Michael Mathias - The Wizard and the Warlord

With just a little unease showing in his normally confident voice, Cade said, “Master Oarly, I assure you that the things in this lake are nothing like you’ve described. These beasts could swallow this barge whole, if they were so inclined.”

Oarly’s gulp was audible.

Captain Hodge led his group toward the Dragon Tooth. His three flat barges were in a line gliding swiftly through the narrow channel, approaching the formation from the west. As Bzorch had commanded, they split up. Hodge’s group, with two dragon gun crews and fifty of the best men, made a wide arc around the westward side of the spire.

The two groups had been separated for two days now. The plan called for them all to converge on the spire this day when the sun was at its zenith. Hodge was worried because his group was going to be late.

The maze of channels that would allow the boats passage had stymied them. Three times they had dead-ended, and once they’d spent more than an hour completely lost in vegetation so thick that they couldn’t even see the fang. Now it was midday and Hodge was supposed to be converging on the formation. He hoped that Bzorch would understand. They’d done the best they could, and now they were hurrying toward the black shark fin as quickly as possible.

Gzorith, the older of the two dragon gunners on Captain Hodge’s barge, noticed the captain’s grim look. “Bzorch will not hold it against you,” he grunted reassuringly. “It’s not like we had a chart or a map.” The big savage-looking breed giant paused to bat away a pest that was buzzing around his head. “The time it took to find channels that cut across the current of the river’s natural flow weren’t accounted for.”

“True spoken,” Hodge nodded. “But it’s not wise to point out your commander’s failures or misjudgments.” He chuckled away a little of his unease. Some loud, cackling creature sounded off deep in the green density around them. “Especially when something might eat you because of them.”

Gzorith boomed out a laugh. “I’ll tell Bzorch we all planned badly,” the breed giant boasted. “My kindred respect those who speak boldly. I don’t care if it’s a woman child who sees my mistakes and tells me about them. I’d rather know than not.”

“Bzorch won’t eat you, though,” the commander joked. “He might eat me, if he had the chance.”

“You’re wrong, Captain,” Gzorith said, growing serious. “When we were imprisoned on Coldfrost he would have eaten me quick. Do not let Lord Bzorch’s civility fool you. He is the lord of my people, whether the king says so or not. He is the most savage and brutal of us, which is why he holds his command. We not only respect him, but we fear him, as well. Lord Bzorch would lose respect for me if I let his errors go unchecked. He is constantly trying to be better and smarter. Without breed like him, my people would probably revert back to our more savage nature.”

Captain Hodge didn’t know what to say to any of that. He walked to the side rail, leaned out, and glanced back at the two boats following in their wake. It was hot and sticky, and clouds of gnats were everywhere. All the men were still standing ready, but since they hadn’t seen anything more than a few family groups of Zard they had grown bored.

The sound of someone shouting came to his ears. He froze in place, trying to make out the man’s words, but an eruption of chaos from the opposite side of the barge drowned them out. He was just about to push off the rail and go see what this disturbance was when a large splash sounded alongside the craft below him. He looked down curiously, and by the time he realized what was happening, it was too late.

An arm-thick tentacle lashed up and wrapped around his neck and began pulling him over the rail. Gzorith dropped his dragon gun and grabbed the captain’s feet just before they disappeared.

“Canzal! Gun! Gun! Gun!” the breed giant yelled at its kinsman.

Shouts were erupting from up and down the train of barges. A cloud of angry red finger-sized hornets were swarming out of the jungle, stinging the soldiers. The shadow of something large slowly crept by, eclipsing the sun for a moment. Gzorith ignored it and, as if he were in a rope tug contest, he yanked back savagely on the captain’s legs.

Canzal leaned over the rail, aimed at where the tentacle met the water, and fired. A small cloud of red bloomed a few feet below the surface.

Gzorith was yanked to the rail. Pulling back with all he had, something suddenly gave way and he and the captain lurched backward. Hodge landed on Gzorith in a jumble on the deck.

“I thought we’d lost you, Captain,” Gzorith said between breaths as he staggered to his feet.

“He’s not listening, Gzor,” Canzal said. He pointed at the headless corpse of Captain Hodge. Blood was still oozing out of the stump in thick pulses.

“Ahhhhgh!” one of the ropemen yelled as the line attached to the spear Canzal had fired tangled around his legs. Before anyone could even think, the breed giant was dragged across the deck and over the side of the barge. Canzal’s powerful hands gripped the rail for an instant, but he was being pulled so hard that they couldn’t keep hold.

Gzorith ran to his dragon gun and picked it up before it got caught in the tangle. From somewhere on their barge, men began to scream as the hornets found their flesh. Gzorith saw the dark shadow gliding across the surface of the channel at the edge of the tangled shoreline. He looked up. A Choska carrying a half-naked woman who strongly resembled the Dragon Queen passed casually over them. Gzorith was so transfixed by the sight that he didn’t even see or hear the barge behind him as it came up out of the water in a twisting roll, only to smash down on the deck of the trailing boat. Men shrieked and screamed and thrashed in the water as some were dragged under and some just disappeared in swirling clouds of crimson gore.

Gzorith raised his dragon gun and took careful aim at the Choska’s chest. He followed it a few feet and then fired. He knew without a doubt that his shaft was flying true, but he never had the chance to see it hit the Choska. Some bright red-winged thing the size of a small human raked his eyes with a jagged claw. He managed to bat it out of the air, but by then his eyes were full of blood and the barge was lifting askew. He would never know it, but the coil of line connected to the missile tangled on the deck. When his barbed shaft tip was only a few feet away from piercing the Choska’s heart, the line pulled taut and yanked the spear back toward the ground.

Gzorith, Canzal, and the rest of Captain Hodge’s group were gone. Only the corner of one barge sticking up out of the water remained to prove they’d been there. For at least a hundred yards, the water was red with death and churning thick with hungry swamp predators.

Bzorch saw the Choska flying to the west of the Dragon’s Fang. It had spooked the strange green swamp troll the breed giant had been observing through the looking glass. It was obvious to him that there was a sizable presence of Zard, but he couldn’t see many of them. Fire pits, trampled trails, refuse, and other signs of an encampment were everywhere, but there were no Zard. Apparently, they either let the swamp troll run amok in their encampment while they were away, or they were hiding from it. More likely, Bzorch decided, they were hiding to ambush him and his men. It was also clear that the Choska was observing Captain Hodge from above. Bzorch was almost glad that the captain was so far away and behind schedule. The plan he was now forming in his mind was even better than the other.

Since the Dragon’s Tooth rose straight up out of the water at all but the southern end, access to the rocky formation was limited. If the Choska was sheltering there, Bzorch decided, it would have to be up in the old dragon hole. Bzorch ordered a man to untie the safety boat, a small four-man rower. He’d put his arm through his coil of line and hefted it over his head so that it hung across his body. He ordered his men to stay back in the relative cover. They had camouflaged their barges with branches and greenery they’d cut from the jungle. Anchored in the right location, they would be hard to find.