The Ogre's Pact

by Troy Denning

  This seemed to satisfy the bodyguard, so Brianna passed Earl Dobbin’s unconscious form to him and began to swim. Avner followed in her wake. Morten simply waded across the dark pool, holding the lord mayor above his head and tipping his chin back to keep his mouth above the surface of the cold water.

  Once the princess and the others had reached the other shore safely, Tavis started to wade again. Because the river was not as violent here as below the pool, he moved into deeper water, where the dark currents would prevent the ogres from seeing anything he happened to disturb on the riverbed. Half swimming and half wading, he continued upstream long after Brianna and Morten had stopped to lay their false trails. Occasionally, he approached the shore close enough to look for verbeeg tracks, but saw none.

  When he had finally gone far enough to be certain the ogres would no longer be coming up this side of the river, the scout went ashore. He found two of the largest logs he could move and pulled them to the river’s edge. After tying the boles together with two short lengths of rope, he slipped his wading staff under the bindings and guided the makeshift raft into the dark waters.

  The swift currents carried him downriver in a fraction of the time it had taken to wade up it. He soon saw his companions waiting just above the slow-moving pool where they had crossed the river. Brianna had already revived Earl Dobbin, who looked pale and frightened. The earl stood on one foot, bracing himself on Brianna’s arm, as though his leg hurt too badly to support any weight. His stance might have seemed reasonable, had Tavis not been able to see, even from the middle of the river, that the princess had already called upon her goddess’s magic to close the arrow hole.

  The scout waved, and they came out to meet him, Avner and the princess swimming. Morten waded, carrying the lord mayor on his back and using both his staff and Brianna’s to steady himself in the deep waters. As the four reached the logs, Tavis directed the humans to the back end of the raft. Taking one of the wading poles from Morten, he positioned himself and the bodyguard near the front, and then they were floating out of the pool. The current swept the raft down a swift-flowing tongue of black water, launching it toward a churning wall of foam.

  “Hold fast!”

  The two firbolgs each locked an arm under the front binding and barely got their legs pointed downstream before crashing through the froth. The raft bucked so hard Tavis thought it would jerk his arm from the socket. Pitching side to side and threatening to fling its passengers into the churning waters, the raft shot into a boiling, roaring cataract filled with boulders as large as stone giants, bottomless craters of bubbling water, and eddies spinning like tornadoes. The descent became a crazed, lung-burning struggle to keep the logs pointed downriver. Tavis and Morten used the staffs to fend off jagged rocks that popped up to snap like bear teeth at the flimsy raft. They kicked madly in a vain, useless effort at control before the current spun them around, reducing the scout and his companions to so much flotsam tumbling down the channel with all the other debris.

  The journey only grew worse as more water poured in from side streams. The canyon grew deeper, the channel steeper, and the raft began to roll, dousing them for long minutes in the angry river only to whip them back into the air so they could draw breath and endure the icy beating a little longer.

  How long the torture continued, Tavis could not say. But he started to hear a certain sonorous undertone in the roaring waters, and the logs rolled with less frequency. Soon, the cataracts grew gentle enough that the raft stopped spinning and began to drift backward down the river. The current slowed, and the river broadened. The scout kicked against a passing rock—he had long since lost his staff—and slowly spun them around.

  Ahead of them lay a basin of swift, dark water. On the other side of the pool, the river disappeared, as did its banks and the forest rising above its flood plain. The world just seemed to end, dropping away into nothingness, with only blue sky and distant mountains beyond.

  Tavis pulled his arm out of the rope that held the raft together. “Swim!”

  The command was useless, for even the scout could not hear the word he had just screamed over the roar of the waterfall. Nevertheless, he found himself trailing behind his four companions as they splashed and kicked, in seeming silence, away from the raft.

  Though the river’s bank was not distant, Tavis thought they would never reach it. The closer they came to the rocky shore, the faster it seemed to slip past. The scout swam with all his might, trying to angle upstream away from the deafening plunge, yet he felt himself drawn inexorably backward. He caught up to the others, but that small accomplishment brought him no relief. In the Corner of his eye he could see nothing but blue sky.

  Then Morten stopped swimming. Though he was submerged up to his chest in dark waters, he stood like a granite pillar against the current. He reached out and clasped Brianna’s hand. She stopped drifting and clasped Avner, and then Earl Dobbin was clutching madly at the boy’s legs, his mouth gaping open in a scream that no one could hear above the din of falling water.

  Tavis reached for the lord mayor’s ankles. He felt cold water slipping between his fingers. The scout glanced over his shoulder and saw the dark edge of nothingness creeping toward his feet. He cupped his hands and pulled with all his might, at the same time kicking with both legs. He surged forward, felt the water drag him back, and plunged his feet toward the river bottom.

  The scout felt soft mud sucking at his boots, then found himself struggling to keep his balance in neck-deep water. Pulling against the current with his arms, he walked toward shore, carefully anchoring each foot before he moved the next. The water grew shallow, and soon he found himself standing on shore, a half dozen paces from where his companions lay gasping on the boggy ground.

  Tavis started to collapse, but stopped when he saw Avner yelling at him and pointing at his back. The scout slowly turned and saw, less than a pace away, the sharp edge of a cliff. Far below, the silvery ribbon of the waterfall emptied into a pool strewn with craggy boulders that had tumbled off the top of the precipice in times past. And down there, leaping from one jagged stone to another in a frantic attempt to cross the river, was Basil.

  Tavis raised his arm to wave, then saw a black shaft come streaking out of the trees on shore. The arrow skipped past the verbeeg’s shoulder and disappeared into the river, then a lone ogre stepped out of the forest. The scout pulled Bear Driller off his back and reached for an arrow—only to discover that his quiver had been ripped from his back in the raging river.

  With his useless bow in hand, Tavis watched the ogre below nock another arrow. Basil dived into the water and saved himself as the shaft shot past, but the refuge was only temporary. His attacker was already pulling another arrow from his quiver and leaping onto the rocks.

  Realizing the runecaster could not stay underwater forever, Tavis stepped over to Avner. He tried to ask for the boy’s sling, but when he could not make himself heard over the waterfall, simply pulled it from inside the youth’s cloak. Grabbing a stone off the ground, he returned to the edge of the cliff.

  The ogre was standing on a boulder in the middle of the river, peering down into the water. Tavis placed his stone in the sling and whirled the strap over his head, then hurled the missile at the brute below.

  The rock splashed into the water a dozen paces behind its target. The ogre loosed his shaft, then Basil came up for air. By the time his foe could nock another arrow, the verbeeg had disappeared once again beneath the water.

  Tavis grabbed another rock off the ground, then felt Avner’s hand tugging at his wet sleeve. The boy took the sling and placed a fist-sized rock into the pocket. He stepped over to the cliff edge, began whirling the strap above his head, and waited. When the ogre drew his bowstring back to fire, the young thief whipped his missile forward. The stone streaked down and struck the brute squarely in the back of the head. The warrior pitched face first into the water.

  Basil came up for air again, cocking his head in puzzlement as the dead ogre
drifted past. The verbeeg touched his hand to the back of the corpse’s head, then seemed to realize where his help had come from and looked toward the top of the waterfall. Tavis waved, motioning for the verbeeg to come up and join them.

  Basil shook his head, then turned downstream and began to swim. He looked over his shoulder and waved one last time, then dived back under the water.

  As Tavis stood puzzling over the verbeeg’s sudden desertion, a volley of ogre arrows sailed out of the trees below, arcing up toward him. He did not even bother to step back, for the distance was too great, and he knew they would all fall short.

  Goboka’s burly figure stepped from beneath a giant hemlock’s heavy boughs, a crackling red javelin in his hands. The shaman glared at Tavis for a moment, then hurled the spear into the air. The scout leaped back, barely ducking out of the way as the missile streaked past in a blur of red and orange.

  The javelin struck a black spruce, splitting the bole in two as it passed through. The shaft buried itself deep in the trunk of another tree, then hung there with crimson sparks sputtering from its end.

  Along with Brianna and the rest of his companions, Tavis threw himself to the ground. He landed at the princess’s side. They lay on the ground for a moment. Then, with an explosion audible even over the din of the waterfall, the tree erupted into a giant pillar of flame.

  Tavis felt Brianna’s hand on his shoulder. “I guess you don’t know everything,” she yelled, holding her mouth close to his ear. “Now we try my plan!”

  11

  The Hanging Moor

  After a grueling all-day ascent with the ogre horde clambering close behind, Brianna crested a small cliff and saw a hill giant hulking in the distance. She knew then her small company would soon be safe.

  It didn’t matter that the entire length of a hanging moor and a deep alpine canyon separated her from the giant. The meadow’s tundra would be easy to run upon, and the gorge was narrow enough to yell across, so she would simply sprint over to the chasm’s edge and demand the hill giant’s help. Then he would escort the princess’s party into Gray Wolf lands, and even Goboka would not dare violate Noote’s dominion by following. At least that was Brianna’s hope, for she saw no other means of escape.

  The hanging meadow sat like a broken saucer upon the mountain’s flank. On its uphill side, a sheer wall of granite soared into the sky, its distant crown lost in the pearly vapors of a low-hanging cloud. The downhill side was encircled by a craggy precipice, falling more than thirty feet to a steep slope of talus stones and puny bristlecone pines. This scarp descended several hundred paces to timberline, where a wall of spearhead spruce abruptly rose to replace the ground-hugging pine thickets.

  There, just emerging from the majestic spruce forest, was Goboka’s horde. The warriors were spread out in both directions, cutting off any hope of trying to descend back into the valley below. Unless the companions could fly, their only hope of escape was to descend into the gorge at the far end of the moor.

  “Well?” called Tavis. “Does it lead anywhere?”

  “Yes, to freedom!” Brianna turned around and lay on the moor, reaching down to help her companions up the small cliff. “There’s one of Noote’s hill giants ahead.”

  Tavis’s lips tightened in irritation, but it was Morten who spoke. “We’d better think this over,” he said. “That giant’s liable to attack before you can explain who you are—especially when he sees you with giant-kin.”

  “That’s why I intend to approach him alone, while you and Tavis wait here,” Brianna said. “I know how giants and giant-kin feel about each other.”

  The animosity between the two groups was not bitter enough to be called hatred, but it was as old as the giants themselves. According to the ancient stone giant songs, both true giants and giant-kin had sprung from the loins of the lusty mother-goddess Othea, but they had not been sired by the same father. The true giants were descended from Othea’s husband, the great god Annam, while the giant-kin were scions of her illicit lover, a minor deity named Ulutiu. As with many such families, the sibling races were jealous and resentful of each other, but they could also be helpful when it was mutually beneficial—and Brianna felt sure she could make it worth Noote’s trouble to tolerate a pair of kin.

  Unfortunately, her firbolg companions seemed reluctant to test the hospitality of hill giants. Neither one of them was making a move to climb the cliff, or to help Earl Dobbin and Avner up.

  “We don’t have time to debate this,” Brianna said. She pointed down the mountain, to where the ogres were gathering themselves into packs of ten and twelve. “If you know another way out of here, tell me.”

  Tavis’s only reply was to point up the mountainside.

  Brianna craned her neck back. She saw only a vertical wall of granite, scoured by gales of blowing snow and draped with thick curtains of ice.

  “I can’t scale that!” burst Earl Dobbin. “Not with an injured leg.”

  “And probably not with two good legs,” the scout replied. “But Avner’s an excellent climber. He’ll lower his rope for you.” The scout pointed at the coil of rope the youth carried over his shoulder.

  “I understand being nervous about asking hill giants for help, but you can’t be serious!” Brianna continued to stare at the cliff. Now that she had been looking a little longer, she could see that the ice curtains were in fact hanging glaciers—most ready to come crashing down at any moment. “We’d freeze to death up there, even if we survived long enough to climb out of arrow range.”

  “Morten and I’ll hold the ogres off,” Tavis said. “By the time they get past us, you’ll be out of range.”

  “Leave you behind?” Avner gasped. “I won’t do it!”

  “You won’t have to,” Brianna said. She continued to look at Tavis. “How can you think climbing that cliff’s safer than asking help of the hill giants?”

  “Because it is.”

  Brianna found her gaze locked with Tavis’s, for he was staring at her with the steady, confident expression that he always used when he wanted her to trust him. It was a look that made her ache to believe him, and whenever he used it she found her heart pounding with the desire to forget what she had seen back in Stagwick. “Tavis, if there’s some reason the hill giants give you a special fright, tell me now,” Brianna said. “Otherwise, I will seek their help.”

  Tavis looked at his feet. “I can’t. I promised not to bring it up again.”

  “Then don’t!” Brianna snapped, surmising he was referring to her father. She shook her head in disgust and gathered her feet to rise. “Give me a minute with the giant before showing yourselves.”

  “Wait!” Tavis cast a sideways glance at Morten, then said, “If I can’t convince you, maybe Morten can.”

  “Me?” the bodyguard gasped.

  “All I ask is that you tell her what happened at the Earls Bridge.”

  “If that’s what you want and Brianna will listen.”

  “Make it quick,” the princess said.

  Morten shrugged. “Tavis shot an arrow at your father,” he said. Then, in a helpful voice, he added, “But I don’t think he meant to hit him, or surely the king would be dead.”

  “You did what?” Brianna gasped, staring at the scout in astonishment.

  Tavis did not return her gaze. “Tell her why, Morten,” he said. “And what the king did about it.”

  Morten’s eyes lit with understanding. “They were arguing about how to rescue you,” he explained. “Tavis wanted to lead a company after you right away, but your father wanted to wait for more troops. Then Tavis said he’d track you alone and the king forbade it, so he shot an arrow past your father’s head and left anyway.”

  “And then His Majesty sent us to bring this recreant to justice,” Earl Dobbin added. “As well he should have.”

  Brianna felt a cold lump forming in her stomach. “We’re wasting time.” She glanced down the mountain and saw that the first ogre packs were already well above timberline. “Wh
at’s the point of all this?”

  Tavis shook his head and looked away. “Can’t you see that for yourself?”

  “I can,” said Avner. “The point is that your father didn’t send anyone to rescue you. And the only reason he sent the earls was to stop Tavis from freeing you.”

  The cold lump in Brianna’s stomach began to swell, until it seemed an icy ball of anger filled her entire abdomen. “Avner, you’ll have to learn that kings often do things that don’t make sense to other people,” she said, forcing more patience into her voice than she felt. “Even if my father did not share Tavis’s opinion about the best way to rescue me, that does not mean he betrayed me.”

  The princess turned her angry glare upon the scout. “In fact, it’s quite possible that the king’s plan would have worked better—had it been given a chance.” She pointed to the ogre packs scrambling up toward them. “It’s clear enough that your plan has not been entirely successful—so I suggest you and Morten do something to hold off the ogres until I can arrange for our safe passage to Noote’s palace.”

  With that, the princess turned away. She had taken barely three steps before a series of crashes echoed up from the mountainside. Brianna looked over the edge of the moor to see a half dozen boulders bouncing down the slope at the ogres. Even if they didn’t trust hill giants, Tavis and Morten were doing their best to give her time to strike a bargain with this one.

  Brianna started to run, looking back toward the gorge at the far end of the moor. The hill giant had not moved. He sat squatting on his heels, his armpits resting on his knees and his gangling arms swinging in the long, listless sweeps of a bored child. His eyes, as dim as they were gray, stared blankly into the canyon below, while his mouth hung open in a slack-jawed gape of tedium. The untanned bearskin covering his shoulders did not prevent him from shivering in the cold wind, and every so often Brianna heard a ghastly rattle that could only be the chattering of his huge teeth.

  The princess reached the end of the moor and stopped. The gorge between her and the hill giant was no more than fifty paces wide. “Hello!” she called, yelling into the wind. “Over here!”