Brianna felt her abdomen tighten, though she could not tell whether it was another labor pain or a sign of her growing apprehension. She looked at Galgadayle’s face.
“Put me down, or I’ll order my men to attack.”
The seer squeezed her tightly in the cradlelike crook of his elbow. “That will do you no good. I have already summoned our warriors,” he said. “Even if you kill me, you have no hope of escaping.”
“I’ll take my chances,” Brianna replied. When the firbolg made no move to put her down, she looked to her front riders. “Kill-”
Galgadayle flexed the biceps of his enormous arm, forcing the air from her lungs and preventing her from finishing her command. The front riders braced themselves, but Brianna could see by their eyes they were reluctant to attack for fear of causing her death.
Radborne pushed his way forward to Galgadayle. “You heard the queen! Release Her Majesty.” He raised his arms over his head and still could not reach Brianna. “Hand her down!”
Galgadayle shook his head. “That I cannot-arrghhHH!”
The seer’s muscles went limp. Brianna plummeted into Radborne’s arms, and they crashed to the ground in a clamorous heap of steel armor and fur coat. A dull, throbbing ache blossomed deep within her belly. Suddenly, she seemed to smell every vile and sour thing in the gorge: the brimstone stench of fire giant swords, the coppery blood and steaming entrails covering the road below, even the sour frozen sweat beneath the armor of her own front riders. Her gorge rose, and a dry, rasping sound came from her throat. She saw Galgadayle’s feet stomping in a circle beside her.
From somewhere above came Avner’s scream, “Save the queen! Take her and run!”
Brianna looked up to see Avner dangling from his sword, which was planted to half the depth of the blade in Galgadayle’s back. The young scout was trying to brace his feet on his victim’s hip so he could widen the wound, but the anguished seer was shaking and twisting so violently Avner could not get a foothold.
Two front riders grasped Brianna beneath her armpits and pulled her off Radborne. Her belly filled with pain, and she screamed aloud. Her rescuers paid the cries no heed and dragged her up a hut-sized boulder, safely away from Galgadayle’s writhing figure. She saw Radborne try to rise, then one of the seer’s heavy feet came down squarely on the earl’s breastplate. The steel buckled like tin, and the noble’s death rattle left his lips with the sound of a trembling tambourine.
Brianna tried to rise, but made it only as far as her knees before she doubled over, howling in pain. Her womb had tightened again, and she felt something inside as hot and fiery as lava. She glanced down the slope and saw the leading fire giant already climbing toward her. From other side of the landslide came the muffled clatter of the firbolg troop.
The queen clutched at the arms of her rescuers. “I can’t run!” she gasped. “Get me out of here!”
The front riders pulled her cloak off her arms and tied the empty sleeves across her chest, then rolled the lapels to make a makeshift stretcher. By the time they finished, their fellows had scrambled up the boulder to help. Together, the six men hoisted the queen into the air and started up the landslide, each using his free hand to brace his spear butt on the treacherous ground.
Brianna was facing downslope, where Avner still clung to Galgadayle’s thrashing form. Finally, the young scout managed to plant his feet squarely on his victim’s hip. He jerked on his sword, and the blade snapped with a loud ping. Avner sailed backward through the air and vanished between two boulders. The firbolg collapsed to his knees, growling like a beast and twisting an arm around to claw at the steel sliver in his back.
Brianna glanced down the landslide and saw that the leading fire giant had already climbed halfway up the slope. Another pair followed close behind, while the last two in line were spreading out to prevent the queen’s party from doubling back toward the road.
From between the boulders where Avner had fallen came the young scout’s voice, “ythgimsilisaB!”
The familiar crack of a rune spell echoed up the slide. A black streak flashed into existence, pointing at the fire giants below. A piercing clang echoed off the leader’s armor. The brute’s arms flew up, and he sailed backward through the air as though a catapult boulder had caught him in the chest. He slammed into the warrior behind him. They both crashed to the ground in a clamorous heap of black armor, then the leader’s body went limp and his bronze eyes turned the color of dried blood.
Avner climbed out of his hiding place. In one hand, he held a simple leather sling, in the other a shiny steel ball. The missile, Brianna knew, was one of three her runecaster had given the young scout.
“Avner, no!” Brianna called. It hurt to yell, but if Avner stayed to fight, he would be trapped between two enemies when the firbolgs crested the hill. “Come here!”
Avner shook his head and fit the steel ball into his sling. “The giants-”
“Young man… to my side!” Brianna forced the words out, trying to assume the tone of an angry mother. She had not used that voice with him in more than two years, since before he had sworn the oaths of the Border Scouts and taken his place in the war against the giants. “Now!”
Avner scowled and cast an anxious glance at the fire giants, then reluctantly put his weapon away and bounded up the slide. The giants began to climb again, and Brianna breathed a sigh of relief. She had taken control of events, and that fact alone gave her hope.
Brianna craned her head up the hill and saw that her litter bearers had almost reached the canyon wall. They were angling toward the edge of the landslide, where Blizzard waited to meet them at the broken end of a mining trail. The slide itself became a narrow plume of dirt and rock as it ascended the mountainside toward the mile-long furrow from which it had spilled.
“Not… the… trail,” Brianna gasped. Despite her increasing optimism, her pain had grown so severe that she found it difficult to speak. Her womb was contracting rapidly and severely now, and she felt a growing hollowness in her lower abdomen, as though a great, empty bubble were forming inside. “Up… the slide.”
The front riders stopped in their tracks. Brianna could hear the tremendous clatter of the fire giants climbing after them, and she could smell the sharp fumes of their flaming swords. On the other side of the landslide, the firbolgs were so close that she could hear their deep voices booming commands to each other.
“Majesty?” asked one of the front riders. “The trail is our only chance of outrunning-”
“Do as the queen says.” It was Avner’s voice. In spite of the loose ground, the young scout had approached them as quietly as always. “She knows what she’s doing.”
Avner laid Brianna’s satchel next to her, then stepped to the front of the litter and grabbed hold. The party had barely gone fifteen yards before three fire giants reached the bottom of the plume, their coppery eyes sparkling with bloodlust and their swarthy lips twisted into green-toothed snarls. Each time the brutes exhaled, wisps of yellow vapor poured from their nostrils, and Brianna smelled the bitter stench of brimstone.
The leader leveled his sword at the queen’s litter-bearers and opened his mouth to speak-then a roaring clamor rose at his back. A wall of hairy firbolgs poured over the crest of the slide, their long beards streaming in the wind and their huge axes whirling above their heads. The eyes of the giants turned as yellow as their flaming swords, and they spun around to find a tide of fur-clad warriors swirling about their hips.
The battle did not begin so much as erupt. The fire giants lashed out wildly with their swords, slicing off burly arms and slashing into thick chests, filling the air with the charnel-house stench of spilled entrails and scorched flesh. The firbolgs countered with a flurry of axes, and soon the knelling of their weapons against the giants’ black armor overwhelmed even the thunderous bellows of the wounded and the dying.