Crimson Shadow, The - R. A. Salvatore Page 0,31

would not be boring!

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