The Titan of Twilight

1

Tavis Burdun felt the detonation before he heard it: a faint quiver in the soles of his feet, followed instantly by a feeble shock wave breaking against his back. A muffled karumph rolled up the gorge from someplace far behind him, sweeping last night’s snowfall off the craggy precipices, and he smelled whiffs of some mordant, caustic fume. There was a slight lull, then a deafening crack as an enormous ice curtain broke free of its cliff and crashed down on the far side of Wyrm River.

“Halt the Company of the Royal Snow Bear!” Tavis boomed, addressing the long column of warriors ahead. Even without the roar of shattering ice, he would have had to yell. A fierce boreal wind had been howling down the gorge since dawn, filling the canyon with a whistling keen as eerie and cold as a banshee’s wail. “Halt the horse lancers! Halt the footmen and front riders!”

As the company sergeants relayed the commands forward, Tavis turned and looked back down the canyon, raising his hand to halt the elegant sleighs coming toward him. He saw nothing unusual, only the icy, rutted road that the queen’s entourage had followed into the dusky Gorge of the Silver Wyrm. To one side of the route lay the broad ribbon of Wyrm River’s frozen surface, with a sheer granite cliff looming above the far bank. To the other side rose a steep, craggy slope flecked with the stumps of a felled pine forest A web of precarious footpaths laced the barren hillside, stringing together the rock heaps that spilled from the mouths of the canyon’s fabled silver mines. Atop a few of the mine dumps stood a handful of tiny figures, weary miners who had crawled from their dank holes to watch the queen’s procession. If they felt any concern over the muffled blast, their motionless forms did not betray it.

The royal sleigh, the first in the procession, continued to come toward Tavis. It was drawn by the queen’s favorite horse, Blizzard, a white-flecked mare with a snowy mane and a disposition as fierce and unpredictable as her namesake. The beast did not halt until she reached Tavis’s side, where she cast an angry glare into his eyes and snorted sour-smelling steam into his face. He grabbed the horse’s bridle and pushed her head away, then fixed his attention on the sleigh’s fur-swaddled driver. The young man was a lanky border scout with a yellow beard, twinkling gray eyes, and a touch of larceny in his ready smile.

“Avner, keep a taut rein on the Queen’s Beast,” Tavis advised, calling the petulant mare by his favorite nickname. “I don’t like her look.”

Before the young scout could reply, a muffled voice sounded behind the fleece curtain that enclosed the sleigh’s passenger compartment. “Tavis? What was that horrible crash?”

“Falling ice, milady.”

A mittened hand drew the curtain aside, revealing the striking form of Tavis’s wife, Queen Brianna. She was a tall, big-boned woman with robust features and a chin as strong as a man’s. Even her white fur cloak could not conceal the fact that she was enormously pregnant. She filled three-quarters of the booth, with a belly so swollen she could barely close her coat. There were dark circles under her eyes, for her condition made sleep difficult, and her cheeks were puffy and red from the bitter cold-but Tavis hardly noticed these flaws. He saw only her maternal radiance, the most ravishing of any beauty.

“Falling ice?” Brianna asked. “It sounded more like a falling mountain, Lord Scout.”

Tavis pointed at the enormous ice blocks scattered along the far bank of Wyrm River. “There was some sort of blast behind us. It shook an ice curtain off the canyon wall.” He nearly had to yell to make himself heard over the wind. “The road’s not blocked, but we shouldn’t go on until I know what happened.”

“In that case, we may continue.” The speaker rode into view and stopped his gray stallion on the far side of Brianna’s sleigh. He was the earl of the Storming Gorge, Radborne Wynn, a stout old man wrapped in a cloak of silver ermine. With a tuft of ice-caked beard and a long mane of gray hair, he looked as august and feral as the mountain goats that roamed the canyons of his wind-blasted barony. “A tunnel wizard’s spell caused the blast”

“You told me there would be no mining magic while Brianna is in the canyon!” Tavis barked. “Didn’t you issue the command?”

Radborne responded with an icy glare. “The wizard responsible will be severely punished, Lord High Scout,” he said. “I assure you, there is no need to speak to me in such tones.”

The high scout clamped his jaw shut and looked away, running his eyes over the craggy slopes as though he had not heard the comment. He had learned not to apologize to nobles-such overtures were interpreted as signs of weakness-but the earl had a point. Tavis had been anxious and short-tempered the entire journey-though with good reason, he thought.

The earl’s miners had struck a rich new vein deep in the gorge, and with the royal reserves bled dry by three years of war against the giants, the treasury needed the extra silver. Unfortunately, the deposit could not be mined until Brianna blessed it. An ancient tradition held that Skoraeus Stonebones would swallow anyone who took ore from an unconsecrated vein, and tunnel wizards considered their calling dangerous enough without incurring the wrath of the stone giant god. So despite her delicate condition, Brianna had undertaken a difficult winter journey that would bring her within eight leagues of a fire giant stronghold at the canyon’s far end. As the lord high scout of Hartsvale and the first defender of her majesty the queen, Tavis would have been remiss in his duties if he were not worried.

The high scout tried to steady his nerves by reminding himself that he had taken every possible precaution. The fifteen horse lancers of the Royal Snow Bear Company sat fifty paces up the canyon, in front of a roadside mine portal, their white chargers snorting steam and the pennon flags of their posted lances snapping in the wind. Ahead of the riders stood a hundred pikemen armored in frost-rimed breastplates. In front of the footmen, there was a contingent of swift, lightly armored front riders. A rearguard of six lancers and twenty footmen followed behind the royal entourage, while several bands of border scouts patrolled ahead, behind, and to both sides of the procession.

Tavis could do nothing more to ensure his wife’s safety, but still he was plagued by the incessant sensation that he had overlooked some lurking danger.

Perhaps he was worried about the firbolg seer, Galgadayle. The old prophet had not bothered the queen since last spring, but Tavis doubted that had been the end of the matter. The fellow’s dreams were never wrong, and everyone in the Ice Spires knew it. Twice, Galgadayle’s prophecies had saved entire tribes, once when he foresaw a landslide that engulfed a verbeeg village, and another time when he predicted a flood that deluged a fomorian cave. If the seer claimed that one of the queen’s twins would grow up to lead the giants against the northlands, there would be no shortage of people trying to put the babe to death. It did not even matter that the queen’s own priest had divined the contents of her womb and discovered that she had only one child inside. Given the choice of believing Galgadayle or the imperious Simon of Stronmaus, most people would choose the beloved seer.

Even Tavis had his doubts. Like a knelling bell, Galgadayle’s prophecy echoed through his dreams at night, woke him at dawn, and tolled through his mind all day long. Firbolgs could not lie. If the seer claimed to have dreamed ill about the royal offspring, then he had. But why had he seen twins, while the queen’s priest divined but a single child?

After a few moments of being ignored, Earl Wynn grew impatient “If we hurry, we can still reach the Silver Citadel before twilight.” He cast a nervous eye at the crooked sliver of winter sky hanging over the canyon. Although it was barely two hours past noon, dusk was already beginning to darken the gray clouds. “I’m sure her majesty will appreciate a hot meal and a warm hearth this even-”

An enormous subterranean boom cut the sentence short. The road bucked, and Blizzard whinnied, her voice as shrill as the wind. The big mare reared against her harness rods, lifting the front of the royal sleigh high into the air. Tavis leapt past her slashing hooves and grabbed her bridle. He jerked the startled creature back to all fours, already casting an angry glance in Radborne’s direction.

“Earl, do any of your tunnel wizards heed your commands? One miscreant is bad enough, but two are-”

A deafening roar erupted behind the high scout, drowning out his complaint. The ground trembled beneath his feet, and a blast of hot wind scorched his neck. The same mordant fumes that he had sniffed earlier filled the canyon with a caustic, acrid stench. Tavis spun around and saw an immense tongue of flame lashing from the mine portal beside the road. Inside the inferno he glimpsed the writhing, wraithlike shapes of rearing chargers and flailing riders, then he was half-blinded by the glare and had to look away. Over the horrible crackling of the fire came the squeal of burning horses and the howls of dying men.

Blizzard neighed wildly and shied away from the blast. Only Tavis’s grip on her bridle kept the mare from spinning away and toppling the royal sleigh. She reared, jerking the high scout off his feet. He came down hard on the icy road, then lay on his back, struggling to hang on to the bridle as Blizzard whipped her head to and fro. He twisted his hand into the leather and pulled. Although a runt by the standards of his race, Tavis was still a firbolg. His strapping arms were more than strong enough to manhandle a creature as small as a horse.

Tavis pulled Blizzard’s nose to within reach of his free hand, then pinched her nostrils shut. The mare’s eyes flared, but she quieted instantly. The high scout returned to his feet and looked back toward the sleigh, where Avner sat blanched and wild-eyed, cursing the Queen’s Beast under his breath. Brianna sat far back in the passenger compartment, gripping the hand rails so tightly that her knuckles were white. Her complexion had turned pale, and the shadow of a grimace lingered on her face.

“Milady, are you injured?” Tavis asked. “Did that jolt-”

“I’m pregnant, not feeble.” Brianna glanced over the scout’s head, then hissed, “Hiatea have mercy!”

For the first time, Tavis noticed that the deafening roar behind him had been replaced by the hiss and pop of melting ice. The searing heat had yielded to the flesh-numbing cold of deep winter, and the acrid stench of the explosion had been swept down the canyon by the fierce boreal gale. A few of the wounded had raised their voices to shriek in eerie harmony with the wailing wind, but most were too stunned to do more than groan.

The three closest horse lancers had already struggled to their feet and were calling to their mounts, which were clambering up the steep hillside as fast their hooves could climb. More riders lay scattered across the road, their flesh as black as their scorched armor. Despite their terrible burns, several men were crawling over the hissing ice to their charred horses, already drawing the daggers that would put the loyal beasts out of misery. A huge plume of yellow smoke was billowing from the mine portal beside the road. The fumes were so thick that Tavis could not see the coughing, confused footmen on the other side of the cloud.

Behind Tavis, Avner gasped, “Milady, no! You’re the queen!”

“I’m also Hiatea’s high priestess.” Tavis turned to see his wife climbing out of her sleigh, her gaze fixed on the groaning soldiers ahead. “And those men are suff-”

Brianna’s eyes rolled back in their sockets, then she groaned sharply. She clenched her teeth and grabbed her abdomen with both hands.

Tavis bolted to her side, catching her in his arms. “The baby!”

He lifted Brianna back into the sleigh, then cast a wary eye toward the yellow smoke boiling out of the mine ahead. He did not relish the thought of his pregnant wife passing through those caustic fumes, but he cared less for the idea of watching her give birth in the open. Turning around was out of the question. It would be dark before they could clear the courtiers’ sleighs off the narrow road behind them.

“Avner, close the curtain,” Tavis ordered. “We’ve got to get the queen to the Silver Citadel, now!”

“There’s… no rush,” Brianna gasped. “It’s nothing… I’ve had these pains before.”

“What?”

The queen let out a slow breath, then sat up. “They probably don’t mean anything, Tavis.” Her face no longer appeared anguished, but her cheeks remained pale, and the pain was slow in fading from her eyes. “I’ve been having them now and again.”

“And you didn’t tell me?” Tavis growled. “When we left Castle Hartwick, you must have known your time was near!”

“I knew no such thing-and I still don’t,” Brianna retorted. “It could be another year before I give birth-we really have no way to tell, do we?”

The high scout could not argue. The queen had been pregnant more than three years already, since just after the war broke out. Tavis had not worried for the first two years, since firbolg women carried their offspring that long, but he had grown steadily more concerned over the last year. The blood of Brianna’s divine ancestors still ran strong in her veins, and Tavis secretly feared that the three racial stocks of their progeny had combined in some terrible way to prevent the birth-or to make the infant the hideous monster of Galgadayle’s dream.

A low, grating rumble sounded from someplace inside the mine tunnel, then Radborne’s shocked voice echoed off the canyon wall. “F-Fire giants!”

Tavis looked toward the mine, where the large, boulderlike shape of a giant’s head protruded from the smoking portal. The brute’s ebony face was surrounded by a halo of orange beard and scarlet hair, but the high scout could see little more through the billowing yellow fumes.

Tavis took his bow off his shoulder. At eight feet long, the weapon was not quite as large as the legendary Bear Driller, which had been destroyed three years earlier in a battle against an ancient ettin. The new bow, however, was easily a match for Bear Driller, as it was strung with woven steel and reinforced with the rune-etched ribs of a glacier bear.

“Be ready, Avner.” Tavis pulled an arrow from his quiver. It was thicker than most, with red fletching, a stone tip, and runes carved along the shaft. “I’ll clear the way.”

The high scout was surprised to hear a nervous edge in his voice. Usually, he felt coldly tranquil at the beginning of a battle, unconcerned about anything except maneuvers and tactics. But today his thoughts were a boiling cataract of fear and doubt. Images of his pregnant wife kept appearing in the churning froth inside his head, like a swimmer being swept downstream.

The fire giant squirmed forward until his lanky shoulders came into view, then he thrust his powerful arms out of the mine and dug his fingers into the tunnel’s stone collar. He began to pull his torso out of the hole. The ice hissed and turned to steam beneath his breastplate, as though the heat of the forge still lingered within his black armor.

Tavis nocked his arrow and pointed the stone tip into the fuming portal, not even bothering to search for a gap in the giant’s black armor. The high scout drew his bow, at the same time hissing, “taergsilisaB!” A ruby gleam flared from one of the runes etched into his weapon, then flashed out of existence. He released the bowstring. A sharp clap echoed off the canyon walls, and the arrow flashed away, leaving a blinding streak of crimson between the bow and the tunnel mouth. The shaft flew into the mine, then pierced its target’s thick armor with a muffled clang.

The fire giant did not drop dead, for even an arrow driven by the lord high scout’s magic bow was not powerful enough to fell such a foe in a single strike. The mighty warrior merely grunted in surprise, then instinctively reached for his wound.

“esiwsilisaB!” Tavis cried, speaking the command word that would activate the runearrow’s magic.

From inside the mine came a glimmering blue flash and a mighty boom. The fire giant’s torso shot out of the portal and plummeted over the steep bank of Wyrm River, trailing a spray of crimson blood from the truncated waist. Blizzard whinnied in alarm, and Tavis grabbed her reins. A muffled crack reverberated deep within the mountain.

There was no opportunity to cry out or to cringe in fear, and even the queen’s mare did not have time to rear. The hillside simply folded inward over the tunnel. At the top of the ravine, a frozen buttress of stone lost its hold on the canyon wall and came rumbling down the slope. Tavis and Blizzard barely managed to retreat half a dozen steps before the avalanche roared over the mine portal and swallowed the fallen lancers of the Royal Snow Bear Company. The churning mass spread up the road, then spilled over Wyrm River’s steep bank and rumbled across the broad ribbon of ice, engulfing the fire giant’s truncated corpse and finally crashing against the far side of the canyon.

For a moment, Tavis could do nothing except stare at the mountainous jumble before him, listening to the dying thunder of the avalanche echo down the crooked gorge. He felt himself shivering in the cold wind and realized that he had broken into a nervous sweat. The landslide had come so close to swallowing his wife’s sleigh, and him with it, that he could have reached out with his bow and touched a frost-rimed boulder as large as himself. Even Blizzard seemed stunned by the close call. She stood stiff and motionless at his side, the muscles of her powerful shoulders trembling with fear.

Brianna was the first to speak. “It seems we finally have a name for your new bow, Tavis,” she said. “I hereby dub it Mountain Crusher.”

“Hear, hear! The giants will need Surtr’s own help to dig out of there.” Radborne’s eyes were fixed on the hillock of stone and ice ahead. The heap rose thirty feet above the mine portal, and the choking yellow plume that had been pouring from the tunnel a moment earlier had now been reduced to a few scattered wisps. “Well done!”

From the other side of the rubble heap came a sergeant’s terrified voice: “Your Majesty? Lord Scout?”

“The queen is well!” Tavis yelled back. “What of the footmen?”

“Mostly able. The slide buried a dozen of us,” he replied. “What would you have us do?”

“Climb over here,” Tavis called. “We’re going to need you to carry the queen’s sleigh over the avalanche.”

The high scout did not even consider abandoning the sleighs to retreat up the canyon. Even if Brianna had been in any condition to ride, they would only find more fire giants coming down the road. The fumes he had sniffed after the first, distant explosion smelled the same as the mordant smoke that had been pouring from the mine ahead. Unless the magic of Radborne’s tunnel wizards bore the same odor as fire giant alchemy, it seemed likely that their ambushers had planned to trap the queen between two war parties.

The footmen began to cross the landslide, their armor clanging loudly as they clambered and slipped over the ice-rimed boulders. Tavis relayed orders to the front riders to dismount and wait on the other side of the avalanche in case the queen’s party needed to borrow the mounts. While the high scout arranged his wife’s escape, Avner unhitched Blizzard and set her free. The trails that laced the canyon walls were too narrow and precarious for sleighs, but the stubborn mare had followed her beloved mistress over paths far more perilous.

Tavis was about to send word for the courtiers to abandon their sleighs when a familiar, sharp odor came to him on the wind. He heard a soft crackling, as of a distant fire, then a cry of alarm rose from the back of the column. The high scout turned to see the first of his enemies rounding a bend, about three hundred yards beyond the entourage’s rearguard.

The fire giant was a lanky, dark figure that loomed thrice the height of a man. Like the one Tavis had killed a few moments earlier, this brute was armored in steaming black plate. He also wore a massive helmet upon his head and a buckler as large as a table strapped to one forearm. In his other hand, he carried a flaming sword longer than Tavis was tall.

The high scout drew another runearrow from his quiver, but did not nock it. Over the long line of courtier sleighs, he could see that the rearguard’s six lancers were already charging the brute. If he used the arrow now, he would catch them in the blast.

The fire giant bellowed his war cry and stomped forward to meet the attack, lowering his buckler to protect his groin from his foes’ upturned lances. Behind him, another giant was already stepping around the bend.

The first giant’s fiery sword descended on the leading pair of horsemen. The huge blade struck with a blinding white flare. When the flash faded, the cleaved bodies of horses and riders were tumbling toward their killer’s feet in a tangled ball of smoke and blood. The wind grew heavy with the stench of charred flesh.

The surviving riders leapt their horses over the mess, angling their weapons at their enemy’s hips. The leading pair splintered their lances against the giant’s steel shield, then crashed into his thick legs with a clamorous boom. Even a fire giant could not stand against two chargers at full gallop. The impact knocked the brute’s legs from beneath him, and he dropped to the road face first, crushing the horsemen and their mounts beneath his heavy body.

Before the fire giant could recover, the last pair of riders arrived, their weapons pointed at the soft, unarmored flesh at the base of his neck. The momentum of the charge drove their lances deep into the giant’s torso, eliciting a scream as thunderous as it was brief, then their mounts crashed into his shoulders. The horsemen flew from their saddles and tumbled down the length of their foe’s spine, their armor chiming against his until they skidded off his flanks.

As they struggled to their knees, the next fire giant stepped around the bend and carefully crushed each man beneath his foot. Behind the brute, Tavis could see at least two more giants, and he suspected there was a long line behind them.

The high scout nocked his runearrow.

The palace courtiers began to leap from their sleighs and scurry down the road. Swaddled as they were in thick cloaks of combed fur, they looked like a herd of frightened wolf pups fleeing the slavering jaws of a snow dragon. Their abandoned draft horses also panicked, turning the road into a churning mass of hysterical beast and man. Sleighs began to plummet over the riverbank and topple along the edge of the road, and such a tumult of terrified shrieking filled the air that it was impossible to separate the human voices from those of the horses.

Tavis aimed at the chest of the leading fire giant, more than three hundred yards away, and hissed the command word that would trigger his bow’s magic. A rune flared red and vanished from sight. The high scout released Mountain Crusher’s bowstring, and the arrow streaked away, leaving a trail of crimson light above the jumble of abandoned sleighs.

The runearrow pierced the black armor as though it were leather instead of steel. The giant peered down at the fletching that had sprouted in his breastplate, and Tavis could imagine the brute’s face scowling in fear and confusion. Fire giant armor was as thick as a dungeon door, hammered from special steel forged only in the fires of their volcano homes. For anything less than a storm giant’s spear to pierce it was unthinkable-at least without magic. The fellow reached up to pinch the arrow between his thumb and finger.

“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.