Page 321 of The Priory of the Orange Tree

“I wonder,” Kalyba said, “if you could best me in combat. After all, you are Firstblood.” Her mouth curved. “Come, blood of the mulberry tree. Let us see who is the greater witch.”

Tané set down her bow. Planting her feet apart, she let her siden rise like the sun into her hands.

71

Abyss

On theReconciliation, Loth stood guard beside his queen in the shadow beneath the quarterdeck, surrounded by twelve of the Knights of the Body.

One of the topsails was afire. Bodies strewed the decks. Cannons hawked barshot and chainshot, cut with cries ofFirefrom the boatswain, while siege engines from Perchling hurled grappling hooks that tangled around legs and wings.

It was all the gunners could do to avoid the Eastern dragons. Though some of them were in flight, strangling the fiery breeds the way snakes crushed their quarry, others had adopted a different way to kill. They would dive beneath the waves, then swim up with all their might and breach. One clap of their jaws, and they would drag their prey back to the deep.

Water streamed from their scales as they soared over theReconciliation. Fires sputtered out beneath them.

Sabran kept one hand on the Sword of Virtudom. They watched the pale wyrm transform into a woman and land on theDefiance.

Kalyba.

The Witch of Inysca.

“Ead will go to her,” Sabran shouted to him over the clangor. “Someone must distract the witch so she can strike.”

The Draconic Navy was drawing closer by the moment. A square-rigger with red sails bore down on theReconciliation.

“Hard to port,” the captain bawled. “Gun crew, belay last order. Fire on that ship!”

A terrible shriek of wood and metal. The ship rammed straight into the nearbyMerrow Queen.

“All right,” Loth called to Sabran. “To theDefiance.”

The Knights of the Body were already moving. Keeping Sabran between them, they struck out across the deck. As they ran, they shed their heaviest armor. Breastplates, greaves, and pauldrons clattered in their wake. Cannons ripped into the enemy ship.

“Swords!” The captain drew his cutlass. “Get Her Majesty to the boat!”

“There’s no time,” Loth shouted.

The captain gritted his teeth. His hair clung to his face. “Take her, then, Lord Arteloth, and don’t look back,” he replied. “Hurry!”

Sabran climbed over the side of the ship. Loth joined her, and she took his hand.

The waves swallowed them all.

Tané hurled fire at Kalyba across theDefiance. Flames danced along the deck, catching in pools of Draconic blood. When the witch countered the attack with lurid red fire of her own, so hot it roasted the moisture from the air, Tané gripped the rising jewel. Seawater crashed onto the ship, which pitched beneath them, and the fires were smothered.

Every soldier and archer had fled from the duel. The ship was their battleground.

Kalyba moved lithely from bird to woman, quick as lightning. Tané screamed in frustration as a beak ripped her cheek open and a talon almost took out her eye. Each time the witch changed, Ascalon changed with her. When she was in her human guise, she swung with the sword, and when Tané parried, and their blades locked, the rising jewel sang in answer.

“I hear it,” Kalyba breathed. “Give it to me.”

Tané slammed her forehead into hers and struck with a concealed knife, catching the witch across the cheek. Kalyba reeled, eyes flared wide, red lacing her face. Then antlers erupted from her skull, and she was a bleeding white stag, ghastly andmassive, and the sword was gone again.

Tané used the jewel to throw back a cockatrice. The siden sharpened her senses, made her limbs move quicker than she would have thought possible as the stag thundered across the deck. She saw that one of the antlers was tipped with silver, and as it lowered its head to skewer her, she brought her sword up, severing it.

Kalyba collided with the deck in human form. Blood jeweled from her shoulder, where a chunk of flesh had been hacked away, and Ascalon lay beside her, glazed with ruby. Tané lunged for it, but the witch already had fire in her hands.

Tané threw herself behind the mainmast. Red fire blazed off her thigh, so hot—like molten iron on her flesh—that it made her cry out. Eyes full of brine, she crushed the pain and struck out across the deck. She was almost at the stern when she stopped in her tracks.

---