The Ogre's Pact зк-1

Home > Other > The Ogre's Pact зк-1 > Page 20
The Ogre's Pact зк-1 Page 20

by Troy Denning


  Crouched behind a boulder barely large enough to conceal him, Tavis nocked one of the black arrows. The shaft was too short for Bear Driller's draw, so it would not have as much power as one of his own arrows. But, having lost his quiver to the river, it was the best the scout had. He could still generate enough force to pierce his enemy's thick hide, and, thanks to the poisoned tip, nothing more was required.

  Tavis poked his head up, heard the expected chord of humming bowstrings, then ducked back down. A host of black shafts scraped over the top of the boulder and rattled to the rocky ground behind him. The scout jumped up and raised his pilfered arrow toward the gorge rim, where a pack of ogre warriors stood clustered three-deep. He aimed at one of the brutes in the second rank and released his bowstring.

  The shaft sailed toward the cliff top at an agonizingly slow pace. It seemed to float more than fly, allowing the target and the two warriors in front of him plenty of time to see that it was coming for them. They tried to dodge, but the pack stood so tightly crammed they could hardly move. The arrow nicked the shoulder of one of the ogres in the front, then sliced across the chest of the original target as he tried to twist away, and finally lodged in the arm of an astonished warrior in the third rank. None of the injured ogres fell, and the rest of the pack were already pulling arrows from their quivers to counterattack.

  Tavis dived over the dire wolf the ogres had injured with their first volley, cursed silently as he rolled across jagged rocks, and came up running. He heard bowstrings snap as the fastest of his enemies loosed their arrows. The scout hurled himself over a fallen log into a stand of trees. He did not see where the shafts landed, but none hit him.

  Tavis crawled beneath the low-hanging boughs of a spearhead spruce, then stood up behind its bole and nocked another ogre arrow. When he peered around the trunk to take aim, he saw that the three warriors he had wounded earlier were in various stages of collapse, one teetering at the cliff's edge, one holding himself off the ground with his hands and knees, the last lying unconscious with the arrow still lodged in his arm.

  The scout fired again, picking, as he had before, a target in the second rank. The arrow gashed two ogres before shattering against the mountainside. This time, Tavis had plenty of time to watch his targets collapse, for those who had not been wounded finally understood the strategy of his glancing shots and were scrambling to open some space between themselves. The poison did not drop the wounded ogres immediately, for they had received only minute doses as the tip grazed them. Still, the toxin was powerful. Their knees began to wobble, then abruptly buckled, and both dropped in the same instant-one knocking the teetering warrior over the cliff.

  The five uninjured warriors kneeled at the edge of the precipice, arrows nocked and ready. They seemed content to hold their fire as long as their quarry made no move to escape. The ogres had no reason to press the attack: reinforcements would arrive soon enough.

  Tavis fired another arrow. He waited long enough to see his target drop flat and narrowly escape death, then the scout ducked back behind his spruce trunk. Four ogre shafts answered his attack, two of them passing so close they peeled the bark from his cover. The arrows had not even planted themselves in the ground before Tavis was sprinting from his stand of trees.

  "This way!" He leaped over the fallen wolf and dodged toward the stream where Morten had taken cover, motioning for Brianna and Avner to follow him.

  The ogres' bowstrings snapped, and the scout threw himself headlong into the water. After splashing into the middle of the icy stream, he climbed to Morten's side and peered over the bank. Along with Avner and Earl Dobbin, Brianna was still hiding in a stand of trees with the hill giant.

  Tavis nocked an arrow. "I'll cover you!" be yelled. "Hurry! We've got to get out of here!"

  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 while, 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 lake 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 flutte
ring 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 hill 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 bis 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 be 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 brandies.

  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.

 

‹ Prev