Page 20 of Agor

Move fast.

Go for the necks.

Avoid the teeth.

“I’ll distract them,” Agor’s firm voice sounded before I could tell him what to do.

The hound growled, nipping at the necks that swayed around us like the pale ghosts of the surrounding tree trunks.

A head struck. I swung my knife, aiming at the snake’s forehead, right between its eyes.

“No!” Agor shoved at my arm, turning my deadly blow into a harmless scratch across the head’s opening mouth.

“Why did you do it?” I yelled. “Why did you stop me from killing it? Again?”

“Don’t kill the head. If you do, two more will grow in its stead.”

“What?” My mouth fell open.

Shit.

There goes my battle plan.

The head launched for me, but I made no move to stab it this time, leaping out of its way instead. The head hissed in disappointment at its prey getting away.

“What do we do, then?” I asked Agor.

For once, I had no plan, looking to someone else for directions.

“Ata and I will keep the heads busy.” He swung his mace left and right. The sharp spikes that studded the bulbous end of the mace nicked the creature’s skin, letting the moonlight-blue blood seep out, but didn’t cause more damage than that. “You get to it from behind. The heart is right where all the necks merge with the body. Stab it. More than once.”

I nodded, turning my back to his. Two heads moved on me, their wide-open mouths jostling each other out of the way. I ducked, slipping between their necks and behind the tree on the edge of the swamp.

The bog hydra’s body was at least nine times as thick as one of its necks and seemed long like a log. Most of its body remained submerged in the mud, however.

“I need it to move, Agor!” I screamed at the orc. “Get it out of the swamp more.”

One head whipped around at the sound of my voice. But the rest stuck with Agor and the dog, infuriated by them hitting and biting their necks.

As Agor moved farther away from the creature, it followed. Two webbed, clawed feet emerged from the mud, splashing over the hard ground as the hydra crawled up and out of the bog.

A head attacked me, sending me to jump backwards. I ducked down, then dragged the blade of the knife along its neck, careful not to cut too deep.

The head hissed and struck forward, its mouth stretching wide. I jumped from under it, its teeth ripping the tunic on my shoulder and grazing my skin.

I scrambled on top of the hydra’s slippery body the moment the head struck again. The wide-open, foul-smelling mouth descended on me like a giant mushroom, blocking the night. But I found the spot where the hydra’s necks met its body and stabbed.

“More than once,”Agor had said.

I raised the knife again, then sank it back into the ghostly white flesh. I stabbed again and again as the air inside the monster’s mouth was running out, leaving me unable to breathe.

Its jaws contracted around me. The teeth tore into my clothes and my skin. With no air to breathe and no light to see anything, I kept hitting the same spot again and again.

Suddenly, the toothy dome around me slackened, then was lifted off me. I gasped for air, raising my knife for another blow. My knees slipped in the milky-blue blood gushing from the hydra’s body. I lost my balance, falling backwards.

“I got you.” The orc’s burly arms caught me. “You can stop stabbing, now, my vicious little newt. It’s dead. You killed it.”

Chapter 5

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