by Troy Denning
The man looked up. "What does it matter? I die anyway. We all die!"
Tang slapped the man. "Poison makes bite bleed and hurt, but it does not kill-unless you spill us into swamp with alligators!" Though he was not particularly fond of serpents, the prince's poison trade had taught him more than a little about their venom. "Now stand up and return to duty."
Tang glanced up and saw another ropy form dropping out of the gloomy boughs overhead. He caught this snake on his sword and flicked it away, then quickly returned his eyes to the canopy. Though it was difficult to see into the murk above, it seemed to him that the branches were alive with slinking, writhing forms, all working their way into positions over his small flotilla of rafts. The behavior seemed most unnatural for snakes, which were usually more anxious to avoid trouble than start it.
Tang hazarded a glance at the rafts and was horrified to see his soldiers in a panic. They were lying prone on the logs, groaning over their bleeding bites and begging their ancestors for help, or they were dancing madly about on the logs, hacking at serpents and trying to stay beyond the reach of the voracious alligators. Many had failed already. The water was thick with severed limbs and shredded leather corselets, and some of the behe- moths in the water were even beginning to drift away, each clutching a drowned man in its crooked jaws.
"This is dragon's doing!" Tang yelled. "He fears to show himself!"
Another pair of snakes dropped into his dugout. He dispatched one, while the bitten boatpusher used his pole to fling the other to the alligators.
"Take up poles and go to cavern!" the prince com- manded. "Do not fear snakes! If you are bitten, you can still fight."
Incredibly, the soldiers ignored their attackers and obeyed. The alligators continued to pull men into the water, and the snakes continued to rain down on their heads, but the rafts started to drift forward. Now that the company had orders, the entire troop was focused on its goal, and it did not seem to matter how many ofthe›r comrades fell. Thinking that perhaps he had a natur il aptitude for military leadership, Prince Tang flick another serpent into the water and commanded his boc- pushers forward, then turned to face the cavern.
He found Cypress roosting on the toppled tree outside the cavern. The dragon looked half-agam as large as he had in the spicehouse, with scales so dark they seemed almost shadows in the murky swamp light. Perched beside Cypress were a pair of small wyverns that had been fluttering about the swamp during the prince's ear- lier visits. The creatures looked like huge iguanas, save that their thick tails ended in needle-sharp barbs and they had wings instead of forelegs.
Cypress's empty eye sockets swung toward the prince.
"Am I to assume you don't have the ylang oil?
Tang's knees nearly buckled. His grip grew so we A that he dropped his sword into the bottom of the boat.
"I have come for Lady Feng. Then we talk about oil."
There is nothing to talk about. Without the oil, you will find only death.
"I prefer that fate to disgrace of leaving venerable mother with you."
Tang retrieved his weapon, quietly relieved that Cypress had not yet recovered his voice. Without his breath weapon and magic spells, the dragon would not prove so difficult to defeat. The prince glanced over his shoulder, and when he saw the remains of his small com- pany still behind him, he raised his sword. His hand was trembling so badly that the blade wobbled like the mast of a tempest-tossed caravel, but he did not let that stop him from pointing it at Cypress.
"There is enemy! Do not be frightened. He cannot spray you with acid, and he cannot hurt you with magic!"
Tang's soldiers raised their spears and cheered bravely, then allowed their rafts to drift to a stop and glowered at the dracolich. Cypress opened his muzzle slightly, return- ing the troop's glare with a mocking, yellow-toothed grin.
The two wyverns licked their chops, and the alligators pulled two more men into the water.
The prince scowled at his men, unable to understand why they had stopped advancing. "Attack!"
"In what manner, Honorable Prince?" The question came from Yuan, who stood on the raft closest to Tang's dugout.
The order seemed clear enough to the prince. "Attack with swords and halberds, of course!"
Yuan allowed himself the briefest shake of his head, then turned to the troops. "Number One Raft, assault to right. Number Two Raft to center. Number Three to left, and others remain in reserve." When the men began to maneuver as ordered, the adjutant bowed to Tang. "Perhaps Brave Prince wishes to move to safer position behind reserves?"
Tang almost said yes, then remembered how his men had struggled to hide their laughter during General Fui's u-nfortunate slip of tongue. "No. I lead attack, as I say earlier."
Tang ordered his punt forward and was surprised by the strength of the fear that boiled up inside him. It suf- fused his entire being, filling him with a hot, queasy sen- sation as foul as bile. He felt flushed and dizzy and achy, as though he were physically ill, and it seemed that his whole body had suddenly gone weak. Cypress remained on his roost, flanked by his two wyverns and calmly awaiting the battle, his empty eye sockets never straying from the prince's dugout.
Tang chewed another lasal leaf, hoping that the sick- ening dread he felt was the result of a mind attack and not his own weak constitution. The haze inside his mind grew thicker, but his fear did not subside.
Cypress allowed the prince's dugout to advance almost into halberd-hurling range, then nudged the two wyverns. The beasts folded their wings and tipped for- ward, slipping into the swamp as quietly as alligators.
They dove beneath the surface, then swam toward Tang's boat, the bristling crests along their spines slicing through the scummy water like shark fins.
Tang dropped his sword and grabbed a boatpusher's halberd, then willed his heavy legs to carry him to the front of the punt. He braced his feet against the walls and tried to ignore the voice calling through the lasal haze inside his head, urging him to remember himsel* and take his proper place behind the reserves. The prince raised his halberd and watched the wyverns approach
They came more or less straight on, their spine crests cutting through the water to each side of the dugout. He angled his weapon to the right and thrust the blade into the water, aiming for the space between the creature's shoulder blades.
The halberd bit deep into the wyvem's thick hide and nearly jumped from Tang's hands. An unexpected scream of wild, brutal exhilaration burst from the prince's lips.
He clamped down on the weapon's shaft and dropped into a squat, both to drive the blade deeper and to keep from being jerked out of the dugout. The creature's head erupted from the water, filling the swamp with a loud, sizzling hiss.
Tang jerked his halberd free and swung the blade, axe- like, at the creature's head. The beast retracted its sinu- ous neck. Instead of counterstriking, it hissed again, wagging a forked tongue as long as a pennon flag.
Tang had seen whiptail lizards wag their tongues at prey often enough to know what was coming next. He dove into the bottom of the dugout and heard the wyvern's barbed tail swishing over his back. The sound ended in a slurpy thud, then a boatpusher-the snake- bitten one, judging by his delirious voice-screamed.
With a trembling hand, the prince grabbed his sword, dropped it, grabbed it again, and came up swinging in time to see the wyvem's tail jerk his boatpusher from the punt. The fellow landed facedown and did not move. So deadly and quick was the wyvern's poison that the man puffed up before Tang's eyes. The flesh on his hands and neck grew black and slimy, while the red stain blossom- ing around the man's head suggested his nose was bleeding profusely.
The wyvern flicked its victim off its tail, then dove back beneath the water and swam toward Number Three Raft. Tang remembered the other beast and spun around, half-expecting to feel a tail barb piercing his own flesh.
He found only an empty dugout, with a forsaken halberd and a pool of black slime to mark where the second boat- pusher had been standing a mom
ent before.
Tang's earlier jubilation had vanished like smoke into fog; now he felt helpless and frightened. If a halberd could barely scratch a wyvern, how would it pierce a dragon's thick armor? He had been a fool to come into this swamp without a wu-jen.
The men on Number Two and Number Three Rafts voiced their battle cries and thrust their halberds into the swamp. A pair of tails lashed out of the water almost as one, each driving a barb through a soldier's leather armor. Tang saw scales rippling as the wyverns pumped their victims full of poison, then a flurry of blades as his soldiers hacked at the beasts' sinuous tails.
In the next instant, the back end of Number Three Raft rose on a wyvern's back. The creature's wings beat the swamp as it struggled to raise the boat higher. Men tumbled into the water, screaming and slashing at alliga- tors. Finally, when the raft had grown light enough, the wyvern twisted sideways and flipped it.
Number Two Raft suffered a similar fate; then the two creatures dove beneath the surface and swam toward the rafts Yuan had held in reserve.
Tang grabbed a halberd and used it to push his punt after Number One Raft, which had nearly reached Cypress's roost. It was difficult to say whether the dragon was watching the approaching vessel or not. He held his head turned to one side and slightly cocked, so that one empty eye socket was turned toward the dark water and the other on the murky canopy. His scaly lips were slightly curled, as though he found the cacophony of howling voices a pleasant evening serenade.
Number One Raft scraped past a heap of shark skele- tons and stopped beside Cypress's roost, less than twenty paces from the dragon. Several men quickly formed a wall at the front of the craft while their companions gathered behind them.
Tang pushed harder, trying to catch up before they launched their attack. The voice in his lasal-clouded head kept urging him to turn back. The closer he came to his foe, the less he cared about the disrespect his men had shown him earlier-or the shame he would bring upon himself by failing to rescue his mother. Nevertheless, the prince continued forward, not because he cared about his men or was suddenly determined to prove that he was no coward, but because he knew that the only way to leave the swamp alive was to kill his foe.
Tang had almost caught Number One Raft when the men in the front hurled their halberds like spears. As the shafts arced toward the dragon, half a dozen soldiers leaped onto the toppled tree and rushed forward to attack. The boatpushers again started to move their clumsy vessel forward.
Cypress calmly brought a wing around to shield him- self from the flying halberds. The steel blades pierced the leathery scales easily enough, but lacked the force to drag the heavy shafts through the tough hide and pene- trate the dragon's body. One weapon splashed into the swamp, but most simply lodged themselves in a wing and dangled there like needles in an oxhide.
Cypress lowered his wing and swept the line of charg- ing warriors off the toppled tree, then hopped off his roost and landed in the middle of the raft. The boat settled a few inches beneath the water, but did not sink, and its occupants whirled on their foe in a flurry of flashing steel. Growling and hissing like one of his wyverns, the dragon lashed out with tail and wings and sent bodies splashing into the water on all sides.
Tang gave his punt another shove and stepped into the bow, praying his weak knees would have enough strength to hold him up when he leaped onto Number One Raft.
Before he arrived, Cypress raked his black talons down the length of the raft, severing the lashings that held it together.
The logs rolled apart, plunging all who had been standing upon them into the swamp. Tang's punt continued to glide forward, and somehow-perhaps because he was too frightened to move-the prince found himself standing fast in the bow, with a clear flank shot and Cypress looking the other way. The prince clamped his arms around his halberd and gathered his rubbery legs beneath him, determined that the dragon would not shrug off this strike as easily as the wyvern had shrugged off his first.
Tang was staring at the scale through which he intended to drive his halberd, so he did not see Cypress's wing sweeping toward him on the backswing. He simply heard an earsplitting thump, then found himself sailing over the toppled tree trunk with his gold-trimmed helmet flying in one direction and his weapon in another. He splashed into the warm water, sank to the bottom, and nearly got tangled in a bed of fish skeletons before he recovered his wits and kicked free.
His head ringing and his body aching. Tang broke the surface and peered over the log. The bog scum had erupted into a pink-tinged froth, with the dragon stand- ing waist-deep in blood and shark skeletons, battering his foes with wings and tail and calmly tearing their bod- ies apart with gore-dripping talons. The prince's warriors could do little to defend themselves. The legs of most were hopelessly tangled among the fish bones, and the rest could barely hold their chins above the water, much less swing their heavy blades powerfully enough to pierce
Cypress's thick scales.
The voice inside Tang's head shrieked through the lasal haze, reminding him that he was a Shou prince and should have fled long ago. He managed to ignore it for a short time, but when the alligators appeared at the fringe of the battle and began to drag away the wounded, the voice began to sound wise. Tang pushed away from the log and, moving very slowly to avoid attracting alli- gators, he slipped beneath the surface and swam toward the mountain.
Twelve
A sliver of pearly light split the mid- night gloom between the gate towers, and Ruha realized the guards of Moon- storm House were opening the gates for her. She lashed her mount with the ends other reins, urging the exhausted Shou prancer into the ragged sem- blance of a gallop. The two packhorses behind her snorted in protest, but had little trouble adjusting to the new pace. They were both larger than the witch's mount and, loaded with four sacks of ylang blossoms each, far less heavily burdened.
From behind Ruha came the clatter of firing cross- bows, followed instantly by the ringing echoes of iron bolts skipping across cobblestones. One of the packhorses screamed, and the witch's prancer stumbled as the train slowed. She twisted around and saw the last beast hob- bling badly. Like the animal ahead of it, its chest was covered in lather, and its eyes were bulging with fear and exhaustion.
Thirty paces down the deserted street, two dozen of Hsieh's guards lashed their mounts madly, making a last desperate effort to catch Ruha. As planned, they were closing the distance and doing everything possible to make it appear they truly wanted to succeed. The lead rider accepted a loaded crossbow from the man at his flank, then raised the weapon and fired. A dark streak flashed between him and the hobbling horse. The beast screeched and would have fallen had the other animals not dragged it along, stumbling and staggering.
Cursing her pursuers for heartless killers, Ruha blew a sharp breath in their direction and uttered a simple wind spell. A howling gust tore down the street, blasting the first three riders half out of their saddles. As they struggled to regain their balance, they were overtaken by the galloping throng at their backs; two more soldiers raised their crossbows. Hsieh had commanded his men to make a convincing show of the chase, and Shou were nothing if not obedient.
A chorus of strumming bowstrings sounded from atop the gate towers. The leading Shou riders sprouted arrows in their chests and fell from their wooden saddles. The rest of Hsieh's men whipped their reins around, guiding their horses into a sheltering alleyway.
Ruha's prancer clattered through the dark gateway of Moonstorm House into a spacious, hexagonal courtyard of ornamental trees and twining garden pathways. The witch reined in her mount, bringing the entire train to a halt and drawing a relieved nicker from the wounded packhorse. The enormous garden was enclosed by a milky wall, with slender, cone-roofed towers standing at each of the six corners. The castle had no central keep, nor, as far as the witch could tell, any sort of inner defensework at all.
Despite the excitement of the phony chase, Ruha found herself completely and utterly exhausted by the long ride from the G
inger Palace. This was her second night with- out sleep. She kept yawning behind her veil, and her eyes were burning with the need to close. She braced her hands on her saddle pommel and fought to clear her head; she could not allow herself to even think of resting, not until she had laid her trap.
Captain Fowler rushed from a gate tower's narrow doorway, followed closely by Vaerana Hawklyn, Tombor the Jolly, and Pierstar Hallowhand. Though the hour was well past midnight, they were still dressed in jerkins, tunics, and trousers. They had, no doubt, been up plan- ning tomorrow's assault on the Ginger Palace.
Fowler stopped beside Ruha and took her mount's foam-covered reins. "Are you well, Witch?" The half-ore scowled at the lather on his hand, then wiped it on his pants. "And what have you done to this poor beast?"
"Galloped him all the way from the Ginger Palace, by the looks of it," said Vaerana, joining them. She turned to Pierstar. "You'd better have someone rouse John the far- rier and his boys. These horses need some attention."
Pierstar stopped beside the wounded beast and winced at the two bolts lodged in its rump, then turned toward a tower in the back of the castle.
"I'll do it myself," he said. "And I'll send a patrol of Maces after those riders. I doubt we'll catch them, but I don't want them in the city. Those Shou can be sneaky."
Tombor the Jolly went to the first horse and stood on his toes so he could reach the knots. "Perhaps we should unload. Since Ruha risked her life to bring us this cargo, I assume it is of some importance."
"It is." The witch glanced at the cleric just long enough to nod, then stifled a yawn and dismounted. "It's the last ingredient the Cult of the Dragon needs to steal Yansel- dara's spirit-ylang blossoms. They arrived on the Gin- ger Lady with Minister Hsieh."
"Then you've saved Yanseldara!" Fowler's outburst was as much question as exclamation, but that did not stop him from folding Ruha into his arms. "Maybe now you can get me my gold."
"Not so fast." Vaerana went to help Tombor unload the pack train. "As I understand things, stopping the cult's not the same as saving Yanseldara."
