A disappointed murmur rustled through the cavern. Avner did not care. He was fighting for his life, not the amusement of the frost giants.
The remorhaz flapped its head, spraying droplets of sizzling blood across the ice. The beast cautiously advanced again. It had just closed to striking range when Slagfid’s voice rumbled over the pit like thunder.
“Help!” His voice was so pained that it was barely intelligible. “My eye!”
The crowd on the pit rim slowly parted, then Slagfid’s head came into view. The giant held one hand cupped over his eye, with the dark fletching of one of Tavis’s runearrows protruding between his fingers. A stream of blood was flowing down his cheek and pouring off his jaw in a bright red cascade.
“What happened?” demanded Hagamil.
Slagfid’s only reply was an incoherent wail.
Avner did not have time to watch what happened next, for the remorhaz was approaching again. This time, the worm scuttled toward him sideways. It held its head low to the ground, while, twenty feet away, its tail twitched high the air.
The youth saw at once that the beast had at last hit upon a strategy to defeat him. If he lowered the spear to defend against the head, the remorhaz would lash out with its tail and batter him senseless in a single blow. If he kept his weapon high, the worm would grab him by the ankles.
There was only one thing left to do.
Avner hurled his spear at the remorhaz’s eye. The worm jerked its mouth up and snatched the weapon out of the air. The beast snapped the shaft in two with a single chomp, but the maneuver bought the youth enough time to dart out of the corner.
The creature whirled around and hobbled after him, still crippled by its shackles and broken legs. The youth stopped in the center of the pit, where he would have plenty of room to keep dodging. Eventually, he knew, the remorhaz would wear him down, but his deftness was the only weapon Avner had left.
The second time Tavis stepped through the cavern mouth, the ice cave felt immeasurably vast. The icicles that had appeared to hang so low to a stone giant now looked as high as stars, and the far wall seemed a distant blue horizon.
The air reverberated with the booming voices of astonished giants, dozens at once yelling at Slagfid, calling him a fool and shouting questions. The warrior was in too much pain to provide the explanations they demanded. He seemed unable to do anything except bellow in agony and keep his hands clutched over his eye. As a result, the entire tribe’s attention remained fixed on him.
Keeping a careful eye on the throng, Tavis sneaked through the cave’s mouth and angled toward the log ladder lying near the pit. As the scout moved, he felt the cold hand of panic beginning to squeeze his heart. The clamor in the cavern prevented him from hearing anything in the pit, but he found it ominous that the spectators had lost interest in the remorhaz.
Tavis had nearly reached the log when Hagamil’s voice blustered above the rest. “Quiet!”
The cavern instantly fell so silent that Tavis could hear the soft clatter of the remorhaz’s many legs in the pit below. The worm sounded slow and languid, and the scout could also detect the sporadic clanking of a chain, as though the beast were dragging shackles across the ice. In his mind, the scout envisioned the creature hauling Avner’s limp body into a corner.
On the far side of the pit, Hagamil grasped Slagfid by the shoulders. “Be quiet, you!” he yelled. “Tell me what happened, then I’ll fetch Halflook to take care of your eye.”
This offer seemed to help Slagfid get a hold on himself. The frost giant quieted, then gasped, “Tavis Burdun shot me!”
“That can’t be!” Hagamil roared, shaking the injured warrior. “Sharpnose said he killed Tavis Burdun!”
Tavis reached the ladder and crouched down at the end. He braced his shoulder against the log, ready to push it forward the instant the giants made enough noise to cover the sound.
“That wasn’t Sharpnose here,” Slagfid tried to explain. “It was Tavis Burdun, pretending to be Sharpnose.”
This drew an incredulous murmur from the giants.
Hagamil promptly silenced them with a single, roving glare. “How could a little firbolg pretend to be a stone giant?”
Slagfid did not answer immediately, and the clattering of remorhaz legs fell silent. The scout’s heart felt as if it would burst.
After a moment, Slagfid said, “He was wearing a mask.”
A chorus of thunderous laughter shook the cavern. Tavis shoved the log forward until the end hung over the edge. The far side of the pit floor came into view, where a spear lay broken and discarded. A trail of blood ran from one corner toward the center of the arena, and that was all the scout could see. The hand around his heart clamped tighter, filling his entire being with a sick, cold ache.
Tavis couldn’t leave, not until he saw the body. With the thunderous guffaws of the giants still shaking the cavern, he lay beside the log and crept forward, pulling Bear Driller along with him.
“Quiet!” Hagamil thundered. The laughter died away, and the chieftain asked, “A mask, Slagfid?”
“It was silver,” the warrior said meekly. “It fell off Sharpnose’s face, and then he changed into Tavis Burdun.”
“And he shot you in the eye?”
“No. There was about a hundred traells waiting for him. One of them did it, and it hurts pretty bad,” Slagfid whimpered. “Now I’ve told all I know. Call Halflook, like you promised.”
“Call Halflook?” the chieftain roared. “After you let Tavis Burdun escape-for the second time?”
The scout glanced over the log and saw Hagamil jerk Slagfid’s hand away from the wounded giant’s face.
“You don’t deserve no shaman!” the chieftain growled.
With that, Hagamil pinched the runearrow between his thumb and finger, then plucked it from the warrior’s eye. Although the shaft was little more than a sliver to a frost giant, Hagamil’s careless extraction resulted in the removal of more than the splinter. Slagfid howled in pain, slapping one palm over his emptied socket and grasping after Hagamil’s hand with the other. Wincing at the chieftain’s cruelty, Tavis lowered his head and dragged himself to the edge of the pit.
What the scout saw nearly made him howl more loudly than Slagfid-though in joy, not pain. Avner and the remorhaz stood in the center of the pit, warily circling each other. The battle had obviously been a difficult one for the boy, at least if his bloodied back and chattering teeth were any indication. But the youth had given better than he had received. Blood was streaming down the remorhaz’s face from an amputated tentacle, it was listing badly toward several mangled legs, and it was holding one segment of its body higher than the rest to keep its manacled legs off the ice.
Wondering how Avner had ever shackled the beast, Tavis nocked an arrow and stood, already pulling his bowstring back. He loosed the shaft the instant his feet were steady. The missile did not pierce so much as shatter the ice worm’s chitinous head, and the beast collapsed to the floor in a clattering heap.
Avner spun around and looked up at Tavis, silently mouthing, “It’s about time!”
The youth wasn’t the only who noticed the remorhaz’s death. At the sound of its clattering demise, Hagamil and several other giants looked into the pit, their faces betraying their disappointment at missing the climax of the worm-baiting. When they saw Tavis’s arrow lying near the lifeless beast, their expressions quickly changed to bewilderment. The chieftain was the quickest to realize what had happened and lifted his gaze to the rim of the pit
“There’s Tavis Burdun!” Hagamil gestured at the scout with the gruesome orb at the end of the runearrow. “After him!”
“Basil is wise!” Tavis yelled.
The runearrow exploded in Hagamil’s grasp, hurling the chieftain-now missing one hand-and all the giants behind him into the wall. The impact dislodged a dozen huge icicles, which dropped from the ceiling like spears and lodged themselves amidst the confused tangle.