The two wyverns licked their chops, and the alligators pulled two more men into the water.

The prince scowled at his men, unable to understand why they had stopped advancing. "Attack!"

"In what manner, Honorable Prince?" The question came from Yuan, who stood on the raft closest to Tang's dugout.

The order seemed clear enough to the prince. "Attack with swords and halberds, of course!"

Yuan allowed himself the briefest shake of his head, then turned to the troops. "Number One Raft, assault to right. Number Two Raft to center. Number Three to left, and others remain in reserve." When the men began to maneuver as ordered, the adjutant bowed to Tang. "Per- haps Brave Prince wishes to move to safer position behind reserves?"

Tang almost said yes, then remembered how his men had struggled to hide their laughter during General Fui's u-nfortunate slip of tongue. "No. I lead attack, as I say earlier."

Tang ordered his punt forward and was surprised by the strength of the fear that boiled up inside him. It suf- fused his entire being, filling him with a hot, queasy sen- sation as foul as bile. He felt flushed and dizzy and achy, as though he were physically ill, and it seemed that his

whole body had suddenly gone weak. Cypress remained on his roost, flanked by his two wyverns and calmly awaiting the battle, his empty eye sockets never straying from the prince's dugout.

Tang chewed another lasal leaf, hoping that the sick- ening dread he felt was the result of a mind attack and not his own weak constitution. The haze inside his mind grew thicker, but his fear did not subside.

Cypress allowed the prince's dugout to advance almost into halberd-hurling range, then nudged the two wyverns. The beasts folded their wings and tipped for- ward, slipping into the swamp as quietly as alligators

They dove beneath the surface, then swam toward Tang's boat, the bristling crests along their spines slicing through the scummy water like shark fins.

Tang dropped his sword and grabbed a boatpusher's halberd, then willed his heavy legs to carry him to the front of the punt. He braced his feet against the walls and tried to ignore the voice calling through the lasal haze inside his head, urging him to remember himsel*

and take his proper place behind the reserves. The prince raised his halberd and watched the wyverns approach

They came more or less straight on, their spine crests cutting through the water to each side of the dugout. He angled his weapon to the right and thrust the blade into the water, aiming for the space between the creature's shoulder blades.

The halberd bit deep into the wyvem's thick hide and nearly jumped from Tang's hands. An unexpected scream of wild, brutal exhilaration burst from the prince's lips.

He clamped down on the weapon's shaft and dropped into a squat, both to drive the blade deeper and to keep from being jerked out of the dugout. The creature's head erupted from the water, filling the swamp with a loud, sizzling hiss.

Tang jerked his halberd free and swung the blade, axe- like, at the creature's head. The beast retracted its sinu- ous neck. Instead of counterstriking, it hissed again,

wagging a forked tongue as long as a pennon flag.

Tang had seen whiptail lizards wag their tongues at prey often enough to know what was coming next. He dove into the bottom of the dugout and heard the wyvern's barbed tail swishing over his back. The sound ended in a slurpy thud, then a boatpusher-the snake- bitten one, judging by his delirious voice-screamed.

With a trembling hand, the prince grabbed his sword, dropped it, grabbed it again, and came up swinging in time to see the wyvem's tail jerk his boatpusher from the punt. The fellow landed facedown and did not move. So deadly and quick was the wyvern's poison that the man puffed up before Tang's eyes. The flesh on his hands and neck grew black and slimy, while the red stain blossom- ing around the man's head suggested his nose was bleed- ing profusely.

The wyvern flicked its victim off its tail, then dove back beneath the water and swam toward Number Three

Raft. Tang remembered the other beast and spun around, half-expecting to feel a tail barb piercing his own flesh.

He found only an empty dugout, with a forsaken halberd and a pool of black slime to mark where the second boat- pusher had been standing a moment before.

Tang's earlier jubilation had vanished like smoke into fog; now he felt helpless and frightened. If a halberd could barely scratch a wyvern, how would it pierce a dragon's thick armor? He had been a fool to come into this swamp without a wu-jen.

The men on Number Two and Number Three Rafts voiced their battle cries and thrust their halberds into the swamp. A pair of tails lashed out of the water almost as one, each driving a barb through a soldier's leather armor. Tang saw scales rippling as the wyverns pumped their victims full of poison, then a flurry of blades as his soldiers hacked at the beasts' sinuous tails.

In the next instant, the back end of Number Three

Raft rose on a wyvern's back. The creature's wings beat the swamp as it struggled to raise the boat higher. Men

tumbled into the water, screaming and slashing at alliga- tors. Finally, when the raft had grown light enough, the wyvern twisted sideways and flipped it.

Number Two Raft suffered a similar fate; then the two creatures dove beneath the surface and swam toward the rafts Yuan had held in reserve.

Tang grabbed a halberd and used it to push his punt after Number One Raft, which had nearly reached

Cypress's roost. It was difficult to say whether the dragon was watching the approaching vessel or not. He held his head turned to one side and slightly cocked, so that one empty eye socket was turned toward the dark water and the other on the murky canopy. His scaly lips were slightly curled, as though he found the cacophony of howling voices a pleasant evening serenade.

Number One Raft scraped past a heap of shark skele- tons and stopped beside Cypress's roost, less than twenty paces from the dragon. Several men quickly formed a wall at the front of the craft while their companions gath- ered behind them.

Tang pushed harder, trying to catch up before they launched their attack. The voice in his lasal-clouded head kept urging him to turn back. The closer he came to his foe, the less he cared about the disrespect his men had shown him earlier-or the shame he would bring upon himself by failing to rescue his mother. Nevertheless, the prince continued forward, not because he cared about his men or was suddenly determined to prove that he was no coward, but because he knew that the only way to leave the swamp alive was to kill his foe.

Tang had almost caught Number One Raft when the men in the front hurled their halberds like spears. As the shafts arced toward the dragon, half a dozen soldiers leaped onto the toppled tree and rushed forward to attack. The boatpushers again started to move their clumsy vessel forward.