by Troy Denning
Avner stepped from his hiding place to obey Tavis, and the ogres drew their bowstrings back to fire. Then the hill giant’s long arm lashed out and snatched the boy up.
“Stupid firbolg!” the giant yelled, glaring at Tavis. He pointed up the canyon, toward the headwaters of the tiny brook. “Gate to Noote’s lands upstream!”
Morten started to crawl in the direction the hill giant indicated.
Tavis caught his arm. “Listen to me,” he said. “We can’t trust Noote.”
“We have no other choice.” As he spoke, the bodyguard was staring over Tavis’s shoulder. “Have you seen what’s coming up the valley?”
Tavis twisted around to look. At first, he did not understand what concerned Morten. The valley looked liked any high alpine canyon, with a silvery brook, small patches of tundra meadow, and thick stands of spruce.
Then, on a talus slope about two hundred paces below, something changed. At first, Tavis could not say exactly what. Nothing moved on the hillside, no stones clattered, and the wind came from the wrong direction to carry on its breath any whiff of hidden ogres. But the scout knew better than to doubt the gnawing in his stomach or the hair prickling on his neck. He watched.
At the edge of a spruce stand, a black rock suddenly vanished into the darkness beneath the tree limbs. Tavis blinked, not quite able to believe what he had just seen. The shadows swallowed a second stone, this one white, then a third and a fourth, and the scout realized the whole talus field was disappearing before his eyes. The entire copse of trees was advancing up the gorge, creeping along so slowly that it hardly seemed to be moving at all.
The gnawing in Tavis’s stomach changed to queasy dismay. He had seen ogres creep forward behind screens of shrubbery before, but knew better than to think he was seeing that. Ogres could not carry seventy-foot spruces, nor could hundreds of them coordinate their movements well enough to move an entire stand so precisely and imperceptibly. Only Goboka’s magic could do that.
Morten was right. Tavis and his companions would have to go with the hill giant now, and hope they could part company later—before he took them to Noote.
The scout nocked an ogre arrow in Bear Driller, then gathered five more—all he could reach—and gave them to Morten. “We’ll have to run for it,” he said. “Hand those to me as we go.”
The bodyguard sneered at being relegated to the position of assistant, but, lacking any missile weapons of his own, took the arrows. “Follow my lead. I’ll take five steps and turn left, then three steps and break right, and do the same thing once more,” Morten said. “If we’re not dead by then, you’re on your own.”
The two firbolgs scrambled up the bank. Tavis fired at the top of the cliff. Goboka’s warriors stood their ground and counterattacked, determined to keep the pair from reaching the copse where Brianna and the hill giant were hiding. The scout’s arrow pierced the throat of one brute, then the other ogres released their own bowstrings. Tavis and Morten made their break, narrowly avoiding injury as ogre shafts clattered to the ground beside them.
Avner’s sling whistled from the spruce stand. A stone streaked up and glanced off an ogre’s shoulder, then Brianna voiced a spell. One of the shafts in the brute’s quiver changed into a snake and buried its fangs into his arm. Morten slapped another arrow into Tavis’s palm. The scout fired again, the ogres shot back, Avner’s sling whistled, and the battle evolved into a flurry of flying shafts and stones.
By the time the firbolgs made their last break, only one ogre remained. He suddenly retreated from the edge of the cliff, and Morten leaned over to rest his hands on his knees.
“Runt, I’ve got to admit it,” the bodyguard panted. “You’re a fine archer.”
The scout paid the compliment no attention, and not only because the pounding of his heart in his ears made it difficult to hear. Ogres did not abandon their posts, at least not when their shaman was nearby. If the warrior had retreated, it was because there was no longer any need to hold his quarry at bay.
Tavis looked down the gorge and saw that Goboka’s magical copse was no longer gliding up the canyon. Rather, the stand was sweeping toward them with all the speed of a wildfire, the roots of the majestic trees slithering over the rocky ground like tentacles. The spruces themselves were swaying madly, their boughs fluttering and snapping like battle flags, and their boles groaning like bloodthirsty banshees.
“Run for the gate!” Tavis yelled.
Brianna and the other humans were already fleeing up the gorge, but the hill giant was not moving. Instead, he remained at the edge of the copse, staring at his unconscious dire wolf.
“Greta!” he wailed.
Tavis could not tell whether the giant was crying out in remorse or commanding his stricken wolf to rise. The scout thrust his bow into Morten’s hands, then turned back for the pet. He had no love for dire wolves—he considered them little more than cowardly bullies—but if rescuing the giant’s pet would help their dimwitted guide think more clearly, it was worth the risk.
The scout hoisted the beast by its legs and could not help noticing that the thing was a male. “And that churl called me stupid,” he muttered. “Greta indeed!”
Tavis hefted the wolf across his shoulders, then turned and ran toward his companions. Greta was a heavy load and slowed him considerably, but the broad grin on the giant’s face left no doubt in the scout’s mind that he had avoided a lengthy delay by picking up the beast.
“Go on!” Tavis yelled. He did not dare stop to look back down the valley, but knew that they had no time to waste. Goboka’s magical copse was coming fast, perhaps faster than any of them could run. “I’ll bring Greta!”
The hill giant plucked the three humans off the ground, then stepped into the stream and splashed up the valley. Although the big oaf was rather ungainly and awkward, his long strides covered the ground quickly. Even Morten could not quite keep pace, though he was scrambling along the bank at his best sprint. It was no wonder that Tavis, burdened by Greta’s extra weight, quickly fell behind and lost sight of his companions in the rough terrain of the stream channel.
That was fine with Tavis. The hill giant was putting distance between Brianna and Goboka, which seemed a fair trade for bearing the wolf. But the scout could not keep his end of the bargain for much longer. Already his lungs burned with exhaustion, his thighs ached with weariness, and his head pounded from the exertion. He struggled on, determined to outrun the shaman’s copse not for his own sake, but for that of the princess. Only he understood the true danger to Brianna—that posed by her treacherous father—and if he allowed himself to die she would never be safe.
The rush of falling water began to hiss through the cramped canyon. The scout looked up to see the slender ribbon of a waterfall spilling over the lip of a high granite wall. Although the tiny cascade was a mere trickle compared to the rumbling monster that had nearly claimed the party earlier, it rose more than a hundred feet high, and Tavis saw no way he could scale such a high cliff with a dire wolf on his back.
The scout stopped at the base of the waterfall, his legs quivering, his breath coming in burning gasps. No one had stayed to help him, but dropping Greta was out of the question. Not only was he afraid of angering the giant, he had said he would bring the beast, and a promise was a promise. A terrible, rancid odor began to thicken the mountain air, and, cringing at the thought of what he would see, Tavis turned to look down the gorge.
It was worse than he expected. Less than fifty paces down the stream loomed a wall of blue-green spruces, madly rocking from side to side as they waddled up the gorge on their gnarled roots. Many of the trees were leaning forward, stretching their spiny boughs out to seize Tavis, while others were spreading out to flank him and make sure he didn’t escape.
Tavis dropped the dire wolf and reached for his sword.
“No, stupid firbolg!” The hill giant’s voice came booming down from above. “Bring Greta.”
A coil of greasy rope splashed into the stream. Tavis looked up to see the h
ill giant straddling the top of the waterfall. Morten and the humans were nowhere in sight. Snatching the wolf, the scout jumped into the water. Holding Greta under one arm, he barely managed to slip the line around his chest before the loop tightened and he was yanked off the ground, a steady spray of cold water crashing down on his head.
Several spruce trees lunged forward and scratched their prickly boughs across his legs. Tavis kicked so madly that he almost dropped Greta, but his efforts did not keep a limb from twining itself around his ankle. The scout’s ascent ended with an abrupt jerk. His leg nearly popped from its socket, and the rope bore down so hard that his breath left his chest in a single huff of agony.
From the top of the waterfall, the hill giant let out a deep grunt and continued to pull. The loop around Tavis’s chest tightened until he feared it would crush his ribs, and the joints in his leg felt as though they might burst apart. Greta began to slip out from beneath his arm. He dug his fingers into the wolf’s fur, knowing that if he dropped the beast, the giant would drop him.
Tavis looked down and could hardly believe what he saw. The hill giant had pulled him, with an entire spearhead spruce dangling from the limb wrapped around his ankle, more than halfway up the waterfall. The tree’s roots were waving in mad circles, as though the thing were actually frightened, and it was reaching up with several other limbs to secure a better grip on the scout.
Screaming in anger, Tavis drew his sword and hacked at the branch around his ankle. His blade cleaved it in a single blow, slicing through with a sick pop that sounded more like he had cut bone and tendon than wood. The tree dropped away, its limbs and roots flailing madly, and splintered against the rocky streambed with a tremendous crash.
Then, as the hill giant tugged Tavis to the top of the waterfall, the spearhead’s color changed from needle-green to flesh-gray. Its trunk flattened into the oblong form of a chest, its roots twisted themselves into a pair of legs, and its branches withered into two gangling arms, one ending at the wrist. The tree began to shrink, its tip coalescing into a brutish head with the jutting chin and squinting, purple eyes of a dead ogre.
Tavis looked at his own leg and saw that the branch clinging to his ankle had become the brute’s severed hand. Before he could kick it away, the scout felt himself being swung over the cliff. He was gently lowered and placed on a granite bank beside the waterfall, then the hill giant took Greta from him and stroked the wolf’s fur. “Thank you, stupid firbolg.”
“You’re welcome,” Tavis huffed. He pulled the ogre’s hand off his ankle and flung it over the waterfall. “But call me Tavis, not stupid firbolg.”
The giant smiled down at him, showing the stubs of a dozen brown teeth. “Rog.” The finger he used to jab his burly chest was the size of short sword. “Friends?”
Tavis returned the grin, and not just out of politeness. Hill giants were not known for repaying debts of honor, but if Rog felt grateful enough to offer his friendship, perhaps he would make a good ally.
“Yes, friends.” Tavis did not raise his arm to shake hands, for hill giants interpreted such gestures as an attempt to steal something. “May our fellowship endure as long as the mountains.”
“Longer!” boomed the hill giant.
“Then may it last as long as there is sky above and ground below,” Tavis corrected.
Glancing over the waterfall into the gorge, the scout saw that Goboka’s magical copse was rapidly changing back to its true form. All of the spruces had shrunk to proper size for ogres. Each tree stood on two crooked legs instead of a tangle of roots. Half of them were rushing forward, their boughs twining together to form long gangling arms, while the rest seemed to be plucking bows and arrows from the midst of their branches.
As Tavis watched, a huge crow stepped from behind an ogre-tree near the back of the stand and glared up at him with an eye as black as an abyss. It cackled angrily, then stretched its wings.
“Rog, we’d better run for your gate,” Tavis said. “I have a feeling there’s more ogre blood than crow blood running through that bird’s veins.”
Rog’s eyes went blank. “Huh?”
The crow launched itself into the air.
“That bird’s really an ogre shaman,” Tavis explained. He stepped away from the cliff edge. “And if we let him catch us in the open, neither one of us will live long enough to appreciate our new friendship.”
“Tavis not worry,” Rog said. “Gate here.”
The scout turned around and saw the small pond from which the waterfall flowed. To all sides of the pool rose sheer walls of stone, their dark faces streaked with runnels of water trickling down from the shelves of blue ice hanging upon every ledge. There was no gate anywhere, at least that Tavis could see, nor any other passage out of the tarn valley.
Tavis was about to ask about the gate, and his companions, when he noticed the rest of Rog’s wolf pack swimming near the base of a cliff. They were circling outside a black crevice that the scout had, at first, taken to be merely a streak of dark stone, but which he now realized was a fissure in the mountainside.
With Greta tucked under one arm, the hill giant stepped into the icy water and waded toward the crevice. After sheathing his sword, Tavis followed. The bottom disappeared from beneath his feet, but the swim was a short one, and he quickly found himself trailing Rog’s wolves into the fissure. He paused inside the entrance to look back across the pool and saw Goboka, in crow form, rising above the waterfall.
Tavis turned around and resumed his swim, following the wolves into a narrow channel of dark water. The cove continued about fifty paces before coming to a gently sloping bank of dry granite. The scout’s companions sat upon this craggy shore, waiting for him.
Brianna held what passed for a torch among hill giants, a burning sapling so large she had to support it with both hands. By the brand’s light, Tavis could see that they had entered a fault cave, a sort of crack in the mountain between two unimaginably huge blocks of rock. Unlike limestone caverns that wandered along the winding courses of ancient underground streams, fault caves ran in straight passages and sharp angles.
This one was no exception. Beyond his companions, the scout saw a long, narrow corridor leading toward the heart of the mountain. Rog had already finished his long swim and was starting to crawl up the passage on his hands and knees. The tunnel was large enough that even Morten could stand in it, but the massive hill giant could barely squeeze through. His great rear-end was dragging against both walls at once, while his broad back was perilously close to becoming lodged in the confines of the crack’s narrowing ceiling. The giant could not have turned around if his life depended on it.
Ahead of Tavis, the first wolf crawled out of the pool and shook, spraying Brianna and the others with icy water. A moment later, the scout’s feet touched bottom and he began to wade forward, waiting his turn in line. Morten slipped around the wolf and held Bear Driller out to Tavis.
“Here’s your bow, runt.” The bodyguard was not ridding himself of an unwanted burden so much as promptly returning another warrior’s weapon. “Glad the ogres didn’t get you.”
“I wanted to wait for you,” said Avner, “but Rog wouldn’t put me down.”
“Which is just as well,” added Earl Dobbin. He stepped deeper into the passage, trying to keep himself from being sprayed as the wolves continued to crawl from the icy waters. “Our goal is to save Princess Brianna, not your wretched master.”
“She’s not safe yet.”
As Tavis uttered his warning, the crow sailed low over his head and dropped down on the granite shore. Before the scout could utter another word, Rog’s wolves leaped for the bird, snapping and snarling, knocking Morten into Tavis and sending both firbolgs sprawling in the pond.
The crow sprang into the air, but did not fly away. Instead, the bird darted to and fro, its talons slashing noses and its beak shredding ears. Cowards that they were, the dire wolves retreated the instant they suffered an injury. Within moments, the entire pack had bru
shed past Brianna and the other humans to flee down the passage, licking their wounds and yelping for their master.
“That’s some crow,” Morten observed, raising himself out of the cold waters.
The instant he could stand, Tavis lashed out with Bear Driller, catching the bird’s neck between the tip and string of his bow. He quickly pulled the thing down, but it slipped free and dived past him into the water.
“That’s no bird. It’s Goboka.” The scout plunged his hands into the water, searching for the submerged crow. “Go on. Once you’re out of the tunnel, tell Rog to seal it behind you—whether or not I’ve caught up.”
Earl Dobbin took Brianna by the hand and started up the corridor, but Avner drew his dagger and stepped toward Tavis.
“I’ll stay to help—”
Morten cut the boy’s offer short by snatching him up and starting up the corridor. “Don’t stay long,” the bodyguard advised. “The giant said the gate isn’t far ahead. We don’t need much of a head start.”
Tavis acknowledged the warning with a grunt, then slipped Bear Driller over his shoulder and drew his sword. He was tempted to wait for the bird to surface, but this was no ordinary crow, and he had no idea how long it might remain submerged. He began to blindly slash his blade through the dark water, hoping that he would at least keep Goboka too busy dodging to counterattack.
A chorus of mad, deep-throated growls suddenly echoed down the corridor. Tavis whirled around and, by the distant light of Brianna’s torch, saw Rog’s wolves spinning around to attack.
“No!” thundered the giant’s voice. “Down!”
The dire wolves paid no attention to their master and leaped for the first person in line, Earl Dobbin. The lord mayor’s hideous screams filled the passage as he disappeared beneath a mad flurry of fur.
“Bad wolves!” yelled Rog. “Stop!”
Morten dropped Avner to the ground, then grabbed Brianna and pulled her behind him. Tavis scrambled from the pool. Earl Dobbin’s screams fell abruptly silent. In the dim light cast by Brianna’s torch, the scout saw the wolves tearing at the lord mayor’s body, their slavering jaws ripping it into a dozen separate pieces.