The Giant Among Us

by Troy Denning

  Avner had fallen into a lethargic slump. One hand was clutching Olchak’s unconscious body to his chest and the other was frozen into the mammoth’s long fur. The boy’s skin was beginning to take on the same blue tint as his lips, and he was staring into the blizzard as though he saw something more than white nothingness ahead.

  After a while, it seemed to Tavis that they were no longer even moving—then, with a start, he realized they weren’t. Graytusk had stopped. The scout could not say whether they were in the center of a meadow, the bottom of a ravine, or even at the base of a mountain. Dusk was coming, and he could barely see the mammoth’s hairy trunk probing through the snow. The firbolg raised his lodestone. When he saw that they were still traveling in the right direction, he tugged on the trunk rope.

  “Let’s go, Graytusk,” he growled.

  The mammoth pulled his nose out of the snow and flung a snootful of brown mud at the scout. When the foul-smelling muck spattered him, Tavis was surprised to discover that it felt vaguely warm. He scraped some of the stuff off his face and saw tiny bits of half-digested twigs and grass. Manure.

  Mammoth manure.

  During the long journey from the glacier, the scout had certainly seen enough of Graytusk’s droppings to recognize the stuff. Of course, it was possible that a wild herd had drifted south from the Icy Plains and crossed the Ice Spires into this valley, but the firbolg could think of a more likely explanation: The frost giants had escaped from their ice cave and beat him into the valley.

  Tavis put his lodestone away and took Bear Driller off his back, then swung his quiver around to where he could grab his arrows easily. He had only two runearrows left, one for Julien and one for Arno. The scout let the trunk rope fall slack, then slipped the end under his thigh.

  “We’re g-getting c-close now, Avner,” Tavis said, shouting to make himself heard above the roaring wind. He was not happy to hear himself stammering. When a firbolg stammered, the weather was truly cold. “B-Be alert”

  “Arrmphg augh?” The boy’s speech was so slurred the scout could not understand it.

  Tavis glanced over his shoulder. The storm was growing dark now, but enough light remained to see that Avner’s pupils were almost as large as their irises. The youth’s breath came in quick, shallow gasps, and the scout knew the boy was the verge of falling unconscious.

  “S-Stay with me,” Tavis said. Although he was speaking in a normal voice, even he couldn’t hear himself over the raging wind. “It can’t be much f-farther.”

  Tavis turned and used the tip of his bow to tap Graytusk on the head. The mammoth rooted around under the snow for a moment longer, then turned slightly north and resumed his trek. Whenever the beast stopped to stick his nose under the snow, the scout tugged on the trunk rope until the mammoth hurled some more dung at him. The manure grew steadily warmer, and Tavis guessed they couldn’t be more than thirty minutes behind the main herd.

  It was during one of those stops that Tavis caught a whiff of something more interesting than mammoth dung: the acrid smoke of burning spruce. The wind was swirling and howling from a hundred different directions, but the scout suspected that the smell came from someplace ahead. More importantly, he felt certain that he knew who had made the fire. Frost giants had little need for campfires, but Julien and Arno might, and Brianna certainly would.

  A confident smile cracked across Tavis’s frozen face. Although the storm’s swirling winds would make it impossible to locate the fire by smell alone, smoke was not so different than anything else he had ever pursued. In the short run, it might dart here and there, laying a crazy path that only the gods could decipher. But over a longer distance, it would travel in a straight line, a line that a good tracker could calculate not by examining each individual sign, but by finding the underlying pattern.

  The scout allowed Graytusk to guide them for a while longer, counting off the seconds before he caught the odor of smoke once more, and then the interval until he smelled it again. He repeated this process over and over, and the period between whiffs steadily grew shorter. At the same time, Tavis used his lodestone to determine that they were traveling almost due north. When the mammoth finally veered westward, still following the scent of his herd mates, the interval between smoke whiffs began to increase.

  Tavis steered Graytusk northward again. The mammoth tried to jerk his head back westward, but a quick tug on the trunk rope returned the beast to good behavior. They continued north and soon entered a spruce copse. Here, the blizzard did not seem so bad. The trees acted as a windbreak, reducing the storm’s howl to a mere whistle. The thick boughs provided a dark contrast to the white haze, and trapped much of the blowing snow in their long needles. Even in the darkening dusk light, the scout could see the silhouettes of trees more than thirty paces ahead.

  Tavis continued northward until the copse started to thin and, in the openings between the trees, he could see the raging white wall of the storm. The scout stopped Graytusk beside a particularly large spruce, then used Bear Driller to scrape the snow off the branches as highup as he could reach. Next, he dismounted into waist deep snow and forced the beast to kneel. He crawled into the cavelike den beneath the conifer’s dense boughs, where he tied the mammoth’s trunk line to the bole.

  With the snow piled five feet high around the base of the tree and a canopy of dense boughs above, the weeping spruce offered a convenient shelter from the wind. There was even a ready supply of firewood, for dead branches ringed the lowest part of the trunk. Tavis crawled back outside and pulled Avner’s stuporous form off the mammoth’s back. Olchak’s frozen corpse slid into the snow beside the beast. The scout left it there and took the boy into the den.

  Tavis pulled some dried moss tinder from his satchel then warmed his stiff fingers under his armpits until they were nimble enough to hold his flint and steel. He struck a few sparks into the tinder and created a flame. This he fed with twigs and sticks. When he had a small fire, he broke several branches off the tree and added them.

  The campfire increased the likelihood of a frost giant stumbling across Avner, but only slightly. Hagamil’s warriors would likely attribute any smoke they smelled to Julien and Arno. Besides, the scout had little to lose. If Hagamil’s tribe found the youth again, they would probably kill him—but the boy would certainly die with out a fire.

  Within a few minutes, the glow of orange flames lit the cave, and the air started to grow warm. The scout worked his way around the tree trunk, snapping off dried branches and stacking them near the fire. When he had removed all the limbs he could reach, he propped Avner’s lethargic form against the bole. The boy’s skin still had a blue tint, and his pupils remained far too large but at least his breathing seemed regular.

  Tavis shook the boy’s shoulders. “Avner! P-Pay at-t-tention!” There it was again, a firbolg stuttering.

  The youth’s glassy eyes wandered toward the scout’s face, but remained unfocused. “Tlaaaavis?” His speech was so slurred that the scout could hardly understand it. “Did we ressssscue Bleeeeanna?”

  “You’ve g-got to feed the f-fire,” Tavis said. He pointed to the branches he had piled near the campfire. “I’ve left you s-some wood. C-Can you do that?”

  Avner’s eyes wandered to the pile. “Wood.” He nodded.

  “It’s imp-p-portant. If you forget, you’ll d-die.”

  The youth leaned forward and slipped his frozen fingers under a branch, then carefully balanced the stick as he moved it He did not seem to notice the flames licking his hand as he dropped the limb into the fire.

  “Good,” Tavis said. “I can’t s-stay, Avner. I’m s-s-sorry.”

  The youth nodded. “Queen.”

  Tavis clasped Avner’s shoulder, relieved to see that he seemed to be recovering his wits. “That’s right,” he said. “I’m p-proud of you, Avner.”

  “T-Tell me late—later.” The boy reached for another stick.

  Wondering if that would be possible, Tavis turned to go. He felt something wet roll
down his cheek, and the tear made it as far as his jawline before freezing solid. The little den was warming up nicely.

  Outside, the scout trudged through the snow to another spruce and cut two dozen long boughs off the tree. He cleared the snow off a fallen log, then sat down to fashion a pair of makeshift snowshoes. He bent the flexible limbs under his boot soles and threaded the ends through the lacing eyelets. It was delicate work for stiff fingers, and the scout had to stop several times to warm his frozen hands in his armpits. Certainly, he could have finished more quickly inside Avner’s cozy den, but then his feet would have thawed. He did not want that. He could walk miles on frozen feet, but after they started to warm, the excruciating pain would make it impossible to take more than a few steps.

  Once he had threaded the boughs through the eyelets, the scout secured them in place by slipping the ends under the leather laces. He cinched his boots down on the icy lumps that had been his feet and started walking. The makeshift snowshoes were far from ideal, but they served to keep him from sinking past his knees in the deep powder.

  When he reached the edge of the copse, a stinging, blinding wall of snow once more assailed Tavis. He pulled the lodestone from his satchel and waited for it to swing northward, then stepped into the blizzard. Although it was impossible to see any hint of sky through the raging storm, the dim gray light suggested that the hour was slipping past twilight. Once night fell, the basin would change from howling white to roaring black. The firbolg would no longer be able to see the lodestone in his hand. If he was going to find the campfire he smelled, he had to do it before dark.

  Within ten steps of leaving the copse, the scout found himself panting for breath. He kept stumbling, and his shivering grew worse. A knot of fear formed in Tavis’s stomach, for he knew what the signs meant. People grew fatigued and clumsy before they froze to death. The safe thing would be to return to the fire with Avner, but he could not warm himself without also thawing his feet, and then he’d still be lying beneath the spruce when the frost giants carried Brianna into the Twilight Vale.

  The scout continued forward, thrusting Bear Driller into the snow like a staff. He soon found himself raising his arm each time he planted the tip of his bow and suddenly realized he was traveling uphill. With all of his reference points lost in a white blur and four feet of snow concealing the terrain, he had not perceived it at first, but he was climbing a slope.

  The discovery did little to make Tavis feel better. Confusion was also a symptom of freezing, and the firbolg felt nothing if not obtuse. More importantly, so much fresh snow made avalanches a real possibility on any steep grade—and judging by the height he had to raise his knees, the slope beneath him was anything but gentle. At least the fluffy snow would take longer to suffocate him if he got swept away and buried.

  Tavis tried not to think about how long he might survive beneath tons of snow—one scout had lasted more than a week before a patrol noticed his boot—and continued to climb.

  Sometime after his legs began to tremble and his lungs to ache, the scout smelled burning spruce—not the fleeting, acrid whiffs he had been sniffing up until now, but a steady, mordant stream of smoke. It was rolling down the hill, straight into his face, and now he could smell something else, as well: burned meat Tavis continued his climb, forcing himself to maintain the same soft tread.

  Sometime later, the sound of the wind faded to a steady whistle and the scout found himself ascending a steep, narrow gorge flanked by cliffs of blond granite. The chute could have been a couloir high on the side of Split Mountain, or merely a gully cutting through a low hill; with the light fading to black and a torrent of swirling snow choking the passage, Tavis had no way to tell. But he did know two things: the passage was the ideal place for an avalanche, and the smell of roasting meat hung in the wind so thickly that his mouth had begun to water.

  Tavis put his lodestone away, then stepped over to a cliff and found two secure handholds. He stomped on the snow several times, ready to transfer his weight to his arms if he dislodged the white mass. When it did not slide, he decided the chute was stable enough to climb and lowered himself back into the gully. He continued up the gulch a long time, stopping every twenty steps to repeat the test, until the last vestiges of light seeped from the storm. The odor of roasted meat—he thought it might be pork—was stronger than ever, and the scout felt warmer just smelling it. He blindly continued up the chute, sweeping Bear Driller back and forth to keep the walls located.

  After a time, the scout heard voices—not words, just voices—mingled with the whistling of the wind. Then he saw a flickering orange light gleaming off the walls ahead, and what looked like the crest of the chute. Tavis stopped. He slipped his frozen hands into his armpits and concentrated on breathing in a slow, steady rhythm. Now that he knew where Julien and Arno had made their camp, the firbolg could picture the terrain above. They were probably camped in the shelter of a dry overflow gulch, at the bottom end of an alpine lake. He was climbing up what would be a waterfall when spring melt-water swelled the pond and sent it pouring over its shores. When he attacked, there would be little maneuvering room for his foes. He would kill them both simply and quickly. The most dangerous part of the rescue would be retreating down this avalanche gully with Brianna.

  When Tavis’s cold fingers finally felt limber enough to draw a bowstring, he fumbled in his quiver until he found his last two runearrows. He put one shaft between his teeth and the other in his hand, then climbed to the top of the chute. He stopped behind the crest and knelt in the snow.

  About thirty paces ahead, the flickering yellow light of a bonfire cut axelike through the blizzard, illuminating the entire width of the gully. On one side of the gulch sat a figure no larger than a hill giant, his back braced against the wall and a haunch of scorched meat in each hand. The scout could see only the profile of the giant’s face, but that was enough to determine that the fellow was a pale-skinned brute with a pug nose and a greasy double chin. The fine ermine cloak over his broad shoulders seemed a strange contrast to his slovenly visage.

  In front of the giant, the bonfire’s flames licked at a spit holding the remains of a good-sized animal. Much of the creature was gone, so it took Tavis a moment to identify it—and when he did, he wished he had not. Knowing that his mouth had watered at the smell of roasting human sent a shiver down his spine.

  On the other side of the bonfire, just at the edge of the bonfire’s light, sat Hagamil’s large form. One of the frost giant’s wrists ended in a bloody bandage, while his face looked as haggard and weary as the scout felt. The chieftain was gnawing hungrily on a human arm.

  Tavis saw no sign of a third giant, Prince Arlien, or Brianna. He felt certain that the giants would not have roasted the queen after all they had gone through to capture her, but that knowledge did not prevent a terrible, cold ache from sinking into his bones. He spent a moment trying to eavesdrop on their conversation, but heard nothing more than a series of deep-throated murmurs. He slipped over the crest of the chute and crept forward, swimming through the snow more than crawling through it. As he moved, the scout kept a watchful eye on Hagamil, who was the most likely of the giants to notice him.

  A short distance later, Tavis found he could understand the giants’ words. He stopped and stuck the runearrows in the snow beside him, then slipped his hands into his armpits and listened.

  “… came as fast as we could, Arno.” It was Hagamil, sounding both apologetic and exhausted.

  “But you haven’t got Tavis Burdun!” Arno shook one of his meat haunches—it was a human thigh—at the frost giant “We said bring him here!”

  “Your plan didn’t work,” Hagamil countered. “I already told you what happened.”

  “It would have worked if you weren’t such an idiot, Hagamil.” It was a third voice, deeper and smoother than either the frost giant’s or Arno’s. Something about it sounded vaguely familiar, but the whistling wind made it difficult for Tavis to say what. He concentrated his efforts
on locating the face that went with the voice. “Even a hill giant wouldn’t mistake a firbolg for a stone giant. Not even a fomorian would make such an error.”

  Hagamil narrowed his eyes and fixed them on Arno. “He had some sort of magic mask,” the frost giant said, his tone as cold as the snow. “I tried to tell you that, Julien.”

  Tavis peered closer at the giant sitting by the fire. When the brute raised a haunch of meat and stuck it somewhere on the other side of Arno’s face, the scout realized where the extra voice was coming from. Arno had a second head. He was an ettin!

  Tavis scowled, perplexed by this discovery. All the ettins he had seen were as stupid as they were cruel, hardly capable of speech. Yet, this one was conversing intelligently with not only itself, but Hagamil as well. Even more surprising, the chieftain acted as though he were the inferior. That made no sense. No giant would take orders from an ettin.

  “I know what you told me!” Julien hissed at Hagamil. “I also know what your failure means. Tavis Burdun has sworn to kill Brianna rather than let us have her. As long as he’s alive, we can’t take her to Twilight”

  As Julien spoke, Tavis realized why his voice sounded so familiar. It was a deeper, louder version of Prince Arlien’s! The ettin had been inside Cuthbert Castle all along, no doubt disguised by some magic similar to the runemask the scout himself had used to impersonate Gavorial.

  “Why can’t we take her to Twilight?” Hagamil demanded. He nibbled at the arm in his hand, then added, “Tavis’ll never catch us in this blizzard. All we have to do is take her through Split Mountain, and we’ll be in the vale before the storm clears.”

  The ettin’s far hand threw its haunch at the frost giant. “Stupid frost giant!” Arno growled. “Do you see Brianna here?”