The Ogre's Pact зк-1

by Troy Denning

  Tavis remembered. He had still been a young boy, standing barely a head higher than his mentor. Something was eating serfs off Earl Ateal's lands, and Runolf's patrol was assigned to hunt it down. They searched for days without finding any sign of the mysterious killer, until Tavis discovered a set of strange prints left by long, narrow feet with three toes and two claws. The tracks did not look large enough to be dangerous, and like all young firbolgs, his curiosity sometimes got the better of him. So he followed them.

  The trail ended on top of a rocky cliff. Tavis spent almost an hour trying to pick it up again, even going so far as to climb partway down the cliff to see if the creature lived in a hidden crevice. It never occurred to him to look up, at least not until he heard the muffled flutter of a winged creature diving through the air.

  Tavis pressed his face light against the rocks, expecting to feel the talons of some angry raptor digging into his flesh. Instead, the strum of several bowstrings, sounded above. A terrible, manlike cry echoed off the cliff, then a blast of bone-chilling cold washed over his back. A heavy body crashed into the rocks beside him, lashing him with a leathery wing, and fell away an instant later. When the young scout looked down, he saw a white dragon plunging along the cliff face, its body peppered with the arrows of Runolf's patrol.

  Runolf came to the cliff edge and looked down at Tavis, who was frozen in place-whether from fright or the cold blast of the dragon's breath, the firbolg did not know.

  "What did you learn from that?" Runolf asked.

  "I thought I was the one doing the stalking, but I was wrong," Tavis replied. "The dragon was hunting me."

  "True enough, but that's not what I mean," Runolf said. "I want you to think about what happens when you go off chasing things you don't understand. The mountains are as cruel as they are mysterious, and they won't suffer curious fools for long."

  With that, Runolf backed away from cliff edge and led his patrol away. It had taken most of the day before Tavis could move his frozen body enough to climb up and follow.

  After considering the disembodied head's warning, Tavis called down the slope, "Is that what happened to you, Runolf? Did you get involved in something you didn't understand?"

  Runolf's mouth twisted into a bitter sneer. "I understood it-more than I wished. I understood so well I dared question my duty." He lowered his eyes, directing them toward the stump of his severed neck. "And this is my punishment."

  "What could make you question your duty?" the scout asked, puzzled. "Why would you ever betray the princess?"

  Runolf looked more ashamed than ever, but did not answer the question. "Leave Brianna to her fate," he said. "Interfering will only bring harm upon yourself."

  Tavis could not believe what he heard. Over the years, he had fought all manner of beasts with Runolf, and never had his old friend warned him off. In fact, the sergeant had always recited his motto before each battle-Forget your fear and remember your duty.-and advised each man to keep it close to his heart.

  "You were doing your duty, weren't you?" Tavis surmised. "You questioned it because you couldn't betray Brianna!"

  "Go back," Runolf warned.

  "Who commanded you to be the ogres' guide?" the scout demanded. Even as he asked the question, he realized his mentor would have taken such an order from only one person. Before Runolf could reply, Tavis gasped, "The king!"

  "That must remain secret!" Wisps of golden light began to cloud Runolf's eyes. "I'm sorry to do this, but duty demands it."

  The misty glow in Runolf's eyes began to spin, forming a pair of tiny yellow cyclones. The two whirlwinds began to lengthen, hissing like dragon's breath as they shot up the couloir.

  Tavis turned and threw himself down the other side of the mountain, landing on a broad scree slope. Above him, Runolf's attack struck the notch with a thunderous crash, rocking the mountainside and filling the sky with a yellow flash. The scout began to roll, tumbling head over heels. Before he could stop himself, a muffled growl rumbled down the mountainside, then the entire scree slope broke free and began to slide.

  No stranger to avalanches, the firbolg spread his arms and legs to stop his tumble. When he finally managed to stabilize himself, lie was lying on his back with his head pointed downhill, still being carried down the mountain with the sliding scree.

  Tavis jerked his knees toward his chest. The action flipped him into the air, with the result that he landed facedown on the avalanche. Although small stones and gravel were now pelting his head, at least he was descending feetfirst in a more controlled position. He began rolling to the side, across the landslide, and soon found himself within reach of a rock outcropping. After a few painful instants of clawing and kicking, he caught hold of a crevice and dragged himself out of the slide.

  "What happened?" called a familiar voice.

  Tavis looked up and saw Basil clinging to a boulder above. The scout had slid so far that he was more than a dozen paces below the runecaster, who still had a considerable distance to climb before reaching the notch above Runolf's couloir. The verbeeg's breath came in gasps as loud as the wind rasping through the crags above, for the steep climb was rendered even more difficult by the mountain's thin air.

  "The ogres left a sentry on the other side of the notch," Tavis explained. A bolt of alarm shot through his breast as he noted that Avner was not clinging to the cliff near the verbeeg. "Where's Avner?"

  Basil pointed down the slope. "When the slide started. Avner was about there." he said. "I didn't have time to see what happened to him."

  Tavis looked down and saw that the avalanche had scraped the hillside clean, leaving a sheer scarp of dusty schist in its wake. There were several large crags onto which the boy could have scrambled to safety, but the scout did not see Avner clinging to any of them.

  "Avner!" he yelled.

  The boy's head popped out of a crevice. "Is it safe?"

  Tavis breathed a sigh of relief. "It's never safe up this high, but at least the slide's over."

  Avner scrambled up the rocky face like a mountain goat, his broad smile suggesting that he preferred the barren rock to the loose fooling of the scree.

  As Tavis waited for the boy, he studied the mountain below. The slide had scraped the slope clean, not stopping until it reached a flat at the base of the hill. On the other side of this small plateau, the mountainside once again grew steep, dropping away into one of the many canyons through which the scout and his companions had passed since leaving Hartsvale. It was a deep, gloomy, gorge, made darker by the conifer forest creeping up its walls.

  Tavis knew Morten and the earls were somewhere down there, for he had glimpsed them earlier as they passed through a clearing. The earls had abandoned their horses, along with their lances and heavy shields, to stumble along on foot. It had been difficult to tell more from a distance, but the scout had seen several silver glimmers as the sun flashed off polished steel, suggesting that they had kept at least some of their armor.

  Although Tavis was not happy to know the king's men were still following, he was far from concerned. Even with Basil and Avner along, the scout knew plenty of tricks to increase his lead-and over the last few days he had employed only a few of them. But sooner or later, he would catch the ogres, and then he would have to slow down to rescue Brianna. It would be then that his own pursuers caught him. He only hoped they would be slow enough to arrive after the task was completed.

  Avner joined Tavis and Basil on their outcropping, then the trio ascended to the notch above Runolf's couloir. They stopped just below the summit, lying on their bellies and being careful to keep their heads down.

  As they peered through the gap, Basil exclaimed, "By the rock beneath my belly! That must be the entire ogre nation!"

  The verbeeg was looking across the valley at the long file of ogres climbing the glacier north of Needle Peak.

  "I don't know that it's the entire nation," Tavis replied. "No one knows how many ogres live in the Ice Spires. But there are certainly more than a th
ousand over there."

  "A thousand or a hundred thousand, it's the same to us," Avner said. "How will we ever rescue Brianna from all those ogres?"

  "We'll steal her," Tavis replied. "You seem to be pretty good at that."

  "The best." If Avner noticed the irony in Tavis's voice, he showed no sign. The youth pointed down the couloir at the disembodied head of Tavis's former mentor, now encased by a dome of golden light. "But I've never had to sneak past a head before. What is he, some kind of spirit guardian?"

  "Yes, and there will be no sneaking past him," Basil said. The verbeeg's hand dropped to his satchel, then added, "Fortunately, I have a rune that will repay him in kind for what he did to us. An avalanche won't destroy him, but it should bury him deep enough for us to pass without trouble."

  Tavis shook his head. "I'd rather capture him."

  "Capture him?" Avner hissed. "We'll be doing good just to get by him alive. Basil's plan sounds good to me."

  "No," Tavis insisted. "He knows too much about Brianna's abduction. I want to interrogate him."

  "You're mad!" Avner said.

  "Whether that's so or not, I'm the leader of this rescue party." Tavis turned to Basil, then asked, "Can you force him to answer my questions?"

  The verbeeg sighed. "I do have a rune that will grant me control over undead spirits, but I must paint it on his forehead."

  "On his forehead?"

  "It's not as difficult as it sounds," Basil informed him. "The shaman assigned your friend's spirit to watch this pass. When he can no longer see to do that, he can't draw on the shaman's magic."

  "Are you saying we have to blind him?" Tavis asked.

  "That's what I was thinking of, yes," Basil replied.

  "If I could get that close, I wouldn't need you!"

  "Runes are not spells," the verbeeg explained. "You can't hurl them about like spears."

  Tavis considered the problem for a moment, then asked, "Is there any chance my arrow would actually destroy him?"

  "Not unless a cleric had blessed it," Basil answered.

  "Then I may know a way to blind him." Tavis said, nocking ah arrow. "Wish me luck."

  He crawled up into the rocky notch and took aim. The globe around Runolf's head began to spin, forming a Whirlpool of golden light. Tavis exhaled in a steady breath, releasing the bowstring at the moment his lungs had completely emptied themselves.

  The arrow flew straight for one of Runolf's eyes, then passed into the spinning light. For a moment, the scout thought the shaft would find its mark, but the wood stuck to the whirling glow as though snatched from the air. The arrow swung around the back of the disembodied head like a stone in a sling, and Tavis knew what would happen next.

  He yelled, "Get down!"

  Tavis pushed Avner's head down and dropped over the notch. He began to slide, the rocky scarp painfully gouging his flank as his own arrow sizzled past a mere hand's breadth above his head. He braced his feet on the slope and halted his descent, then looked back to see his arrow arcing down toward the small plateau.

  "So much for that idea," said Avner. "How about giving Basil's plan a try?"

  "Even if I didn't want to interrogate him, what makes you think an avalanche would work?" Tavis countered. "Judging by what we've seen of Runolf's defenses, I don't think the shaman overlooked an obvious trick like that."

  The scout scrambled back up the cliff and peered over the top of the notch. Runolf remained atop the stone spire, a yellow halo enveloping his head and golden flames crackling in his eyes.

  "Avner?" Tavis asked. "What would you do if you had to steal a key from the pocket of a big sentry-back when it was necessary for you to do such things?"

  The youth considered the problem for a moment, then said, "If there was no way to knock him unconscious, I'd sneak up as close as I could, then have someone else distract him while I picked his pocket."

  "That won't work here," Basil said. "You cannot sneak up on spirit guardians, and they have no pockets to pick."

  "No, but we can distract him," Tavis said. "Maybe we can get close enough to grab him."

  "And then what?" Avner demanded. "Grabbing a wildcat's tail will get you clawed faster than anything else."

  "Not if you do it right," Tavis said. He turned to Basil and asked, "Are you sure you can cause that rockslide?"

  The verbeeg rolled his eyes at the foolish question. "Would you like me to prepare the rune?"

  When Tavis nodded. Basil opened his satchel and pulled a hammer and steel chisel from it. He selected a flat rock, then set the chisel blade on it and began to tap.

  While Tavis waited for the runecaster to finish, he slipped his bow over his shoulder. After a quick glance at the waists of his companions, he motioned at Avner's belt.

  "Let me see that," he requested.

  The youth promptly undid his buckle and handed the belt over."What do you want with it?"

  "You'll see."

  The belt was surprising new, made of black-dyed cowhide as stiff as shoe leather. Tavis slowly flexed the strap back and forth. It was almost too rigid for what he had in mind, but its bulk could turn out to be an advantage. The scout detached Avner's dagger scabbard and returned it to the boy, then grabbed a rock and began to pound the belt to make it more flexible.

  "Hey!" Avner objected. "That's a new belt!"

  "And where did you come across a new belt?" Tavis demanded. "I don't recall making it for you, and we certainly didn't have the spare coins to buy it."

  "Forget it." Avner sighed. "There's always more where that came from."

  This time, Tavis looked up. "There'd better not be."

  The firbolg resumed his work, pounding each section of belt until the leather grew as soft and flexible as cloth. Beside him, Basil continued to tap his chisel, filling the air with a soft chime as erratic as a bell swinging loose in the wind.

  Runolf's voice sounded from the other side of the notch. "Whatever you're doing. Tavis, it won't work," he called. The words were difficult to make out, for the yowling wind softened the consonants and swallowed the vowels. "My spirit serves Goboka, and only his death will release it."

  Basil looked up. "That's fine with us," he said, speaking more to Tavis and Avner than to Runolf's head. "What we have in mind has nothing to do with freeing you."

  The verbeeg put his hammer and chisel back in his satchel, then showed Tavis the stone he had been working on. The glowing rune etched on its face was surprisingly simple, just three blue lines capped by a white crescent.

  "I'm holding it upside down," Basil said. "When you turn it over, it'll set the whole hill to sliding."

  Tavis raised his brow. "And if I turn it over again?"

  "It'll stop the landslide-but I don't know how quickly," the verbeeg replied. He handed the runestone to Tavis, then added. "I suggest you be very careful."

  Tavis smiled. "This should work fine." With the runestone in one hand and Avner's belt in the other, he inched up toward the notch. "I'll go over and bring Runolf's head under control. Wait here until then, but be ready to paint the rune that gives you control over undead."

  "I'm coming with you," Avner announced.

  Tavis shook his head. "This is too dangerous-"

  "If it's so dangerous, we should just bury him," Avner said.

  "I can always do that later." Tavis replied. "I'll let the avalanche take him if I get into trouble."

  "With two of us, you'll be less likely to get into trouble," Avner countered. When Tavis showed no sign of yielding, the boy's eyes grew hard, and he added. "You can let me come with you or after you. We'll stand a better chance if we work together."

  Remembering how well the youth had obeyed his orders to wait at the Weary Giant, Tavis reluctantly acquiesced. "Then take this." He passed the boy's belt back. "Runolf will concentrate on me, so you'll have a better chance of actually reaching him."

  "That makes sense," Avner replied. He held the battered belt up. "But what do I do with this old thing once I get there?"


  "I should think that would be obvious." Basil said, "Use the belt to blindfold him until I can paint my rune on his forehead. If he can't see, he can't perform the task for which he was created, and his link with the shaman will be interrupted."

  Avner's eyes lit in understanding.

  "We'll go down opposite sides of the couloir." Tavis said. "I'll start the avalanche to distract Runolf, and we'll go down behind it. Then I'll try to stop the slide right before it buries him, but if either of us gets into trouble, I'll just let the slide take him. You understand?"

  "Nothing could be simpler."

  With that, the young thief hoisted himself upward. Tavis scrambled into the notch after the boy, then the two rose to their feet. Runolf's halo dimmed, the flames in his eyes burning more brightly as he regarded Avner's small form.

  "How dare you bring a child into this!" the head stormed.

  "I came on my own," Avner yelled down. "And I'm as old as Tavis was when you made a scout of him."

  "And that's as old as you shall grow," Runolf replied in a melancholy voice. His golden halo began to dim, then he added, "It's not in my power to show mercy-even to a boy."

  The scout turned his runestone over. The scree slope came loose with a tremendous crack, sliding down the couloir in a single huge cascade. Tavis waited an instant, then shoved Avner toward the far wall.

  "Go!"

  Tavis leaped into the couloir on the tail of the avalanche, springing toward the wall opposite Avner, hoping to draw all of Runolf's attacks upon himself. The tactic failed miserably. The sergeant's eyes rotated in different directions, one following Avner and the other the scout. A fiery stream of energy arced from each of the golden orbs, crackling arid sizzling up the narrow couloir.

  Tavis ducked. The blazing beam flashed past, licking the back of his cloak with golden flames, and struck the craggy wall. A deafening bang echoed through the couloir. The scout's nostrils filled with the acrid smell of scorched rock, and he fell a heavy shard of stone slam into his shoulders, pitching him forward. He found himself flying down the slope and clutched the runestone to his breast. He glimpsed Avner, on the opposite wall of the canyon, sliding along behind the avalanche. The boy's clothes were smoking and his mouth was wide open with fear, but at least he was descending feet first and on his back, and that was all Tavis had time to see before he crashed face first into the sliding scree.