by Troy Denning
Tavis smiled, then whispered, “That shot should slow down even an angry firbolg.”
* * * * *
Needle Peak loomed across the valley, a granite minaret rising a thousand feet above the field of gray boulders surrounding it. Behind the spire lay the silhouette of the next mountain ridge, a jagged wall of stone and ice. To the pinnacle’s south, the rocky meadow ended at the brink of a vast, murky abyss. From these gloomy depths came the dull roar of an unseen river, its frothing waters filling the air with a fine mist that bent the sun’s light over the canyon in a stunning arc of red and yellow and blue.
The rainbow was the only colorful thing in the vista ahead. To the north of the pinnacle, the field ended beneath a wall of loose boulders and pearly ice, the terminal moraine of a large glacier. The snow field curved away for miles, slowly climbing toward a cirque in the mountain ridge.
Somewhere in the unseen valleys ahead were trees, or so Brianna had heard, but she could see only the gray and white ramparts of mountain chain after mountain chain, each higher and more icy than the last, until the peaks grew so lofty and snowy she could no longer tell them from the clouds. The princess had never before ventured beyond the borders of her father’s kingdom and gazed on the vast expanse of the Ice Spires. The sight filled her heart with a despair as dark and deep as the abysses hidden ahead.
A dozen paces down the couloir, Goboka stopped. The ogre shaman lifted a boulder off the bottom of the narrow trench, then began a careful examination of the stone. Brianna’s ogre—or more accurately, the one carrying her across his shoulders—stopped to wait, bracing one hand against the couloir wall to keep from sliding down the steep slope. The other survivors of Brianna’s ambush simply sat down, holding themselves in place by kicking their heels into the loose scree. Both warriors were lightly burdened, one carrying a handful of waterskins and the other Runolf’s head. The head was all that remained of the unfortunate traitor, for Goboka had eaten the rest.
With an impatient grunt, the shaman dropped the boulder he had been examining and reached for another. Brianna found herself silently cursing Goboka’s delay. When they stopped moving, the smell of the ogres grew immeasurably worse, to the point where her jaws ached and her stomach churned. Not even the bitter wind could carry the awful stench away fast enough, and she could not recall ever wanting anything quite so much as she now wanted to retch.
But that was impossible. Even if the ogres had not gagged her with one of their filthy rags, the princess could not have stopped her teeth from chattering long enough to do the job. They were high in the mountains, where the sun’s rays were as frigid as ice and a stabbing, bitter cold crept into the lungs with every breath. To make matters worse, as a way of discouraging another escape attempt, Goboka had burned Brianna’s cloak with the bodies of his dead warriors. She wore nothing more than the tattered remains of the cashmere dress in which she had attended Tavis’s party. Even the slightest breeze numbed her flesh, and up here the wind howled loud enough to shame an entire pack of dire wolves.
Brianna twisted around to look up the mountain, praying she would see her father’s men climbing over the rocky notch above. She could not understand what was taking them so long. Even if she had not been missed until the ball started, the ogres would have had less than a three-hour start on her saviors. With the advantage of the swift royal horses, the rescue party should be closing in by now.
At least Brianna hoped they were. Already her bones ached with cold, and her joints felt too stiff to move. If her rescuers did not arrive soon, there would be nothing left to recover but a frozen body.
When no guards appeared, Brianna reluctantly forced herself to look down the steep couloir again. Watching for rescuers only made her wait more agonizing.
At the front of the ogre line, Goboka picked up a long, narrow stone with a sharp point on each end. With a mighty thrust, he drove one end deep into the ground, planting the stake in the center of the couloir, where the walls stood within twenty paces of each other and the pitch was so steep stones sometimes rolled down the hill with no visible impetus. The shaman tested the pillar to make sure it was steady, then took Runolf’s head and placed it on top of the post.
The shaman said something in the deep, guttural voice he used for casting spells. Runolf’s eyes popped open. They were not dazed or glassy, as those of a dead man, but seemed fully alert and alive. The traitor’s gaze roved over the couloir and came to rest on Brianna’s face. There was an expression of terrible anguish in the depths of his eyes, but also something more, as though he was more sad for the princess than he was for himself.
Brianna could not look at Runolf’s face without remembering how he had asked forgiveness and claimed the decision to betray her had not been his. Then whose decision had it been, Runolf? Was Tavis involved? Did his betrayal of her include more than abusing her good name? The princess would have liked to call down and ask all these questions of the traitor, but of course she could not. She had a gag in her mouth, and even if she had not, who was to say Runolf could answer. He was Goboka’s creature now, and the sadness in his eyes might have meant anything—or nothing at all.
Goboka looked across the valley and raised his hands to his mouth. A loud, wavering cry erupted from his throat, cutting through the wind to crash against the cliffs of the distant mountains. For a moment, there was no answer, until an excited murmur slowly bubbled up from the remote fields beneath Needle Peak. The gray stones stirred, and at first Brianna could not understand what she was seeing. Then the distant shapes began to arrange themselves into ragged formations, line after line, rank upon rank. A strange thunder rumbled across the valley, growing more rhythmic with each repetition, until she could make out a single, guttural word rising from the throats of a thousand ogres: “Bree-an-a! Bree-an-a!”
6
Runolf’s Couloir
The disembodied head of Runolf Saemon sat thirty paces down the slope, fixed atop a small rock spire lodged between the craggy walls of the steep couloir. The sergeant’s face was pale with death, his cheeks hollow and his lips the color of ash, but his eyes still seemed very much alive. They were as blue as mountain columbines, with twitching crow’s feet at the corners and watchful pupils fixed on Tavis’s face.
For a long time, the scout sat on his haunches in the windy notch above the couloir, waiting for Basil and Avner to join him.
More than anything, Tavis wanted to avoid thinking about the gruesome scene below, but his mind would not allow it. His thoughts kept returning to what he saw, searching for an acceptable theory to explain why it was Runolf Saemon’s head waiting down there.
There was only one conclusion for Tavis to reach: His mentor had been part of Brianna’s abduction from the beginning. Runolf had been the guide who led the ogres past the outposts of the Border Guard. Later, he had been their spy, sneaking away from the party at the Weary Giant to warn the kidnappers of their quarry’s approach. And now, having been ripped apart by Brianna’s mountain lions, the traitorous sergeant continued to serve the brutes as some sort of undead watchman.
The only thing Tavis did not understand was why.
The scout fixed his eyes across the valley, where a long file of dark forms was climbing the glacier north of Needle Peak. A cold wind was blowing from that direction, and on its breath Tavis caught faint whiffs of the rancid, sour-milk odor of ogre flesh. Sometimes, he thought there was a more fragrant scent, one he remembered from the princess’s visits to the Weary Giant, but his imagination was only playing tricks on him. Brianna was certainly with the ogres, but her perfume would long since have worn off.
The scout’s stomach burned with a hollow pain he had felt not too long ago, upon learning of the death of his adoptive mother, Isa Wirr. This time, he could not say for whom he was mourning. Was it for Brianna, hopelessly lost in the midst of a thousand foul-smelling ogres? Or was he grieving for Runolf, whose unfathomable betrayal had left him feeling even more lost than the princess?
Tavis forc
ed himself to look down the couloir and met his mentor’s gaze. Runolf’s eyes were filled with shame and regret, two emotions Tavis had never before seen on the man’s face. In life, Runolf had been one of those rare humans as confident in his own moral code as firbolgs were in their laws, a dedicated man who always upheld the strict codes of duty and honor to the letter. How the ogres had corrupted a man of such character, the scout could not imagine. Perhaps when he knew that, he would also know why they had taken Brianna.
“Runolf, I know you led the ogres into Hartsvale,” Tavis called down. “The thing I don’t understand is why. Tell me.”
“That I cannot do,” replied the head. “But I will say this: Remember what I taught you about three-toed tracks.”
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 tight 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, he 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 footing 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 trick
s 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 thousand 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?”
“Well 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.”
