The Ogre's Pact (33 page)

Morten hoped the dazed expression on his foe’s face meant the brute would meet a quick end. It was going to be difficult enough to weave his way through the forest of bolelike legs ahead, especially when they began kicking and stomping. Save for the alley down the center of the room, which he felt sure would be the quickest avenue to death, he could see no open ground at all, only huge filthy feel with stumpy toes and broken yellow nails.

About halfway down the gauntlet, Tavis still hung over the cooking fire. Fortunately, once the hill giants had lost interest in steaming him, the fomorian cook had let the fire die down to glowing coals, and it seemed entirely possible that the scout would be alive when Morten reached him. Whether he would be strong enough to help free Brianna was another matter, but at least his presence might add to the confusion. The princess herself hung near the ceiling of the far wall, a distant cocoon of rope illuminated by a single torch the giants had placed there so the rabbits would know where they were trying to go-though few expected them to live that long.

“Ready rabbits?” Noote asked.

Without waiting for a reply or offering any other warning, the chief lifted the hands he had placed in front of the two racers. Morten reacted first, sprinting forward without so much as a sideward glance. The giants roared their delight, filling the palace with a deafening rumble louder than any thunderstorm. The sound seemed to buffet the bodyguard like a powerful wind, threatening to sweep him from his feet.

The giants began to stomp, and before Morten knew it, the dirt floor was bucking beneath his feet like a collapsing rampart. The firbolg managed two steps before he bounced so high into the air that he lost his feel for the ground. He came down at an angle, arms flailing wildly, and crashed to the floor on his back.

The hill giants yelled even louder, shaking the walls so hard that the hide coverings flapped as though a terrible wind were tearing at them. As his tormentors moved in for the kill, Morten saw their heads forming a rough circle high above. He rolled sideways, narrowly saving himself as a huge foot crashed to the floor.

The impact bounced the firbolg into the air. He tried to gather his legs and felt as though he were trying to stand while tumbling down a sleep hill. He managed to plant his feet on the ground, but his body’s momentum carried him past his balance point and sent him sprawling. He glimpsed the ogre tumbling through the air beside him, then landed face first on the ground.

Something heavy crashed down on his back. Morten dug his fingers into the dirt and tried to pull himself forward, expecting to feel a large heel with all the enormous weight of hill giant behind it.

Instead, the ogre’s powerful jaws bore down on the firbolg’s burly calf, sending sharp daggers of pain shooting up through his knee. The bodyguard howled in surprise and anger, though even he could not hear the cry above the din of the hill giants. He twisted around to grasp his attacker. The ogre pulled his head away from Morten’s leg and spit a hunk of flesh from between his lips, then lowered his mouth to the firbolg’s ankle.

Morten brought his foot up as hard as he could, driving the hard knob of his heel into his attacker’s face. Unlike those of humans or firbolgs, ogre noses were filled with dozens of small bones, and the kick snapped them all like dry twigs. The ogre went slack; whether he was unconscious or dead did not matter to Morten. The brute was out of the race either way. The firbolg rolled, throwing the ogre’s limp body off his back-then saw a giant’s immense foot sweeping toward him.

The kick landed square in his ribs. The firbolg felt the air rush from his chest, then he and the ogre went sailing in different directions.

Morten crashed, back first, into the side of a giant’s treelike leg. He felt something crack, like an inflexible trunk snapping in a heavy wind. A pained bellow reverberated above, louder even than the tremendous tumult of the other hill giant voices, and the fellow’s knee buckled-not in a direction it normally bent, but sideways. The giant reflexively clutched at the joint, barely retaining his balance as he attempted the impossible maneuver with both hands still bound behind his back.

Morten slid to the ground, a terrible ball of dull, throbbing agony forming between his shoulder blades. The firbolg knew the impact had knocked something in his back terribly out of place, but he could not let that bother him now-not when he had such an opportunity to throw the hill giants into a confused panic. The bodyguard rolled onto his stomach and pushed himself to his hands and knees. He spun around until he saw the injured giant’s good leg, then, without standing up, he gathered his feet beneath him and drove his shoulder into it as hard as he could. Again the giant bellowed, but this time he also came down.

The effect was something like a tree toppling in an over-thick stand of woods. The fellow crashed into two more giants beside him, and they also fell, unable to catch themselves with their hands tied behind their backs. This pair unbalanced two more, who had to stop kicking long enough to regain their balance.

The opening that resulted wasn’t much, but it was enough for the firbolg. He jumped to his feet and clambered away, dodging and weaving as hill giant feet lashed at him from all directions. He suffered several glancing blows that almost knocked him over, and twice he was struck so hard that he actually fell and tumbled through the swarm of legs, somersaulting across insteps and ricocheting off ankles. Each time, he managed to roll back to his feet and continue running. At first, he moved across the lodge toward a side wall, as though searching for a clear alley. Then he suddenly turned toward Brianna and darted into a dense thicket of hill giant legs, where the crowd was packed so thickly that the giants smashed each other’s shins more often than their target. Even when a foot did catch Morten, it did not have much momentum, and so the blow was not very painful.

By the time the firbolg neared the middle of the lodge, the hill giants ahead were beginning to bump each other aside, trying to create enough space around themselves so they could land a solid attack if the rabbit came their way. Morten dodged back toward the center of the room, running straight for the shimmering orange light of the cooking fire.

As the firbolg broke free of the thicket of giant legs, he was surprised to see Tavis no longer hung over the fire. Ig had already taken the scout’s spit down and was using a bone butcher knife to cut the cocoon apart. Long strings of drool were dripping from the fomorian’s mouth, and he was licking his twisted lips with a long gray tongue.

“Leave him alone!” Morten bellowed.

The bodyguard started to charge the cook, hoping that the fomorian was typical for his race and coward enough to bluff away easily. Otherwise, Morten would have to abandon the scout. He could not afford the time it would take to kill the fomorian.

The firbolg suddenly found his way blocked by the fomorian dancing slave. Although hardly as big as a hill giant, she was still much larger than Morten, and he could not easily dodge around her.

“Go!” She thrust his battle-axe into his hand. “We take care of Tavis Burdun.”

Morten stared at the weapon in confusion, so stunned by the unexpected help that it took him a moment to realize the fomorian slaves had become his allies. The firbolg accepted his axe and started to step past the fomorian, intending to rush into the crowd on the other side of the lodge. Before he made it all the way around her enormous hip, the hides on the wall ahead were ripped away with a tremendous whoosh. The firbolg caught a glimpse of towering fir trees silhouetted against a blue sky, then hill giants began to spin around, shouting and screaming in astonishment. The tumult lasted only a matter of seconds before giants began to collapse, the black fletching of ogre arrows protruding from wounds that, on their huge bodies, seemed mere pinpricks.

Deciding it wiser to risk hill giant feet than ogre arrows, Morten spun around. The conditions on that side of the lodge were no better. Goboka had planned his attack well, catching his enemies in a deadly cross fire.

Noote’s angry voice came bellowing from the other end of the lodge. “Forget game! Fight ogres!”

Hoping the giants ahead could hear their chief, Morten turned and ran for Brianna’s end of the lodge. At first, Noote’s followers seemed confused about what was happening. While their fellows dropped all around them, many continued to stomp and kick at Morten, angrily bellowing about the game being unfair when he used his axe to fend off their attacks. Then, as their unconscious fellows piled on top of each other, the giants seemed to realize the firbolg was not their greatest problem. They began to work feverishly to unbind each other’s hands. Morten even began to help, cutting their hands free as he ran past.

To the bodyguard’s relief, Goboka’s attack was concentrated near the center of the lodge. Fifty paces down from the cooking fire, the walls remained intact, and the giants were moving toward the battle with their clubs and wooden shields. Occasionally, one of these warriors took a swipe at Morten, but the firbolg had little trouble dodging these halfhearted attacks-especially when the aggressor was invariably chastised for wasting time. They had ogres to kill!

By the time Morten reached the far end of the lodge, it was more or less empty. All the giant warriors were back near the cooking fire, bellowing insults at their attackers and trying to work up the courage to raise their shields and charge into the onslaught of ogre arrows. All that remained here, in the relatively untouched corners of the lodge, were a handful of wrinkled giants too old to do much of anything except watch the clan’s whimpering children. None of them made any move to stop Morten as he approached Brianna.

“Are you all right up there?” the bodyguard called.

“Better than you,” Brianna warned. “Look behind you.”

The floor began to tremble as someone broke into a charge. Morten spun around to see Noote and his queen rushing toward him. The bodyguard could not imagine how they had pushed their way through the swarm of giants in the center of the lodge, but there could be no denying they had.

Cursing under his breath, Morten braced himself to meet the charge. One giant he could handle, but two-his silent complaint was interrupted by the muffled strum of a bowstring. The queen cried out in shock and began to stumble. She managed to take one more step before collapsing on her face, the black fletching of an ogre arrow protruding from one enormous buttock.

The bodyguard felt the cold fingers of panic slipping around his heart, at least until he realized that it wasn’t an ogre that had fired the shaft. Tavis’s crimson-skinned figure stood a short distance beyond the queen, with a scrap of filthy hide tied loosely about his waist and the fomorians standing to either side of him. The scout was trying to nock another arrow, though he was so weak that he could not stand without leaning against the leg of the female dancing slave.

“Save your strength!” Morten yelled.

The bodyguard allowed Noote to continue his charge. Then, when the hill giant stooped over to reach for him, the firbolg hurled his axe. The weapon tumbled through the air once, then lodged its blade deep in the chieftain’s forehead.

Morten dove away, catching a glimpse of Noote’s eyes growing blank as he pitched forward. The hill giant’s body did not fall clear to the ground, instead lodging against the wall below Brianna’s feet.

The firbolg picked himself up, then climbed Noote’s back and stood on the hill giant’s shoulders as he plucked Brianna off the wall.

“Nice axe work,” the princess commented. “Now let’s get out of here-and fast!”

Morten glanced over his shoulder and saw that some of the hill giants had decided it would be easier to go out the entrance than to try squeezing out the holes the ogres had opened in the center of their palace. About two dozen of the huge warriors were rushing toward the exit, bellowing war cries and whirling clubs over their heads.

“Fools,” Morten commented. He began to unwrap Brianna. “Goboka will expect that.”

“But I bet he won’t be expecting that, will he?”

The princess pulled her arm free of her loosened bindings and pointed to Tavis. The scout and his fomorian rescuers were rushing straight toward the side of the room, desperately attempting to avoid the giants charging down the center of the lodge. As Morten and Brianna watched, the fomorians linked arms and lowered their shoulders, then hurled themselves through the wall with a tremendous crash.

“Let’s go,” Brianna ordered. She pulled the rope off her legs and tossed it aside, then started to run. “We don’t want to get left behind.”

16
Unexpected Help

A few moments after the fomorians opened the gaping hole in the side of the Fir Palace, Tavis and his companions rushed through it. The scout ran between Morten and Brianna, who had snatched up two battered hill giant bucklers to screen the trio’s flanks. Although the shields were as large and heavy as tower doors, the princess’s ancestral strength allowed her to carry hers as easily the bodyguard did his. The small company did not bother to guard against frontal assaults, for their fomorian allies had ripped a huge section of hides from the lodge wall as they exited, then cut a broad swath through the ogre lines by hurling this tattered canopy over the heads of their would-be attackers.

Tavis and his companions made it only three steps out of the lodge before ogre arrows began to pound the shields on both flanks. The assault sounded like some sort of crazy drumbeat, reverberating through the wood with an erratic cadence of thumps and thuds. Tiny splits appeared in the thick planks, each sprouting the dark tip of an iron arrowhead. The venomous points were not yet penetrating far enough to be dangerous, but the scout knew that soon a shaft would split one of the gray slats and pierce the flesh of a shield-bearer.

Though Tavis was not carrying either of the heavy shields, he found it difficult to keep pace with his companions. Both his mangled arm and the gash in his side throbbed with a deep, boiling pain, while Noote’s torture had scalded his skin to such a degree that he felt as though wasps were stinging every inch of his body. But his thirst caused the worst suffering. The scout had lost so much sweat during the steaming that he felt like he had not drunk water in a tenday. He could hardly draw breath past his swollen tongue, and his joints burned with the fiery ache of fever. Even the spots swimming before his eyes seemed ready to sink into darkness.