Princess Takiyasha's Arc

Chapter 2 of 10

Grokmaw's body still floated in the pool. Takiyasha turned from it to face the open swamp. The barrier was gone. By dawn, the alligator king's scouts would come through the treeline, and she had three warriors and no wall to stop them. Coral counted on their fingers and shook their head. "We cannot fight an army in open mud," they said. "We need a place they must come to us." Takiyasha looked at the muddy neck of land where the trees pinched close. Only one path led in. "Then we build here," she said. "A tower and a wall. Anyone who comes must pass under our blades." Terradon planted his axe and grinned. Krogg began dragging fallen timber. Coral gathered hide and bone from the swamp's dead things. They worked through the dark hours, lashing rough wood and tusks into a crude watchtower over the path. Halfway through, a branch cracked in the reeds. Everyone froze. A four-armed shape slid out of the shadow. He had a snake's tail instead of legs and a snout full of teeth. Two katanas hung ready in his upper hands. More hilts bristled at his belt. Krogg raised his blade. "Scout," he warned. "No," the newcomer said. His forked tongue tasted the air. "Sseth Bladescale. I hunt a warlord. He killed my elders and burned my temple. I go where he cannot follow." His yellow eyes moved to the half-built tower, then to Takiyasha. "You are hunted too. I smell it." "By dawn," Takiyasha said. She did not lower her jade naginata. The blade caught the moonlight, pale green, its carved frogs staring up the shaft. "I have no time to test you. I have a tower half-built and an army coming." Sseth studied the naginata, then the path below the tower. "One way in," he said. "Good ground. You saw it fast." He slid closer and coiled at the base of the tower. "Give me the high beam. I will hold it. A warlord's men taught me how to make a narrow place cost blood." Takiyasha weighed him. A stranger with four blades and a grudge. But he had read her ground in one glance, and he asked for the hardest post. "Take the tower," she said. "If you run, I burn you off that beam." "I do not run," Sseth said. "I already ran once. Never again." He climbed the lashed timbers and settled at the top, katanas resting across his coils. By first light the tower stood over the path, ugly and strong. Four warriors held it now, not three. Then Coral pointed east. Torches moved through the far trees, a long line of them, more than they could count. "They're here," Coral whispered. The alligator king had not waited for full dawn. Takiyasha gripped her naginata and stepped onto the wall. The wait was over. The fight for her throne started now.