"Worthy ancestors, please to silence spirits," the prince begged. "It is difficult to be brave with such din."
If anything, the spirits wailed more loudly, yet not loudly enough to drown out the small, whispering voice that kept telling Tang he was a fool to face the wyverns alone. It was not the place of Shou princes to wade through swamps filled with the choking stench of death and rot, or to brave black waters infested with leeches and alligators.
The bottom vanished beneath Tang's feet. He forced his legs and arms into service and swam toward the cave.
The closer he came to the moss-draped maw, the weaker his limbs felt. He doubted he would have the strength to enter the grotto, but that was not required. All he had to do was push the dugout into view of the wyverns, and they would do the rest.
As the prince consoled himself with these thoughts, it occurred to him there was a weakness in his plan. How would he know when-or even if-the wyverns took his bait? The poison would be both painful and quick. Once the stakes punctured the lining of their stomachs, the great reptiles would thrash about and screech madly for a short time, but Tang would not hear them. The dead soldiers were wailing too loudly; the prince would not have heard it if Cypress himself roared in his ear.
Tang allowed the dugout to drift to a stop, then hung from its stern. He had two choices: go into the cave with the corpses, or make his report to Yen-Wang-Yeh so the soldiers would be silent.
Or sneak out of the swamp while Cypress was away, added the insidious voice inside his head.
"I do not go back!"
Feeling proud for avoiding the obvious choice of a cow- ard, Tang took the second most cowardly course and swam the dugout toward the yawning cavern. It seemed entirely possible the wyverns would kill him, but that was preferable to disgracing his ancestors by admitting that he had turned out to be a fool.
The punt nosed in front of the cavern mouth. When the wyverns did not immediately come swooping out of the darkness, Tang took a deep breath, then slipped beneath the water and pushed the dugout around the corner. The din of his dead soldiers faded to a watery roar, and the cowardly voice in his head stopped urging him to flee.
The prince continued to ease forward, hoping his feet did not break the surface when he kicked, struggling to keep his hand from slipping on the boat's slimy bottom. His lungs were already burning for air, but he knew it was only the coward in him looking for an excuse to flee.
Tang continued to kick, praying he would feel the wyverns' strike rock the dugout before his craven lips opened and sucked a mouthful of fetid water into his lungs. It occurred to him that the wyverns might be gorged already. But they had to be ravenous after last
night's burst of fighting, and the two lizards had not yet finished feeding when Cypress sent them inside to guard the lair. Unless the prince had misinterpreted last night's events, they would be voracious enough to devour the punt as well as its contents.
So why hadn't they attacked?
Tang's yearning for air grew so overwhelming that he nearly opened his mouth. Instead, he blew his breath out through his nostrils and continued to swim.
At this point, he expected the coward inside to remind him that it was treason to risk the life of a Shou prince, to urge him to swim for the swamp. The whispering voice remained mercifully silent, perhaps because it knew
Tang had come too far. The punt was his only camou- flage. If he was not behind its sheltering bulk when he pushed his head above water, the wyverns would swoop down to bite him in two, just as they had bitten apart those bodies in the swamp outside.
A black fog gathered at the edges of Tang's percep- tions, and he realized he could no longer deny his lungs.
He rolled onto his back and pushed his head up alongside the slimy hull. When his face broke the surface, he opened his mouth and quietly filled his chest with dank, moldy air.
The cavern ceiling hung thrice a man's height above hie head. It was a dark vault of broken stalactites and shadowy hollows, dimly illuminated by the swamp's emerald light. Here and there were blocky holes where some huge chunk of stone had long ago fallen into the water, shaken loose by an earthquake, or perhaps some ancient outpouring of Cypress's anger.
Tang allowed his gaze to follow the curve of the ceiling down to the wall, then farther down to a rock ledge loom- ing above the water. Hanging above this stony bench were two pairs of huge orange eyes with slit pupils and gleaming, voracious gazes. The prince's heart skipped a beat or several, and he stopped himself from crying out only by pulling his head beneath the water.
The wyverns struck the next instant, taking Tang's bait so hard that they slammed the bottom of the dugout into his chest. The impact drove the air from his lungs, and he found himself choking on fetid brown swamp water. His head broke the surface of its own accord and violent coughs began to rack the prince's body. He grabbed the side of the punt and tried to regain control of his convulsing chest.
A pair of severed legs splashed down on the other side of the dugout. Tang looked up and saw four reeling wings silhouetted against the cavern's far wall. Still coughing, he grabbed for his halberd, nearly capsizing the punt as he reached inside. The wyverns turned toward him.
Their orange eyes glowed bright as fire, and strings of flesh dangled between their needle-sharp teeth. In the dim light, the prince could barely make out a prickly leather ball lodged in the corner of one creature's mouth.
He could not see the second poison sack, but the other reptile kept whipping its narrow head from side to side and thrusting out its forked tongue, as though something were caught in its throat.
The wyverns swooped low over the water. Tang found the heft of his weapon and saw his attackers raise their tails to strike. He forgot about the halberd and pulled hard on the side of the dugout, flipping it over on top of him. The polearm's shaft fell across his shoulder; then a pair of loud, sharp thuds cleaved the din of his dead sol- diers' voices. The bitter smell of wyvern poison filled the air. The prince grabbed the halberd and slipped beneath the surface.
A muffled crack reverberated through the water, fol- lowed quickly by a great gurgling sound as a large mass splashed into the pool. Tang kicked away from the spreading slick of wyvern poison-he did not want the stuff seeping into his scratches-and came up for air.
At the base of the stony ledge lay one of the wyverns, thrashing about in the water and hurling shards of splin- tered dugout in every direction. A puffy black bulge had
The VeUed Dragon
formed halfway down its sinuous neck, where the snake venom was eating away the delicate tissues of the throat lining. As the ring of swollen flesh began to restrict the flow of blood and air, the creature's nostrils flared, and its eyes bulged. It swung around and, when it tried to rip the obstruction from its own throat, came away with nothing but a mouthful of black mush. It flung the putrid flesh across the cavern, then suffered a wave of uncon- trollable convulsions and collapsed into the water.