The bushes quivered. Something rose out of the foliage. A man’s been hiding there, Garric thought; but as the shadow continued to extend up the wall of the tower, he knew he was wrong.
It was a snake. From the size of the head rising toward him, it was a snake as long as the tower was high.
“Metron!” Garric said. “Stop that thing!”
He tried to draw his sword and almost dropped Thalemos. The youth cried out again and wrapped his arms tightly around Garric’s neck. That took care of the problem of dropping him, but trying to fight the creature while burdened with this terrified weight would be an exercise in futility.
Terrified. Garric remembered the effect the viper on Serpent’s Isle had on Tint. No wonder she was silent: she was paralyzed with fear!
“Quickly!” the wizard wheezed. “I’m losing you!”
“Gar!” Tint screamed despairingly, and leaped. She touched the sheer wall twenty feet above the ground and got enough purchase from it to spring another dozen feet upward. She grasped the serpent behind the head with all four limbs and bit viciously into the neck.
“Quickly!” said Metron.
Garric felt the beginning of another shift, of down preparing to become a plunge of fifty feet to the base of the tower. He sprinted forward, clearing his sword. If Thalemos couldn’t hold on by himself, Thalemos was going to have to learn how to fly.
The snake twisted like a straw touched by flame. It couldn’t reach Tint, but it battered her against the side of the tower. She hung on at the first impact, but the second flung her loose. She sailed through the air, already balling her limbs beneath her for a safe landing.
The snake struck, snatching the beastgirl out of the air. Her bleat ended in a crunch of bones. The snake curled its forebody to the ground, lifting its head slightly. It tossed the frail corpse and caught it again, headfirst this time for easy swallowing.
Garric felt the ground rising to meet him. He jumped, flexing his knees, and fell the last ten feet without harm. The shock pulled Thalemos away from him, but that was a side benefit. Garric stepped toward the snake.
“Get over the wall!” Metron was saying. “It won’t climb the wall!”
The snake’s jaw hinge dislocated, letting its mouth open still wider. Its left eye glittered at Garric beneath spike-scaled brows. A membrane slid sideways, wiping the cornea. Only Tint’s feet were still visible.
Garric slashed as though he were splitting wood, striking the small scales on the back of the snake’s neck; bone grated beneath his edge. A spasm rippled down the whole long body, throwing distant plantings about as if a tornado had struck the garden.
The snake twisted onto its back, exposing its broad, pale belly scales. Its midbody struck the tower with a whack like cliffs meeting. Someone in the street shouted.
Tint’s feet vanished. The slight bulge of the beastgirl’s body shivered farther down the serpent’s throat, drawn by reflexes inexorable even in death. Garric paused with his sword lifted for another blow; he shot the blade home in its scabbard instead.
He turned. Thalemos was watching aghast. Garric caught his arm.
“Follow me!” he said as he started back the way he’d entered the garden. “Put your feet where I do!”
As Garric ran, he wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. If he missed his path for the tears, then Tint would have died for nothing.
Though Sharina stood beside the flutist who blew time for the sailors launching the nearby trireme, even she could scarcely hear the notes over the bedlam of the fleet loading. Either the sailors had better hearing or, more likely, they could have kept pace in their sleep by virtue of their repetitive training.
Across the U-shaped Arsenal, another trireme splashed into the water. The men who’d launched her with block and tackle gave over to a separate crew on tow ropes, drawing the ship to the boarding quay. There most of the hundred-plus crewmen waited, holding their oars upright like a thicket of blighted saplings. Only the helmsman and a dozen rowers were aboard, ready to fend the lightly built vessel away from trouble.
Pulleys squealed; pine keels shrieked in a chorus against the polished limestone draw-ways, despite the buckets of water passed hand to hand up the ramps and poured at the top for lubrication; petty officers snarled commands at men who weren’t where they were supposed to be or were sloppy in getting there; and louder than all the rest, the huge crowd of watching civilians chattering provided a deafening susurrus of excitement.
King Carus broke away from his circle of advisors and walked the short distance to where Sharina stood. He wore the field uniform of this day: short tunic, shoulder cloak with hood, and sandals laced to mid calf. He’d wanted to don the breeches and high boots in which he’d campaigned when he was in his own flesh, but Liane had pointed out that the best that would do was puzzle people. Other possibilities started at, “Prince Garric has gone mad,” and went downward from there.
“Are you impressed?” Carus said, bending his lips to Sharina’s ear.
She didn’t know what he expected her to say, so she told the simple truth: “It’s confusing. And it’s not just me; lots of people are confused, so it’s taking a long time.”
She didn’t point, but the clot of soldiers on the boarding quay across the harbor was self-evident. The two banks of oarsmen had boarded smoothly, but the heavy infantry who’d be riding as passengers in the inboard banks tripped angrily over their fellows and the oarlooms as they tried to reach places in the center of the vessel.
A flash of light made Sharina squint, then shade her eyes with a hand to see better. Lord Waldron himself was on the boarding dock, using his bare sword as a pointer. After she’d seen him, Sharina could even make out the rumble of the old soldier’s furious commands.
“Right,” said Carus approvingly. “Though they’re doing better than I’d expected. If efficiency were all that mattered, I’d have taken the ships downriver with just their crews and boarded the infantry off temporary stages at the Pool.”
An officer was trying to get past the Blood Eagles screening Carus; his breastplate was not only gilded but picked out with six very respectable jewels. The fellow’s voice was rising.
Carus paused in what he was saying to Sharina and turned his head, glancing toward the guard commander and the irate officer beyond him. The latter cried, “Prince Garric—”
“Lord Ghosli,” Carus said, thundering above the general noise, “get aboard the Lady of Valles now or surrender your command—and surrender your honor as well, so far as I’m concerned! Do you hear me, milord?”
Sharina blinked. Lord Waldron across the harbor could hear that order. Ghosli looked aghast, then furious. He turned and stamped away.
Carus shook his head in disgust. “Shouldn’t have said that, should I?” he muttered to Sharina. “Ghosli wants to take his horse aboard, can you believe that? But he uses his own money to buy extras for his men, and his regiment’d follow wherever he led them because of that. I shouldn’t have snapped his head off.”
Sharina cleared her throat; she didn’t have to repeat what Carus had already said, so instead she put her hand on his elbow, and remarked, “It’s my duty to remind you to be Prince Garric, your highness, so the fault’s mine.”
As she’d expected, Carus looked stricken at the thought his outburst had hurt her. Quickly, Sharina went on, “Why aren’t you boarding at the Pool then?”
The just-loaded trireme moved away from the quay on short strokes by a dozen oarsmen. The slender hull wobbled badly as the infantrymen seated themselves on the cramped inner benches, but the noncoms were sorting matters out. A tow crew slid another vessel into place.