The Ogre's Pact (29 page)

Avner’s eyes were opened wide with fear and his lips were trembling uncontrollably, but the boy seemed far from resigned to his fate. Although he could move no more than his head, the youth’s eyes were wildly searching for a means of saving himself.

“Rog, do you think I’ll keep my promise if you let Kol kill that boy?” Brianna asked. She did not know whether the hill giant would consider ten horses worth the price of his wolf pack, but it was her last hope. “Do you think I’ll send all those horses?”

Kol’s fist closed instantly, once again holding Avner secure. “Horses?”

Sart scowled in Rog’s direction. “You didn’t tell us nothing about horses!”

Brianna stood, breathing a silent sigh of relief. “I promised to give Rog ten horses if he’d help me.”

“With what?” demanded Kol, eyeing Rog suspiciously.

“To go see Noote,” Rog growled. He scowled down at Brianna. “And Rog say a hundred horses!”

Kol pulled Avner back from the edge of the platform. “A hundred horses?”

“That’s right,” Brianna replied. “But there won’t be any if we’re hurt.”

Sart and Kol nodded to Brianna. “We not let Rog hurt you.”

“Them’s Rog’s horses!” The hill giant tossed Morten toward the wall.

The bodyguard hit with a loud thump, then dropped to the timber road at Tavis’s side, gasping for air as he tried to recover his breath.

Rog stepped toward Kol. “Give boy!”

Kol backed away, placing Sart in front of himself and holding Avner out of reach. “Share!” he yelled.

“Rog lose wolves!” Rog thundered back, stopping in front of Sart. “Not Kol! Not Sart!”

With that, the hill giant loosed a vicious right hook that landed with a deafening boom. Sart slammed into the cliff, dropping with such force that the sound of splintering timbers echoed off the granite wall. Fearing the platform would collapse, Brianna, in a futile search for handholds, turned to clutch at the smooth cliff.

“Rog, I’ll bring horses for everyone!” Brianna yelled.

Rog was too angry to pay her offer any more heed than he did the shaking platform. He stepped past Sart and tried to snatch Avner. Kol shoved him away, then stepped back. He was now standing directly in front of the fault cave gate, with less than a pace of platform left behind him.

“Leave Kol alone!”

“Give boy here!”

Rog lunged for the hand holding the boy, and Kol twisted away. For an instant it looked like Avner’s captor would dodge aside and send his attacker plunging over the edge, then Rog caught himself by smashing an elbow into his foe’s temple. Kol’s eyes rolled back in his head, and his knees buckled. He collapsed backward, the hand clutching his prize still extended, and tumbled headfirst over the edge of the platform. Avner’s muffled voice cried out in alarm, the hoisting chains rallied briefly, then Kol’s echoing death scream drowned out both sounds.

“Avner!”

Brianna leaped to her feet and charged toward the end of the platform, but quickly found her way blocked by Sart’s enormous form.

“Kol killer!” Sart threw himself forward, driving his shoulder squarely into the other giant’s back.

Rog roared and stumbled forward, one enormous hand scraping at the sheer wall of the cliff as he tried to brace himself. “Stop! Stop!”

Sart’s feet continued to pound the floor of the platform, driving Rog back, closer to the edge. Brianna was too horror-stricken to think. She didn’t know what to do-didn’t know what she could do-to stop the titanic struggle before her, or even whether she should after Avner’s loss. Her companions seemed as horrified and dumbfounded as she. They were staring at the battle with gaping mouths and making no move to rise.

“Rog sorry!” Rog yelled. “Rog share!”

With a final, thunderous grunt, Sart shoved the other giant toward the edge. Rog’s terrified voice rumbled through the entire platform, then, arms flailing wildly, he followed Kol into the valley below.

Sart stared after Rog only until a distant crash echoed up from the bottom of the cliff. Then, his breath coming in great gusts of foul-smelling wind, he turned back to Brianna and her companions.

“Now Sart take you to Noote,” he said, a rapacious grin on his lips. “Get horses for himself.”

*****

As the peasant’s wagon trundled across Earls Bridge, a chorus of trumpets echoed from the summit of Castle Hartwick’s lofty ramparts. A sonorous thud sounded from inside the walls, then the gates began to creak open.

“Stop here and let me out,” ordered Earl Wendel. The earl issued the command from the bed of the peasant’s wagon, where he lay with two of his unconscious fellows. The other seven survivors of the ogre ambush waited in more carts back at the guardhouse, where the sentries had halted them for fear of overloading the bridge. “I won’t meet my king in an oxcart.”

The peasant halted the wagon as ordered. “You shouldn’t be walking, milord,” he protested. “Your wounds are too serious.”

“I think I can make fifty paces.” Wendel could not quite keep the sarcasm out of his voice, for his two arrow wounds, one in the shoulder and the other in the thigh, had not stopped him from dragging one of his fellows out of the mountains on a sledge of pine branches.

The earl climbed down from the wagon and limped toward the gate, where he saw Gavorial’s enormous face glaring out at him.

“Where’s Tavis?” demanded the stone giant.

“We don’t have him,” Wendel replied.

“Why not?” The muffled question came from behind Gavorial, but that did not stop Wendel from recognizing the voice as Camden’s. “Did you kill him?”

“No, Your Highness.”

Gavorial abruptly retreated from the gateway, then the king himself came storming onto the bridge, his chamberlain and young queen, Celia of Dunsany, trailing close behind. Wendel stopped a few paces in front of the oxcart to wait for his liege.

Upon reaching the earl, Camden demanded, “If you didn’t kill Tavis Burdun, what are you doing here?” The circles beneath the king’s eyes were as dark as charcoal, and his lower lip was bloody and chapped from constant biting. “Where is he?”

“Somewhere beyond the Needle Peak glacier by now,” Wendel replied, alarmed by Camden’s demeanor. Only a madman would be more worried about avenging his wounded pride than his kidnapped daughter. “He saved us from an ogre ambush, then promised to surrender on his own-after Morten helped him rescue Brianna.”

An angry light flashed in the king’s eyes. “You allowed that?”

“We had no choice.” Wendel motioned to his wounded fellows in the oxcart. “None of us could stand at the time.”

Camden glared at the wagon for several moments, his expression growing as dark as a mountain storm. Suddenly, he looked back to Wendel.

“You can stand now? ” he yelled.

The king shoved Wendel hard, sending him crashing to the ground at the feet of the peasant’s ox.

“Go back and do as I commanded!”

The queen, a golden-haired girl standing barely up to Camden’s elbow, placed herself between Wendel and the king.

“Please, milord. Earl Wendel and these other men have already suffered much on your behalf.” As Celia spoke, she kept her eyes fixed on Camden’s feet, clearly frightened to look her own husband in the eye. “You’re being unreasonable.”

“Unreasonable!” Camden roared.

Celia grimaced, but nodded. “Aye,” she said. “These men need to rest-and to see Simon.”

The king scowled at her, then stepped past the quivering peasant to peer at the unconscious figures in the back of the wagon. “So they do.”

Suddenly, Camden’s voice seemed as gentle as a meadow breeze. Wendel found the abrupt mood change more frightening than he had the king’s anger.

“They’ll stay at Castle Hartwick until they recover,” the king declared. He seemed to grow thoughtful, then added, “And I’ll have to do something else about Tavis Burdun, won’t I?”

Celia breathed a sigh of relief. She reached down and took Wendel’s arm, helping him to his feet. “Please forgive him,” she whispered. “The strain has affected his temper.”

“It’s affected more than his temper,” Wendel replied, eyeing the king nervously.

“Ssshhh!” Celia hissed. “There’s no telling what he’ll do if he hears you.”

But there was no danger of that, Wendel saw.

Camden had already turned to face his nervous chamberlain. “Bjordrek, do you think Noote is home by now?”

The chamberlain nodded. “M-most certainly,” he said. “He left the day after Brianna’s disappearance.”

“Good. Needle Peak isn’t far from Gray Wolf lands.” Camden grabbed his chamberlain by the shoulders and shoved him toward the gate. “Go and tell Simon to prepare one of his message birds. I must ask Noote to do something for me.”

14
The FIR Palace

When Sart herded Brianna and her companions into the Fir Palace, as he insisted upon calling Noote’s oversized lean-to, the princess felt like she had stepped into some vast, sour-smelling vault where the gods held wicked spirits in purgatory. The air was hazy and damp, filled with the stench of unwashed bodies and the acrid smoke of the distant cooking fire. A roaring din of brutal laughter, bellowing voices, and lewd, bestial groans reverberated through the entire place. Around the perimeter of the room lounged great mounds of flesh that could only be hill giants, their faces and features lost in the flickering shadows draped along the walls.

“Go,” Sart urged. “Noote way down there.”

The giant thrust his arm over their heads, pointing. The air was so murky that Brianna could see only a few paces beyond the hand, much less clear to the other end of the cavernous room. Nevertheless, she led the way forward, determined to find Noote and interrogate him. The chief was cunning for a hill giant but he was not a quick thinker. The princess felt confident it would not take long to learn everything he knew about her abduction.

Winning the hill giant’s help could be more difficult. Because Tavis had been so willing to let her cast her true speaking spell on him, Brianna had decided to accept his warning about Noote and the Twilight Vale-though she still believed the scout was mistaken about her father’s involvement. Now the princess was trying to think of some way to convince the chieftain to take her to Castle Hartwick instead of returning her to the ogres or taking her to the Twilight Vale himself.

The safest thing would have been to avoid Noote altogether, but the princess had spent all afternoon and most of the evening, the length of time it had taken to climb down from the gate, trying to persuade Sart to lead them through the valley. The giant had steadfastly refused, even when Brianna pointed out that Noote might demand some of his horses. Although he had not said as much, Brianna suspected Sart anticipated trouble explaining what had happened to his two fellows, so he wanted some captives handy to blame for the deaths.

As Brianna progressed through the room, curious hill giants loomed out of the shadows to peer down at her and her companions. The princess could not tell the males from the females, for their brutal faces were entirely androgynous, with uniformly heavy brows, flat noses, and blocky chins. Nor was facial hair any help. They all seemed to have a little on the upper lip and chin, though never enough to grow a beard or mustache. And their bodies were uniformly lumpy and bulky, lacking any of the customary curves or angles that suggested their sex.

A few of the giants snapped belittling comments at Sart. “Stupid Sart? Firbolgs not good slaves!” Others pointed at Tavis, who was being carried in Morten’s arms, and cried, “That one no good? Can’t walk, can’t work?”

Others seemed more alarmed by Brianna’s presence. “Hide girl!” they warned. “Noote says don’t take humans, stupid!”

Occasionally, a hand would snatch out at the princess, but Sart would promptly slap it away, explaining she had come of her own will to see Noote. This invariably drew some ribald remark about “the rut” and caused a thunderous outbreak of laughter.

Brianna soon realized that the hill giants were not just visiting their chief. They all appeared to live in this one chamber. Some were eating-what, she could not tell-and others were sewing hides, repairing weapons, and tending to all the many chores of everyday life. Here and there some of the giants were even lying on their backs snoring-as often as not within ten paces of a bellowing argument or a thundering chorus of laughter.

Brianna was even more puzzled by their love of wrestling. Everywhere she looked, giants were rolling on the ground in groups of two and sometimes more, their arms locked around each other’s torsos, their hands clawing at each other, growling and groaning, screaming and … Suddenly falling silent, two nearby giants rolled apart with stupid grins on their faces, and the princess saw that they hadn’t been wrestling at all.

“The rut,” Morten commented, his voice thoroughly disgusted. “Savages!”

Brianna had to agree.

Morten nudged her, and Brianna realized she had stopped moving and was simply staring at the two giants. With her cheeks burning, she quickly resumed her pace, taking care to keep her eyes fixed straight ahead-though she wasn’t sure why. The hill giants certainly didn’t seem to care if anyone watched. In fact some were being observed with all the rapt attention of an athletic contest, and she half expected to hear the spectators wagering on the outcome.

About halfway through the chamber, they came to an abhorrent mound of flesh standing about twice as tall as the princess. There was one overly long leg dragging on the ground behind him, one incredibly short leg dangling from his hip, and one that seemed just about the right size propped beneath his tailbone. He had a pale, hunched body, stooped shoulders, and no neck whatsoever. His head was bald and wart-covered, with floppy, pointed ears and red, bulging eyes lacking brows or lids.

Brianna’s first impression was that a hill giant child had fallen into the fire and melted, then somehow survived to crawl back out. But once she recovered from her shock, she realized the figure was only a fomorian slave. Every member of this strange race of giant-kin was born hideously and uniquely deformed, though few quite as grotesquely as this fellow.

The fomorian, secured by a lengthy chain to a post, stood next to a large cooking fire. Over the roaring flames were suspended a dozen roasting spits, each skewering the charred remains of what might have been a deer. At the far end of the fire lay a tremendous pile of skinned animal carcasses, while at the closer end, where a huge black pot bubbled at the edge of the blaze, there was a much larger mound of pine cones.