The sky had arced out of sight in a single flash, and he had found himself staring at the distant spires of the fir forest below. Then Kol's hand crashed into something hard and flew open. Avner felt rough iron scraping down his back and realized it was the chain. He twisted around, arms flaying madly, and nearly wrenched his arm out of its socket as he jammed his hand through a link.
The chain crashed into the cliff. Avner felt the bones in his wrist being mashed to powder as the chain ground his arm against the cliff. His entire body went limp; had his hand not been trapped, he would have plunged after Kol into the trees below. But his pain served him well, reminding him that he was still alive and might stay that way if he reacted quickly enough. With his good hand, the boy grabbed hold of the link and pulled himself up, wedging his body through the center as it twisted away from the wall. He banged into the granite several more times, less violently than before, then his pain washed over him like a dark, cold river, and he closed his eyes.
When he opened them again, and the chain was still swinging. The wind was howling, Avner's teeth were chattering, and the boy did not know whether the laughter spilling from his throat was caused by joy or hysteria. But he did know that he had to get off this mountain, and fast. By morning, the only thing lodged in this link would be a hunk of frozen flesh.
Avner wrapped an arm around the outside of the icy loop, then pulled himself up until he could work a leg through the opening and straddle the bottom. The link was just tall enough that he could sit hunched inside it. He tried to examine his injured arm by moonlight, but the shadows under the platform were too thick to see clearly. All he could tell for certain was that it was horribly swollen, and he could not bend it from the elbow down.
"I sure hope Brianna's still alive," he whispered, not quite certain why he was afraid to speak out loud. If there had been any giants on the platform above, he would have heard their footsteps echoing through the timbers.
Avner drew his dagger and cut the sleeve away from his injured arm, then used the cloth to bind his arm to his side. Next, he took his rope off his shoulder and tied a series of loops. By the time he finished, he had a makeshift ladder of about a dozen feet, easily twice as long as he needed to reach from one link to the next.
The boy passed the rope through the link above, pushing the line through one of the loops he had tied to secure it in place. He slipped his good arm, still trembling from the cold, into another loop and began to climb. The young thief moved quickly and efficiently, for many times he had used similar techniques to climb the exterior of some tower that supposedly could not be scaled-though he had seldom found anything inside worth the trouble. Once he had even used the method to climb from Earl Dobbin's well, after he had been forced to jump down the pit to elude a company of murderous guards.
To his surprise. Avner felt sad about the fate of the lord mayor. He was not sorry the man was dead-the earl had certainly threatened to kill him enough times- but it seemed an era had passed. For as long as the boy could remember, he had been stealing from Dobbin Manor, and Earl Dobbin had been trying to catch him in the act. It had not been a game-the consequences of the king's law were too deadly for that-but the contest had been eminently fair. Now, with the lord mayor separated not only from his property but from his own limbs as well, there no longer seemed any point to stealing from Dobbin Manor. It was even possible the boy would be forced to rethink his ambitions-providing he didn't freeze to death on the side of this mountain first.
Fortunately, that was beginning to look less likely. Avner had only one link left before he climbed into the hoisting chain slot. He could see the iron plate that blocked the entrance to the fault cave, the moonlight glinting off the crossbar's white wood less than twenty feet above. Once he climbed through that hole and had solid timbers below his feet, he would march down the road as fast as he could. Even if it did not get him off the mountain quickly, it would at least warm him up enough to stop shivering.
Avner reached up to pass his makeshift ladder through the last link of the hoisting chain-then abruptly stopped and pulled the rope back down. Not far above, in the shadows beneath the crossbar, a pair of hands was emerging from the iron gate. They were gaunt and leathery, with knobby joints and long black talons the boy recognized as those of the ogre shaman. Even cold iron would not keep Goboka from his prize. * 15* The Rabbit Run
The runt had it easy, Morten thought. The giants had sewn Tavis into a cocoon of waterlogged deerskin, then tied him to a spit and hung him over the fire to roast. Morten they had stripped to his loincloth and smeared with rancid bear grease. The stuff smelled worse than a glacier skunk-worse, in fact, than a glacier skunk that had drowned in a fetid bog and floated to the surface after it decayed. Every time the bodyguard inhaled, his stomach threatened to purge itself and such a wave of nausea rolled over him that his legs nearly buckled.
Morten kept his teeth clenched and his knees locked, trying to hide his distress. Not only was he determined to deny his tormentors the satisfaction of seeing him suffer, he knew that showing his misery would only encourage the giants to smear him with substances even more repugnant. As Tavis's cocoon was tied to the spit, the scout had made the mistake of groaning in pain. Noote had ordered the deerskin cut away around the victim's face, so his cries would be more clearly audible when the flames began to roast him. So far, the groan had been the only sound to escape the runt's lips, but wisps of steam were just beginning to rise from the wet skins. The real pain would come later, when the leather began to shrink and his blood began to boil.
Morten did not see how he could save the runt. Noote's queen was a shrewd woman, and she clearly intended to steam Tavis as a warm-up for the morning's climactic torture, the "rabbit run." The hill giants would be lined up along both walls of the Fir Palace, their hands fastened behind their backs. Morten would be released at the far end of the lodge. If he could run the entire length of the chamber and out the door without being kicked to death, he would be allowed to live-or so Noote claimed. If the bodyguard tried to save the scout, he would probably be killed before he had a chance to make the rabbit run.
In itself, that would not have bothered Morten. He had no interest in playing the queen's game, at least not for the stakes she had proposed. But if he could convince the giantess to wager Brianna's freedom as well, then he was determined to succeed. The run was the bodyguard's last chance to redeem himself for letting Goboka capture the princess, and he was not about to squander it on the scout.
After Ig had turned the spit for several minutes without drawing a single moan from Tavis, Noote grew impatient. He pulled the fomorian away from the flames and shoved him toward the log pile. "More wood!"
The chief, his eager face looming above the cooking fire, stood across the floor from where Morten was tied. His stout wife was at his side, clutching Brianna's rope sheathed form in her pudgy fingers. Ribbons of early morning light were streaming down through the smoke hole, forming hazy blue halos around their knobby heads.
Ig returned with an armful of tree trunks. He dropped the load next to the fire, then put the smallest logs on the pyre.
"That'll do you no good," Morten called. He was yelling much louder than necessary, for his words were intended as much for the hide-swaddled scout as for Noote. "Tavis won't scream."
"Will too," Noote growled. "Burning hurt."
"Maybe, but Tavis won't yell. He won't give you that satisfaction," the bodyguard maintained. "And I'm not going to make your rabbit run, either."
Noote scowled. "Not?"
The logs beneath Tavis began to burn. Ig left the rest of the trees on the ground and started to turn the spit.
"Firbolgs die with honor," Morten explained. "We don't beg for mercy. We don't show pain. We just die."