R. Salvatore - The Sword of Bedwyr

“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.

More swells came in under them, grinding the ferry against the stone, splintering wood. Luthien dove to the deck and crawled across, grabbing hold of the fallen man and pulling him back up out of the water. The captain called for his crewman to crank, but then spat curses instead, realizing that with the other end of the guide rope unsecured, the ferry could not possibly escape the current.

“Bring Riverdancer!” Luthien called to Oliver, understanding the problem. He scrambled to the back of the raft and took up the loose guide rope, then looked about, finally discerning which of the many stones would best hold the rope. He moved to the very edge and looped up the rope, readying his throw.

A swell nearly sent him overboard, but Oliver grabbed him by the belt and held him steady. Luthien tossed the rope over the rock and pulled the loop as tight as he could. Oliver scrambled onto Riverdancer’s back and turned the horse around, and Luthien came up behind, tying off the rope onto the back of the saddle.

Gently, the halfling eased the horse forward and the rope tightened, steadying the rocking ferry. Oliver kept the horse pressing forward, taking up any slack, as Luthien tied off the guide rope. Then they cut Riverdancer free and the cranking began anew, easing the ferry out of the inlet and back out from the rocks. A great cheer went up from the captain, his crewman, and the four other passengers.

“I’ll get her into Diamondgate’s dock,” the captain said to Luthien, pointing to a wharf around the outcropping of rocks. “We’ll wait there for a ferry to come for us from the other side.”

Luthien led the captain’s gaze back into the channel, where the other ferry, teeming with armed cyclopians, was now working its way into the channel.

“All the way across,” the young Bedwyr said. “I beg.”

The captain nodded, looked doubtfully to the makeshift guide rope, and moved back to the front of the ferry. He returned just a few moments later, though, shaking his head.

“We have to stop,” he explained. “They’re flying a yellow flag on the Diamondgate dock.”

“So?” put in Oliver, and he did not sound happy.

“They have spotted dorsals in the other side of the channel,” Luthien explained to the halfling.

“We cannot take her out there,” the captain added. He gave the pair a sincerely sympathetic look, then went back to the bow, leaving Luthien and Oliver to stare helplessly at each other and at the approaching boatload of cyclopians.

When they reached the Diamondgate dock, Luthien and Oliver helped everyone to get off the ferry. Then the halfling handed the captain another sack of coins and moved back to his pony, showing no intention of leaving the boat.

“We have to go on,” Luthien explained to the gawking man. They both looked out to the two hundred yards of choppy dark water separating them from Eriador’s mainland.

“The flag only means that dorsals have been spotted this morning,” the captain said hopefully.

“We know that the cyclopians are very real,” Luthien replied, and the captain nodded and backed away, signaling for his crewman to do likewise, surrendering his craft to Luthien and Oliver.

Luthien took the crank and set off at once, looking more to the sides than straight ahead. Oliver remained in the stern watching the cyclopians and the curiously forlorn group they had just left at the dock. Their expressions, truly concerned, set off alarms in the normally unshakable halfling.

“These dorsals,” Oliver asked, moving up to join Luthien, “are they very big?”

Luthien nodded.

“Bigger than your horse?”

Luthien nodded.

“Bigger than the ferry?”

Luthien nodded.

“Take me back to the dock,” Oliver announced. “I would fight the cyclopians.”

Luthien didn’t bother to respond, just kept cranking and kept looking from side to side, expecting to see one of those towering and ominous black fins rise up at any moment.

The cyclopians passed Diamondgate, dropping two brutes off as they passed. Oliver groaned, knowing that the cyclopians would inevitably try to cause mischief with the guide ropes once more. But the halfling’s fears soon turned to enjoyment. The ropes were suspended quite high over the Diamondgate docks, and the cyclopians had to build a makeshift tower to get anywhere near them. Worse, as soon as the ferry with its cyclopian load had moved out a safe distance, the captain of Luthien’s ferry, his crewman, and the other passengers—even the injured one Luthien had pulled from the cold water—set on the two cyclopians, pushing them and their tower over the edge of the wharf and into the dark water.

At Oliver’s cheer, young Luthien turned and saw that spectacle and marked it well, though he had no idea then of how significant that little uprising might later prove.