by Troy Denning
Earl Dobbin pulled free of his men and staggered out the gate. His guards loitered in the courtyard for a few moments, debating whether or not to continue the search. Finally, when their fellows returned from the dining hall and the lodge without finding any sign of the verbeeg, they decided to leave rather than search the barn again.
Once the guards were gone, Lady Brianna turned to Tavis. “I’ve enjoyed your party tremendously.”
“I’m sorry for the interruption.”
Brianna grinned. “Don’t be. It was most delightful to see Blizzard plant her hooves in the earl’s ribs,” she laughed. “But the time has come for me to leave. There’s much I must do before the ball this evening.”
Tavis, his stomach knotting in anxiety, frowned at mention of the ball. “Princess, I’ve a question before you go.”
Brianna’s expression changed to one of concern. “Yes?”
“Your father didn’t invite me to the ball.”
“He didn’t invite any commoners,” the princess said.
Tavis nodded. “I understand, but I’d like to know who you’ll choose this evening.”
Brianna’s gaze fell to the ground, and with it Tavis’s heart. Tonight, the princess had no intention of outraging her father’s court.
“Whomever I choose, it will be for the good of the kingdom,” the princess said, taking his hand. “I hope you’ll support me in that decision.”
“I’ll always support you,” Tavis replied, trying to hide his disappointment and failing. “But I doubt an unhappy princess will be good for the kingdom.”
Tears welled in Brianna’s eyes. “Damn you,” she said. A sad smile crossed her lips, and she wiped her cheeks. “I was hoping you’d make this easy.”
“I can’t do that—yet,” Tavis said. The princess’s watery eyes gave him hope, for the scout saw in her tears what Brianna had not actually said: that no matter what name she spoke tonight, the one in her heart would be Tavis. “But it’s a long time between betrothal and marriage. A lot can happen.”
“What are you going to do?” Brianna demanded. “Have yourself reborn as an earl?”
“If that’s what it takes, yes,” the firbolg replied, smiling. “But until then, the best I can do is kill that glacier skunk so you can retrieve Blizzard.”
The scout turned to ask his mentor’s help in luring the beast into the open, but Runolf was nowhere in sight. The sergeant had left without a word, vanishing from the courtyard as suddenly as he could disappear in the wilderness. It wasn’t like Runolf to leave so rudely, but Tavis took no offense. The sergeant may have sensed something alarming as Earl Dobbin left, and decided to follow, not bothering to excuse himself because he did not want to draw attention to his departure.
Tavis glanced back to Brianna. “Give me a moment before coming for Blizzard,” he said. “It wouldn’t do to have you sprayed today.”
The scout took a deep breath and went into the barn. The air remained close with foul-smelling vapors, but the stench had already begun to lose its potency. Blizzard was neighing angrily in her stall, whipping her head from side to side in an attempt to snap her reins free. Tavis advanced cautiously, watching rafters and mangers as well as the straw piled beneath the loft ladder. A glacier skunk, if that was truly what had hidden itself in his barn, was a cunning predator. It could down a bull elk—or a careless firbolg—as easily as a mountain lion could.
As Tavis approached to within ten paces of the ladder, something stirred beneath the straw pile. The scout pulled his bowstring back, then patiently waited for his prey to show itself before he loosed the shaft. A smaller hunter might have fired earlier, fearing that one arrow would not stop a vicious glacier skunk, but a single shaft fired from Bear Driller would stop a charging moose.
A pair of steely gray eyes peered from beneath the straw. “Is the earl gone?” whispered a familiar voice.
Tavis lowered his bow. “Avner!”
The boy crawled from the pile and brushed the straw off his body. Behind him came a wolf-sized skunk with white fur and a pair of black stripes running down its back. It had a cone-shaped head with round ears, a shiny black nose, and four curved fangs drooping beneath its lip. The beast’s claws were as long as a bear’s and as sharp as a lynx’s, while a needlelike barb protruded from the end of its furry tail. A red smear marked where its flank had been pierced by a guard’s spear.
“What’s happening here?” Tavis demanded.
Avner looked away. “You always say it’s important to help others.” He focused his gaze on the skunk. “Basil needed help.”
As the youth spoke, the skunk sat down. Before Tavis’s astonished eyes, it began to enlarge. The beast’s fur thinned into a curly mass of hair, while its bushy tail disappeared altogether. Its hind legs straightened out and became more manlike. The forelegs grew longer and more slender, the claws retracting to become fingers and the dewclaw spreading outward to become a thumb. Finally, the creature’s fangs receded, the snout narrowed into a long, crooked nose, and Tavis found himself looking at the hairy, naked form of a verbeeg.
The giant-kin rose and offered Tavis his hand. “I’m Basil of Lyndusfarne,” he said. “I’m happy to make your acquaintance.”
The verbeeg, with gangling arms, bowed legs, and huge feet as flat as a beaver’s tail, stood a full head taller than Tavis. He had a typical build for his race, looking gaunt and half starved, with a distended belly and stooped shoulders. A scrawny beard hung from his chin, while a thick-lipped mouth gave him an affable—and oddly sly—smile. His eyebrows were as gray as his beard and twice as thick, bestowing upon him a surprisingly sagacious aspect for one with such a steeply sloped forehead.
Tavis kept his arrow pointed at the intruder’s chest and made no move to take the proffered hand. He had met enough verbeegs to know their race deserved its devious reputation, and this one’s unusual eloquence only made the scout more suspicious.
When it became apparent Tavis would not lower his arrow, the verbeeg glanced down at his nakedness and blushed. “I beg your pardon,” he said. “How mindless of me.”
Basil reached into the straw heap and pulled out a tattered robe of untanned bearskin. The garment stank almost as much as the rancid vapors that had driven everyone out of the barn earlier, but that did not stop the verbeeg from draping it over his scrawny shoulders.
“I always forget to put my clothes back on after such changes,” he explained. “It’s rather a disorienting experience.”
“Are you some sort of werebeast?”
Basil shook his head. “Heavens no,” he replied. “I’m just a runecaster—quite harmless, I assure you.”
“Verbeegs don’t have wizards.”
“Watch,” Basil replied. He traced a symbol in the air, filling the area with flickers of golden light. The sparkles rose and circled the verbeeg’s head like a crown. “Now, which do you doubt—that I’m a verbeeg or a runecaster?”
“Neither, I guess,” Tavis said. “What are you doing here?”
Basil looked at the tip of the arrow still pointed at his chest. “Leaving soon, it appears,” he said. “But first, I have some business with your young friend.”
Avner’s face went pale. “We can forget about that,” he said. “I’m just glad to help.”
“Nonsense. An agreement is an agreement.” The verbeeg reached into the straw heap. “Thieves’ honor and all that.”
Tavis lowered his bow and looked at Avner. “What agreement?”
Avner’s only answer was a guilty look.
With a heavy groan, Basil pulled an enormous moose-skin sack from beneath the straw. “In return for hiding me, I promised Avner half the treasure I took from the lord mayor’s house,” the verbeeg explained. He turned the bag over and emptied an entire library of leather-bound books onto the barn’s grimy floor. “You choose first, Avner.”
“Books?” the youth shrieked. “I risked my life for ink and parchment?”
Basil’s bushy eyebrows came together in irrita
tion. “My boy, knowledge is the greatest treasure.” The verbeeg stooped down and selected a book. “But since you have no conception of the riches before you, I’ll choose first.”
From outside the barn, Brianna called, “Tavis? What’s happening in there?”
Tavis spun toward the barn door, which hung ajar so that he could not see into the courtyard. “Wait a moment!”
“Why?” Brianna demanded. Her voice sounded louder, as though she were approaching the barn. “Is something wrong?”
Tavis could not think of what to say. Like all firbolgs, it was nearly impossible for him to lie. He understood the concept well enough, but the strain of uttering false words affected his race more than any other giant-kin. If he said something untrue, his voice would crack, he would break out in a cold sweat, and his guilty conscience would not let him sleep for a tenday. Therefore, he did what most firbolgs did when they could not answer a question honestly: he did not reply.
Turning to Avner and Basil, Tavis whispered, “Into the loft with you, quick!”
Avner scrambled up in a flash, but Basil was too large to move quickly. He had to climb more slowly, gripping the side rails and taking great care to place each huge foot squarely on the narrow ladder treads. Cursing the verbeeg’s clumsiness, Tavis grabbed an armful of straw and threw it over the books.
“Tavis?” demanded Brianna. “Why don’t you answer?”
The innkeeper covered the last book, then looked up. Brianna and Morten stood at the door, squinting into the dim barn.
“Just a moment—”
Tavis was interrupted by the crack of a snapping board. A loud thud quickly followed, then Basil moaned in pain. The innkeeper wheeled around and saw the verbeeg sprawled on the floor, the loft ladder lying in pieces around him.
“How unfortunate,” Basil groaned. He pushed himself into a sitting position, then grabbed a shard of gray board. “I feared I was too heavy for the ladder.”
A pair of lumbering feet thundered across the barn floor as Morten rushed to Tavis’s side. The bodyguard touched the tip of his great sword to Basil’s throat and said nothing. Lady Brianna followed, though her steps fell silent before she reached the scout. Tavis turned around in time to see her pull a book from beneath the straw. She opened the cover to the title page.
“A Full History of the Dobbins of Stagwick, by Neville Dobbin, the thirty-fifth Earl of Stagwick,” she read.
Tavis took a single step toward her. “Let me explain.”
“You don’t have to,” Brianna replied. “I can see for myself what’s going on here.”
The princess drew her arm back and threw the book. It caught Tavis square in the forehead, breaking the binding and scattering leaves of parchment in every direction. The blow was incredibly powerful, much more forceful than the scout would have expected even for Brianna’s large frame, and he found himself stumbling backward, until at last he tripped over Basil’s feet and crashed down at the verbeeg’s side.
“Please, Brianna. I know this looks bad—”
“You played me for a fool, Tavis,” the princess snapped. “While I was protecting you from Earl Dobbin, you were looting Stagwick—and I was blind to what everyone else saw as plainly as the sun in the sky!”
“No!” Tavis started to rise, but quickly found the tip of Morten’s sword at his throat. “That’s not what happened!”
Brianna shook her head angrily. “How could you do this?”
With that, she stepped into Blizzard’s stall and untied the mare. “I’ll send someone for the children this evening. I can only hope you haven’t corrupted them beyond redemption.” She started toward the door and added, “I expect you to be gone by then. It will spare me an abundance of humiliation—and save you several decades of torture in my father’s dungeon.”
Though Brianna’s voice was cracking with grief, she did not look back.
2
Coggin’s Rise
Blizzard snorted, then tossed her head and slowed from a gallop to a trot, angrily stamping the ground each time her front hooves came down. Brianna reluctantly reined her mount to a stop. She leaned forward and stroked the mare’s sleek neck.
“What is it, girl?”
The horse tipped her ears forward and flared her nostrils. After testing the air for a moment, Blizzard’s muscles tensed, and she became as motionless as a statue.
Scowling, Brianna pulled a silver-handled axe from its saddle sheath. A cool mountain breeze hissed down from the aspen-covered slope ahead. Though she smelled nothing but damp leaves on its breath, the princess knew her mount well enough to realize Blizzard had caught the scent of danger. She laid her weapon across her lap and, remaining as still as her horse, studied the path before her.
A canopy of small, heart-shaped leaves hung over the road. They quivered incessantly in the light breeze, flashing waxy green and dusty silver, filling the air with a rustle just loud enough to cloak the whisper of creeping feet. Supporting this shimmering vault were hundreds of papery white tree trunks, rising from a steep, boulder-strewn slope with ample cover for an ambush.
This was Coggin’s Rise, named for an ancient earl who had been found on its slopes mysteriously torn limb from limb, and Brianna had learned better than to travel it recklessly. Once, she had nearly lost Blizzard when a cave bear sprang from among the boulders along the trail, and another time a marauding mountain giant had chased her from the base of the hill all the way to Castle Hartwick. In spite of her eagerness to return home, she thought it wise to let her bodyguard inspect the wood.
Brianna twisted around to look at Morten, lumbering up the trail fifty paces back. After leaving Tavis’s inn, she had ridden hard for half an hour, and the effort of keeping pace with Blizzard had nearly done the firbolg in. He wore his helmet pushed half off his head and his leather armor fastened too loosely to offer protection. His buckler hung across his back, slung in place by a rope strung beneath his armpits, and his feet had grown so heavy that he stumbled over the slightest obstacle. He kept his eyes fixed on the ground, and he was panting so hard the princess saw his chest heave each time he gasped for breath.
A guilty pang shot through Brianna’s breast, for her anger at Tavis had overwhelmed her concern for the firbolg. Even a fire giant would have found it difficult to keep pace with Blizzard for more than a league, and the princess had forced Morten to run several times that distance. It was a good thing something had alarmed her horse, or she might have run her poor bodyguard to death. It might even be possible that an apology was in order.
Blizzard snorted again, vanquishing all thoughts of penance. A crow screeched, then the crack of a snapping branch ricocheted through the aspen trees. Catching a faint whiff of something sour and rancid, like curdled milk, Brianna twisted around to face the forest. She saw a black flash as the crow rose through the quivering canopy of leaves, but that was all. Among the white trunks, nothing stirred.
Still, the smell did not vanish, and Brianna glanced over her shoulder. “Will you hurry, Morten?” she called. “I smell something.”
The firbolg’s chin rose and he sniffed at the breeze, but he did not seem to smell anything. Nevertheless, from somewhere he summoned the strength to sprint. A dozen thudding steps later, he stopped at Brianna’s side and braced his hands on his knees. He lifted his head and tried to catch the scent, but he was gasping so hard he could not draw air through his nose.
“I don’t smell anything,” he wheezed.
“The odor’s not very strong,” Brianna said, “but it’s sour.”
“Maybe bear or elk,” Morten suggested. “They both stink.”
Brianna scowled. “Wouldn’t I know if it was an animal?” As a priestess of Hiatea, she was familiar with all the creatures of the wild, able to identify any one of them by their tracks, droppings, calls—or scent. “This is too rancid. It’s more like a goatherd’s cheese hut.”
The firbolg went pale, the fatigue draining from his face as though he had just risen from a nap in a shady sn
owbank. Fixing his gaze on the woods ahead, he raised himself to his full height and tightened the buckles of his armor. “Ogre!” he hissed.
“You can’t be serious,” Brianna scoffed. She found herself craning her neck to look up at her bodyguard, despite the fact that she still sat upon her big mare’s back. “No ogre would dare come this close to Castle Hartwick.”
Evidently, the firbolg did not share her conviction. He pulled his helmet down and drew his huge sword. “Wait here,” he said. “I’ll scout the wood.”
“We’ll go together,” Brianna countered. She was far from convinced that something as dangerous as an ogre lurked in the woods ahead. “I don’t have time to wait.”
“Better late than dead,” the firbolg grunted. “Besides, the dance doesn’t start until dusk. We’ve got plenty of time.”
“I will have to bathe and dress,” Brianna snapped. “Or do you suggest I enter the ball smelling of horse and trail?”
“You weren’t worried about that before you found Tavis hiding the verbeeg,” Morten replied. “You just want to get home so you can cry.”
“Cry over a firbolg?” Brianna scoffed. Despite her retort, the princess felt the tears welling in her eyes. Looking away, she added, “It’s the orphans that concern me. Tavis may try to take them with him.”
“Why?” asked Morten. “They’d only make his life harder.”
“Fire giants will trade silver and gold for human children.”
Morten shook his head. “No firbolg would do such a thing.”
“We have no idea what Tavis might or might not do, but it’s better not to take chances.” Brianna’s tone was at once certain and regretful. “Besides, Tavis isn’t really a firbolg. He was raised among our kind, not yours.”
It was common knowledge that Tavis had been born under what the firbolgs called a “red moon,” meaning his mother had died in childbirth. In accordance with the tribe’s stern code of justice, the infant had been held responsible for the death and banished. A visiting bear trapper had carried the babe to Stagwick’s only lodge, where the kindly Isa Wirr had taken the child to raise among the kingdom’s many other orphans.
