The Giant Among Us

14

For the second morning in a row, Brianna peered out her window, over the bustling ramparts and across the sparkling lake, to find the hill giants standing beside their rafts and a favorable wind blowing across the blue waters. They had oaken shields strapped to their forearms and knobby tree trunks resting across their shoulders. Strangely enough, the sight didn’t alarm her. Maybe she was just too groggy, or maybe she had more confidence in the castle defenses than she realized, but the queen was not frightened this morning.

Brianna resented being so calm when she didn’t understand the reason for her composure. She felt like a goose being fattened for slaughter, too content and stupid to realize what was happening.

There came a knock at the door. “Enter,” Brianna called. She pulled her dressing gown more tightly around her throat, but continued to peer out the window.

The hinges squealed. “How are you feeling this morning, Majesty?” asked Cuthbert “Better, I hope.”

“I am,” Brianna answered absently. It was something about the hill giants, she realized. They were the reason she felt so calm. “I still can’t remember what happened in the temple the other night, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“Actually, that’s the least of my worries.” Cuthbert started across the room. “With Basil in the dungeon and Arlien out looking for our reinforcements, I doubt we’ll have any more trouble.”

Brianna hardly heard him. Her attention remained fixed on the giants.

“I can’t stop watching them, either,” Cuthbert said, joining her. “Do you think they’ll attack today?”

Brianna shook her head. “No, not today.”

The queen finally realized why she wasn’t afraid. Even from across the lake, she could see heads tipping back as the giants yawned, or bodies swaying from side to side as they shifted their weight back and forth. They were bored. Brianna knew enough about battle to realize that any number of emotions might run through a warrior’s heart in the moments before combat, but lethargy wasn’t one of them.

“You can tell your men to get some rest,” Brianna said. “They’re putting on a show for us.”

“A show? Why don’t they just attack?” Cuthbert’s voice sounded as brittle as ice. “All this waiting… it’s very wearing on the men, I can tell you that”

For the first time since the earl had entered the room, Brianna glanced down at him and saw the dark bags under his eyes. He was already dressed for battle, with his breastplate, vambraces, and greaves cinched down tightly. He carried his helmet under one arm, and his heavy axe was leaning against the doorjamb.

“I don’t mind the wait,” Brianna said. “Our reinforcements should be arriving within two days. The longer the wait, the better-don’t you think, Earl?”

“Yes, of course,” Cuthbert replied, his face reddening. “I don’t mean to imply I’m anxious to lose my castle. But the waiting makes no sense. I hope the hill giants don’t know more than we do.”

“That’s certainly possible,” Brianna allowed. “We have no idea whether T-Ta-, er… whether my bodyguard actually reached Wendel Manor. They would know if he failed.”

Cuthbert nodded. “That’s what worries me. They’re acting too confident, like they know everything we might do.” He fell silent, then shook his head. “Maybe I shouldn’t have let Arlien go, after all. But on the chance that he is a spy, I thought it’d be better to have him outside the castle. Even if he returns, I don’t think I’ll let-”

“I miss him.”

Cuthbert furrowed his brow. “Milady?”

Brianna did not answer immediately. The words had slipped from her lips before she realized she had uttered them, and she was trying to figure out why. The queen wasn’t aware of any longing for Arlien, or of any other feeling except the vague suspicion that it was wiser not to be alone with the prince.

“Majesty, did you say you missed Prince Arlien?”

“I believe I did.” She said it quietly, as though admitting something rather distasteful.

The earl scowled. “Does that mean you want me to admit him into the castle if he returns?”

Brianna tried to consider the question, but when she pondered the possibility that Arlien might be a spy, her thoughts began to wander in a hundred different directions. She found herself lost in her clouded minded.

“Milady?” Cuthbert asked. “Should I-”

“Do what you think is best, Earl!” Brianna was surprised at the tone of her voice, for she had not intended the reply to be a sharp one. “Now, please excuse me. I don’t think I’m feeling well, after all.”

The avalanche had hit the spruce copse with the power of Stronmaus. The edge of the stand had been reduced to an impassable tangle of snapped and splintered trees packed in a powdery wall of snow. Avner had walked Graytusk the length of the barrier several times, looking for a way to cross. The combination of soft snow and tangled logs made it impossible for the mammoth to climb. They would have to find another way out onto the avalanche.

Avner stretched forward and tugged his mount’s ear, intending to go around the wall. Graytusk had other ideas. The mammoth pulled his ear from the youth’s hand, then walked up to the wall and dug his tusks into the snow. He twisted his head about for a short time and wrapped his long trunk around a broken spruce. With a loud snort, the beast slowly backed away, filling the copse with sharp bangs and cracks as he tore a hole in the snowy barrier. Avner cringed at the loud sounds, fearing the frost giants might hear it, but allowed his mount to finish the job. If Hagamil’s warriors were still within earshot, the damage was already done.

Graytusk repeated the procedure a dozen more times before the painful radiance of sunlight on snow came pouring through the breach. Avner and his mount both turned their heads aside, allowing their eyes to adjust to the brilliance. The boy took the opportunity to rub the bony dome atop the mammoth’s head. Even that gentle contact sent waves of searing pain hissing up the youth’s arm. Last night’s blizzard had left his hand, as well as his face and other extremities, badly frostbitten. When Tavis’s fire had warmed him enough for the circulation to return, the pain had been so bad that he had nearly left his shelter and crawled back into the storm.

Avner pulled his aching hand away. “Good job, Graytusk,” he said. “I hope you figure out the rest of my plan that easily.”

The mammoth snorted impatiently, then turned and climbed into the gorgelike breach. On the slope above Avner could see a huge triangle of rocky outcroppings and grass exposed by last night’s avalanche. The apex was located directly beneath a narrow chute cutting through a high cliff of blond granite.

The youth knew Tavis had started the avalanche. He had heard the muffled booms of two exploding runearrows. The entire copse had begun to tremble, then there had been a tremendous crashing and banging as tons of snow slammed into the spruce stand. Avner had gone outside to see what was happening, but a scouring torrent of snow had driven him back into his den. Now, with the sun hanging in a cloudless blue sky and the temperature hovering a little below freezing, he found it difficult to remember how terrible last night’s blizzard had been.

Once they reached the other side of the gorge Graytusk had opened, the mammoth had little trouble climbing onto the avalanche fan. The snow here was well packed. Five frost giants had spent the early part of the morning trampling it down, haphazardly thrusting long spears into the snow in an attempt to locate Tavis’s buried body. Finally, as the sun climbed toward its zenith, they had given up and left, complaining bitterly about all the time they had wasted when they were supposed to be on their way to catch Brianna.

Because Avner had been watching them the entire time, he knew that a random search was unlikely to uncover the scout. Nor could he hope to make a methodic search of the avalanche. It was too large and too deep for him to succeed, especially considering the condition of his feet and hands. If the youth intended to find Tavis, he would need a better method.

That was where Graytusk’s sensitive nose would prove useful.

Avner guided the mammoth toward the center of the avalanche fan, more or less directly beneath the chute. Tavis had taught him that it was important to work quickly when searching for people buried in snow, since most victims suffocated within an hour of being buried. Thankfully, that applied more to wet, heavy snow than this fluffy stuff. A firbolg could probably last longer in this powder-exactly how much longer, the youth could not say-and there were things a victim could do to help himself, like crossing his arms in front of his face. Avner remembered Tavis drilling that into him time after time, saying it would double or even triple the amount of time before the air ran out So, if he assumed the scout would last twice as long in light snow as the heavy wet stuff, that would be two hours, and tripling that for knowing what to do would give him six hours.

By the youth’s best guess, Tavis had now been buried for twelve hours.

Avner shoved the thought aside. The boy intended to keep looking until he found his friend, and it wouldn’t matter if a week had passed. The youth turned his mount toward the chute. The frost giants had been in enough of a hurry that they hadn’t wasted time searching near the top of the avalanche, which was the least likely place for a victim to be buried.

Nevertheless, after watching the warriors search all morning, Avner had come to the conclusion that the top of the fan was the best place to start looking. If Tavis had been swept into the tangled mess at the copse’s edge, his body would hardly be worth finding, and the giants had already explored all the obvious accumulation zones in the middle part of the avalanche.

Besides, Avner thought it most likely that Tavis lay buried high up the slope. In last night’s blizzard, visibility on the open hillside would have been a mere foot or two, rendering a bow and arrows useless. But the scout would have been able to see much farther in the shelter of the gully, so he had almost certainly been in the chute when he fired the arrows. And if he had been at the top of the avalanche when it started, it seemed likely that he lay near the top now.

Graytusk left the trampled snow that the giants had already searched and waded into the deep powder higher up the slope. Avner stopped the beast here. From his satchel the youth withdrew one of the thistle roots Tavis had given him to eat earlier. He tossed it into the snow a few feet in front of the mammoth’s trunk.

The root sank out of sight. Graytusk plunged his nose into the snow and sniffed the root out, then slipped the morsel into his mouth. Avner dropped a rock he had collected in the spruce copse. Again, the mammoth dipped his nose into the snow and sniffed around. The youth pulled himself to the top of his mount’s head and watched the beast’s face intently. He had no idea what Graytusk would do if he caught a whiff of Tavis, but Avner felt certain the mammoth would react in some way.

After several moments of not finding the root, Graytusk pulled his trunk from the avalanche and sprayed his passenger with snow.

“Sorry, but you’ve got to work for your treats,” Avner said.

The youth guided his mount up the slope, stopping every dozen paces or so to repeat the process. He soon learned to vary the order and number of thistle roots he tossed into the snow, since Graytusk would not sniff around if he thought Avner had dropped a rock.

They were about twenty paces from the top when the mammoth’s ears swung forward. A series of muffled squeals rose from the beast’s submerged trunk, then Graytusk followed his probing nose across the avalanche. A short distance later, he stopped and lowered his tusks into the snow, angrily swinging his head from side-to-side.

Avner grabbed both woolly ears. “No, Graytusk!” The boy’s heart was beating like a drum. “Gently.”

The youth allowed Graytusk to lower his head again, but did not release the beast’s ears. The mammoth dug more carefully, and within a few minutes he had excavated a hollow ten feet deep. The beast stopped digging, then snorted and tilted his head to gore something beneath the snow.

Avner yanked on the trunk rope, forcing Graytusk to raise his head. The youth peered around his mount’s ear. In the bottom of the hole, he saw a scrap of frozen tunic showing through a patch of icy red snow. His heart started to pound so hard he thought it would burst.

Keeping the trunk rope taut, Avner climbed down his mount’s woolly flank. He dropped the rest of the thistle roots in the snow. “You’ve done your part, Graytusk,” he said. “Good boy.”

The mammoth cast a suspicious glance into the hole, then diffidently looked away and began to eat the delicacies. Avner tied the trunk rope around his waist-whatever happened, he did not want Graytusk to leave-and waded toward the scrap of tunic. Even this far beneath the surface of the avalanche, the snow remained so fluffy that he sank to his hips with each step.

The youth stopped and knelt in the blood-soaked snow. He placed a hand on the tunic. Under the frozen cloth, he felt a shoulder blade.

“Tavis!”

No response.

Avner dug through the crimson snow and located Tavis’s head. The scout lay facedown, curled into a fetal position, with his arms crossed in front of his face and his knees tucked to his elbows. The resulting air pocket looked quite large, but the heat of the firbolg’s breath had lined much of it with a glassy layer of ice, sealing the cavity like a tomb.

Avner yelled, “Can you hear me?”

Again, no response.

The youth reached into the hole and laid his fingers over Tavis’s nose and mouth. With his hand still stinging from his frostbite, he could not feel much, but the scout’s skin did seem to feel a little warmer than the snow. Avner withdrew his arm and saw tiny beads of water on his fingers. It could only be condensation from the scout’s breath.

Avner’s stomach somersaulted.

Working frantically, the youth cleared the snow away so he could inspect Tavis’s injuries. A weblike tangle of jagged, ugly gashes covered the scout’s back and limbs, while a fiery blast had scorched the front of his body from his head to his knees. Both arms and one leg had nasty-looking lumps that might indicate cracked bones, but there were no unusual bends or kinks to suggest a severe break. A large, egg-shaped lump had risen on the side of his head.

Satisfied that Tavis would suffer no further injury by being moved, Avner went back to Graytusk. The youth turned the mammoth so that the beast was standing on the scout’s downhill side, then forced him to kneel. The creature sank so deeply that he almost disappeared in the snow.

Avner dragged his patient to the mammoth and mounted, pulling the heavy firbolg up in front of him. Graytusk stood without command. As the beast started to turn away, Avner caught a glimpse of familiar brown leather lying in the bottom of the hole.

“Not so fast, Graytusk!”

The youth stretched over Tavis’s inert form to grab his mount’s ears and stop the beast. He cut four short lengths of line off Graytusk’s trunk rope and tied the scout’s limbs into the mammoth’s shaggy fur. Avner turned the creature back toward the hole. Still holding the trunk rope, he slipped down Graytusk’s flank, then waded over to the familiar brown leather. He brushed the snow away and pulled Tavis’s quiver from where it had lain half-buried. The case still contained thirteen arrows, twelve of wood and one of gold.