by Troy Denning
On the road beyond Avner, Raeyadfourne was slowly giving ground to the fire giant. One side of the giant’s steel apron hung bloody and askew, while half a dozen glancing blows had left the firbolg’s parka seared and smoking. The rest of the fire giants were only thirty paces from the battle, and one was already climbing the hillside to flank Raeyadfourne.
Brianna’s six front riders came scrambling down the slide, the frozen links in their mail coats rattling like bones. They carried their lances at port arms across their chests and did not slow as they approached the queen, obviously intending to help Raeyadfourne with the fire giants. Earl Wynn was ten steps behind the men, clambering over the boulders as best he could in his plate armor.
“Wait!” Brianna ordered. “I need you men here.”
The front riders clattered to a stop several paces from Galgadayle, politely leaving space for the firbolg to continue up the slide. Brianna and her captor were now so close to the summit that she could see the next bend in the gorge.
“Stop this firbolg!” Brianna commanded. “He’s abducting me!”
Most of the front riders merely scowled in confusion, but two men instinctively obeyed the queen’s command. The seer did not stop until the tips of their weapons were pressed against his belly. Then, as the other front riders moved to surround him, Galgadayle tightened his lips and let out a whistle as loud and piercing as the cry of an eagle.
Brianna expected some strange spell to render her men unconscious or helpless, but that is not what happened.
Instead, Earl Radborne demanded, “Majesty, what are you doing?” He had stopped behind the front riders and was pointing down the slide, to where Raeyadfourne was diving over the riverbank to avoid being trampled by fire giants. “There are more giants coming!”
“Let them!” Brianna snarled. She let her eyes drift toward the crest of the landslide, then asked, “Where’s Gerda? I need my midwife.”
“We have taken her into our troop’s protection,” Galgadayle answered. “We have done the same for all your courtiers.”
Brianna felt her abdomen tighten, though she could not tell whether it was another labor pain or a sign of her growing apprehension. She looked at Galgadayle’s face.
“Put me down, or I’ll order my men to attack.”
The seer squeezed her tightly in the cradlelike crook of his elbow. “That will do you no good. I have already summoned our warriors,” he said. “Even if you kill me, you have no hope of escaping.”
“I’ll take my chances,” Brianna replied. When the firbolg made no move to put her down, she looked to her front riders. “Kill—”
Galgadayle flexed the biceps of his enormous arm, forcing the air from her lungs and preventing her from finishing her command. The front riders braced themselves, but Brianna could see by their eyes they were reluctant to attack for fear of causing her death.
Radborne pushed his way forward to Galgadayle. “You heard the queen! Release Her Majesty.” He raised his arms over his head and still could not reach Brianna. “Hand her down!”
Galgadayle shook his head. “That I cannot—arrghhHH!”
The seer’s muscles went limp. Brianna plummeted into Radborne’s arms, and they crashed to the ground in a clamorous heap of steel armor and fur coat. A dull, throbbing ache blossomed deep within her belly. Suddenly, she seemed to smell every vile and sour thing in the gorge: the brimstone stench of fire giant swords, the coppery blood and steaming entrails covering the road below, even the sour frozen sweat beneath the armor of her own front riders. Her gorge rose, and a dry, rasping sound came from her throat. She saw Galgadayle’s feet stomping in a circle beside her.
From somewhere above came Avner’s scream, “Save the queen! Take her and run!”
Brianna looked up to see Avner dangling from his sword, which was planted to half the depth of the blade in Galgadayle’s back. The young scout was trying to brace his feet on his victim’s hip so he could widen the wound, but the anguished seer was shaking and twisting so violently Avner could not get a foothold.
Two front riders grasped Brianna beneath her armpits and pulled her off Radborne. Her belly filled with pain, and she screamed aloud. Her rescuers paid the cries no heed and dragged her up a hut-sized boulder, safely away from Galgadayle’s writhing figure. She saw Radborne try to rise, then one of the seer’s heavy feet came down squarely on the earl’s breastplate. The steel buckled like tin, and the noble’s death rattle left his lips with the sound of a trembling tambourine.
Brianna tried to rise, but made it only as far as her knees before she doubled over, howling in pain. Her womb had tightened again, and she felt something inside as hot and fiery as lava. She glanced down the slope and saw the leading fire giant already climbing toward her. From other side of the landslide came the muffled clatter of the firbolg troop.
The queen clutched at the arms of her rescuers. “I can’t run!” she gasped. “Get me out of here!”
The front riders pulled her cloak off her arms and tied the empty sleeves across her chest, then rolled the lapels to make a makeshift stretcher. By the time they finished, their fellows had scrambled up the boulder to help. Together, the six men hoisted the queen into the air and started up the landslide, each using his free hand to brace his spear butt on the treacherous ground.
Brianna was facing downslope, where Avner still clung to Galgadayle’s thrashing form. Finally, the young scout managed to plant his feet squarely on his victim’s hip. He jerked on his sword, and the blade snapped with a loud ping. Avner sailed backward through the air and vanished between two boulders. The firbolg collapsed to his knees, growling like a beast and twisting an arm around to claw at the steel sliver in his back.
Brianna glanced down the landslide and saw that the leading fire giant had already climbed halfway up the slope. Another pair followed close behind, while the last two in line were spreading out to prevent the queen’s party from doubling back toward the road.
From between the boulders where Avner had fallen came the young scout’s voice, “ythgimsilisaB!”
The familiar crack of a rune spell echoed up the slide. A black streak flashed into existence, pointing at the fire giants below. A piercing clang echoed off the leader’s armor. The brute’s arms flew up, and he sailed backward through the air as though a catapult boulder had caught him in the chest. He slammed into the warrior behind him. They both crashed to the ground in a clamorous heap of black armor, then the leader’s body went limp and his bronze eyes turned the color of dried blood.
Avner climbed out of his hiding place. In one hand, he held a simple leather sling, in the other a shiny steel ball. The missile, Brianna knew, was one of three her runecaster had given the young scout.
“Avner, no!” Brianna called. It hurt to yell, but if Avner stayed to fight, he would be trapped between two enemies when the firbolgs crested the hill. “Come here!”
Avner shook his head and fit the steel ball into his sling. “The giants—”
“Young man … to my side!” Brianna forced the words out, trying to assume the tone of an angry mother. She had not used that voice with him in more than two years, since before he had sworn the oaths of the Border Scouts and taken his place in the war against the giants. “Now!”
Avner scowled and cast an anxious glance at the fire giants, then reluctantly put his weapon away and bounded up the slide. The giants began to climb again, and Brianna breathed a sigh of relief. She had taken control of events, and that fact alone gave her hope.
Brianna craned her head up the hill and saw that her litter bearers had almost reached the canyon wall. They were angling toward the edge of the landslide, where Blizzard waited to meet them at the broken end of a mining trail. The slide itself became a narrow plume of dirt and rock as it ascended the mountainside toward the mile-long furrow from which it had spilled.
“Not … the … trail,” Brianna gasped. Despite her increasing optimism, her pain had grown so severe that she found it difficult to speak. Her wom
b was contracting rapidly and severely now, and she felt a growing hollowness in her lower abdomen, as though a great, empty bubble were forming inside. “Up … the slide.”
The front riders stopped in their tracks. Brianna could hear the tremendous clatter of the fire giants climbing after them, and she could smell the sharp fumes of their flaming swords. On the other side of the landslide, the firbolgs were so close that she could hear their deep voices booming commands to each other.
“Majesty?” asked one of the front riders. “The trail is our only chance of outrunning—”
“Do as the queen says.” It was Avner’s voice. In spite of the loose ground, the young scout had approached them as quietly as always. “She knows what she’s doing.”
Avner laid Brianna’s satchel next to her, then stepped to the front of the litter and grabbed hold. The party had barely gone fifteen yards before three fire giants reached the bottom of the plume, their coppery eyes sparkling with bloodlust and their swarthy lips twisted into green-toothed snarls. Each time the brutes exhaled, wisps of yellow vapor poured from their nostrils, and Brianna smelled the bitter stench of brimstone.
The leader leveled his sword at the queen’s litter-bearers and opened his mouth to speak—then a roaring clamor rose at his back. A wall of hairy firbolgs poured over the crest of the slide, their long beards streaming in the wind and their huge axes whirling above their heads. The eyes of the giants turned as yellow as their flaming swords, and they spun around to find a tide of fur-clad warriors swirling about their hips.
The battle did not begin so much as erupt. The fire giants lashed out wildly with their swords, slicing off burly arms and slashing into thick chests, filling the air with the charnel-house stench of spilled entrails and scorched flesh. The firbolgs countered with a flurry of axes, and soon the knelling of their weapons against the giants’ black armor overwhelmed even the thunderous bellows of the wounded and the dying.
Avner led the queen’s party to the edge of the slide, then released his hold on her litter and pulled his sling from inside his cloak. Brianna did not have to ask what he was doing, for a single fire giant had escaped the battle and was angling up the canyon wall to cut them off. Nevertheless, she caught the young scout’s sleeve before he could go.
“Avner …”
Brianna could barely hear her own voice above the battle clamor, but she did not have the strength to speak louder. She was shaking uncontrollably—from the pain, not the cold—and her body felt entirely too weak and achy for the strenuous business of delivering a baby. She pulled Avner close to her mouth.
“Avner … thank you, for believing me … not Galgadayle.”
Avner gently pulled his sleeve from her grasp. “I’m just keeping my promise to Tavis,” he said. “I’m not really sure what to believe.”
As Avner spoke, the baby shifted and slowly began to drop toward Brianna’s pelvis. The horrible pain in her stomach subsided almost instantly, and everything below her waist suddenly felt loose and open.
“You’d better go kill that giant,” the queen said. “And find someplace for us to hide—we’ll know soon enough who to believe.”
4
The Silver Duchess
The queen’s cry broke from the tunnel, as shrill and piercing as the shriek of a striking wyvern. Avner cringed and prayed that the keening wind would swallow the sound before it reached the ears of their enemies. He crawled on his belly to the edge of the rock dump and peered into the darkening canyon, where he saw a swarm of firbolgs on the trails far below. The entire troop had stopped climbing and tipped their heads back. They were too distant to tell if any of the warriors were looking toward the Silver Duchess, the mine where the queen’s party had taken refuge, but the young scout was careful to keep his chin close to the ground.
Avner counted thirty burly silhouettes spread across the bottom of the slope. That was many fewer firbolgs than before the battle with the fire giants, but it was far more than the queen’s small party could hope to turn back. After killing the last fire giant, Avner had only one magic runebullet left for his sling. The front riders had no missile weapons at all.
The young scout cast a longing glance over his shoulder. Less than a hundred yards above, the gorge’s crooked lip hung silhouetted against the purple twilight sky. He had hoped to make it over that crest and join the border scouts patrolling the canyon rims, but the party had been forced to hide in the Silver Duchess so Brianna could deliver her baby. The birth was taking much longer than Avner had expected. He tried to stay calm, telling himself that the battle’s thunderous clamor had certainly alerted the patrols to the trouble in the canyon. He did not understand why a company of his fellows wasn’t running down the slope now.
“Tavisssss, you baaaarrggh!”
Brianna’s curse became an incoherent, grating wail that made Avner’s teeth ache. He looked back into the canyon and saw firbolgs pointing up the slope every which way. A few fingers were aimed in the direction of the Silver Duchess. The young scout pushed himself back across the rock dump into the shelter of the tunnel mouth, then stood up. A faint draft wafted out of the dark hole, so gentle it was almost imperceptible, save for the stale heat and dank granite smell on its musty breath. Five front riders sat just inside the portal, looking out over the canyon and self-consciously trying not to seem too interested in what was happening deeper in the mine.
Fifteen paces beyond them, at the creeping black edge of the mine’s gloom-cloaked throat, the queen was squatting over her fur cloak. She was naked, save for the flaming spear talisman hanging around her neck. There were baggy, dark circles beneath her violet eyes, which had themselves grown almost black with pain. Her skin was as pale as snow, her mouth twisted into a hideous, gaping grimace by the anguish racking her body. Runnels of tears and sweat streamed off her face to dribble on her blue-veined breasts, while her swollen belly throbbed with spasms so rapid and severe they made Avner wince and swear he would never be so cruel as to father a child.
The sixth front rider was kneeling in front of Brianna, holding his outstretched hands beneath the queen’s trembling hips. Although Gryffitt was an old married man, his face had a green tint visible even in the dim light. He kept averting his gaze, as though he could not quite bear what he was seeing. Only Blizzard, who stood nearly invisible in the murk beyond the queen, seemed at all easy with what was happening. The mare kept up a reassuring nicker, and once in while her snout appeared out of the darkness to give Brianna a comforting nuzzle.
Avner envied the horse’s unquestioning loyalty and compassion. He kept hearing Galgadayle’s warning about the twins and could not help feeling angry with Brianna. Love potion or not, if she had remained true to Tavis and sent the imposter away in the first place, there would be no question now of whose baby it was.
Brianna’s belly stopped throbbing, then several bands of muscle tightened around it like a belt. The queen’s eyes rolled back in her head and her mouth yawned open. Avner rushed to her side, at the same time pulling his frozen mitten off his hand.
“Majesty, don’t yell!” He slipped the edge of his mitten between her teeth, then said, “Bite down on this.”
Brianna turned her head and looked at him with a wild, bug-eyed glare. The mitten flew from her mouth, then a deafening shriek filled the dark passage. Avner had heard such a cry only once before, as a frost giant’s axe cleaved a warrior through at the hips, but that man had been fortunate enough to die a moment later. There was no telling when the queen’s agony would end.
Avner slipped one arm around Brianna’s shoulders and clamped his free hand over her mouth. The sound vibrated through his fingers and continued to reverberate off the dank walls, only slightly muted by his grasp.
“Milady, the firbolgs are coming!” Avner hissed.
Brianna glared into the young scout’s eyes. She clutched his wrist and used it to support herself. She felt as though she were slowly exploding from the inside out; her lower back ached with such a fiery, crushin
g pain that she wondered if her kidneys had been smashed. Her intestines had turned into writhing, searing snakes of anguish. The worst agony of all was her pelvis. She could feel her womb pushing the baby against the inner edge of the cavity, trying to force the infant out and managing only to drive barbed spikes of pain deep into her bones.
It would have been easier to squeeze a boulder through a keyhole. For several minutes now, Brianna had not felt the baby descend any farther, and she was growing weak. Her midwife had said that would not happen. Gerda had told her that Hiatea gave every mother the strength she needed to deliver her child, but the queen could feel her vigor fleeing her body on the wail she was breathing into Avner’s hand. Her infant was stuck.
“Majesty, the firbolgs will hear you,” Avner pleaded. “Please, you must be quiet!”
Brianna ripped Avner’s hand from her face. “Surtr … take the firbolgs!” she said, half groaning and half growling. She was surprised to find she could talk at all; a moment ago, she could force nothing out but wails of agony. “Do something useful … kill them!”
“There are at least thirty, Majesty,” replied Avner. “We can’t possibly—”
“Don’t bother me with … with this!” Brianna snarled. She heard a clatter from the front of the tunnel as the nervous front riders rose to obey her orders; then she regretted her words. She wasn’t going to save her child by issuing impossible orders. “Wait, you men! Don’t listen to me. Can’t you see I’m giving—” She paused to groan. “That I’ve got other things on my mind?”
The soldiers glanced at each other and studiously avoided looking toward the back of the tunnel. They hovered just inside the portal and did not seem to know what to do. Brianna dropped to her knees, then fixed her gaze on Gryffitt’s slack-skinned face. She had seen fog giants with better color.
“What do you think, Gryffitt?” the queen asked. She could still feel the baby against her pelvis, but the pressure from her womb was slackening. She hoped that meant her body was resting, not that it had given up. “The delivery isn’t going well, is it?”