The Ogre's Pact (37 page)

Basil’s log pile shifted. The runecaster cried out in alarm and tried to scramble away, but something caught his feet and pulled him back. One of the logs began to writhe, its gray bark changing to scales before Tavis’s eyes. The bole slithered around the verbeeg’s waist and began twining him in its mighty coils.

The scout resisted the urge to sprint to Basil’s aid, realizing Goboka was probably using the runecaster as bait. Instead, Tavis stopped well out of the snake’s reach and fired his arrow. The shaft bounced harmlessly off the beast’s thick scales. He tried again, this time drawing his string back until the tip barely touched the bow. Again, the shot did not penetrate.

“Where boy?” demanded Goboka’s voice.

Tavis nocked an arrow and turned toward the sound, but remembered how the shaman had thrown his voice in the fault cave and did not fire. Taking care to conceal the maneuver with his fingers, the firbolg slipped the notch of the ogre shaft off Bear Killer’s string, but drew the bow as if he were going to fire.

“Leave Avner out of this,” Tavis said, relieved to hear the shaman trying such a trick. If it had been possible for the ogre to throw his voice while uttering a spell incantation, Goboka would not have bothered trying to make conversation.

“Let all you go.” Goboka said. To give the impression that he was moving about, he had shifted the location of his words. “Give me princess.”

Tavis turned his bow toward the voice and released the cord beneath his fingers. The sonorous strum of Bear Killer’s snapping bowstring echoed off the trees, but the firbolg’s arrow remained between his fingers.

As the scout expected, Goboka’s heavy footsteps came rushing at him from behind. Tavis tightened his grip on the arrow and spun, thrusting the shaft out in front of him. He heard an astonished groan and felt the iron tip sink into something pulpy, then the shaman’s huge bulk smashed into him, breaking the arrow and knocking the firbolg off his feet.

Tavis crashed to the ground beneath his attacker. The air rushed from his lungs in a single excruciating gasp, then a pair of huge hands closed around his throat. He felt hot ogre blood spilling onto his skin, then Goboka’s loathsome face appeared before his eyes, the illusion of invisibility shattered once the shaman revealed his location by attacking. The brute’s yellow tusks were gnashing in fury, with blue poison antidote still frothing at the corners of his mouth.

Tavis slammed his palms into the ogre’s elbows, trying to break his attacker’s arms and free himself of the hands that had squeezed shut the veins in his neck. The shaman roared in anger, but his sturdy limbs did not budge, and he brought his heavy brow down to smash his captive’s face. The scout turned his head, keeping his nose from being shattered, but Goboka’s forehead still caught him in the cheek. An agonizing crackle resonated through the firbolg’s head, and his entire face erupted in pain.

Tavis’s sight began to grow murky and black, as though he were climbing into a cave for a deep winter sleep. The scout fought to stay alert, turning all his thoughts toward the dwindling light at the lair’s distant mouth, but the gloom continued to close in, until he could see nothing but Goboka’s hideous face leering at him from the other end of a narrow, dark tunnel.

Tavis reached up and pressed his thumbs to Goboka’s eyes, trying to gouge the purple orbs from their sockets before the warrens of his mind grew completely dark.

The shaman threw his head back, pulling his eyes safely out of reach-then Avner’s small frame appeared in the gloomy shadows at the edge of Tavis’s vision. The youth’s hand was arcing through the air, driving the gleaming blade of a steel dagger down past Goboka’s face. The knife struck with a deep thud. A spray of blood shot up past the shaman’s cheek, and the ogre finally pulled his hands from Tavis’s throat.

As the blood rushed back into Tavis’s head, the murk began to lighten. The scout glimpsed Goboka’s clublike arm swinging toward Avner’s small form. The blow landed with a terrible crack and sent the youth sailing through the air. The boy yelled once, then fell quiet.

The shaman stood and turned to follow. As soon as the tremendous weight disappeared from Tavis’s chest, the scout pushed himself up and reached out to clutch Goboka’s ankle. The ogre did not even spin around. He simply swung the heel of his huge foot and caught Tavis beneath the chin. The scout went reeling down into the dreamless mists where bears sleep.

Brianna snatched up the small wooden javelin Basil had prepared for her and stood, more than a little frightened by what she saw on shore. The shaman’s kick had left Tavis lying motionless, either unconscious or dead, while the ogre’s snake had just captured Basil’s second arm in its coils. Goboka himself was striding toward Avner’s groaning form, apparently determined to make certain the youth did not survive to attack him again. Despite the steel dagger and two arrows that had been lodged in his bloody torso, the shaman showed no signs of discomfort-much less of debilitating injury-as he moved to finish the boy.

“Hiatea, give me your blessing,” Brianna whispered. “The battle has fallen upon my shoulders now.”

The princess spoke the command word Basil had taught her, then hurled the javelin in her hand at Goboka’s back. With a great whoosh, the spear burst into flame and streaked away, long tongues of yellow fire trailing after it. The shaman cocked an ear toward the hissing shaft, then, without even glancing toward the sound, hurled himself to the ground.

The maneuver did not spare him. The shaft curved down and planted itself between his shoulder blades. Goboka’s scream echoed through the woods. The javelin burst apart, leaving a geyser of flame to shoot from the hole in the ogre’s back.

At last, something had injured the shaman. For several moments, he lay on the ground with a pillar of greasy black smoke rising from his wound, growling with pain and digging his long talons into the dirt. Brianna thought he might be dying, but that hope vanished when he raised his head and looked back toward her. His purple eyes had gone black with rage, while his lips were covered with gashes from his own gnashing tusks.

Goboka pushed himself to his feet. After glancing around to make certain his other foes would not be attacking again, he fixed his eyes on Brianna and staggered toward her.

“Princess like hurt? Goboka too. Got plenty.” The ogre stopped at the edge of the bog and scowled at the syrupy mud. “Hurt you good before we go.”

Brianna stared across the bog, not trying to hide her fear. “You’re not going to hurt me,” she said. “I won’t allow it.”

The princess turned and took quick steps, then leaped away from the edge of the raft. She splashed, with a syrupy gurgle, into the mud and plunged in as far as her chest, then began to sink more slowly.

Goboka’s angry eyes paled to lavender, and his heavy jaw fell open. “Stop!” he ordered. “What you do?”

“I swore I’d die before I let you take me again,” Brianna said. Her feet touched the boulder she and her companions had placed on the bottom when they moved the raft into position, and she slowly bent her knees so that it would appear she was continuing to sink. “And I meant it.”

The princess held her chin above the mire long enough to see the shaman grab a log and come splashing toward her, then she closed her eyes and let her head sink into cold mud. Pinching her nostrils shut with one hand, Brianna kneeled down and ran her hand over the boulder until she found the line they had tied to it, then she followed the rope until she came to the hand axe.

The princess pulled the weapon loose. Her heart began to pound, rebelling against any plan that required her to stop breathing, and within thirty alarmed beats the rest of her body joined the panic. Soon, it seemed to Brianna that she had been submerged forever, though a small corner of her mind knew that no more than a minute had passed. Her lungs began to ache for air, and her mouth longed to open wide. It required a conscious act of will to keep her legs folded beneath her, for every instinct screamed at her to straighten them out and thrust her head up into the cool, crisp air just two feet above. But the princess knew what would happen if she did: Goboka would realize he had been tricked. He would react instantly, dodging or blocking her axe strike, and her chance would be gone.

The princess could not understand what was taking Goboka so long. He was obviously intelligent, at least for an ogre, and this was a simple enough thing to do. Push his log out to her raft and plunge his hand into the mud, then grasp her hair-or whatever he could find-and pull her up.

Perhaps he was casting a spell. They had talked about that possibility, but Basil had convinced them that once Brianna was submerged, the ogre would not have time to prepare a spell capable of saving her. Unfortunately, Goboka had surprised them too many times for the princess to place much faith in the runecaster’s reassurances. That she was now crouching in the bog was proof enough of the shaman’s prowess, for this was the last hope of victory. All of their other plans and assaults had failed to stop him.

There was nothing for Brianna to do but wait, fighting against her own instincts while her body slowly burned her last whiffs of air. Her temples began to throb, and her chest was about to burst with the urge to expel the stale breath in her lungs. In the back of her mind, a fiendish voice kept saying she would feel better if she exhaled. The princess did not listen. She knew her desperate lungs would try to refill themselves the instant she emptied them, and she still had enough control over her mind to know humans could not breathe mud.

At last, Brianna felt the mire swirling near her face. She pushed her head toward the activity and felt her brow brush a pair of talons. They twitched away, and she lost contact. The princess almost screamed, then felt the coarse pads of five ogre fingers slipping over the crown of her head. They squeezed down, the claws digging into her scalp so deep she feared they would puncture her skull.

Brianna took her fingers away from her nostrils and reached up to claw at the hand, trying to pull Goboka into the mud on top of her. She did not want to succeed, but if she allowed the shaman to pull her from the bog without a struggle, he might sense a trap.

Goboka’s talons dug deeper, and he pulled. Brianna was surprised by the force the bog exerted to keep her down. The suction was more powerful than the princess had imagined possible, and she found herself worrying the ogre would not be strong enough to pull her free. She had heard many stories of moose, bears, and even dragons that had become so caught in quagmires that they starved to death within plain sight of solid ground. If such powerful beasts could not free themselves, it seemed unreasonable to think an ogre could pull her out.

Fortunately, Brianna did not have to rely on her foe. Ever so slightly, she began to straighten her legs and push against the solid surface of the boulder. She felt herself slipping slowly upward, until, with a loud whooshing sound, the suction broke and her head came shooting out of the mud.

Brianna found herself looking at the side of Goboka’s log, with what appeared to be a bleeding mass of mud piled on top. At first, the princess did not know what to make of the sight, then she understood exactly what she was seeing and braced her feet solidly on the boulder. She pushed herself to her full height, so that she was standing only chest-deep in the mire, and brought the hand axe up from beneath the muck.

Goboka tried to slide off the other side of the log, but Brianna was already swinging the weapon at his throat. The blade came down with a damp, distinct thump, then she felt the satisfying crackle of a skull popping free of its neck.

The head splashed into the bog, but the rest of the shaman’s bulky corpse remained on the log. Brianna shoved the loathsome body out of sight and pulled herself from the bog, already turning toward the shore where her friends lay in desperate need of healing magic.

It did not occur to the princess to give a victory cry, not until she reached the shore of the bog and saw Tavis lift his battered head.

18
Audience with the King

As the flabbergasted doormen performed the ceremonial presentation of their poleaxes, Brianna pulled Basil’s runestone from beneath her grimy bearskin cape and turned its glowing symbol toward them. The eyelids of both men drooped shut, the tension drained from their bodies, and their weapons slipped from their hands. They fell to floor, landing atop each other in a crumpled heap.

The princess spun around, presenting the runestone to the six astonished sentries flanking Tavis. These guards also sank into slumber, collapsing to the floor amidst a clamor of weapons and armor.

“Can I look yet?” Tavis was holding his hands to his eyes, Avner and Basil were waiting, at Brianna’s order, in the woods outside Castle Hartwick.

“Yes.” Brianna turned the runestone toward the floor, then waited for the scout to uncover his eyes and handed it to him. “You keep this, in case any more of Father’s guards show up.”

Tavis slipped the runestone beneath his cloak, then retrieved Bear Driller from the guard who had been holding it. “I’ll slip inside once you’ve drawn their attention away from the door,” he said. “Don’t worry if you don’t notice. I’ll be there when you need me.”

Brianna smiled and touched his cheek, which was still badly swollen in spite of all the healing spells she had cast on it. “You always have,” she said. “Wish me luck.”

The princess turned and kicked the door, thrusting her heel into the bas-relief face of a leering satyr. The portal swung open with a resounding boom, then Brianna stepped through a looming arch into Castle Hartwick’s banquet room.

The cavernous chamber was every bit as gloomy as the interior of the Fir Palace, for the wall sconces had all been hung with red mourning curtains that turned the flickering torchlight to the color of blood. A long feasting table ran down the center of the room. Standing along its sides, staring in her direction with their swords drawn and mead dripping from their beards, were the surviving earls of Hartsvale. Most had white bandages covering the wounds they had suffered during the ogre ambush, and a few still seemed to have trouble standing.