Princess Takiyasha's Arc

Chapter 3 of 10

The first alligator rank hit the wall like a flood. Takiyasha felt the stakes shudder under her boots. Fur bindings snapped. Two posts leaned inward. Below her, a dozen scaled bodies shoved and hacked, and the palisade groaned. Sseth loosed arrows from the tower, and Terradon braced a cracking beam with his shell. It was not enough. The wall would break in minutes, and her four warriors could not fill the gap. Then she saw him. One alligator did not push with the others. He stood behind their line, huge, scarred, an axe across his back notched a hundred times. A necklace of skulls hung at his chest. He was not attacking the wall. He was watching it fail, waiting to walk through the ruin. Takiyasha knew his kind at once. He served no one here. He hunted his own quarry through the king's ranks. She made her choice fast. She leapt down inside the wall, ran to the weakest post, and drove her jade naginata into the mud beside it. Blue runes flared up the shaft. "Bonecrusher!" she called over the din. "You want the warchief who burned your swamp. He marches with this king's army. I know the crest." The big alligator went still. His slitted eyes found her through the smoke. "You lie to save your wall," he said. Flat. Certain. "I don't beg," Takiyasha said. "I offer. Break this wall and you cross into a fight you don't care about. Hold it with me, and I put you in front of the man who took your skulls." A post cracked behind her. An alligator soldier forced his snout through the gap, jaws wide. Gral turned and buried his axe in the soldier's neck without looking at him. He wrenched the blade free and stepped into the breach himself, filling it with his own bulk. "I want the warchief," Gral said. "I don't feel loyal to you." He crushed a second attacker against the stakes. "That's the line. Don't cross it." "Stay on your side of it," Takiyasha said. "That's all I need." Gral held the gap. His tail swept three soldiers off their feet. His axe rose and fell, and the notched edge kept the breach shut where four warriors could not. The alligator rank broke against him and pulled back to reform. The wall still stood. Takiyasha pulled her naginata from the mud. The runes dimmed. She had a fifth warrior now, and the strongest yet. But she had promised him the warchief, and she did not yet know if that man truly marched below. If she was wrong, Gral would turn his axe on her the moment he learned it. The wall would hold today. The debt came due tomorrow.