He discarded the handle and was able to scramble to his feet before they fell upon him, and he stumbled backward as they approached with his hands out-stretched, knowing full well he could not possibly last long against their tusks and fangs without the reach of the scythe.
“Dravidian!” Shekalane shouted.
He whirled around to face her, assuming it would be the last time he would ever look upon her face. But she threw something to him; and when his hands grasped its shape he knew they would survive.
For he held in his hands the truest of a ferryman’s tools. That which was nothing of what it could be if not wielded by a true ferryman.
He held in his hands the Ferryman’s Oar: an oar unlike any other, for the edges of its paddle were sharpened like killing steel, and the hollow of its sha
