Princess Takiyasha's Arc

Chapter 8 of 10

Takiyasha's army moved fast, but scouts brought worse news. A frog runner splashed up from the water and croaked its report. The scattered alligator soldiers had not fled home. They had raced ahead and seized her father's hall. They held the very walls she had promised to give the frog folk. She halted the march at the marsh's edge. The frog folk set down the shrine stones. Krogg came to her side, blade across his back. "They took the hall," he said. "You cannot hold a castle you have not reached." A voice answered from the reeds. "Then reach it another way." A tiefling stepped forward, gray-brown skin, ram horns curving back, a spiked skull on his shoulder. He was a mercenary Takiyasha had met once at the swamp entrance, a spear-for-hire who owed no one. He held a long spear loose in one hand. "The gators shut the front gate," he said. "But I fought inside that hall years ago. There is a water channel under the east wall. Wide enough for frogs." Takiyasha studied him. "And your price?" "Gold, when you sit the throne." He grinned. "I bet on the one who kills kings." She weighed it fast. A siege would take days her promise could not survive. The frogs would tire and slip back to the swamp. But frogs swam. The channel could put a hundred warriors inside the walls before the gators knew. "Show me," she said. Zarmenos led them through the reeds to a low stone arch half-drowned in mud. Dark water ran into it beneath the east wall. Takiyasha slid off her toad and touched the current. Cold. Deep enough. She turned to the frog folk. She lifted the jade naginata so they could see it shine. "Under the wall," she said. "Quiet as fish. We open the gate from inside." Krogg went first into the channel. The frog folk followed, sliding under one by one without a splash. Takiyasha sent the shrine stones behind them on broad amphibian backs. She came last with Zarmenos, wading into the dark. They surfaced in a flooded courtyard inside the walls. Alligator soldiers turned, too slow. Frogs boiled up from the water on every side. Krogg's blade opened the front gate's bar. The doors swung wide. Takiyasha's toad and the rest of her force poured in behind. The fight was short. The scattered gators had no king and no plan. They broke and ran for the far woods. By dusk the hall stood empty of them. Takiyasha climbed to the high seat. On a shelf near the throne sat a golden toad seal, heavy and old, the shogun's mark of this hall. She lifted it. Her hand shook. She held her father's throne at last. Zarmenos leaned on his spear below. "You have the walls," he said. "Now the frogs want the castle you drew." Outside, a hundred voices began to croak for their shrine.