by Troy Denning
Morten grabbed Brianna and pushed her back toward Tavis, then spread himself across the tunnel. He swung his axe, and a pair of dull thumps reverberated down the corridor. Two wolves yelped in pain, then abruptly fell silent
“Stop!” Rog’s grief-stricken wail filled the passage.
Morten’s foot lashed out, crushing another beast against the wall.
“Tavis friend!” yelled Rog. “Make stupid firbolg stop!”
“Sorry, Rog,” Tavis called, sprinting down the corridor.
The scout did not have time to explain that the beasts were being controlled by the ogre shaman, for Morten was swinging his axe again. The bodyguard killed another pair of wolves, but two more slipped past in the confusion.
Before the wolves had a chance to attack Brianna or Avner, the princess swung her huge torch like a club. She dropped one beast dead in its tracks and caught the other on the backswing, setting its fur ablaze. So powerful was her blow that it darkened her torch and sent the wolf tumbling down the passage.
The flaming brute landed directly in front of Tavis. It sprang up instantly, snarling and snapping. The scout tried to bring his sword up, but the red-eyed monster, stinking of scorched fur and the rancid breath of a carnivore, was already on him. He threw his free arm up to keep the beast from ripping his throat out, then felt its momentum bowling him over.
Tavis let himself fall, dropping to his back and planting a foot squarely in his attacker’s abdomen. His whole arm exploded into searing pain as the fangs sank deep into his flesh, but the scout ignored the agony and kicked as hard as he could. The beast rolled over him and he followed, leading with his sword. The blade pierced the creature’s sternum with a wet crackle. The wolf’s fur, smothered beneath its huge body, quickly stopped burning, and the scout found himself lying in darkness. “Tavis?” came Avner’s voice.
The passage had grown eerily quiet, save for Rog’s distant demands for someone to open the gate. The scout looked behind him and saw only a few faint embers glowing on Brianna’s extinguished torch. Otherwise, the corridor was as black as a grave.
“Is anyone hurt?” asked Brianna.
“Aside from the lord mayor?” countered Morten.
The sound of sloshing water echoed through the passage. Tavis needed no light to know that a huge, burly ogre was rising from the pool.
“Tavis?” Avner repeated. “Is that you?”
“No, it’s Goboka,” Tavis whispered over his shoulder. “Morten, take Brianna and Avner!”
“Do you need a light to fight by?” asked Brianna.
“No, just go,” Tavis whispered. “And that means you, Avner. I’ll have enough to do without worrying about where you are.”
“If that’s what you want,” the boy responded. “But you better make it out alive.”
“I’ll do my best,” Tavis replied.
The scout waited until his companions’ footsteps began to echo down the corridor, then rose and crept forward, moving as silently as possible to keep Goboka from tracking him by sound. Because ogres were as blind in the darkness as firbolgs, Tavis considered himself at an advantage. He was an experienced blind-fighter, while the shaman could not use his magic without revealing his position. Tavis continued forward, holding his sword before him, warm blood dripping off his mauled arm, ready to spring forward the instant Goboka uttered the first syllable of an incantation.
The shaman did not make that mistake. He remained as silent as Tavis.
The scout did not worry. No matter how silent Goboka remained, he could not hide completely. A sour, rancid odor filled the cave, and it was growing stronger by the moment. Tavis pressed himself against the cavern wall and raised his sword, waiting for the slightest sound that would give the shaman’s position away.
Something came hissing at Tavis’s head. The scout swung his sword and leaned away, failing to avoid the four leathery knuckles that caught him in the cheek. His head snapped back, his blade clanged off the stony wall, and he fell reeling to the ground.
Tavis rolled. A foot crashed against the stone where he had been lying, and he swung his sword’s hilt up into the darkness. The pommel smashed into something solid, and he felt the ogre’s knee buckling. Tavis pushed off the ground, bringing his legs beneath him and slashing down as Goboka’s great mass fell.
The blade clanged against bare stone.
This time, Tavis sensed nothing before he was hit. The shaman’s fist caught him square in the chest, driving the wind from his lungs and hurling him back through the darkness. The scout landed on a lifeless lump of fur somewhere down the passage—he could not tell where—still gripping his sword in both hands.
The scout forced his aching body to rise. He slowly backed away, sliding his feet along just above the cave floor. His chest hurt, hurt like it had never hurt before. There had been no snapping or cracking when his foe’s blow landed. So why did it hurt so much?
The ogre smell seemed weaker now. Tavis hoped that meant Goboka was far away, but he also knew it could mean he was getting weaker. He had fallen unconscious before, and he remembered his senses beginning to fade just before he passed out.
But his hearing seemed fine. As he continued to back along the corridor, he heard Rog’s thundering voice behind him: “Gate! Open gate now!”
Tavis’s heel touched the warm body of another wolf. He stepped over the furry corpse and silently continued down the corridor. If he had entertained any hopes of killing Goboka today, they were gone. Now he was just trying to escape alive, without losing Brianna.
“Blood tastes good.” The whisper was deep and guttural, and it came from the floor right in front of Tavis. “Even firbolg blood.”
Of course! The shaman was following his blood trail. Tavis stepped forward, slashing diagonally at the voice.
His blade skipped off the stone with a loud clatter.
“Wrong!”
The word seemed to come from behind him, but the blow that snapped his head back definitely came from the front. Tavis slammed to the ground on his back, then threw his legs over his head and rolled. The momentum carried him several more tumbles up the passage, then he came to a rest on his stomach. A few paces ahead, Goboka pounced, slashing at the stony ground where he had expected to find his quarry.
The scout silently cursed himself for striking at the voice. Brianna had warned him that Goboka was a mimic, so it was no surprise that the ogre could also throw his voice. Many shamans used such tricks to impress their followers when the spirits were not communicating.
Two could play that game. Tavis picked himself up and dropped his sword on the ground, making certain it clanged nice and loud. Then he drew his dagger and took three quick steps back, stopping when he felt the hot breath of one of his companions across the back of his neck. Realizing that only Morten was tall enough to breathe down on him, the scout reached back and tapped the firbolg’s hip. Once the bodyguard knew where he was, Tavis felt sure he would help.
Goboka fell completely silent, but the scout could smell his rancid body coming closer. In his mind’s eye, Tavis saw his foe creeping forward, running his fingers over the ground in search of the blood trail, hoping the dropped sword meant his enemy had finally collapsed. Could the shaman also sense how close he was to his true quarry, Brianna? The scout hoped not.
“Open gate!” Rog’s booming voice filled the corridor.
Goboka’s talons scraped sharply across the floor, then clinked against Tavis’s sword. The ogre burst into a mystic chant The scout smiled and flung himself forward, striking at the darkness just beneath the shaman’s droning voice.
A thunderous clap echoed through the corridor, then, with a deafening clatter of chains, bright, glaring sunlight rushed into the narrow passage. Suddenly Tavis could see his dagger blade slashing through the air—and so could Goboka.
The shaman threw himself against the wall, narrowly dodging the gleaming steel. He brought Tavis’s sword up to counter. The blade bit deep, lodging itself between two ribs and hurlin
g the scout across the corridor. His whole body burned with pain, and he felt himself slam into a rocky wall. Still struggling to continue the battle, the scout rolled, bringing his dagger around in a desperate effort to deflect the final, killing stroke.
Morten’s burly form flashed past, axe raised high and eyes burning with ire. The bodyguard’s blow missed, but he followed it up with a series of furious assaults. Goboka, off-balance and blinded by the light streaming into his eyes, had no choice except to fall back.
Avner and Brianna were at Tavis’s side instantly, the princess already tending his wounds and the youth trying in vain to pull the wounded firbolg into the light. The scout did not think the boy would succeed, for inside his mind the dark curtain was falling fast.
13
Dale of the Gray Wolves
The iron plate rose into place with a deep, rumbling boom, and Rog slipped the enormous crossbar onto its supports, locking Goboka on the other side of the gate. The two hill giant guards released the hoisting chains and let them crash against the cliff, shaking the timber platform so hard Brianna feared the rickety thing would come apart. The ends of the chains slipped through a pair of slots, then hung beneath the huge shelf, dangling in the wind.
On this side of the mountain, the fault cave opened high on a wind-scoured wall of cold, sheer granite. Aside from a timber road that hung suspended from the stone face, the cliff was so smooth and clean it could have been cut by the axe of Stronmaus. It stretched for hundreds of feet in both directions, abruptly ending at a craggy rib with nothing but empty air beyond. Below—far, far below—lay a wooded dale encircled by precipices similar to the one upon which the companions stood. In the center of this valley the hill giants had hacked a muddy clearing from the forest and erected a small village of rough-hewn lodges. Though the buildings were probably as large as castles, from so high up they seemed as small as shepherds’ lean-tos, and the giants wandering between them looked no larger than sheep.
Brianna went a short distance down the timber road, then laid Tavis beside the cliff. Though his swollen cheek had almost closed one eye, the princess suspected that other injuries were more pressing. Taking the dagger from the scout’s good hand, she cut his cloak away.
Tavis’s body was strong and lean, with a powerful neck and shoulders. His chest was also larger than Brianna had expected, muscular and sharply defined, while his stomach was so flat and sinewy it looked like a stone giant had chiseled it from a granite slab. It was the kind of torso that the princess’s eyes might have lingered on for a very long time, had she not seen several other things that concerned her deeply.
Where his skin color had not been tainted by the effects of his wounds, the scout was as pale as alabaster. His sternum had turned black and swollen up to form a dome as big around as Brianna’s fist. There was a gash in his side so long and deep that she could have hidden the dagger in it. Most troubling of all was the steady stream of blood oozing from his mangled arm. If she did not halt that flow, Tavis would be dead within minutes.
“Will he be all right?” demanded Avner.
“I’ll do what I can,” Brianna replied. She found it difficult to speak around the catch in her throat. “But I am young, and Hiatea has not blessed me with her most powerful healing magic—and only two of her lesser remedies.”
“You can’t let him die!” Avner burst.
“The princess will do all she can,” Morten said, coming up behind the boy. “You’ll only make the task more difficult by disturbing her.”
Brianna slipped her amulet from around her neck, then opened her waterskin and placed her goddess’s flaming spear inside. “Valorous Hiatea, bless this water with your magic so that it may boil the enemy’s contagion from the wounds of this …”
Brianna hesitated, trying to think of the kindest thing she could honestly say about Tavis. Hiatea was not profligate with her magic, seldom granting it to aid those who had proven themselves unworthy of her attention, and the princess feared that her goddess would not heed her call to aid the firbolg. To her surprise, she found herself terribly alarmed by that possibility, so much so that unsummoned tears were rolling down her cheeks.
“Bless this water so that it may scald the evil from this warrior’s blood,” she continued. “Many times has Tavis Burdun’s bravery saved my life and that of an orphaned child. He has served you in that much, at least.”
Avner demanded, “Does your goddess let people die just because she thinks they’ve done bad things?”
“We’ll talk later,” Brianna replied, hardly hearing the boy.
“But Tavis didn’t know—”
“Later!” Morten grunted. He plucked Avner up and carried him across the platform to where the boy would not interfere with the princess’s work.
Brianna brushed the tears from her eyes, then spoke the mystic syllables that would actually shape Hiatea’s purifying magic. A gentle gurgle arose inside her waterskin, then the sides puffed out and white vapor gushed from the open neck. The princess sighed in relief. Her supplication had convinced the goddess of Tavis’s worthiness.
The princess removed her talisman and poured the boiling liquid over her patient’s injuries. White bubbles frothed up in the open cuts, though not to the extent she had expected. She had assumed the scout’s blood would be so full of wicked contagions that it would continue to lather until her waterskin ran empty. Instead, the fluid quickly cleared and began to stream from his wounds in red-tinged runnels. Brianna bit her lip, puzzled. When she had healed Morten back on Coggin’s Rise, even his blood had frothed more than Tavis’s.
The scout’s eyes popped open. “Bri … an … na!” he croaked. The effort of speaking drained even more color from his face. “Giants!”
Noticing that his gaze was fixed over his shoulder, Brianna looked up to see that the three hill giants had come to watch her work her magic. In one hand, Rog still held Greta’s limp form, but no other wolves were near, for the rest had perished inside the fault cave.
Brianna returned her attention to Tavis. “Don’t you remember? Rog is our friend; we’re safe with him.”
Given the power of the shaman’s magic, the princess was not entirely sure that was true. But if Goboka did find a way past the gate, Brianna could only hope Rog and his two friends would be able to dispatch the ogre.
Tavis grabbed her head and pulled her ear close to his mouth. “No. Can’t … trust … giants!”
“Be quiet,” the princess said gently. “You’re not strong enough to talk.”
Brianna placed her silver spear on the scout’s mauled arm, then closed her eyes and uttered the mystic syllables of her healing spell. A wave of searing heat pulsed from the silver spear, and Tavis cried out.
Brianna opened her eyes again and looked down to see her amulet flickering with orange fire. The arm itself was hidden by a pall of gray smoke, though the princess could see tongues of yellow flame dancing where there had been runnels of blood before. Hiatea’s magic continued to sear the mangled limb for several moments, Tavis groaning in pain as the heat burned his flesh. At last, the flames died and the smoke cleared, revealing a hairless arm covered with swirls of raw, scorched hide.
By way of comforting Tavis, Brianna said, “Don’t worry, it’ll look better after I heal it a few more times. At least the bleeding’s stopped.”
The scout hardly seemed to notice the arm. “Just make me strong enough … to protect you.” Then, so quietly that even the princess could barely hear him, he gasped, “In case you’re wrong … about Noote.”
Brianna held her gaze on Tavis’s. The scout’s persistence was beginning to convince her that he believed what he was saying. Perhaps Basil or Runolf, or both of them, had lied to him. That would certainly explain his fanatic accusations against her father and Noote.
“We’ll worry about that later.” Brianna took a hooked needle from her satchel and ran a coarse black thread through its eye. “Right now, I must concentrate on you.” “But—”
The sco
ut’s objection changed to a hiss of pain as Brianna pinched the gash on his stomach closed. Before he could protest further, she slipped the tip of her needle through a flap of skin and began to stitch the wound shut. Tavis allowed her to work in silence, perhaps because he found it impossible to speak through clenched teeth.
The princess had to concentrate to keep her attention focused on the task at hand. Her thoughts kept wandering back to what had happened when she purified Tavis’s wounds. The lack of froth suggested the scout was exactly what she had originally believed: a rather naive, self-sacrificing firbolg incapable of treachery. Yet, that could not be so. Even if she dismissed his accusations against her father, she had seen with her own eyes that Tavis was a thief. The two incidents were contradictory, and she did not understand how she could have witnessed them both.
Brianna finished closing the wound and returned the needle to her satchel. In spite of her efforts, brightly colored blood continued to ooze from between the gash’s puffy lips. She laid her talisman over the cut, then decided to make a quick inspection of the bruise on Tavis’s chest before using her last healing spell. The wound on his stomach was probably a greater threat to his life, but the bruise might mask some internal injury that would kill him more quickly.
The princess placed her hands on both sides of the black circle and pushed down, steadily increasing the pressure. Despite Tavis’s howl of pain, she was pleased by what she felt. The sternum had not moved and probably was not cracked. Next, the princess grabbed the dome of swollen flesh and worked it back and forth between her fingers, drawing even louder cries from the scout. The lump felt soft and watery, with no sign of anything solid inside.
“If you’re … trying to kill me, just slit my throat,” the scout growled. “It’d hurt less.”
“Don’t be such a coward,” Brianna chided. “This is nothing but a bruise. You’re not going to die from it.”