Behind Tavis, Avner gasped, “Milady, no! You’re the queen!”
“I’m also Hiatea’s high priestess.” Tavis turned to see his wife climbing out of her sleigh, her gaze fixed on the groaning soldiers ahead. “And those men are suff-”
Brianna’s eyes rolled back in their sockets, then she groaned sharply. She clenched her teeth and grabbed her abdomen with both hands.
Tavis bolted to her side, catching her in his arms. “The baby!”
He lifted Brianna back into the sleigh, then cast a wary eye toward the yellow smoke boiling out of the mine ahead. He did not relish the thought of his pregnant wife passing through those caustic fumes, but he cared less for the idea of watching her give birth in the open. Turning around was out of the question. It would be dark before they could clear the courtiers’ sleighs off the narrow road behind them.
“Avner, close the curtain,” Tavis ordered. “We’ve got to get the queen to the Silver Citadel, now!”
“There’s… no rush,” Brianna gasped. “It’s nothing… I’ve had these pains before.”
“What?”
The queen let out a slow breath, then sat up. “They probably don’t mean anything, Tavis.” Her face no longer appeared anguished, but her cheeks remained pale, and the pain was slow in fading from her eyes. “I’ve been having them now and again.”
“And you didn’t tell me?” Tavis growled. “When we left Castle Hartwick, you must have known your time was near!”
“I knew no such thing-and I still don’t,” Brianna retorted. “It could be another year before I give birth-we really have no way to tell, do we?”
The high scout could not argue. The queen had been pregnant more than three years already, since just after the war broke out. Tavis had not worried for the first two years, since firbolg women carried their offspring that long, but he had grown steadily more concerned over the last year. The blood of Brianna’s divine ancestors still ran strong in her veins, and Tavis secretly feared that the three racial stocks of their progeny had combined in some terrible way to prevent the birth-or to make the infant the hideous monster of Galgadayle’s dream.
A low, grating rumble sounded from someplace inside the mine tunnel, then Radborne’s shocked voice echoed off the canyon wall. “F-Fire giants!”
Tavis looked toward the mine, where the large, boulderlike shape of a giant’s head protruded from the smoking portal. The brute’s ebony face was surrounded by a halo of orange beard and scarlet hair, but the high scout could see little more through the billowing yellow fumes.
Tavis took his bow off his shoulder. At eight feet long, the weapon was not quite as large as the legendary Bear Driller, which had been destroyed three years earlier in a battle against an ancient ettin. The new bow, however, was easily a match for Bear Driller, as it was strung with woven steel and reinforced with the rune-etched ribs of a glacier bear.
“Be ready, Avner.” Tavis pulled an arrow from his quiver. It was thicker than most, with red fletching, a stone tip, and runes carved along the shaft. “I’ll clear the way.”
The high scout was surprised to hear a nervous edge in his voice. Usually, he felt coldly tranquil at the beginning of a battle, unconcerned about anything except maneuvers and tactics. But today his thoughts were a boiling cataract of fear and doubt. Images of his pregnant wife kept appearing in the churning froth inside his head, like a swimmer being swept downstream.
The fire giant squirmed forward until his lanky shoulders came into view, then he thrust his powerful arms out of the mine and dug his fingers into the tunnel’s stone collar. He began to pull his torso out of the hole. The ice hissed and turned to steam beneath his breastplate, as though the heat of the forge still lingered within his black armor.
Tavis nocked his arrow and pointed the stone tip into the fuming portal, not even bothering to search for a gap in the giant’s black armor. The high scout drew his bow, at the same time hissing, “taergsilisaB!” A ruby gleam flared from one of the runes etched into his weapon, then flashed out of existence. He released the bowstring. A sharp clap echoed off the canyon walls, and the arrow flashed away, leaving a blinding streak of crimson between the bow and the tunnel mouth. The shaft flew into the mine, then pierced its target’s thick armor with a muffled clang.
The fire giant did not drop dead, for even an arrow driven by the lord high scout’s magic bow was not powerful enough to fell such a foe in a single strike. The mighty warrior merely grunted in surprise, then instinctively reached for his wound.
“esiwsilisaB!” Tavis cried, speaking the command word that would activate the runearrow’s magic.
From inside the mine came a glimmering blue flash and a mighty boom. The fire giant’s torso shot out of the portal and plummeted over the steep bank of Wyrm River, trailing a spray of crimson blood from the truncated waist. Blizzard whinnied in alarm, and Tavis grabbed her reins. A muffled crack reverberated deep within the mountain.
There was no opportunity to cry out or to cringe in fear, and even the queen’s mare did not have time to rear. The hillside simply folded inward over the tunnel. At the top of the ravine, a frozen buttress of stone lost its hold on the canyon wall and came rumbling down the slope. Tavis and Blizzard barely managed to retreat half a dozen steps before the avalanche roared over the mine portal and swallowed the fallen lancers of the Royal Snow Bear Company. The churning mass spread up the road, then spilled over Wyrm River’s steep bank and rumbled across the broad ribbon of ice, engulfing the fire giant’s truncated corpse and finally crashing against the far side of the canyon.
For a moment, Tavis could do nothing except stare at the mountainous jumble before him, listening to the dying thunder of the avalanche echo down the crooked gorge. He felt himself shivering in the cold wind and realized that he had broken into a nervous sweat. The landslide had come so close to swallowing his wife’s sleigh, and him with it, that he could have reached out with his bow and touched a frost-rimed boulder as large as himself. Even Blizzard seemed stunned by the close call. She stood stiff and motionless at his side, the muscles of her powerful shoulders trembling with fear.
Brianna was the first to speak. “It seems we finally have a name for your new bow, Tavis,” she said. “I hereby dub it Mountain Crusher.”
“Hear, hear! The giants will need Surtr’s own help to dig out of there.” Radborne’s eyes were fixed on the hillock of stone and ice ahead. The heap rose thirty feet above the mine portal, and the choking yellow plume that had been pouring from the tunnel a moment earlier had now been reduced to a few scattered wisps. “Well done!”
From the other side of the rubble heap came a sergeant’s terrified voice: “Your Majesty? Lord Scout?”
“The queen is well!” Tavis yelled back. “What of the footmen?”
“Mostly able. The slide buried a dozen of us,” he replied. “What would you have us do?”
“Climb over here,” Tavis called. “We’re going to need you to carry the queen’s sleigh over the avalanche.”
The high scout did not even consider abandoning the sleighs to retreat up the canyon. Even if Brianna had been in any condition to ride, they would only find more fire giants coming down the road. The fumes he had sniffed after the first, distant explosion smelled the same as the mordant smoke that had been pouring from the mine ahead. Unless the magic of Radborne’s tunnel wizards bore the same odor as fire giant alchemy, it seemed likely that their ambushers had planned to trap the queen between two war parties.