They walked their mounts easily onto the boards of the thirty-foot wharf, passing two workers without incident. A third man, one of the cargo workers, approached them smiling.
“Next barge is an hour before the noon,” he explained cheerily, and he pointed to a small shed, starting to explain where the travelers could rest and take a meal while they waited.
“Too long!” Oliver cried suddenly, and off leaped Threadbare, Riverdancer charging right behind. Men dove out of the way; the two visible cyclopians shouted and scrambled, producing short swords from under their cloaks. As Oliver had predicted, every third barrel began to move, lids popping off and falling aside as cyclopians jumped out.
But the two companions had gained surprise. Riverdancer sprang past Oliver’s pony and blasted past the two cyclopians, hurling them aside. Oliver moved Threadbare to the edge of the wharf, along the row of barrels, and managed to bump more than a few as he rushed by, spinning them into the drink.
The slow-moving ferry was fifteen feet out when Luthien got to the end of the wharf, no great leap for powerful Riverdancer, and the young man held on tight as he soared across.
Oliver came next, sitting high and waving his hat in one hand as Threadbare flew across, coming to a kicking and skidding stop, banging into Riverdancer atop the smooth wooden barge. Back on the wharf, a dozen cyclopians shouted protests and waved their weapons, but Oliver, more wary than his less-experienced companion, paid them no heed. The halfling swung down from his mount, his weapons coming out to meet the advance of a cyclopian that suddenly appeared from among the piles of cargo.
The rapier and main gauche waved in a dizzying blur, a precise and enchanting dance of steel, though they seemed to come nowhere near to hitting the halfling’s opponent. The cyclopian gawked at the display, sincerely impressed. But when the flurry was done, the brute was not hurt at all. Its one eye looked down to its leather tunic, though, and saw that the halfling had cut an “O” into it in a fine cursive script.
“I could write my whole name,” Oliver remarked. “And I assure you, I have a very long name!”
With a growl of rage, the cyclopian lifted its heavy ax, and Oliver promptly dove forward, running right between its wide-spread legs and spinning about to poke the brute in the rump with his rapier.
“I would taunt you again,” the halfling proclaimed, “but I see that you are too stupid to know that you are being taunted!”
The cyclopian howled and turned, then instinctively looked ahead again just in time to see Luthien’s fist soaring into its face. Oliver meanwhile had retracted the rapier and rushed ahead, driving his shoulder into the back of the cyclopian’s knees. Over went the brute, launched by Luthien’s punch, to land heavily, flat on its back. It struggled for just a moment, then lay still.
A splash made Luthien turn around. The cyclopians on the wharf had taken up spears now and were hurling them out at the barge. “Tell the captain to get this ferry moving,” Oliver said calmly to Luthien as he walked past. He handed Luthien a small pouch of coins. “And do pay the man.” Oliver walked to the stern of the ferry, apparently unconcerned with the continuing spear volley.
“You sniffers of barnyard animals!” he taunted. “Stupid oafs who poke their own eyes when trying to pick their noses!”
The cyclopians howled and picked up their throwing pace.
“Oliver!” Luthien cried.
The halfling turned to regard him. “They have but one eye,” he explained. “No way to gauge depth. Do you not know that cyclopians cannot throw?”
He turned about, laughing, then shouted, “Hello!” and jumped straight up as a spear stuck into the deck right between his legs.
“You could be wrong,” Luthien said, imitating the halfling’s accent and stealing Oliver’s usual line.
“Even one-eyes can get lucky,” the halfling replied indignantly, with a snap of his green-gloved fingers. And to prove confidence in his point, he launched a new stream of taunts at the brutes on the wharf.
“What is this about?” an old, weather-beaten man demanded, grabbing Luthien by the shoulder. “I’ll not have—”
He stopped when Luthien handed him the pouch of coins.
“All right, then,” the man said. “But tether those horses, or it’s your own loss!”
Luthien nodded and the wiry old man went back to the crank.
The ferry moved painfully slowly for the anxious companions, foot by foot across the choppy dark waters of the channel where the Avon Sea met the Dorsal. They saw cyclopians scrambling back on the wharf, trying to get the other ferry out of its dock and set off in pursuit. Luthien wasn’t too concerned, for he knew that the boats, geared for solid and steady progress across the dangerous waters, could not be urged on any faster. He and Oliver had a strong lead on their pursuers, and Riverdancer and Threadbare would hit the ground across the way running, putting a mile or more behind them before the cyclopians stepped off their ferry.
Oliver joined Luthien beside the horses, limping and grumbling as he approached.
“Are you injured?” a concerned Luthien asked.
“It is my shoe,” the halfling answered, and he held his shoe out for Luthien to see. It seemed intact, though quite dirty and quite wet, as if Oliver had just dipped his leg into the water.
“The stain!” Oliver explained, pushing it higher, near to Luthien’s face. “When I crossed the roof of the merchant-type coach, I stepped in the blood of the dead cyclopian. Now I cannot get the blood off!”
Luthien shrugged, not understanding.
“I stole this shoe from the finest boarding school in Gascony,” Oliver huffed, “from the son of a friend of the king himself! Where am I to find another in this too wild land you call your home?”
“There is nothing wrong with that one,” Luthien protested.
“It is ruined!” Oliver retorted, and he crossed his arms over his chest, rocked back on one heel, his other foot tap-tapping, and pointedly looked away.
Luthien did well not to laugh at his pouting companion.
A few feet away, the downed cyclopian groaned and stirred.
“If he wakes up, I will kick him in the eye,” Oliver announced evenly. “Twice.”
Oliver snapped his glare up at Luthien, whose chest was now heaving with sobs of mirth. “And then I will write my name, my whole name, my very long whole name, across your ample buttocks,” the halfling promised.
Luthien buried his face in Riverdancer’s shaggy neck.
The ferry was well over a hundred yards out by then and nearing Diamondgate Isle, the halfway point. It seemed as if the friends had made their escape, and even pouting Oliver’s mood seemed to brighten.
But then the guide rope jerked suddenly. Luthien and Oliver looked back to shore and saw cyclopians hanging from the high poles that held the ropes, hacking away on the rope with axes.
“Hey, don’t you be doing that!” the captain of the ferry cried out, running back across the deck. Luthien was about to ask what problems might arise if the guide rope was cut down behind them when the rope fell free. The young man got his answer as the ferry immediately began to swing to the south, toward the rocks of the island, caught in the current of the channel.
The captain ran back the other way, screaming orders to his single crewman. The man worked frantically on the crank, but the ferry could not be urged any faster. It continued at its snail pace and its deadly swing to the south.
Luthien and Oliver grabbed hard to their saddles and tried to find some secure footing as the ferry bounced in. The boat scraped a few smaller rocks, narrowly missed one huge and sharp jag, and finally crashed into the rocks around a small and narrow inlet.
Cargo tumbled off the side; the cyclopian, just starting to regain its footing, went flying away, smacking hard into the barnacle-covered stone, where it lay very still. One of the other passengers shared a similar fate, tumbling head over heels into the water, coming up gagging and screaming. Threadbare and Riverdancer held their ground stubbornly, though the pony lurched forward a bit, stepping onto Oliver’s unshod foot. The halfling quickly reconsidered his disdain over his dirty shoe and took it out of his pocket.