crushed the side of its face.
Luthien was hurt more than he cared to admit. The wounds wouldn’t have been serious, except that he was engaged in a brutal fight at the moment and his head was pounding so badly that he could hardly see straight.
In fact, he saw not one but two halberd tips continually darting his way. He whipped the bow back and forth and backpedaled.
He walked right into a tree, and lost his breath in the surprise. The agile young Bedwyr fell to the side as the cyclopian, thinking him caught, jabbed straight ahead, the wicked halberd tip digging a fair-sized hole in the wood.
Luthien responded with a swing of his own, but he missed and cringed when he heard the bow crack as it struck the tree. He brought it back out in front of him: half of it was hanging by a splinter.
The cyclopian bellowed with laughter; Luthien threw the bow at it. The brute batted it aside and its laugh turned to a growl, but when it began to advance once more, the cyclopian found that its opponent now carried a sword.
Oliver’s pony was still dancing atop the groaning cyclopian when the halfling swung into the saddle. He meant to turn about and go help the young man who had come to his aid, but he paused, hearing whispers from inside the coach.
“Shoot him!” he heard a woman say. “Are you a coward?”
Oliver nodded in confirmation, guessing that she was talking to the merchant. Most merchants were cowards, the halfling believed. He hopped to a standing position atop his saddle, turned his pony beside the coach, and stepped lightly onto its roof, nearly tripping over the body of a cyclopian, a long arrow stuck deep into its face. Oliver looked down at his shoe, streaked with the cyclopian’s blood, and crinkled his face in disgust. A huge hand shot out suddenly, gabbing the halfling’s ankle and nearly knocking him over.
The cyclopian driver held on stubbornly, despite the arrow sticking into his chest. Oliver whipped him atop the head with the side of his rapier blade, and when the brute let go of the halfling’s ankle to grasp at its newest wound, Oliver kicked it in the eye. The cyclopian gurgled, trying to scream, and tumbled backward off its seat, falling in a heap behind the nervous horse team.
“Count your luck that you did not mess my fine and stolen clothes,” the halfling said to him. “For then I would surely have killed you!”
With a derisive snort, the halfling picked his way to the other side of the coach’s roof and knelt down on one knee. A moment later, the plump arms and head of the merchant appeared, holding a crossbow and pointing it in the general direction of Luthien and the last remaining soldier.
Something tapped the merchant on top of his head.
“I do not think that would be such a wise idea,” he heard from above. Slowly the merchant turned his head upward to regard the halfling, on one knee still, with his elbow propped against his other knee, green-gloved hand, holding the rapier, against the side of his face, with his index finger tap-tapping against the side of his nose.
“I do not know for sure, of course,” the halfling went on casually, “but I think he might be a friend of mine.”
The merchant screamed and tried to wheel about and bring the crossbow to bear on this new foe. The rapier snapped suddenly, flashing before the fat man’s eyes, and he froze in shock. As soon as his senses recovered and he realized that he hadn’t been hit, he tried to finish the move, even going so far as to pull the crossbow’s trigger, before he realized that the quarrel was no longer in place along the weapon’s shaft, plucked cleanly away by the well-aimed rapier.
Oliver held out his hands and shrugged. “I am good, you must admit,” he said. The merchant screamed again and disappeared into the coach, whereupon the woman set upon him, calling him “coward” repeatedly, and many other worse names.
Oliver sat in a comfortable crouch on the roof, enjoying it all thoroughly, and turned his gaze back to the continuing fight.
The cyclopian was working the long halberd fiercely, whipping it to and fro and straight ahead. The young man, to his credit, hadn’t been hit, but he was tumbling wildly and snapping his blade all about, apparently unaccustomed to facing so long a weapon.
“You must move straight ahead when he moves ahead!” Oliver called out.
Luthien heard him, but the strategy made no sense. He had fought against spear wielders in the arena, but those weapons were no more than eight feet long. The shaft of this halberd nearly doubled that.
Luthien started forward, as instructed, on the cyclopian’s next thrust, and he caught the tip of the halberd on his right shoulder for his effort. With a yelp, the young man fell back, grabbing his sword in his left hand and favoring the stung shoulder.
“Not like that!” Oliver scolded. “Do not thrust in an angle that is complementary to your enemy’s line of attack!”
Still hard-pressed, Luthien and the cyclopian paused for an instant to wonder what in the world this curious halfling was talking about.
“Do not line up your body with the enemy’s closest tip,” Oliver instructed. “Only a silly viper snake would do that, and are you not smarter than a silly viper snake?” The halfling then launched into a long dissertation about the proper methods of parrying long weapons, and of fighting silly viper snakes, but Luthien was no longer listening. A sweeping cut forced him to spin away to the side; a straight thrust for his abdomen had him jerking his rump far out behind him, doubling over. The cyclopian retracted and poked ahead again, thinking he had the young man off balance. He did, indeed, except that Luthien hurled himself facedown to the ground right behind the retracting blade. The halberd’s tip as it came jabbing back scratched Luthien’s behind but caused no serious damage, and Luthien spun about on the ground and scrambled ahead, grabbing the halberd shaft in his right hand and pulling it down as his sword came whipping up. The long weapon cracked apart.
“Well done!” came the halfling’s cry from the top of the coach.
The cyclopian was not unarmed, though, still holding a broken shaft that now effectively served as a spear. Oliver’s cheer had barely left his mouth when the one-eyed brute growled and pushed ahead, catching Luthien as he tried to stand. Down went the young man, apparently impaled.
“Oh,” the halfling groaned as the roaring cyclopian put his weight behind the spear and began to grind and twist it mercilessly. On the ground, Luthien squirmed and squealed.
Oliver put his grand hat over his heart and lowered his head in respect. But then the cyclopian jerked suddenly and straightened, letting go of his weapon. He stumbled backward several steps and tried to turn, and Oliver saw that he was grabbing his belly, trying to hold in his spilling guts. Back on the ground, Luthien’s sword, the top half of the blade bloodied, was sticking straight up. Luthien sat up, tossing the spear aside, and Oliver laughed loudly as he recognized the truth of the matter. Luthien hadn’t been impaled; he had caught the cyclopian’s blade under his arm and rolled to the side as he fell to disguise the ruse.
“Oh, I do think that I am going to like this one,” the halfling said, and he tipped his hat to the victorious Luthien.
“Now, cowardly fat merchant-type, will you admit that you are defeated?” Oliver called, rapping the coach door with his rapier. “You may get out now, or come out at the end of my so fine rapier blade!”
The door creaked open and the merchant came out, followed by a painted and perfumed lady wearing a low-cut-up-high and high-cut-down-low silken crimson gown. The woman eyed the halfling incredulously, but her expression changed when she noticed the handsome young Bedwyr as he walked over to join the group.
Luthien caught her lewd gaze and returned it with an incredulous smirk. He immediately thought of Avonese, and his left hand unconsciously tightened on the hilt of his bloody sword.