"Keep them away from me!" he shouted to the trio behind.
He bent low in the seat, urging the horses on faster.
Parissus, sitting to Entreri's right, mumbled something and slumped in hard against him, causing him to twist and inadvertently tug the reins and slow the team. With a growl, Entreri shoved back, not quite realizing that the woman had lost all consciousness. She tumbled back the other way and kept going, right over the side. Entreri grabbed at her but couldn't hold her and hold the team in its run.
He chose the wagon.
The woman rolled off, falling under the front wheel with a grunt, then a second grunt as the back wheel bounced over her.
Calihye cried out and grabbed at Entreri's arm, yelling at him to stop the wagon.
He turned to glower at her, to let her know in no uncertain terms that if she didn't immediately let go of him, he'd toss her off the other side.
She fell back in fear and pain then screamed again as another stream of acidic venom hit her in the face, blistering one cheek.
Hold on! Hold on!
That was all the poor, confused Davis Eng could think as the assault continued. Gone were his hopes for aiding his fallen friend, for he rode on the very edge of doom, disoriented, lost in a sea of hovering, biting, spitting serpents. Lines of blood ran down his arms and along the flanks of his horse, and angry blisters covered half his face.
"Abominations of Zhengyi!" he heard his beloved commander yell from somewhere far, far away—too distant to aid him, he knew.
He had to find a direction and bolt his horse away, but how could he begin to do anything but hold on for all his life?
His horse reared, whinnied, and spun on its hind legs. Then something hit it hard from the side, stopping the turn, and the soldier lurched over and could not hold on.
But a hand grabbed him hard and yanked him upright, then slid past him and grabbed at his reigns, straightening him and his horse out and leading them on.
So great was Mariabronne's control of his mount that the horse accepted the stinging hits from the abominations, accepted the collision with Davis Eng's horse, and carried on exactly as the ranger demanded, finding a line out of there and galloping away.
On the ground behind Mariabronne, the fallen soldier kept squirming and rolling, but he was obviously beyond help. It pained Mariabronne greatly to abandon him, but there was clearly no choice, for dozens of snake creatures slithered around him, biting him repeatedly, filling his veins with their venom.
The horses could outrun the creatures, Mariabronne knew, and that was this other soldier's—and his own—only hope.
The warrior woman cried out, bending low and slashing her axe through the air as her horse thundered on toward the soon-to-be-overwhelmed drow. He worked his arms frantically—and magnificently, Ellery had to admit—sending a stream of spinning daggers at the nearby snakes. He spun continually as well, his cloak flying wide and offering more than nominal protection against the barrage of acidic venom flying his way. Still, he got hit more than once and grimaced in pain, and Ellery was certain that he couldn't possibly keep up the seemingly endless supply of missiles.
She bent lower, winced, and nearly fell from her seat as a stream of caustic fluid struck the side of her jaw, just under the bottom edge of her great helm. She kept her wits about her enough to send her axe swiping forward to tear the wing from another of the snakes, but a second got in over the blade and dived hard onto her wrist and hand. Hooked fangs came forth and jabbed hard through Ellery's gauntlet.
The knight howled and dropped her axe then furiously shook her hand, sending both the gauntlet and the serpent tumbling away. She shouted to the drow and drove her steed on toward him, reaching out her free hand for his.
Jarlaxle caught her grip, his second hand working fast down low with a dagger, and Ellery's surprise was complete when she found herself sliding back from her seat rather than tugging the drow along. Some magic had gripped the dark elf, she realized, for his strength was magnified many times over and he did not yield a step as her horse galloped by.
She was on the ground in a flash, stunned and stumbling, but Jarlaxle held her up on her feet.
"What…?" she started to ask.
The drow jerked her in place in front of him, and Ellery noted faint sparkles in the air around them both, a globe of some sort.
"Do not pull away!" he warned.
He lifted his other hand to show her a black, ruby-tipped wand in his delicate fingers.
The woman's eyes went wide with fear as she glanced over Jarlaxle's shoulder to see a swarm of snakes flying at them.
Jarlaxle didn't show the slightest fear. He just pointed his wand at the ground and uttered a command that dropped a tiny ball of fire from its end.
Ellery instinctively recoiled, but the drow held her fast in his magically-enhanced iron grip.
She recoiled even more when the fireball erupted all around her, angry flames searing the air. She felt her breath sucked out of her lungs, felt the sudden press of blazing heat, and all around her and the drow, the globe sparked and glowed in angry response.
But it held. The killing flames could not get through. Outside that space, though, for a score of feet all around, the fires ate hungrily.
Serpents fell flaming to the ground, charred to a crisp before they landed. Off to the side, the wagon Entreri and Jarlaxle had unceremoniously abandoned flared, the corn in the supply bags already popping in the grip of the great flames. Across the other way, the body of the fallen soldier crackled and charred, as did the dozen serpents that squirmed atop it.
A puff of black smoke billowed into the air above the warrior and the drow. The wagon continued to burn, sending a stream up as well, its timbers crackling in protest.
But other than that, the air around them grew still, preternaturally serene, as if Jarlaxle's fireball had cleansed the air itself.
A wave of heat flashed past Entreri—the hot winds of Jarlaxle's fireball. He heard the thin man in the wagon behind him yell out in the surprise, followed by Athrogate's appreciative, "Good with the boom for clearin' the room!"
If the assassin had any intention of slowing and looking back, though, it was quickly dismissed by the plop of acidic spittle on the hood of his cloak and the flapping of serpent wings beside his ear.
Before he could even move to address that situation, he heard a thrumming sound followed by a loud whack and the sight of the blasted serpent spiraling out to the side. The thrumming continued and Entreri recognized it as Athrogate's morning stars, the dwarf working them with deadly precision.
"I got yer back, I got yer head," came the dwarf's cry. "Them snakes attack ye, they wind up dead!"
"Just shut up and kill them," Entreri muttered under his breath—or so he thought. A roar of laughter from Athrogate clued him in that he had said it a bit too loudly.
Another serpent went flying away, right past his head, and Entreri heard a quick series of impacts, each accompanied by a dwarf's roar. Entreri did manage to glance to the side to see the remaining woman, fast slipping from consciousness, beginning to roll off the side of the wagon. With a less-than-amused grimace, Entreri grabbed her and tugged her back into place beside him.
Entreri then glanced back and saw Athrogate running around in a fury. His morning stars hummed and flew, splattering snakes and tossing them far aside, launching them up into the air or dropping them straight down to smack hard into the ground.
Behind the two dwarves the thin man stood at the back of the wagon, facing the way they had come and waggling his fingers. A cloud of green fog spewed forth from his hands, trailing the fast-moving wagon.