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.
Oliver did a cartwheel, leaped and spun with joy, and came down frozen in place, looking out to the north side, to the open channel and the tall fin—thrice his height, at least—that had come up through the dark waves.
Luthien’s smile disappeared as he considered his friend’s sudden expression, then shifted his gaze to consider its source.
The dorsal fin sent a high wake in its speeding path, dropped to half its height, then slipped ominously under the water altogether.
Luthien, trying to remember all the advice his local fishermen had ever given to him, stopped the crank, even back-pulling it once to halt the ferry’s momentum.
“Crank!” Oliver scolded, running forward, but Luthien grabbed him and held him steady and whispered for him to be quiet.
They stood together as the water around them darkened and the ferry shifted slightly to the south, nearly snapping its guide rope, moved by the passage of the great whale as it brushed under them. When the whale emerged on the other side, Oliver glimpsed its full forty-foot length, its skin patched black and white. Ten tons of killer. The halfling would have fallen to the deck, his legs no longer able to support him, but Luthien held him steady.
“Stay calm and still,” the young Bedwyr whispered. Luthien was counting on the cyclopians this time. They were beasts of mountain holes and surely knew little about the habits of dorsal whales.
The long fin reappeared starboard of the craft, moving slowly then, as if the whale had not decided its next move.
Luthien looked behind at the eagerly approaching cyclopians. He smiled and waved, pointing out the tall dorsal fin to them.
As Luthien expected, the cyclopians spotted the great whale and went berserk. They began scrambling all about the deck of their ferry; the one on the crank began cranking backward, trying to reverse direction. A few of the brutes even climbed up to their guide rope.
“Not such a bad idea,” Oliver remarked, looking at his own high rope.
Luthien turned his gaze instead to their loyal mounts, and Oliver promptly apologized.
Then Luthien looked back to the great whale, turning now, as he had expected. The cyclopians kept up their frenzy, disturbing the water, inadvertently calling the whale to them.
When the behemoth’s course seemed determined, Luthien went back to the crank and began easing the ferry ahead slowly, so as not to attract the deadly whale’s attention.
With typical cyclopian loyalty, the cyclopians chose one from their own ranks and threw the poor brute into the water ahead of the approaching whale, hoping that the behemoth would take the sacrifice and leave the rest of them alone.
They didn’t understand the greedy nature of dorsal whales.
The black-and-white behemoth slammed the side of the cyclopians’ ferry, then, with a flick of its powerful tail, heaved itself right across the flat deck, driving half of the pitifully small craft under water. Cyclopians flew everywhere, flailing and screaming. The dorsal slipped back under the water, but reappeared on the ferry’s other side. The whale’s head came right out of the water, a cyclopian in its great maw up to the waist, screaming and slapping futilely at the sea monster.