The masked bandit pointed Jayden towards some rails attached beneath the pier. Jayden looked ahead, he could see that the rails were placed roughly half a metre apart, making it easily possible to swing from rail to rail all the way along the pier.

The bandit gestured again with the point of his knife. Jayden jumped out of his boat and onto the rails, gradually swinging from rail to rail as he worked his way towards the docks. After about 30 swings, Jayden was starting to feel exhausted, and he stopped to catch his breath.

"Keep moving," the voice hissed, "They're gonna see your boat soon, and then they'll know exactly where we are."

Jayden quickly rolled his shoulders and started swinging again. Every time he caught sight of the bandit out the corner of his eye, the bandit seemed to have one hand on the railing and the other hand holding the dagger pointing at Jayden. And every time Jayden slowed down, the sharp point of the dagger poked into the nape of his neck, encouraging him to keep moving as fast as he could.

It wasn't quite like a lion chasing you, Jayden thought, but he was certainly motivated to move fast. He pushed himself beyond his ability, his exhaustion rapidly building, his muscles starting to ache. But with the sharp encouragement of the bandit, he pushed through the exhaustion and kept moving towards the end of the pier.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Finally, he could see land approaching. There were probably only 20 swings left to reach the end of the pier. Jayden was just psyching himself up for the last push when the bandit hissed again, "Stop. We're gonna swing onto the pier now."

The bandit cinched to the end of the railing, near the edge of the pier, and then swung out, holding onto the rail with one hand, and grabbing the edge of the pier with the other. Then he quickly pulled himself up out of sight.

Jayden had a choice now. He could dive into the water and swim away. But just as he was hesitating, a light shone onto his skiff at the end of the pier, and the voices that had dropped a little, started to shout loudly again, highlighting the discovery of his empty skiff.

"Come on!", hissed the gravelly voice from above the pier, "We don't have much time. They're going to start looking for you on land now." Jayden quickly swung up onto the pier and stood beside the bandit.

The bandit started running down the last few metres of the dock and into a street lined by large warehouses. Jayden followed as quickly as he could, even as the dock area started to light up with ship lights beaming along the pier and towards land.

Fortunately, he was already cutting into a side alley by the time the lights shone down the full length of the pier and into warehouse streets.