Now they saw that the three other giants approached them, one at a time along the narrow ledge. Each of the massive creatures carried a huge club. The first of these lumbered forward, and Kith-Kanan darted at him. Sithas, recovering his breath, climbed to his feet.
The giant stepped back, then swung a heavy blow at the dodging, weaving elf. Kith danced away, and then struck so quickly that Sithas didn’t see the movement. The tip of the sword cut a shallow opening in the giant’s knee before the elf skipped backward.
But that cut was telling. Sithas watched in astonishment as the giant’s leg collapsed beneath it. Thrashing in futility with its hamlike hands, the giant slid slowly over the edge, vanishing with a shriek that was quickly lost in the howling of the storm.
While the other two giants gaped in astonishment, Kith-Kanan remained a dervish of motion. He charged the massive creatures, sending them slipping and sliding backward along the ledge to avoid his keen blade, a blade that now glistened with blood.
“Kith, watch out!” Sithas found his voice and urged his brother on. Kith-Kanan appeared to stumble, and one of the giants crashed his heavy club downward. But again the elf moved too quickly, and the club splintered against bare stone. Kith rolled toward this one, rising into a crouch between its stumplike legs. He stabbed upward with all the strength in his powerful arms and shoulders, and then dove out of the way as the mortally wounded giant bellowed its pain.
Sithas raced toward his brother, recognizing Kith’s danger. He saw his twin slip as he tried to hug the cliff wall between the dying giant and its sole remaining comrade.
The latter swung his club with strength born of desperate terror. The loglike beam, nearly a foot thick at its head, crashed into Kith-Kanan’s chest and crushed his body against the rough stone wall behind him. Sithas saw his brother’s head snap back and blood explode from his skull. Slowly the elf sank to the ledge.
The wounded giant collapsed, and Sithas sent it toppling from the brink. The last of the brutes looked at the charging elf, the twin of the warrior he had just felled, and turned away. He bounded along the narrow ledge, descending across the face of the mountain, away from the niche that had sheltered the twins. In seconds, he disappeared into the distance.
Sithas paid no further attention to the monster. He knelt at Kith’s side, appalled at the blood that gushed from his brother’s mouth and nose, staining and matting his long blond hair.
“Kith, don’t die! Please!” He didn’t realize that he was sobbing. Gingerly he lifted his brother, surprised at Kith’s frailty—or perhaps at his own desperate strength. He carried him to their niche. Every cloak, every blanket and tunic that they carried, he used to cushion and wrap Kith-Kanan. His brother’s eyes were closed. A very faint motion, a rising and falling of his chest, gave the only sign that Kith lived.
Now night fell with abruptness, and the wind seemed to pick up. The snow stung Sithas’s face as sharply as did his own tears. He took Kith’s cold hand in his and sat beside his brother, not expecting either of them to be alive to greet the dawn.
12
Somehow Sithas must have dozed off, for he suddenly noticed that the wind, the snow—indeed, the entire storm—had vanished. The air, now still, had become icy cold, with an absolute clarity that only comes in the highest mountains during the deepest winter frosts.
The sun hadn’t risen yet, but the Speaker could see that all around him towered summits of unimaginable heights, plumed with great collars of snow. Gray and impassive, like stone-face giants with thick beards of frost, they regarded him from their aloof vantages.
The brothers’ ledge perched along one of the two steep sides of the valley. To the south, on Sithas’s left as he looked outward, the valley stretched and twisted toward the low, forested country from which they had come. To the right, it appeared to end in a cirque of steep-walled peaks. At one place, he saw a saddle that, while still high above him, seemed to offer a lone, treacherous path into the next section of the mountain range. Kith-Kanan lay motionless beside him. His skin had the paleness of death, and Sithas had to struggle against a resurgence of despair. He couldn’t allow himself to abandon hope; he was their only chance for survival. The quest for the griffons, the excitement and adventure of the journey he had known before, were all forgotten now, overwhelmed by the simple and basic wish to continue living.
The valley below him, he saw, was not as deep as they had guessed when the storm struck. Their shelf was a bare hundred feet above level ground. He leaned out to look over the edge, but all he saw was a vast drift of snow piled against the cliff. If the bodies of the giants or of gallant, fallen Arcuballis remained down there somewhere, he had no way to know it. No trees grew in this high valley, nor did he see any signs of animal life. In fact, the only objects that met his eyes, in any direction, were the bedrock of the mountain range and the snowy blanket that covered it.
With a groan, he slumped back against the cliff. They were doomed! He could see no possibility of any fate other than death in this remote valley. His throat ached, and tears welled in his eyes. What good was his court training in a situation like this?
“Kith!” he moaned. “Wake up! Please!”
When his brother made no response, Sithas collapsed facedown on his cloak. A part of him wished that he was as unconscious of their fate as Kith-Kanan. For the whole long day, he lay as if in a trance. He pulled their cloaks about them as night fell, certain that they would freeze to death. Kith-Kanan hadn’t moved—indeed, he barely breathed. Broken by his own anguish, the speaker finally tumbled into restless sleep.
It was not until the next morning that he regained some sense of purpose. What did they need? Warmth, but there was no firewood in sight. Water, but their skins of the liquid had frozen solid, and without fire, they couldn’t melt snow. Food, of which they had several strips of dried venison and some bread. But how could he feed Kith-Kanan while his brother remained unconscious?
Again the feeling of hopelessness seized him. If only Arcuballis were here! If only Kith could walk! If only the giants ... He snarled at himself in anger, realizing the idiocy of his ramblings.
Instead, he pushed himself to his feet, suddenly aware of a terrible stiffness in his own body. He studied the route along the narrow ledge that twisted its way from their niche to the valley floor. It looked negotiable—barely. But what could he do if he was lucky enough to reach the ground?
He noted, for the first time, a dark patch on the snow at the edge of the flat expanse. The sun had crested the eastern peaks by now, and Sithas squinted into the brightness.
What caused the change of coloration in the otherwise immaculate surface of snow? Then it dawned on him—water! Somewhere beneath that snow, water still flowed! It soaked into the powder above, turning it to slush and causing it to settle.
With a clear goal now, Sithas began to act. He took his own nearly empty waterskin, since Kith’s contained a block of ice that would be impossible to remove. As he turned away from the sun, however, he had another idea. He set Kith’s waterskin in the sunlight, on a flat stone. He found several other dark boulders and placed them beside the skin, taking care that they didn’t block the sunlight.
Then he started down the treacherous ledge. In many places, the narrow path was piled with snow, and he used his sword to sweep these drifts away, carefully probing so that he did not step off the cliff.
Finally he reached a spot where he was able to drop into the soft snow below. He pushed his way through the deep fluff, leaving a trench behind him as he worked his way toward the dark patch of slush. The going was difficult, and he had to rest many times, but finally he reached his goal.