“Stop, fool!” Tang ordered. By the panicked cries echoing across the pond, the prince knew that his boatpusher was not the only soldier to suffer a snake bite. “Do you mean to capsize us?”
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 behemoths 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 commanded. “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 of their comrades fell. Thinking that perhaps he had a natural aptitude for military leadership, Prince Tang flicked another serpent into the water and commanded his boatpushers forward, then turned to face the cavern.
He found Cypress roosting on the toppled tree outside the cavern. The dragon looked half-again 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 earlier 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 weak 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 company 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, returning 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 unfortunate 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 suffused his entire being, filling him with a hot, queasy sensation 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 sickening 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 forward, 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 himself 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 wyvern’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 sinuous 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 wyvern’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 blossoming around the man’s head suggested his nose was bleeding profusely.