by Troy Denning
Raeyadfourne rushed past with the rest of the Meadowhome firbolgs, and Basil stopped at Tavis’s side.
“Look at you! You’re covered in blood again,” the runecaster panted. “You can’t take much of this. Munairoe said-”
“I know what M-Munairoe sssaid,” the high scout stuttered. “But Brianna’s d-down there.”
Tavis charged over the summit in time to see the Meadowhome firbolgs swarming Patma. Only the storm giant’s wildly flailing limbs were visible, for he had fallen beneath the veil of wind-driven snow at the base of the scarp. The high scout bounded down the rocky face, stealing glances at the rest of the battlefield as he bounced between outcroppings.
At the eastern end of the meadow, the furtive fomorians were nowhere in sight. But the giant Eusebius was swinging his blade back and forth through the ground blizzard, flinging gore in all directions. At the western end of the field, the battle looked to be bloody on both sides. One of the storm giants had fallen to his knees with several verbeeg spears in his midriff, but the other was standing his ground against Orisino’s orderly ranks, cleaving through his foes’ waists two and three at a time.
By the time Tavis reached the bottom of the scarp, Patma’s limbs had disappeared beneath the ground blizzard. A thick cloud of birds wheeled over the body, crying mournful songs and raking at the firbolgs’ heads. The high scout skirted the fringe of the crowd. He was just tall enough to see over the curtain of blowing snow. Directly ahead, Anastes remained at his station in front of the queen’s tower. The storm giant’s eyes were melancholy and resigned, but he held his rust-flecked sword in one hand and a crackling ball of lightning in the other.
As Tavis started toward the center of the meadow, the snow suddenly avalanched from the flanks of the little drumlin behind the queen’s tower. A long aquiline nose emerged from beneath the white blanket, followed by a wiry, square-cropped beard and the rest of Lanaxis’s head. His crown sat upon his pate, cocked forward and lopsided, with a few wisps of coarse white hair poking out from beneath the band. His face was shriveled and white with age. A crossbow bolt had pinned shut one of his haggard eyes, which was now inflamed and oozing infection.
The titan gathered his feet beneath him and stood, voicing a deep, soul-drained groan that made him seem as old and weary as the mountains.
Raeyadfourne caught up to Tavis. “Wait! We need to regroup!” he yelled. “We cannot-”
“ I can! Take your tribe and go!” Tavis shoved Raeyadfourne toward the eastern side of the tower. “Circle around there-and if you reach Brianna first, remember your promise!”
Tavis circled in the opposite direction, plowing through waist-deep snow at his best sprint. He happened upon Sebastion’s corpse and scrambled onto the body, startling hundreds of birds from their roosts. Seven quick paces took him the cadaver’s length. When he jumped back into the deep snow, the birds followed, assailing him with angry screeches and raking talons.
A deafening volley of thunder rolled across the field. Tavis glanced eastward. Anastes stood no more fifty paces away, looming above the ground blizzard like Stronmaus himself. The storm giant was hurling lightning bolts down upon the firbolgs’ heads and shoulders, the only parts of the Meadowhome warriors that showed above the whistling curtain of snow.
Tavis turned directly toward the queen’s tower. Lanaxis stood beside the battered structure, peering over the top to survey the battlefield. The high scout continued to rush forward, unconcerned about being seen. The titan’s good eye was looking the other direction.
Tavis had closed to within twenty paces of the tower when a black spire eagle swooped low over his head and turned toward the titan. The bird voiced its shrill cry, drawing Lanaxis’s attention at once. The titan’s gaze lingered a moment on the reeling birds above the high scout’s head, then seemed to pierce the feathery cloud and fall directly on Tavis’s face.
He stopped and drew a runearrow from his quiver. The titan simply looked away, then knelt in the snow and wrapped his arms around the queen’s tower.
Tavis nocked his arrow. The spire eagle appeared before his face, talons extended to strike. The scout leapt sideways and loosed his shaft, then tumbled backward as the raptor slammed into his shoulder.
“esiwsi-”
The eagle sank its beak into Tavis’s gullet, and they dropped into the snow together. The high scout released his bow and twisted toward his attacker, at the same time drawing his belt dagger. The raptor tore a hunk of flesh from Tavis’s neck. He drove his knife deep into the bird’s feathery breast, drawing a startled squawk and a last, feeble peck at his face.
“Damn damn damn birds!”
Tavis leapt up and turned toward the center of the meadow. Lanaxis had already risen to his full height and was cradling the queen’s tower in the crook of his elbow. The runearrow was lodged in the shoulder of the same arm, but if the titan noticed it, he showed no sign. He was already limping away from the battle.
Tavis started to utter the command word that would detonate the runearrow, then realized how far the building would drop if he blew the arm off. A cold, sick ache more painful than any wound filled his body, for he knew better than to think his wife and child would emerge alive from the rubble. He stood motionless in the snow, torn between the futile impulse to stumble after them and the wiser decision to turn back and help his allies regroup.
Basil’s hand grasped his shoulder. “You’re as mad as Memnor!” the runecaster puffed. “Attacking the titan alone!”
“He’s weak during the day,” Tavis croaked. The effort of speaking pained his savaged throat, but he barely noticed. “I almost had him.”
Basil cocked an eyebrow. “I’d say you’re lucky you didn’t.” The verbeeg retrieved Tavis’s bow from beside the dead spire eagle. “But we have other problems at the moment. Ror has betrayed us all.”
The runecaster pointed Mountain Crusher across the blowing snow, toward the eastern end of the meadow. It took Tavis a moment to find what concerned Basil, then he saw them: a long line of hulking shapes in the forest beyond the village, slipping through the trees as quietly as thieves. In the lead was a massive figure with a potbelly and spindly legs.
“Ror!” Tavis exclaimed. “He’s chasing Lanaxis!”
“And leaving the firbolgs to the storm giants,” Basil said. “Look.”
Tavis turned his gaze back across the field. Raeyadfourne and his warriors were forming ranks to charge Anastes in mass, completely oblivious to the huge figure rising over the hilltop behind them.
It was Eusebius.
Tavis grabbed his bow and plowed through the snow, shouting and gesturing as he ran. The thundering storm drowned out his voice, and the Meadowhome warriors were too intent on their charge to notice his waving arms. Balls of lightning filled Eusebius’s hands. He began to hurl the bolts into firbolg’s rear ranks, but they were too determined to notice the attack from behind.
Raeyadfourne himself led the first rank into the fray, flinging his axe into Anastes’s midriff. The storm giant bellowed and stumbled, then his great sword came down, reducing the chieftain and three more warriors to a crimson spray.
Behind the firbolg column, Eusebius hurled his last lightning bolt, then drew his sword and descended the scarp in two strides.
Tavis drew a common arrow from his quiver. He had one more runearrow left, but he could not use it without also detonating the one in Lanaxis’s shoulder. He stopped and nocked the shaft.
Eusebius stepped away from the hill and was upon his quarry. Tavis fired his arrow, aiming low so that it would skim the heads of the last two ranks of Meadowhome warriors. A flurry of birds flashed down to intercept the shaft, but the bustle caused several firbolgs to duck and look over their shoulders.
Eusebius’s sword came down, slicing through the last rank from one end to the other.
An alarmed cry rose from those who had seen the attack, and the rear ranks slowly wheeled around to face their menace. Munairoe’s voice briefly lifted above the clamo
r, beseeching the aid of the fire spirits. A fountain of molten rock erupted beneath Eusebius, drawing a long and agonized wail.
With his legs still flaming, Eusebius stepped out of the fiery column and swung his mighty sword. Munairoe fell with five warriors at his back. Then Eusebius and Anastes, each as bloody and battered as the other, hacked their way toward one another, hewing firbolgs as though they were harvesting hay.
Tavis nocked another shaft, then heard Basil’s heavy breath at his back. The high scout turned to his panting friend and presented the tip of his arrow to the runecaster.
“I need magic!” Tavis said. “Something to keep the birds off!”
“No time… for anything powerful.” Basil pulled a runebrush from his cloak and traced a quick pattern on the arrowhead.
A tremendous crash shook the field, and Tavis glanced back to see a shroud of birds settling over Eusebius’s fallen body. Anastes stumbled another step forward and brought his sword down, cleaving his comrade’s killer down the center. The last three firbolgs, Galgadayle among them, buried their axes in the storm giant’s leg. His knee buckled with a loud crackle, then he dropped into the snow with a long, mournful groan.
“Done!” Basil reported.
Tavis brought his bow around and fired. The arrow streaked away, a great plume of red smoke roiling from its tip. The birds dived after the missile and disappeared into the crimson cloud, then emerged on the other side disoriented and hardly able to fly. The shaft reached Anastes unimpeded. He twitched slightly as it planted itself in his ribs, then struck a glancing blow off the heads of Galgadayle’s companions. Both firbolgs collapsed with crushed skulls.
Basil yelled an arcane command word, and a spout of green flame shot from Anastes’s arrow wound. The storm giant roared in surprise and glanced down to look at the hole.
Galgadayle stepped forward to attack, throwing all his weight into the blow. The seer’s axe bit deep, splitting the giant’s chest cleanly down the sternum.
As if by instinct, Anastes’s hand rose and closed around the seer. A long rasping gurgle sounded from the storm giant’s throat, then the howling wind fell silent and the blowing snow settled over the meadow.
Tavis drew his bowstring with no conscious memory of having nocked the arrow between his fingers. It was not the runearrow.
“Stop!” Tavis’s voice cracked as though he were lying. He could probably finish the storm giant with a common arrow, but not quickly enough to save Galgadayle. “Let that warrior go!”
Anastes looked at Tavis, his face grave with the unfathomable weight of his race’s ancient remorse. For several moments, they stared at each other more in pity than menace or anger.
Finally, Tavis lowered Mountain Crusher and took the arrow off his bowstring. “The battle is done,” Tavis said. “I see no more sense in killing.”
“Nor I. What will be will be.”
The storm giant lowered his hand and released Galgadayle, then closed his eyes. A warm, wailing wind rose out of the south. The air pulsed with the beat of a hundred thousand wings and the sky dimmed beneath a myriad of feathers.
Anastes gasped, “The matter is entirely out of my hands.”
13
Cuthbert Pass
Brianna cringed as Avner pushed against the loose stone. The young scout sat on the smoke shelf just above the fireplace damper, using his feet to shove the heavy block out of its niche in the chimney wall. He had already scraped the mortar from the joints, but the block moved slowly, grinding against the stones around it and filling the murky chamber with a loud, harsh grating.
“Quietly!” Brianna urged.
“We don’t have time to be quiet,” Avner retorted. “Whatever Lanaxis is doing, I’ll wager it has to do with twilight. He’ll be on his way again as soon as dark falls, and us with him if we’re still here.”
It was late afternoon, the day of the battle between the giant-kin and the storm giants. Brianna had crawled down the chimney into the tower’s first-floor chamber, where all manner of weapons had been knocked from their racks and scattered across the floor during the rough journey northward. The room’s only outlet, aside from the chimney flue, was a doorway that had once opened into the internal passages of Wynn Keep’s thick walls. Now, the portal was covered by a twinkling curtain of purple gloom, as were the sally port, the arrow loops on the second floor, and all of the tower’s other exits. Lanaxis had used his magic to draw the dark screens over the openings shortly before twilight, when he had suddenly stopped and set the tower down. Brianna and Avner had no way to look outside and so did not know where their captor was presently. But a minute earlier they had felt the floor shuddering, presumably as the titan walked away.
The grating in the fireplace ceased, and the stone fell free with a muffled clack. A brief rustle sounded in the flue as Avner rearranged himself, then a puff of icy wind rolled out of the fireplace. The young scout stuck his head down beneath the lintel.
“Now’s the time, Brianna.” As Avner spoke, little black clouds billowed from his soot-packed beard. “I’d say we still have twenty minutes before dark.”
Brianna passed Avner a waterskin filled with her milk and a rope they had found in the room’s debris. Then she pressed her lips to Kaedlaw’s brow and held them there for a long time.
At last, Avner said, “Majesty, I’m not fond of this plan of yours, but if it’s going to work, we’d better be on our way.”
Brianna nodded, then looked into Kaedlaw’s round face. “Good luck, my son. I love you-both of you.” With tears in her eyes, she passed the child to Avner, then touched the young scout’s soot-covered face. “And arrow’s speed to you, my defender. Watch over my child.”
“With my life,” Avner assured her. “I’ll see you at Wind Keep.”
“Don’t wait. That’s not my purpose.”
“I know,” the young scout replied. “But you’ll fool him. Hiatea will help you.”
Avner withdrew onto the smoke shelf, pulling Kaedlaw out of the queen’s sight.
Brianna tried to stop crying for a moment, then gave up and went to the side of the fireplace. She removed a rock from the mouth of a tin ewer and thrust her hand inside, grabbing a terrified rat Avner had caught for her. The rodent tried to bite her and squirm free as she pulled it from the pitcher, but the queen had it by the back of the neck. It was helpless in her grasp. She removed Hiatea’s amulet from her neck and took a tress of Kaedlaw’s coarse hair from her pocket, then pressed them both to the creature’s chest.
“Valorous Hiatea, take mercy on your humble servant,” Brianna beseeched. “Grant this lowly creature the aspect of my beloved son, that mad Lanaxis may have a prince worthy of his mad plans.”
The tip of the silver spear glowed red and the flames began to dance, singeing the fur from the helpless rat’s chest. The creature let out a shrill squeal and writhed wildly, but Brianna’s grasp remained secure. She uttered the mystic syllables of her spell. The rodent grew calm, tranquilized by the goddess’s magic. A flickering yellow fire spread over the beast’s body, burning away the fur and revealing skin as pink and tender as a baby’s.
The rat began to grow, its narrow face broadening into the round, double-chinned visage of her son. The muzzle receded to form Kaedlaw’s flat, rather swinish nose, the long fangs shrank into a mouthful of snaggled incisors, and the lips grew puffy and as red as blood. As the rodent’s size increased, its body softened and thickened. Its claws retracted to become toenails and fingernails, its gaunt limbs changed into an infant’s chubby arms and legs, and almost before she knew it, the struggling creature in her arms appeared to be her son. Only the eyes gave away the truth; the black pupils were almost as large as the irises, and so full of fear that the queen felt sorry for the confused beast.
Brianna swaddled her decoy in a pair of woolen cloaks, wrapping him tightly so that he could not squirm, then crawled into the fireplace. The breeze hissing down the flue smelled of spruce and pine, and its frigid bite felt good against her skin
. The queen pushed her shoulders through the damper throat, and a pale, wintry light shone through a square hole in the back of the chimney. She laid the rat-child on the smoke shelf and hoisted herself up, then retrieved him and sat down, pushing her feet through the opening. A mountain stream outside gurgled softly under its ice, and trees rustled in the wind, but she heard no sound to suggest that the titan waited nearby. Clutching her burden to her chest, she squirmed through the passage and dropped into the cold snow.
Brianna found herself next to a moonlit ribbon of ice that snaked its way through a broad, round-bottomed canyon. A blanket of gangly conifers covered the valley bed, but the forest grew steadily thinner as it crept up the steep walls of the dale. A short distance downstream, the frozen creek abruptly became an icefall and dropped away into nothingness, with only sky and the distant Baronies of Wind beyond. The queen saw no sign of the rope Avner had taken, which was good. It meant he had already reached the bottom of the waterfall and retrieved his rappelling line. By now, he would be well on his way toward the canyon mouth and the shelter of Wind Keep.
Brianna turned to inspect her own route. The flat expanse of a snow-covered tarn lay fifty paces upstream. Beyond the frozen lake, the dale’s craggy headwall rose a thousand feet to the narrow saddle of Cuthbert Pass, where the slender silhouette of Gap Tower was barely visibly in the afternoon light. At its crown flickered the orange speck of a signal fire, a sure sign that the garrison had observed Lanaxis’s approach. The queen saw no sign of the titan himself.
Brianna clutched the rat-child close to her breast and started up the canyon.
On the last sun-tipped peak I stand, the savage winds whistling across the ashen sky, cold twilight flooding the purple valleys below. In the distant west, a golden crescent sinks behind endless ranks of sawtooth mountains, shooting effulgent rays across the heavens to stab, like daggers, far, far into my wounds.
