by Troy Denning
“Blast him now!” urged Radborne. “Say the word!”
Tavis remained silent When the giant tried to extract the runearrow, the butt of the shaft broke off. The warrior’s face paled to an ashy charcoal. He turned to face his comrades, pointing at the pinhole in his armor. The second giant in line leaned down to inspect the wound, with a third peering over his shoulder.
“esiwsilisaB!” Tavis cried.
A sapphire light reflected off the slope beside the three giants, then a thunderous boom shook the canyon. The wounded brute dropped where he was, a smoking hole in his chest. The second giant’s head simply vanished in a ball of blue flame. The third survived long enough to cover his mangled face and turn away, then fell over the riverbank and crashed through the ice.
Four more giants stomped around the bend. The footmen of the rearguard formed two wedges and started down the road.
The palace courtiers began to gather around the queen’s sleigh, assaulting both Brianna and Tavis with a din of questions and suggestions. The scout quickly found himself trying to keep the frightened crowd at bay as well as watch the giants ahead. He did not notice the arrival of the rest of the Royal Snow Bear Company until a sergeant clanged to a stop at his side.
Tavis turned to the man, a grizzled veteran with a gray beard and bushy black eyebrows. “Get these worthy gentlemen and ladies out of the way,” the high scout ordered. “Send the rest of your footmen to reinforce the rearguard.”
As the sergeant and his men began to herd courtiers toward the landslide, Tavis took an inventory of his quiver and bow. He had plenty of black-feathered runearrows left, and four runes still remained on Mountain Crusher’s lower limb. Unfortunately, those sigils were of little use at the moment. The runes on the upper limb were the ones that made his shafts pierce the fire giants’ thick armor, and only two of those remained.
The high scout looked up the canyon. The four fire giants were scuttling down the narrow road, hunched over so that he could barely see their heads and shoulders above the abandoned sleighs. The brutes were hiding behind their bucklers, with the surfaces angled to deflect arrows. They had been careful to space themselves so that Tavis’s blasts could not kill more than one at a time.
The rearguard was still a hundred yards from the leader.
Tavis nocked another runearrow. As the main body of the Royal Snow Bear Company pushed through the tangle of abandoned sleighs, the high scout fired at the second of the approaching giants. The magic shaft streaked away, penetrating both buckler and armor with a single loud clang. The high scout spoke his second command word. The blast sent the huge warrior’s buckler twirling high into the air, with the arm that had been holding it still attached.
The leading giant cast a nervous glance over his shoulder. He grimaced at the sight of his comrade’s mangled carcass, then rose to his full height and charged. Tavis nocked another runearrow, but held his fire. The rearguard’s first wedge was already rushing to meet the attack. The three point men brandished battle-axes, and everyone else held long pikes.
The giant closed the distance in three crashing steps. The men in the middle row angled their pikes toward his midsection. He brought his buckler down instantly, sweeping the sharp points aside, and swung his fiery sword into the wedge. A chorus of agonized screams echoed off the cliffs, and the wind was suddenly heavy with the stench of charred flesh. Four severed bodies dropped in midstride.
The wedge continued its charge, the weapons of the rear echelon now rising toward the fire giant’s vulnerable loins. Too late, the brute realized his mistake and stepped away, trying in vain to bring his shield back into position. The pikes struck home, and a loud crackle echoed off the walls as several shafts snapped against his steel armor. The giant bellowed in pain and stumbled back, the splintered ends of two wooden poles protruding from the seams in his armor. The axemen went to work, hacking at his ankles as though felling a tree. The huge warrior toppled to the icy road, crushing three more humans before the survivors swarmed him.
The rearguard’s second wedge began its charge, rushing forward to meet the last pair of fire giants. Hoping to spare them the trouble of felling both brutes, Tavis pulled another runearrow and turned Mountain Crusher back down the canyon. The pair had wisely decided not to hide behind their bucklers and were rushing up the road at a full sprint. The high scout drew his bowstring back and aimed at the one in front.
Before he could fire, a bolt of lightning arced away from the queen’s sleigh. It struck the leading fire giant with a thunderous bang, burning a terrific hole through his breastplate and the chest it protected. The bolt blasted through the brute’s backplate and crackled halfway to the next giant before finally fading.
The high scout shifted his aim to the last fire giant and fired. The shaft took its target high in the breastbone. Tavis uttered the command word. The brute’s head disappeared in a blue flash, then his body collapsed in a clanging heap of steel and flesh.
“Well done!” exclaimed Radborne. “You saved my mines!”
“That’s a good thing, I suppose,” Tavis allowed. “But I was more concerned with the queen’s safety.”
The high scout turned to face Brianna and found her lying in the bottom of her sleigh, clutching her abdomen. Avner was kneeling by her side holding her head. When he looked up to meet Tavis’s gaze, his eyes were wide with alarm.
“I think your baby likes the fighting!” he yelled. “He’s coming!”
The high scout slung his bow over his shoulder and went to his wife. “Sergeant! I want men here!” he bellowed. “We must carry the queen’s sleigh over that landslide!”
The sergeant arrived almost instantly. “Begging your pardon, Lord Scout,” he said. “But I don’t think we’ll be having time for that.”
Tavis looked up and saw the sergeant pointing down the canyon. Another fire giant was peering around the bend.
2
Winter Battle
The crushing agony receded as it had come, smoothly and swiftly, and Brianna felt like a door was being lifted off her abdomen. Her broken waters were already growing cool against her thighs, but the effort of breathing still sent torrents of liquid fire tumbling through her body. Something was wrong. The royal midwife had said there would be no pain when the womb unleashed its flood, yet the queen had not suffered such pain since the ogre Goboka had punched her in the stomach. She felt herself flush with fear, tiny pearls of sweat popping out on her brow and lip. In the bitter cold, the beads froze almost as quickly as they formed.
“Brianna?”
The queen opened her eyes to find Tavis peering at her. His rugged firbolg features were tense with concern, and his eyes were fixed on her lap, where her cloak had opened to reveal a half-frozen stain of thin, milky fluid. Blizzard, now free of her harness, had hooked her chin over the edge of the sleigh to stare at her mistress. Only Radborne, still sitting on his silver stallion, had averted his gaze.
Brianna tugged her coat closed, then, with Avner’s help, pulled herself onto her seat. “The baby’s coming.”
Tavis cringed. “He has a bad sense of timing.”
“She,” the queen quipped, hoping the banter would relax her husband. She had never seen Tavis panic, but he looked nervous today-and today, of all days, she needed him calm. “The child is a girl-by royal decree.”
Tavis grinned, but the smile quickly vanished as a fire giant’s angry bellow dropped out of the wind. The death screams of several men echoed off the canyon wall, and the reek of charred flesh filled Brianna’s nose: a sick, rancid odor that made her jaws ache with the urge to vomit. Then came the clatter of snapping pikes, more yelling, and the booming crash of a collapsing giant. The Royal Snow Bear Company had felled its next foe.
Blizzard snorted anxiously and stomped her foot, no doubt urging the queen to take flight before it was too late. Tavis stepped onto the sleigh’s running board, his ruddy complexion now as white as Brianna’s cloak, and reached for her.
“No. See to the ba
ttle.” It was the hardest command the queen had ever given. All her maternal instincts howled for her to find a quiet and safe place to give birth-but there was no safe place, not with the fire giants’ attacking. She pushed Tavis away. “Go and stop our enemies.”
“I’m the first defender,” Tavis objected. “My duty is to see you to safety, if I can.”
“Then you mean to abandon my mines?” Radborne’s voice was indignant.
Tavis gave the earl a cold glare. “Your silver mines mean nothing to me.”
“But they mean everything to Hartsvale-and I want you to save them,” Brianna said. She switched her gaze to Radborne. “Earl, you will fetch my midwife, then assemble an escort in case I must flee the battle.”
Radborne scowled. “These are my mines,” he objected. “My place is-”
“Gentlemen, I am not asking your opinions.” Brianna cast admonishing glances at both Radborne and Tavis. “I am issuing commands.”
Tavis raised his brow, then set his jaw and took a runearrow from his quiver. To Avner, he said, “Promise me this, Scout: no matter what happens to me, you won’t let the giants have Brianna or the baby.”
Avner nodded grimly. “On my honor.”
“Tavis, nothing’s going to happen to you.” Brianna tried to sound confident “That is my promise.”
“In battle, even a queen cannot guarantee such a thing,” Tavis replied. He kissed Brianna, then turned to face Radborne. “Earl, we have our orders.”
With that, the high scout turned away and rushed off. He crossed the road and angled up the mountainside, then traversed the slope above the main body of the Royal Snow Bear Company. Now that Brianna had persuaded him to concentrate on the battle at hand, the firbolg seemed completely in his element. He ran along the frost-rimed slope with bow in hand, vaulting ice-draped boulders and sidestepping snow-capped stumps without taking his eyes off the fire giants. Tavis was known as the Lion of Hartwick for his great size and hunting prowess, but Brianna thought of him more as a sleek, noble bighorn ram. He was powerful, swift, and agile without being bloodthirsty or cruel, and he possessed a certain feral dignity rare in human men. If something happened to her husband today-the queen stopped herself, for there was no use even considering that possibility. Tavis Burdun would never fall, not in this battle, nor any other.
As the high scout moved up the canyon, a steady war din started to build: screaming footmen, bellowing giants, the crackle of flaming swords and snapping pikes, steel clanging against steel. Other smells merged with the sick stench of burning warriors: coppery blood, throat-scorching brimstone, the fetor of spilled entrails. Brianna’s stomach grew hollow and queasy. She forced herself to breathe through her mouth. She climbed out of her sleigh, holding on to Blizzard’s snowy mane while she peered up the canyon.
Two hundred yards away, the road was becoming a river of pain and death as a long line of fire giants waded into a swirling current of knee-high soldiers. The queen could see her footmen swarming around the first three foes, hacking with gleaming battle-axes at huge ankles, or jabbing pikes into the seams between thick plates of ebony armor. The giants were fighting back viciously, clearing broad swaths of road with every swing of their fiery swords. Brianna counted a dozen more brutes coming down the canyon to join the battle, and she could not even see the end of their line.
Tavis was already a hundred yards up the canyon, above a jumble of courtier sleighs lying abandoned along the roadside. He was less than twenty paces from the leading fire giants, easily within bow range; from that distance, he could sink an arrow into each of a giant’s eyes before the dead body hit the ground. Nevertheless, the high scout continued forward, traversing the slope well above the reach of his enemies. The queen saw one giant try to climb after him, but a thicket of pikes instantly drove up beneath the warrior’s loin apron. The brute thundered in pain and collapsed into the battle swarm.
Brianna felt her hand drifting toward her sleigh, where the satchel containing her spell components lay on the bench. She allowed herself to pick up the bag, but restrained the urge to reach inside. Through long experience, the queen had learned the wisdom of saving her magic for critical moments, when a rain of fiery hail or a well-placed lightning bolt could turn the tide of a battle.
Tavis finally stopped and nocked his runearrow. He fired down the hill. The queen waited for the shaft to detonate, but the blue flash and sharp crack never came. Apparently, the arrow had bounced off the target’s thick armor-it was inconceivable that the lord high scout had actually missed. He drew another runearrow and fitted it onto Mountain Crusher’s bowstring.
On the hillside below Tavis appeared two fire giants, crouching behind their bucklers and scrambling up the slope. One brute’s breastplate was striped by a long runnel of blood, bright and red against the ebony steel. From his collarbone protruded a tiny, feathery stub: the high scout’s first runearrow.
Tavis ignored the pair and fired at the road again. Brianna felt a growing tension low in her abdomen and knew another labor pain was coming. The two giants lowered their bucklers and charged up the slope, raising their huge swords to strike.
“What’s that firbolg doing?” Brianna demanded of no one in particular. “Say the command word!”
She would have said it herself, but that was not possible. Three years ago, Tavis had nearly died when a spy learned how to discharge his runearrows and detonated one in his face. Now, the command words had to be spoken backward, and even then, they worked only if spoken by the person who had nocked the shaft.
By the time his foes reached striking range, Tavis had pulled another runearrow from his quiver. Brianna did not see what good it would do him, for he would never have the opportunity to nock it. The fire giants’ huge swords dropped, tracing fiery arches against the hillside. Tavis gathered himself to leap, then the giants’ flaming blades came together in a brilliant flash.
The hillside erupted into a fiery ball, spraying scorched rock and blazing stumps into the air as high as the giants’ heads. The looming warriors raised their swords and struck again, hewing great, smoking furrows deep into the mountainside. They did not stop swinging until they had churned the ground into a blackened mound of stone and earth. Even then they continued to jab the tips of their blades into the heap, like a pair of nervous hunters trying to spear a wolverine before it scurried from its den and chewed their legs off.
The giants were doomed to fail. Brianna saw Tavis more than twenty paces down the slope, rising to a knee, the runearrow in one hand and Mountain Crusher in the other. His cloak was badly tattered from catching on stones and stumps, and he looked rather unsteady on his feet. Despite his condition, he quickly nocked his arrow and fired.
The shaft streaked up the slope and planted itself behind a giant’s knee. If the fellow cried out, his voice was lost in the battle din, but he suddenly hunched over to slap at the wound. He said something to the brute with the runearrow lodged near the collarbone, and they both turned to face Tavis. In the same instant, the enormous, bearded face of a third fire giant appeared behind the scout.
Brianna’s hand slipped into her satchel. Before she could withdraw the spell component, her husband abruptly rushed across the slope toward a nearby crag. Behind him, sapphire lights flashed beneath the armor of his foes, and a trio of loud, sharp booms shook the canyon. All three giants collapsed, one with nothing below his loin apron, one with nothing above his breastplate, and the third with nothing between his chin and his belt. With the impact of their crashing bodies, Brianna’s swollen stomach reverberated like a drum.
The baby noticed the rumble, too. The queen’s belly suddenly began to jump and dance above the child’s kicking feet. A tiny fist pressed against her kidney, sending a fiery pang of anguish through her lower back. Almost instantly, the pain faded to a dull ache, but it also slid forward and encircled her abdomen. The coil slowly tightened, and the crushing agony of a labor pain gripped her.
The queen gritted her teeth and kept her gaze fixed
up the canyon. One of the giants had fallen onto the road, but the other two were still tumbling down the slope, descending upon the road in a fiery avalanche of blood, bone, and steel. They came to rest atop the third giant, forming a hillock of black armor and flesh.
The death of the three fire giants caused no eerie silences or temporary lulls in the battle; the fighting continued. The Royal Snow Bears pressed their attack with renewed vigor. One giant fell when he looked over his shoulder at his dead comrades, the next when he slipped and dropped to a knee. Brianna’s pikemen swarmed up the gorge, leaving the road behind them strewn with bodies large and small. The roar of combat faded to a drone, and the rancid battle-smell grew so thick the howling wind could not sweep it from the canyon.
The Snow Bears’ advance came to a rumbling halt thirty paces later, when they crashed into a long line of charging fire giants. As the battle din returned to its former roar, four giants at the rear of the column climbed the hillside into Brianna’s view. Unlike their comrades on the road below, they had no bucklers strapped to their arms. They carried their swords, dark and cold, in their scabbards. The four spread out and cautiously started across the barren slope toward Tavis, bobbing and dodging to make themselves difficult targets.
Doing her best to ignore her growing pain, Brianna reached into her satchel, considering which of her spells would best aid her husband.
As her fingers closed around a small glass rod, Avner cried, “Majesty, look!”
The young scout was standing on his bench, pointing up Wyrm River. Brianna looked over the top of her sleigh and saw several fire giants near the bend in the canyon, belly-crawling down the river’s icy surface. They were not hiding-even the thought was absurd-but trying to distribute their weight across the ice so they did not fall through. They would soon outflank the Royal Snow Bears, for the company no longer had enough men to spread their lines across the frozen river.