He mentally begged it to show him more, but the vision dissolved. He rested back on his haunches and sheathed the sword. Maybe he would wait to try again when they reached the mines. Perhaps it would give him more distinct images if he gave the magic a rest.
Dhamon returned to camp, settling himself several yards away from the mariner—on the only solid patch of ground that hadn’t been staked out by the ogres. He saw Rig watching him. The mariner had rested his glaive against the trunk of a massive shaggybark. Dhamon mused that Rig seemed to collect the weapons he discarded. The mariner wouldn’t be getting this sword, as Dhamon knew he wouldn’t be discarding Wyrmsbane while he lived.
Then Dhamon leaned his back against the tree, a gnarled root prodding discomfitingly into his leg, and he closed his eyes and futilely attempted to sleep. The sounds bothered him too much, festering in his mind. The cries of hidden birds and great cats, the movement of leaves in the lowermost canopy. More than that—the conversations of the ogres bothered him. He wished he could understand them better and could pick out more than a few words here and there. He couldn’t bring himself to trust them, as they were mercenaries of Donnag. He wanted to know exactly what they were talking about, and he wanted Maldred to share his concern about their loyalty.
He heard the squishing of footfalls and opened his eyes. The ogre called Mulok was approaching. Dhamon considered waving him away, preferring to be alone. But the big ogre carried a large skin of spirits with him, and so Dhamon gestured Mulok closer.
Dhamon noted that Rig was still watching him. Fiona was several yards away. She was softly illuminated in the light of a tall torch stuck into the ground. She gave Dhamon an occasional glance, but most of her attention was conferred on Maldred. She was standing close to the big man, and his hand had enfolded hers.
Mulok took a long pull from the skin and passed it to Dhamon. The ogre knew a smattering of the common tongue, and tried to engage Dhamon in a conversation about a large boar he had spied earlier in the day and tried unsuccessfully to catch. Dhamon listened politely and took several long swallows of the alcohol. It was slightly bitter, but not at all unpleasant. He found it heady, and after one more swallow passed it back and nodded his thanks.
Mulok dug in his pocket for painted stones, elements of a simple game the ogres enjoyed. Dhamon reluctantly agreed to play, and was fishing about in his pocket for a few copper coins when the howl of an ogre cut across the camp. Dhamon jumped to his feet and drew his sword. Mulok dropped the stones and reached for his club.
With only two tall torches burning, there was little light—just enough to make the clearing the ogres had made by tromping around seem truly spooky. The ogres had been milling around, flattening the last of the saw grass, their dark shapes difficult to discern because of the tall, thick foliage that ringed the clearing. Dhamon moved toward the nearest torch—to where he’d last spotted Fiona. Mulok was tromping behind him.
But before he took more than a dozen steps, Dhamon felt himself being lifted, snakes dropping from the canopy and wrapping around his arms and chest and hoisting him skyward. The air was filled with the hissing of hundreds of snakes.
Within the passing of a heartbeat, Dhamon’s left arm was pinned. But his sword arm remained free. With it he slashed out at more snakes dropping down on him and seeking to entwine him further. His frenzied swings managed to stop any more from slithering closer, at least for the moment. Keeping his eye on other snakes he saw massing above, he wielded Wyrmsbane against the serpents that already had a firm hold on him, swiftly cutting himself free and dropping in a crouch to the soft ground below.
Dhamon suspected only a few minutes had passed. And in that time several of the ogres in the company were being hauled, struggling and cursing, into the lower canopy. Maldred was among them. The big man’s arms were lashed to his sides, and one snake was wrapped around his legs, holding his limbs tightly. Maldred was trying with all his considerable strength to extend his arms and break his bonds. But the snakes were resilient, defying his attempts and twisting ever tighter. They cut into the exposed flesh on his arms and drew blood.
On the ground, Dhamon was barely managing to elude more of the dropping snakes. He crouched as one tried to whip about his chest. He swung Wyrmsbane at a thick constrictor that was dropping toward him, striking it, but only managing to bat it away. Veins knotting like cords in his arms and neck, he swung a second time, slicing through the constrictor and releasing a spray of gray-green blood.
In a matter of moments, he had cleaved several snakes in two and was standing on a severed section that continued to writhe. In the scant light of the torch he could see the mouth that snapped open to reveal rows of needle-fine barbs. Odd. He looked closer. Not teeth, exactly. There was something else unusual about the dead and dying snakes that lay around him.
They looked more like vines, like the lianas that hung everywhere in the swamp. He dropped beneath a hissing serpent, and his hand shot out to feel one of the dead snakes. They felt like vines, too, devoid of scales. “What are these beasts?” he said to himself. Then he was shaking off his curiosity, rising and slashing at another approaching serpent.
“Dhamon!” Maldred called from above. He was hidden in the lower canopy, but Dhamon could hear him thrashing. “Some help here!”
More ogres were caught and disappeared aloft. Others were swinging swords and clubs at snakes that continued to drop from the canopy and lash about for more victims. The snakes made a hissing that grew in intensity, the sound virtually blotting out the shouts of the ogres.
Fiona sliced through an especially thick snake twisting toward Dhamon. He saw her and nodded, then dropped to his stomach when he felt the brush of a serpent against his back. He rolled and slashed upward, cutting off the head of another one. With his free hand, he reached up and grabbed another snake that had dropped to entwine him. Holding his magical blade between his teeth, he climbed up this last snake as if it were a contorting rope.
“Dhamon!” Fiona called to him. “I can’t see Maldred!” She had cleaved through at least a dozen of the creatures and parts of them were wriggling and snapping on the ground. The torchlight revealed that her silver mail was spattered with dark green slime. Her face grim and eyes wide. “He must be above with the others. Dhamon!”
Dhamon couldn’t reply, the blade in his mouth as he continued to climb. He stopped about twenty feet above the ground. Hanging on tight with one hand, his feet clamped about the constrictor to keep it from jostling him too much, he swung out with his sword wildly, cutting through a black snake hurtling toward him. He sliced through it easily, slamming his eyes shut as the blood sprayed him. Acidic, it burned his skin, and he almost fell off in surprise. He could see a few other black snakes among the green majority. They were wrapped around ogres, biting at their faces and hands. After a few moments of struggling, the ogres hung limply in their coils. Dhamon called a warning to the ogres fighting on the ground to beware the dark snakes. But the hissing of all the snakes had grown so unbearably loud that the ogres weren’t able to hear him.
He climbed higher still, marveling at the length of these snakes. He was more than fifty feet off the ground, and the snakes were longer yet—Dhamon couldn’t see the end of the one he was climbing.
“Maldred!” Dhamon screamed his friend’s name. “Maldred!”
He tried to blot out the hissing as the snakes continued to lower themselves through the canopy to the ground. He thought he heard his friend’s familiar deep voice coming from somewhere above him. He climbed higher, then paused again, when the snake he was clinging to began to thrash wildly, threatening to dislodge him. He stretched across to a thick branch, releasing the snake he’d been climbing, then with a quick motion he sliced through the snake. The thing fell to the ground, and he swung about and continued up the tree, disappearing amid the broad leaves of the lowermost canopy.