Sithas tried to spot his twin, but the distance was too great. Wait ... there!
Kith-Kanan, he realized, must also have seen the giants, for the wounded elf had pulled a dark cloak over himself and was now pressed against the far wall of the ledge. His camouflage seemed effective and would make him virtually invisible from below as the giants headed toward the cliff. The column of giants waded the stream. The one in the lead gestured again, this time indicating the path in the snow that Sithas had made in his travels back and forth for water. Another giant indicated a different track, the one made by Sithas on the previous day.
That slight gesture gave him a desperate idea. He acted quickly, casting around until his eyes fell upon a medium-sized boulder resting in the summit of the pass and cracked loose from the bedrock below. Seizing it in both of his hands, grunting from the exertion, he lifted the stone over his head. The last of the giants had crossed the stream, and now the file of huge, grotesque creatures was nearing the cliff wall.
Sithas pitched the boulder as hard and as far as he could. The rock plummeted down the steep, rock-strewn pass. Then it hit, crashing into another boulder with a sharp report before bouncing and smashing again and again down the mountain pass, Breathlessly Sithas watched the giants. They had to hear the commotion!
Indeed they did. Suddenly the twelve monsters whirled around in surprise. Sithas kicked another rock, and that one too clattered down the pass, rolling between the two huge boulders that he had slipped between on the previous day’s climb.
Now the beasts halted, staring upward. Breathlessly Sithas waited. It worked! He saw the first giant gesturing wildly, pointing toward the summit of the pass, toward Sithas! Kith-Kanan was left behind as the entire band of the great brutes turned and broke into a lumbering trot, pursuing the elf they probably thought they had “discovered” trying to sneak through the pass. Sithas watched them advance toward him. They plunged through the deep snow in giant strides, each stride taking them farther from Kith-Kanan. Sithas wondered if his brother was watching, if he had seen the clever diversion created by his twin. He lay still, peering around a boulder as the monsters approached the bottom of the pass.
Now what could he do? The giants had almost reached the base of the pass. He looked behind him. Everywhere the valley was blanketed by deep snow. Wherever he went, he would leave a trail so obvious that even the thick-witted hill giants would have no difficulty in following him.
His attention returned to the immediate problem. He saw, with sharp panic, that the giants had disappeared from view. Moments later he understood. They were so close to the pass now that the steepness of the slope blocked his vision.
His head seemed fogged by fear, his body tensed with the anticipation of combat. The thought almost brought a smile to his lips. The prospect of facing a dozen giants with his puny sword struck him as ludicrous indeed! Yet by the same token, that prospect seemed inevitable, so that his amusement quickly gave way to stark terror.
Carefully he crept forward and looked down the pass. All he saw were the two monstrous boulders that had bracketed his ascent of the pass on the day before. As yet there was no sign of the giants.
Should he confront them at those rocks? No more than one at a time could pass through the narrow aperture. Still, with a brutally honest assessment of his own fighting prowess, he knew that one of them was all it would take to squash his skull like an eggshell. Also, he remembered the precarious balance of those boulders. Indeed, one of them had shifted several inches merely from the weight of his touch.
That recollection gave him an idea. The elf checked his longsword, which was lashed securely to his back. Quickly he unlashed the bundle of firewood and dropped the sticks unceremoniously to the ground. He hefted the longest one, which was about as long as his leg but no thicker than his arm—still, it would have to do.
Without pausing to consider, Sithas, in a running crouch, crossed through the saddle and started down the slope toward the two rocks. He could see several of the giants through the crack now, and realized with alarm that they were nearly halfway up the steep-sided pass.
In a slide of tumbling scree, Sithas crashed into one of the boulders and felt it lurch beneath his weight. But then it settled back into its place, and he couldn’t force it to move farther. Turning to the second rock, he pushed and heaved at it and was rewarded by a fractional shifting of its massive bulk. However, it, too, seemed to be nestled in a comfortable spot and would not move any farther.
Desperately Sithas slid downward through the crack between the boulders. The elf reached beneath the base of the one he judged to be the loosest and began to dig and chop with his piece of firewood.
He pried a large stone loose, and it skittered down the slope. Immediately he began prying at a different rock. A bellow of surprise reached him from below, and he knew that he didn’t have much time. He didn’t look behind him. Instead, he scrambled back upward between the rocks. He pitched his body against the rock he had worked so hard to loosen and was rewarded by a slight teetering. Then a shower of gravel sprayed from beneath it to tumble into the faces of the approaching giants.
The leader of the monsters bellowed again. The creature was a bare fifty yards below Sithas now and bounding upward with astonishing speed. After one last, futile push at the rock, Sithas knew that he would have to abandon that plan. His time had run out. Drawing his sword, he dropped through the narrow crack again, prepared to meet the first giant at the mouth of the opening. Grimly he resolved to draw as much blood as possible before he perished.
The beast came toward him, its face split by a garish caricature of a grin. Sithas saw the tiny bloodshot eyes and the stubs of teeth jutting like tusks from its gums. Its huge lips flapped with excitement as the brute prepared to squash the life from this impudent elf.
The thing held one of those monstrous clubs such as the giants had employed in their earlier attack. Now that weapon lashed outward, but Sithas ducked back into the niche, feeling the rock tremble next to him from the force of the blow. He darted outward and stabbed quickly with his steel blade. A sense of cruel delight flared within him as the weapon scored a bloody gash on the giant’s forehead.
With a cry of animal rage, the giant lunged upward, dropping its club and reaching with massive paws toward Sithas’s legs. The elf skipped backward, scrambling up and away. As he did, he stabbed downward, driving his blade clear through the monster’s hand.
Howling in pain, the giant twisted away, shrinking back down the slope to clutch its bleeding extremity. Sithas had no time to reconnoiter, however. The next monster had already caught up. This one had apparently learned from his comrade’s errors, for it thrust its heavy club into the crack and stayed out of reach.
Sithas twisted away with a curse as the crude weapon nearly crushed his left wrist. The giant reached in, and Sithas scrambled upward. But then a loose patch of scree caused him to lose his footing, and he slipped downward toward that leering, hate-filled face.
He saw the monstrous lips spread in a leering grin, darkened stubs of ivory teeth ready to tear at his flesh. Sithas kicked out, and his boot cracked into the beast’s huge, wart-covered nose.
Desperately Sithas kicked again, pushing himself upward and catching one boot on an outcrop of the rock wall beside him. The giant reached up to catch him, but the elf remained just out of his reach, barely a foot or so above him. With determination, the broad-shouldered brute pressed into the narrow crack between the boulders. The force of his body pushed the stones outward slightly.